“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause.) You live surrounded by impulses. You must make innumerable decisions in your lives — must choose careers, mates, cities of residence. Experience can help you make decisions, but you make decisions long before you have years of experience behind you.

Overall, whether or not you are conscious of it — for some of you are, and some of you are not — your lives do have a certain psychological shape. That shape is formed by your decisions. You make decisions as the result of feeling impulses to do this or that, to perform in one manner or another, in response to both private considerations and in regard to demands seemingly placed upon you by others. In the vast arena of those numberless probabilities open to you, you do of course have some guidelines. Otherwise you would always be in a state of indecision. Your personal impulses provide those guidelines by showing you how best to use probabilities so that you fulfill your own potential to greatest advantage — and [in] so doing, provide constructive help to the society at large.

When you are taught not to trust your impulses you begin to lose your powers of decision, and to whatever extent involved in the circumstances, you begin to lose your sense of power because you are afraid to act.

Many people in a quandary of indecision write to Ruburt. Such a correspondent might lament, for example: “I do not know what to do, or what direction to follow. I think that I could make music my career. I am musically gifted. On the other hand (pause), I feel a leaning toward psychology. I have not attended to my music lately, since I am so confused. Sometimes I think I could be a teacher. In the meantime, I am meditating and hoping that the answer will come.” (Pause.) Such a person is afraid to trust any one impulse enough to act upon it. All remain equally probable activities. Meditation must be followed by action — and true meditation is action (underlined). Such people are afraid of making decisions, because they are afraid of their own impulses — and some of them can use meditation to dull their impulses, and actually prevent constructive action.

They are not forgotten, but the people involved simply close their own eyes, so to speak, to those decisions, and pretend (underlined) that they do not exist, simply to make their lives appear smooth and to save face with themselves, when they know very well that the decisions really rest on very shaky ground indeed.

[...] Still, in most such instances those inner decisions can be easily reached — but while people are determined to “save face,” they will simply refuse to accept those decisions as their own. [...]

[...] Instead, in the majority of cases they consist of quite conscious decisions, made at one time or another on quite surface levels.

I do not wish to simplify matters, but such decisions can be uncovered very easily in children. [...]

He has free will to make any decisions that he is able to make (intently). This means that his free will is contained, given meaning, focused, and framed by his neurological structure. [...] We are speaking now of conscious decisions as you think of them.

(Long pause.) You can only make so many conscious decisions, or you would be swamped and caught in a constant dilemma of decision making. [...]

[...] This immediately brought about the importance of choosing between one action and another, and made acts of decision highly important.

[...] Otherwise, free will would be almost inoperable in practical terms: Individuals would be faced by so many choices that any decisions would be nearly impossible. [...]

Tell yourself you will make no decision until after your birthday, or after the holidays, or that you will put off any decision for a month, or even a week — whatever you feel most comfortable with.

[...] It is a good idea to put off making any decision for a while. [...]

Any therapist can also follow through by making such suggestions, thus gaining the client’s cooperation at the same time by letting the individual choose the time period for which such a decision will be delayed.

(3:54.) It is futile to tell such a person that he or she can not, or must not, commit suicide — and indeed, such a procedure can be quite dangerous, hardening the person’s leaning toward a death decision. [...]

[...] This state can be extremely advantageous when you are trying to solve problems having to do with future arrangements, decisions that will affect the future, and any matters, in fact, in which important decisions for the future must be made. In this state you are able to try out various alternative decisions and some probable results, not imaginatively but in quite practical terms. [...]

According to the situation, you can do the same thing to find out the effect of this decision on others specifically. [...] After a period of rest, return and make the second decision, and again the third, following through in the same manner. Then in your normal state of consciousness, of course, you make the decision that you want from the information and experience that you have received.

[...] You make the decision. [...] With great sensitivity you are able to see what physical effect the decision will have — whether the state of the body remains the same, whether there is a great sense of health within it, or the incipient beginning of great difficulties.

These probabilities are realities, regardless of which decision you make. [...]

If, for example you see, in objective life with strangers about, that you prefer your isolation, relatively speaking, you can make certain decisions. In the past each of you to some extent made “unconscious” decisions based upon fears.

[...] In its way the entire summer affair, with people about, is important, so that you can consciously make decisions that once perhaps were unconsciously made, without deep-enough understanding.

[...] The decisions you make often seem wrong because you are trying to apply artificial decisions over initial decisions of feeling that you override. [...]

[...] It would dictate what decisions you made. [...]

[...] Such a policy would allow you an automatic way of making such decisions, would clear the air, and give you each a far more exuberant flow of energy.

[...] Were these decisions mistakes?

5. On our decision—R. finishes “Unknown” Reality—and later Psyche, maybe with my help?

[...] Your private experience is far more filled with such decisions than you usually realize. [...] In your terms, each decision you make alters the reality that you know to one degree or another.

[...] Then imagine what might happen as a result of your chosen decisions. [...]

[...] Such private decisions affect the genetic heritage of the species. [...]

[...] The personal decisions all add up to the global happenings on any given day.

(Long pause.) In the past, and in large areas of the world now, many important decisions are not made by the individual, but by the state, or religion, or society. [...] Young adults found themselves faced with a multitudinous number of personal decisions that in other cultures were made more or less automatically. [...]

