“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You cannot say to yourself twenty times a day “There is no peace,’’ and at the same time expect to find some, with any possibility of achieving anything but conflict. There is no other way. Keep your cherished beliefs in conflict, but you will not find peace.

The greatest Old Masters felt the inner self’s great integrity, and its connection with All That Is, and each in his own way through painting tried to represent that energy and show it to others. The energy is behind all. When you look at the great world picture before you in space and time, look at it as you would a multidimensional worldscape, painted by some artist who was all of the great masters in one; and behind the scenes of destruction and conflict, feel the great energy that in itself denies the destruction that is in that case so cleverly depicted.

Now there are progressions, so to speak, of understanding, and when you reach the level currently experienced by yourself and Ruburt, then you will be driven because of the seeming conflict into the kind of synthesis that I have just spoken of allegorically. This applies to your understanding of private lives as well as world conditions.

You can be alone in the silence, fairly isolated, and yet filled with conflict if it is within you. You can be surrounded by some noise (as Seth, Jane pointed to the ceiling; someone was moving into the apartment above us) or traffic, and feel its great synthesis with the vitality of life, and it can be conducive to peace. This does not mean that silence at times is not preferable to noise. It means that you make your own reality.

[...] This resulted in conscious conflict before avoided, and a series of conflicting thoughts and impulses.

[...] It was a creative conflict.

[...] Recommendations: one half-hour a day, at any time, should be allowed specifically for clear physical activity, where that impulse is encouraged, and where there is no conflict. [...]

[...] It seemed at different times since our sessions began that there were disruptive conflicts, for example: was Ruburt a writer or was he a psychic? [...]

Those kinds of conflicts can only exist in a society in which the entire concept of creativity is segmented, in which the creative processes are often seen as inner assembly lines leading to specific products: a society in which the very nature of creativity itself is largely ignored unless its “products” serve specific ends.

(To me:) I want you to specifically understand that there is and can be no conflict, for example, between your writing and painting, for in the most basic of ways they represent different methods of exploring the meaning and the source of creativity itself. [...]

[...] Realizing that you are in the position you wanted to be and realizing that your abilities are not in conflict with each other, nor you with them, will automatically fulfill and develop all of those abilities, in a new kind of overall creativity that is itself beyond specifics.

[...] This was a biological activity he felt he could safely suspend, and in doing so avoid further conflict, the conflict caused by enjoyment in sex, when he did not feel worthy of being loved.

[...] The conflict mentioned in last evening’s session was a barrier to dedication. [...] He has always seen his daily life in the context of eternal meaning, and the conflict prevented this, robbing him of the previous significance possessed by the most trivial incident.

When your words disagreed with his spontaneous self severe conflicts arose. [...]

(“But these moral encouragements could conflict with the spontaneous self, even in dreams?”)

[...] Your abilities would meet some conflict in terms of religious, sexual, and social beliefs. This conflict would in a certain fashion sharpen the issues. [...]

To some extent or another you chose abilities ahead of time that would at least partially meet conflict with the society in which you were born. [...]

[...] When you found yourselves able to buy a house, however, both of you experienced some conflict because of those beliefs, held over too long.

You could have stayed in apartments all your life, denying yourself the privacy that you now enjoy, and thus avoided any conflict. [...]

If the personality settled for less, then, true, the conflict would not have arisen. The conflict would have arisen however in whatever field the personality chose, except for the poetry. [...]

As long as he acted with relative abandon, as in the early years, relatively unreasoning, then there was no point of conflict. [...]

[...] The challenge and the conflict were then set.

But without the challenge and the conflict the personality would have had little chance to develop its potential, particularly in terms of understanding. [...]

[...] You would never consciously face what appeared to be the conflict between writing and painting. [...] In the framework there was a nagging conflict. You managed to get the training, the experience, in such a way that you by-passed the seeming conflict.

[...] You felt conflicts at times. [...] Instead you saw them, basically now, as conflicting. [...]

[...] You spent more mental energy setting up barriers to protect it, so that any one instance, say, of interruption or conflict, would immediately arouse the power of the buried fear, and become a symbol for it. [...]

[...] Ruburt feared that the psychic work conflicted with the writer, and detracted from you in your focus as an artist. [...]

[...] All of the conflicting beliefs that have been mentioned thus far are the end result of what I have called before the “official line of consciousness.” Certainly people experienced disease long before those conflicting beliefs began — but again, that is because of the part that disease states play in the overall health of individuals and of the world.

(Long pause.) Large numbers of the population do indeed live unsatisfactory lives, with many individuals seeking goals that are nearly unattainable because of the conglomeration of conflicting beliefs that all vie for their attention. [...]

[...] There are indeed ways of breaking through such conflicts, however, and those broader avenues of expression, peace, and satisfaction are available to each individual, however unfortunate the entire picture seems to be.

[...] You interpret them as conflicts. They remind you of the noises in your family home, conflicting and yet comforting. [...]

[...] Thoughts of buying a house throw both of you into a quandary because they directly come in conflict with your private ideas about your work and purposes, and your places in the world.

