“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.