These beliefs are centered around artists, writers, poets, musicians, actors and actresses, or others who seem unusually gifted in the arts or in various other methods of self-expression. The beliefs lead to the most dire legends, in which the gifted person always pays in one way or another for the valued gifts of self-expression — through disaster, misfortune, or death.

In many such cases the individuals involved are highly intellectual, and possess obvious gifts that are, however, seldom put to full use. Such people are so frightened of the nature of personal power and energy that they short-circuit their nervous systems, blocking the ability for any purposeful action, at least momentarily.

Because they realize that they do indeed innately possess strong gifts and abilities, these people often seek attention for their disease, rather than for their abilities. They may become professional patients, favorites of their doctors because of their wit and repartee in the face of their affliction. These persons, however, again, are living at cross purposes. They are determined to express themselves and not to express themselves at the same time. Like so many others they believe that self-expression is dangerous, evil, and bound to lead to suffering — self-inflicted or otherwise.

In some instances, stuttering is a very mild example of the same kind of activity. On the one hand some epileptic patients feel a cut above the usual run of humanity, while on the other they perform far more awkwardly than normal persons. Again, many also believe that those with special talents or gifts are disliked by others and persecuted. Period.

Now each of you are indeed being given a gift each time the Sumari sings or speaks and it is up to you to decipher that gift. In one way Ruburt was correct, it is a gift from the universe but it is also a gift from yourselves. [...]

(Richard Kendall felt he was given a gift.)

[...] Gifts and ‘Liabilities.’ The Vast Sweep of the Genetic and Reincarnational Scales. The Gifted and the Handicapped.”

[...] There are also, again, highly gifted people, physically or mentally, people who seem to be at times as far from the ordinary person on the gifted scale as an idiot might be [on] the other. [...]

GIFTS AND “LIABILITIES.”

THE VAST SWEEP
OF THE GENETIC AND
REINCARNATIONAL SCALES.

THE GIFTED AND
THE HANDICAPPED.

[...] At first I thought it quite a useless gift, even if beautiful. [...] “I’d have never thought of buying something like that for a gift,” I told Jane. [...]

[...] Jane and I exchanged our own gifts—candy for her, designer jeans—black and gray—for me [to my great surprise].

[...] Several of the staff gave Jane little gifts. [...]

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. [...]

[...] When it distrusts its gifted people, rather than encouraging them, a nation is at least in trouble. [...]

[...] Parents, however, often half-disapprove of their children if they show unusual gifts. [...]

Many children, for that matter, who are regarded as retarded by their teachers, are instead highly gifted. [...]

(One of the questions concerned Seth’s material on page 218 of the last session, when he referred to the feeling that Jane and I have, that we had “an even more unfair advantage” without children—this, as he’d stated earlier, on top of our already being set apart from others because of our creative gifts. [...] “It’s the sort of thing I think is rooted in Sinful-Self stuff, on both of our parts—you’re not going to feel guilty about the gifts of nature unless those feelings have a pretty strong base in the psyche, somewhere.... Why can’t we feel glad about being gifted instead?” I added that as I’d said this afternoon, guilt about superiority would make a lot of gifted people miserable if they paid attention to such thinking. [...] I realize that the very handicaps adopted could also be part of the given personality’s overall plan for life—contending with that as well as the gifts. [...]

4) a connection with someone else beside Don with the watch.
* correct—the watch was a gift from his wife.

5) small stupid incident immediately before or after the purchase.
* correct—It was a Christmas gift and he had bought the same item, a watch for his wife. They both knew what the other had bought and decided to open them Xmas eve because they knew.

[...] Sometimes they provide a backbone, an impetus, a direction, a framework, in which people not specifically gifted can find a place, sometimes. [...]

In that framework, you each found yourselves artistically gifted. [...]

Ruburt’s reading in college, and his friends there, led him to believe that the artistically gifted were not too well equipped to handle normal living. [...]

[...] A Rembrandt living today would be an entirely different Rembrandt, granted that he used his gifts fully.

[...] It was to his way of thinking a perverted gift, for which he could give no adequate acknowledgment—a gift that denied what you wanted was no gift but an unendurable burden.

He has several important gifts of character, now, as separate from abilities. [...]

[...] He felt you were throwing his gift back in his face.

Those who are given gifts by the gods must use them.

You can reach both sexes, particularly in your teaching, and in this way you have gifts for both, and they are spiritual and psychic gifts. [...]

[...] At 8:55 PM Jane received a flash which she thought to be from Seth: “Pat is insisting on using the gift of life in a certain way.”

[...] You have a fine, strong and worthwhile purpose, but you will not fulfill it well while you rail against what you do not have, and ignore the abilities and gifts and blessings that you do have.

[...] (Louder.) The whole development of your individuality and of your whole self is a gift of All That Is; a state of grace is the acceptance of life and vitality and joy. [...]

Such gifts he felt were quite odd presents indeed from the gods. Those who possessed such gifts knew it at once, but they must walk a cautious path while still allowing the abilities expression and insuring their development. [...]

[...] From many sources—literature, psychology, religion, biography, he felt that creative or artistic people, those highly gifted, were persecuted by others, hunted down, misunderstood, and poorly equipped to deal with the social world. [...]

[...] He is gifted in dealing with people. [...]

[...] Their qualifications emotionally are also quite advanced, and it is quite possible that they are gifted in terms of mathematics and music, though these gifts may never come to fruition, since they are unsuspected.

You were gifted enough so that you would not starve in the marketplace (humorously)—and yet your gifts were also those that would fit in with your overall purposes of obtaining knowledge of the inner workings of nature, and the psyche. [...]

[...] He tries to view his own work through some idealized image of a psyche who is as gifted as he is as a writer, and also highly gifted in meeting the public, putting on performances, acting as a healer, as a prophet, and as an expert therapist all at once, and in so doing his own characteristics and natural abilities and inclinations become lost along the way. [...]

[...] I do admire that intense focus, that wholehearted commitment, and history offers plenty of examples—famous, too, if you will —of gifted individuals who lived their lives that way and made great contributions....

[...] Truly a creative and original gift. In fact, Jane said, it was a more valid and true statement of reality than the other gift from Sue—After Man, by Dougal Dixon. [...] Regardless of that, I eventually decided that I was glad to receive the gift, no matter what Sue does or doesn’t know about evolution. [...]

“It is a gift, a boon, an exquisite pleasure, to become physically alive on your functioning planet, couched securely within your dusk and dawn, your existence supported by the seasons and by an overall operation of spontaneous order.”

[...] If he is gifted with words in writing, and gifted in speech, then he feels that he should go out bravely into the public arena, and speak out his message to the world.

[...] There is much more that could be said, but I simply here want to mention that such issues demand far more of a gifted personality.

[...] Each individual is gifted in a variety of ways. [...]

[...] He asked Joseph what he would like for a gift, and Joseph more or less replied: “A book on Cézanne.”

If you are gifted, and want to be a musician, for example, then you may literally learn while you are asleep, tuning in to the world views of other musicians, both alive and dead in your terms. [...]

(Pause.) You will not feel the need, say, to “justify your existence” by exaggerating a particular gift, setting up the performance of one particular feat or art as a rigid ideal, when in fact you may be pleasantly gifted but not greatly enough endowed with a certain ability to give you the outstanding praise you think you might deserve.

On the other hand, there are many highly gifted people who continually put down their abilities, and are afraid to take one small step toward their expression. [...]

[...] Jane was a human being first, and a very gifted psychic second. [...]

[...] The great gifts of our psyches are all there, waiting …