[...] Both ideas are idealized, sentimentalized and distorted in your minds, and either could be incorporated in your ideas of work if you were aware of the conflicts.

(“Well, with the pendulum I’d arrived at the idea that my stomach bothered me because of a conflict between painting and writing—the time I have for each. [...] I received the answer that I felt guilty over the conflict: when I wanted to do one, I thought I should be working on the other.”)

[...] Creatively you see the photographs’ value, but they still caused a conflict between your ideas of perfection and self-disclosure, particularly as they were related to your mother’s attitudes.

[...] His personality is so constructed that he cannot give time, without conflict, to any matter to which he is not totally committed, or to any matter about which he has any serious doubt.

[...] As you know, some of this conflict has been expressed with beautiful and frightening simplicity through physical symptoms.

[...] The upsetting circumstance mentioned—the decision—representing the basis of conflict that perpetuates many of his physical symptoms. [...]

[...] The neck difficulty (John B.’s) caused by inner conflict, resulting in a slight misalignment of the 4th vertebra. [...]

The conflict has never been that he resented having to make extra money outside of writing. The conflict—when it was touched off you see by the need to make more money again—the conflict resulted from what would appear to be two methods of making money. [...]

There would have been no overwhelming conflict for him, hence no such physical symptoms as he has encountered, if he was content, you see, basically to let you carry the financial ball—in other words, if he were truly a dependent personality.

[...] Various foods are then used in a destructive way, representing the emotional conflicting forces.

It is not only that your joint ideas may conflict but that within yourselves you hold conflicting ideas regarding such situations. [...]

[...] The telephone situation as it occurred on two occasions lately brings up in both of you a beautiful case of beliefs, conflicting beliefs, on both of your parts. [...]

[...] You have not understood your own beliefs, much less communicated them to the other, and your joint behavior in such cases has largely resulted because you each hold conflicting ideas yourselves.

[...] When his creative abilities found contemporary scientific thought also too narrow, however, and his natural intuitions had led him toward a new framework—one that, again, introduced values having to do with the nature of consciousness, or soul—then the new ideas began to conflict directly with the old buried ones, particularly those that had to do with the conflicts between creative expression, the church, and “forbidden knowledge.” To go ahead creatively, forming new versions of a spiritual reality, to state that man and his impulses were good, brought him finally into direct conflict with the old beliefs of the Sinful Self, whose value system was based upon the idea that the self was indeed sinful, not to be trusted. [...]

The child at such a time for one thing is not in the situation to do conflict with belief systems—it is too young and dependent. [...]

[...] With that understanding you can have help without conflict, or do the work yourself without conflict.

[...] And conflicts of beliefs, as well as other conventionalized concepts that quite override your natural love of physical bodily activity.

[...] The chest trouble is a result of such conflicts.

[...] You have not used them as a way of life because of the conflicts mentioned earlier, and if you are going to get off dead center and do something instead of complaining, you must each begin to put these to practice. [...]

[...] Tonight, I told her, Seth said nothing at all about what I regard as the central point of conflict—the conflict between her Sinful Self, so-called, and the spontaneous self. For I consider that argument, that unresolved conflict, to be at the heart of her difficulties. [...]

[...] I think a strong part of you is now so against the whole psychic thing that you’ve ended up in an awful position physically because of the conflicts involved—pulling you this way and that. [...]

[...] There’d be no conflict. [...]

[...] At first glance it seems contradictory of nature to do that, or to make such a conflict possible, yet it must happen all the time. [...]

The ideas obviously conflicted, and each collected subsidiary beliefs. [...]

The idea of money also had conflicting connotations. [...]

For a while there was a severe crisis, which passed, when he had difficulty writing, even, and we have discussed this, the conflict of images. [...]

[...] In the session Seth postulates two men, both portions of myself, who represents the conflicting sets of beliefs I’ve carried for years. [...]

[...] Now whenever I sense a conflict arising, I do as I’d figured out—and as Seth himself suggested recently: I ask the advice of the first man; what would he do in these situations? [...]

[...] The idea, of course, is only to integrate the two often opposing points of view, instead of having them in conflict with each other, since, as Seth says, we always have some practical need of Framework 1 activity. [...]

“MESSAGES” FROM GODS, DEMONS, HEROES,
AND OTHER PROMINENT PERSONS — OR,
MORE CONFLICTING BELIEFS

Conflicting beliefs about the nature of reality can bring about dilemmas in almost any form, for the individual will always try to make sense out of his or her surroundings, and try to at least see the world as a cohesive whole.

Some of the most complicated ways of trying to put conflicting beliefs together are often mental or emotional ones. [...]

[...] The free association is valuable because it helps to point out those conflicting feelings and beliefs, brings them into consciousness, and into the present moment, where they can indeed be understood in the light of knowledge that has been acquired since — but not been allowed to act upon the old conflicting beliefs.

[...] You have instead a conglomeration of severely conflicting beliefs, so that there is no clear single road to action.

[...] There was a conflict between creative work and the church even when only poetry was involved. [...]