“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The imagination is highly involved with event-forming. Children’s imaginations prevent them from being too limited by their parents’ world. Waking or dreaming, children “pretend.” In their pretending they exercise their consciousness in a particularly advantageous way. While accepting a given reality for themselves, they nevertheless reserve the right, so to speak, to experiment with other “secondary” states of being. To some extent they become what they are pretending to be, and in so doing they also increase their own knowledge and experience. Left alone, children would learn how to cope with animals by pretending to be animals, for example. Through experiencing the animals’ reactions, they would understand how to react themselves.

When children dream, they utilize these inner senses as adults do, and then through dreaming they learn to translate such material into the precise framework of the exterior senses. Children’s games are always “in the present” — that is, they are immediately experienced, though the play events may involve the future or the past. The phrase “once upon a time” is strongly evocative and moving, even to adults, because children play with time in a way that adults have forgotten. If you want to sense the motion of your psyche, it is perhaps easiest to imagine a situation either in the past or the future, for this automatically moves your mental sense-perceptions in a new way.

Children practice using all of their senses in play-dreams, which then stimulate the senses themselves, and actually help ensure their coordination. In your terms, events are still plastic to young children, in that they have not as yet learned to apply your stringent structure. There is an interesting point connected with the necessity to coordinate the workings of the senses, in that before this process occurs there is no rigid placement of events. That placement is acquired. The uncoordinated child’s senses, for example, may actually hear words that will be spoken tomorrow, while seeing the person who will speak them today.

In play, particularly, children try on any conceivable situation for size. In the dream state adults and children alike do the same thing, and many dreams are indeed a kind of play. The brain itself is never satisfied with one version of an event, but will always use the imagination to form other versions in an activity quite as spontaneous as play. It also practices forming events as the muscles practice motion.

If, on the other hand, parents view the body as a healthy, dependable vehicle of expression and feeling, then their children will look at their own bodies in the same fashion. It is very important that parents express a fond affection toward each other, and toward their children. In this way most children are assured of their parents’ love, and hence need not resort to illness as a way of gaining attention or testing a parents’ love and devotion.

(Long pause.) Parents who are actually quite worried about their childrens’ susceptibility to illness often go overboard, stressing all kinds of sports and sports-related projects, but the children sense their parents’ unspoken fears, and they try to reassure their parents through achieving high goals or merit in sports programs.

[...] If parents believe that the body is somehow an inferior vehicle for the spirit, or if they simply view the body as unreliable or weak and vulnerable, then children will at an early age begin to consider good health as a rarity, and learn to take depression, poor spirits, and bodily aches and pains to be a natural, normal condition of life.

There is no natural reason for children to feel a sense of shame concerning any bodily part. [...]

[...] (Pause, then humorously:) Mama and Papa, back at the homestead, know where their children have gone, in other words; they read with amusement, amazement, and wonder the communications from their offspring. In this homespun analogy, Mama and Papa send letters back — also in the native language — to their children. As time goes by, however, the children lose their memories of their home tongue. Mama and Papa know that times are like places or countries, but their children begin to forget this, too, and so they grow to believe that they are far more separate from each other than they actually are. [...] The children forgot that they can move through time as easily as through space.

Give us a moment … Remember, in this analogy the various children represent your ancestors, yourself, and your own children. [...]

[...] If you have children, imagine their experience 50 years hence as still another place.

Now: Think of your ancestors, yourself, and your children as members of one tribe, each journeying into different countries instead of times. [...]

For now we will speak of children who possess ordinary good health, but who may also have some of the usual childhood “diseases.” Later we will discuss children with exceptionally severe health conditions.

I do not mean that ill children should not be treated with kindness, and perhaps a bit of special attention — but the reward should be given for the child’s recovery, and efforts should be made to keep the youngster’s routine as normal as possible. Children often know quite well the reasons for some of their illnesses, for often they learn from their parents that illness can be used as a means to achieve a desired result.

[...] Children, however, are far more innocent, and though they respond to the ideas of their parents, still their minds are open and filled with curiosity. [...]

At the same time, young children in particular still possess a feeling of oneness with the universe, and with all of life, even as they begin to separate themselves at certain levels from life’s wholeness to go about the delightful task. [...]

