“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause.) When you think, colon: “Life is earnest,” and decide to put away childish things, then often you lose sight of your own creativity and become so deadly serious that you cannot play, even mentally. Spiritual development becomes a goal that must be attained. The goal is to be achieved through hard work, and as long as you believe this you do not understand what the spirit is.

People have written here asking about soul mates.³ In certain circles this is the latest vogue. The idea is an old one; it is based upon the reality of counterparts, and presents another version of the theory. But, again, it is treated with an almost pompous seriousness. (Pause.) Many of those who use the term do it to hide rather than to release their own joyful abilities. They spend time searching for their soul mates — but the search involves them in a pilgrimage for a kind of impossible communication with another, in which all division is lost, with the two then trying to join in a cementing oneness, suffocating all sense of play or creativity. You are not one part, or one half, of another soul,⁴ searching through the annals of time for your partner, undone until you are completed by your soul mate.

(A one-minute pause, eyes closed, at 9:42.) When you become too intent to maintain your reality you lose it, for you deny the creativity upon which it rests.

(Long pause.) I am not denying the importance of true reason. Certainly I am not telling you to ignore the intellect. But you do often ignore the playfulness of the intellect, and force it to become something less than it is.

The life that you consider real represents one narrow stratum of even your physical experience. I am not speaking here of other realities that could add to that dimension. (Pause.) Play brings you a needed rest from your distorted concepts of selfhood, and many of the world’s finest inventions have come when the inventor was not concentrating upon work, but indulging in pastimes or play.

(Pause.) You are involved with some of your counterparts more or less directly, while others live in different lands, and are sometimes separated also in terms of age differences or culture — qualities with which you would find it difficult to relate.⁵ Intuitively, you know who the counterparts are in your daily experience. This does not mean that if you become consciously aware of such affiliations you must then feel it your responsibility to form a kind of culture of counterparts, or to try and affect other people’s lives by reminding them of your relationship. You are each individual. Some of the people you dislike most heartily may be counterparts.⁶ Each of you may be exploring different aspects of the same overall challenge.

(Pause at 10:20.) Pretend that the psyche is a plant sending out seeds of itself in many directions, each seed growing into a new plant in different conditions. Growing to planthood, those seeds send out further new variations. A handful of seeds from any tree might fall in the same backyard. Others might be blown for miles before they land.

These counterparts form psychic families. They are family representations on another level. First of all, such groups have a built-in focus — political, civic, religious, sexual, or whatever. (Pause.) Certain members of the group express the repressed tendencies of others. Yet each is supported through a common sense of belonging, so that the group sometimes seems to have its own overall identity, in which each member plays a part. Any reader can easily discover this by examining the groups to which he or she belongs.

(Pause.) Earl (Williams) and Sam (Garret) are counterparts. To my readers these names mean nothing. Yet in each case the relationships noted indicate inner realizations and connections. The same realities appear in each of your lives. Will Petrosky and Ben (Fein) are counterparts. Will (who, incidentally, witnessed the 729th session) is a very intellectual young man — proud of it, though he goes to great effort to show he is one of the boys. On the other hand, Ben Fein trusts his intuitions fully, and relies upon them, yet to some extent fears his own great energy. In many respects he is a child, and utterly spontaneous.

(Pause.) End of session. My heartiest regards, and a fond good evening.