(9:55.) Some people looked, and are looking, for some authority — any authority — to make their decisions for them, for the world seems increasingly dangerous, and they, because of their beliefs, feel increasingly powerless. They yearn toward old ways, when the decisions of marriage were made for them, when they could safely follow in their father’s footsteps, when they were unaware of the lure of different places, and forced to remain at home. [...]

Those people look to cults of various kinds, where decisions are made for them, where they are relieved of the burden of an individuality that has been robbed of its sense of power by conflicting beliefs. At one time the males might have been drafted into the army, and, secretly exultant, gone looking for the period before full adulthood — where decisions would be made for them, where they could mark time, and where those who were not fully committed to life could leave it with a sense of honor and dignity.

[...] They might pursue other goals, but the decisions of where to live, what to do, where to go, how to live, would be made for them. [...]

The decision is your own according to your understanding. [...]

(Bernice M.: “Do we make instantaneous decisions? [...]

(Bernice M.: “But he had made the decision before.”)

(Jim H.: “The decision was made when that previous personality had returned to the whole self for a period of reevaluation?”)

In some cases the decision is made by the subconscious. However, for various reasons often the ego will simply refuse to make the decision. Occasionally when a decision has been made by the ego, the subconscious will change it, because the decision is obviously such an unwise one.

[...] The decision as to whether or not a particular probable event should be perceived as a physical one depends, of course, upon the nature of the ego which would then experience it. The probable self does not make the decision, but merely passes on the data which it has received through its own experience with the event.

[...] Jane said she felt the reference to an entrance concerned the recent decision by the Ecumenical Council in Rome, to the effect that Protestants could now be allowed to enter the altar enclosure to be married. My brother Loren told us Sunday that this decision is so recent that his daughter was the first to be married in such a fashion in this church.

[...] Were it not for the experience of this probable self and for the information which it gives, via the dreaming self to the subconscious, then it would be most difficult for the ego to come to any kind of a decision within the physical universe.

[...] In other words, you are perturbed over what is the proper direction for you to take—not trusting yourself to make the proper decision automatically, but wanting to force a quick conscious decision so that you will know what to do, and have it over with.

(Pause.) Your dog dream (of March 31, 1979) also somewhat symbolizes that dilemma: do you go with your head, forcing a conscious decision, or do you go with your instincts, symbolized by the dog’s form? [...]

[...] One result of our meeting [as I wrote at the beginning of the Introductory Notes for Volume 1], was the decision to publish this long manuscript for “Unknown” Reality in two volumes.⁵

[...] But in that instant, inner computations occur as you consider making a fairly simple decision, and the immediate area is checked against all portions of your knowledge.⁷

[...] If you had to stand there and write down all the thoughts and associations connected with each course of action before you made your decision, you might never cross the intersection to begin with. [...]

[...] That information is returned to you instantaneously, and you make your decision accordingly. [...]

[...] Now it is easy for me to say this, but you can be aware of it in your experience if you choose, but he has been watching out for you and many of the decisions you have made, including the purchase of your house, have been overseen by him though he encouraged you to make the decision on your own. There are other decisions you will also make and he will acquiesce in them and do not be so limiting in your ideas, he does not want that either. [...]

[...] It was a decision that he made. [...]

[...] In space there were endless varieties of probabilities and decisions. [...] There were an infinite number of ideas behind all of those decisions. [...] In greater terms, therefore, those people decided to be at that particular time and place, so that the photograph is the result of multitudinous decisions, and represents a focus of experience, rising from myriad probabilities. [...] Your most intimate decision affects the species. [...]

[...] A pause lasting well over a minute.) Your current decisions to accept one specific line of consciousness as real, and to ignore others, makes such concepts difficult to understand. [...]

([Ron:] “In other words, in this reality we are faced with decisions in this context, is it true that our decisions can be only constructive and good or destructive and evil?”)

([Ron:] “Is there such a thing as a moral decision for someone who exists in the next plane of existence?”)

There are always moral decisions. [...]

([Ron:] “What system of values do you use to choose in your moral decisions?”)

[...] There are decisions to make, but you are uncertain and disinclined to face yourself fully to reach a decision. [...]

The decision to have the interview of itself meant that Ruburt was less afraid. The event of the interview showed you both, in concentrated form, how much you hid from others, and led to the further decision as described in our last session–not to hide Ruburt’s condition, and not to be apologetic about it either.

[...] The nerves are physically urging him on—hence of course the walking in the kitchen, the impatience in the chair, the odd nervous sensations in the legs and hips, and behind this, your decision again not to hide —not to be apologetic. [...]

On the other hand, the decision to have the interview (for the Village Voice), to take up with Eleanor, and so forth—these events catapult old beliefs to the forefront of Ruburt’s mind—an excellent reaction, by the way—for when those beliefs are voiced and discussed then they can be understood and eventually dismissed.

Ruburt felt he had to explain to the world, and he began to cut off experiences that he did not intellectually find decisive answers for. [...]

[...] It is not a means of helping you avoid decision, my good friend. The purpose of such a session is instead to help you develop, to grow in self-confidence and strength through making your own decisions.

You have been afraid, you see, for accepting the responsibility for your own decisions and actions, and I cannot help you continue in this direction. [...]

You will grow as you make your own decisions. [...]

[...] You must straighten this out, for you are not able to make any clear decisions unless you feel well.