(Marian has five children and they were all home. [...] The living room can be closed off by old-fashioned glass doors, so we closed those and had relative privacy even though the children passed back and forth on the other side. [...] The children did not know the session was taking place; from their viewpoints we must have appeared like three adults who sat talking, and closed the doors because they didn’t want to be bothered.

[...] Marian loves children deeply. Seth explained that the ovarian tumor represented her subconscious attempt to grow something, since she has now almost gone through menopause and cannot grow children. Seth stressed that if Marian could learn to channel her energies outward, perhaps in helping underprivileged children, the subconscious need to be wanted would be satisfied and the tumor would shrink by itself.

[...] According to Seth two of the Spaziani children are psychically older than their parents. [...] The last time she was a female she was childless; Seth stressed quite often that this subconscious memory had much to do with her strong desire for children in this life.)

Give us a moment … When children play, often the play events seem as real or even more real than ordinary physical events that are experienced outside of the play framework. Children playing at cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers, can on occasion become quite as frightened by the pursuit or the chase as they would be if they were actually caught up in such an adventure in ordinary life.

CHILDRENS’ PLAY, REINCARNATION, AND HEALTH

We will begin a new chapter, to be entitled: “Childrens’ Play, Reincarnation, and Health.”

Children then apply their imaginations more vividly, and even utilize all of their senses at certain times, to follow or reinforce those pictures that imagination paints. [...]

The tale has always appealed to children because they recognize the validity behind it.² The fairy godmother is a creative personification of the personalized elements in Framework 2 — a personification therefore of the inner ego, that rises to the aid of the mortal self to grant its desires, even when the intents of the mortal self may not seem to fit into the practical framework of normal life. [...] Children however know quite well, automatically, that they have a strong hand in the creation of the events that then seem to happen to them.

3. The 806th session proper can be found in Chapter 2, but in the deleted portion of that session Seth came through with some comments relative to children that fit in well with his material this evening: “The point of power is in the present. [...] Yet children know the truth of it. [...]

[...] Surely it may seem that such a children’s tale has little to do with any serious adult discussion concerning anything so profound as the creation of the known world. [...]

For one thing, [the] Cinderella [tale] has a happy ending, of course, and is therefore highly unrealistic (with irony), according to many educators, since it does not properly prepare children for life’s necessary disappointments. [...]

Ruburt today read an article about gifted children — their background and development. Gifted children do not fit psychology’s picture. Gifted children do not fit the portrait of children that is sold to parents. The fact is that for many reasons gifted children merely show the latent quickness, mental agility, and curiosity and learning capacity, that is inherent in the species. [...]

[...] Parents, however, often half-disapprove of their children if they show unusual gifts. They are afraid their children will not get along with others. They are upset because the children do not fit the norm — but no child ever fits “the norm.”

Many children, for that matter, who are regarded as retarded by their teachers, are instead highly gifted. The same also applies to disruptive children, who are overactive and put on drugs. [...] Autistic children, in many cases, now, are those who have picked up the idea that the world is so unsafe that it is better not to communicate with it at all, as long as their demands or needs are being met. [...]

[...] Autistic children are afraid of making choices. [...]

[...] Children do not come in litters. The family of the caveman was a far more “democratic” group than you suppose — men and women working side by side, children learning to hunt with both parents, women stopping to nurse a child along the way, the species standing apart from others because it was not ritualized in sexual behavior.

[...] There were children of various ages in such a band all the time. When women were near birth, they performed those chores that could be done in the cave dwellings, or nearby, and also watched other young children; while the women who were not pregnant were off with the males, hunting or gathering food.

(Slowly:) Children began food gathering and hunting as soon as they were able to — females as well as males — led by the older children, going farther away as they progressed in strength. [...]

[...] Children came from women’s wombs. Man was acquainted with death, and many children were stillborn, or were naturally aborted. [...]

(Long pause.) They end up actually threatening their children, though usually they do not of course understand what they are doing. [...] In any case, often children grow up with the idea that proper behavior consists mainly in avoiding danger. [...] Children are taught to repress their emotions rather than to express them. [...]

Children’s play is extremely important to a child’s development—and when they play children use those exquisite powers of imagination, confidence, and expectation that provide the wellspring for growth and fulfillment. [...] Many children, however, are unfortunately taught by their parents to be suspicious of exuberance and high spirits. [...]

