“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.”

In the past some (Ilda) have been great courtesans, and even though they were not able to travel physically, they were at the heart of communication — that is, a part of court life, or involved with diplomats who did travel.

Neither house expresses your own particular individualistic ways of life, of course, but each one comes close enough to intrigue you, and either one could be made to suit your purposes quite easily. You were attracted also because the people who put their greatest imprint upon those houses so shared some of your tendencies. In the second house your ideas of privacy were shown to you, carried to an extreme, where the windows would not even open. In the first house the stairs to the second floor were purposely steep, and never altered, because no one was invited to view the private family bedrooms. The stairs were meant to be formidable.

Since you both work at home, those houses do not fit you, generally speaking.¹⁴ Work is not incorporated into daily family life, but certainly exists apart from it — something you find, each of you, relatively inconceivable. You can see farms better, though you are not farmers, simply because there also work and home life are one.

Seth’s material on Mr. Markle’s feeling for his art, however, is his (Seth’s) own. I couldn’t help here; as a boy of less than 12, I hadn’t been that consciously aware of subjective states other than my own. Although I remember my parents talking about Mr. Markle, I have little idea of how much they may have understood — or misunderstood — his basic life-style.