“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The next family (Borledim) deals primarily with parenthood. These people are natural “earth parents.” That is, they have the capacity to produce children who from a certain standpoint possess certain excellent characteristics. The children have brilliant minds, healthy bodies, and strong clear emotions.

While many people are working in specific areas, developing the intellect, for example, or the emotions or the body, these parents and their children produce offspring in which a fine balance is maintained. No one aspect of mind or body is developed at the expense of another aspect.

The personalities possess a keen resiliency of both body and mind, and serve as a strong earth stock. It goes without saying that members of one family often marry into other families. Of course the same thing happens here. When this occurs new stability is inserted, for this particular family acts as a source-stock, providing physical and mental strength. Period. Physically speaking, these people often have many children, and usually the offspring do well in whatever area of life is chosen. (Pause.) Biologically speaking, they possess certain qualities that nullify “negative” codes in the genes.² They are usually very healthy people, and marriage into this group can automatically end generations of so-called inherited weaknesses.³

These people (the Borledim) believe, then, in the natural goodness of sex, the body, and the family unit — however those attributes are understood in the physical society to which they belong. As a rule they possess an enchanting spontaneity, however, and all of their creative abilities go into the family group and the production of children. These are not rigid parents, though, blindly following conventions, but people who see family life as a fine living creative art, and children as masterpieces in flesh and blood. Far from devouring their offspring by an excess of overprotective care, they joyfully send their children out into the world, knowing that in their terms the masterpieces must complete themselves, and that they have helped with the underpainting.

[The Borledim] are the stock that so far has always seen to it that your species continues despite catastrophes, and they are more or less equally distributed about the planet and in all nationalities. They are most like the Sumari. They have the same love of the arts, the same general attitudes. They will usually seek fairly stable political situations in which to bear their children, as the Sumari will to produce their art. They demand a certain amount of freedom for their children, however, and while they are not political activists, like the Sumari their ideas often spring to prominence before large social changes, and help initiate them. The one big difference is that the Sumari deal primarily with creativity and the arts, and often subordinate family life (as Jane and I have done), while this family thinks of offspring in the terms of living art; everything else is subordinated to that “ideal.”

An artist expects his paintings to be good — or, if you will forgive a jingle: at least he should. These people expect their children to be well-balanced, healthy, spiritually keen, and so they are. You will find members of the Borledim family in almost any occupation, but the main consideration will be on the physical family unit.

These parents do not sacrifice themselves for the sake of their children. They understand too well the burden that is placed upon such offspring. Instead, the parents retain their own clear sense of identity and their individual characteristics, serving as clear examples to the children of loving, independent adults.

I suggested that you take it (but see my note in the material at next break). It would have been good for you both, but you were afraid of it, and your feelings had much to do with the contract being turned down (by the Veteran’s Administration). That house represented what each of you thought of as unbridled, undisciplined creativity. It was dirty and cluttered. The artist had children who ran about without any control. There was much playfulness there, however, that could have tempered some of your great mutual seriousness at the time. You did not choose to accept such a probability then, any more than you could have accepted my advice all the way. The authorities turned the contract down — but the authorities stood for the inner disciplinarians, and you did not want to share your road with the world; nor did you want, later, to share your driveway (for the Sayre house) with your neighbor.

Except for the Sumari, which Jane and I choose to be allied with, there’s much we don’t know about the families of consciousness; the material is all so new. Yet my observation can even apply to aspects of our relationship with the Sumari. For instance, were any of our now-deceased parents Sumari? And regardless of whatever family each of those four people had belonged to, how had their individual family predilections affected their Sumari children? Seth’s data in these recent sessions give us clues, but we need time to put it all together.