Often parents undermine their children’s confidence by endlessly repeating negatives. [...]

and so we do not lead our children into untruths

we lead our children

for we lead our children into truth,

and we fear neither parent or children

In the dreams of children this same activity continues, so that the boy may have many dream experiences as a girl, and the girl as a boy. More than this, however, in children’s dreams as in their play activity, age variances are also frequent. [...]

Dictation: In their play children often imaginatively interchange their sexes. [...]

[...] If you are a parent, imagine that you are your mate, and in that role imaginatively consider your children.

Children’s dreams activate inner psychological mechanisms, and at a time when their age makes extensive physical knowledge of their world impossible. [...]

There are also perfectly healthy, normal children who have determined ahead of time that they will live only to the threshold of adulthood, happy and flushed with dreams and promises of accomplishment, yet not experiencing any disillusionment or regret or sorrow. Such young people die of sickness or accident, but go to their deaths like children after a splendid day. [...]

In many cases, it is the parents of such offspring who suffer more than their children, since it seems as if such families were unjustly saddled with the most unfortunate woes.

In one way or another, such children may try to describe their feelings to those closest to them, so as to cushion the shock. [...]

(4:12.) Perhaps the greatest variances in human behavior show in mental states, and so parents are apt to feel most crushed and despondent if any of their children prove to be what is generally regarded as mentally deficient. [...]

Now in this children’s tale pretend with me. [...] We imagined a physical reality and we imagined this moment and this time and there is no end to this children’s tale. There is never any end to a children’s tale. [...]

Now, I am glad you liked my children’s tale. I do want to give our friend (Jane) more of a break, however, but let me tell you that in my own book I am not using children’s tales. You have been given children’s tales too often. [...]

(During break Nadine stated her children were always sick and she has a terrible fear of germs.)

Now, I will tell you a children’s tale. [...]

Children quickly learn from their parents that experience must be structured in a certain conventional pattern. In their own periods of imaginative play, however, children utilize dream events, or events perceived in dreams, while clearly realizing that these are not considered actual in the “real” world.

[...] Before conditioning, children’s play follows the love of performance, of body or imagination, for performance’s sake only; the expansion of mental or physical abilities. [...] The exercises I will suggest have to do with games “that anybody can play,” then — with the natural joyful manipulation of the imagination that children employ.

[...] They should be considered as creative play, though of a mental nature, and they actually consist of mental endeavors tried quite spontaneously by children. [...]

Children’s play, creativity, and dreams all involve you with the birth of events in the most direct of fashions. [...]

(Regarding “Two children”, interpreted on page 22. [...]

[...] On the visit to Story Book Land with the two children, Barbara also visited the display for Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. [...]

[...] She is a woman with children grown, and they have a fine home in the country. [...]

[...] It seemed to him, with the force of old beliefs, that Ida, Richard and the children were indeed driven willy-nilly by contradictory impulses, and that their lives lack any organizing inner purpose.

[...] Books were not left around the house for women or children to misuse.

[...] He wanted children to be frightened of him, for this proved that he was indeed superior, and not given to emotional outbursts.

[...] They consist of suggestions given to children:

These suggestions and others like them are often given to children by their parents with the best of intentions. [...]

[...] Obviously, children who go into the water right after eating do not all drown. [...]

Instead of such procedures, children are often taught to believe that any situation or illness or danger will worsen, and that the least desirable, rather than the most desirable, solution will be found. By such mental games, however, stressing the desirable solution, children can learn at an early age to utilize their imaginations and their minds in a far more beneficial manner.

[...] Children who want to be good, therefore, can unfortunately strive for poor health, in the belief that it is a sign of God’s attention. [...] Adults who hold such views unwittingly often let their children in for a life of turmoil and depression.

[...] Children learn through play-acting. [...]

This allows children a sense of freedom, independence, and power as they see themselves acting forcibly in all kinds of situations. [...]

[...] Your children play with wooden blocks and they make houses. [...] You encourage your children in their creativity, and when they make errors and when you see that their houses will not stand, you do not kick the blocks aside in ire. [...]

[...] I shall cease speaking to you as kindergarten children, and I shall expect that you will cease thinking like kindergarten children. [...]

[...] In many ways, you are indeed children. [...]

[...] But reality is far more than the children’s blocks and the houses that they build in kindergarten. [...]