“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Psychologically, your impulses are as vital to your being as your physical organs are. They are as altruistic, or unselfish, as your physical organs are (intently), and I would like that sentence read several times. And yet each impulse is suited and tailored directly to the individual who feels it. Ideally (underlined), by following your impulses you would feel the shape, the impulsive shape (as Ruburt says) of your life. You would not spend time wondering what your purpose was, for it would make itself known to you, as you perceived the direction in which your natural impulses led, and felt yourself exert power in the world through such actions. Again, impulses are doorways to action, satisfaction, the exertion of natural mental and physical power, the avenue for your private expression — the avenue where your private expression intersects the physical world and impresses it.

There is a natural impulse to die on the part of men and animals, but in such circumstances [as we are discussing here] that desire becomes the only impulse that the individual feels able to express, for it seems that all other avenues of expression have become closed. There is much misunderstanding concerning the nature of impulses, so we will discuss them rather thoroughly. I always want to emphasize the importance of individual action, for only the individual can help form organizations that become physical vehicles (intently) for the effective expression of ideals. Only people who trust their spontaneous beings and the altruistic nature of their impulses can be consciously wise enough to choose from a myriad of probable futures the most promising events — for again, impulses take not only [people’s] best interest into consideration, but those of all other species.

In more mundane terms, impulses often come from unconscious knowledge, then. This knowledge is spontaneously and automatically received by the energy that composes your body, and then it is processed so that pertinent information applying to you can be taken advantage of. Ideally (underlined), your impulses are always in response to your own best interests — and, again, to the best interests of your world as well. Obviously there is a deep damaging distrust of impulses in the contemporary world, as in your terms there has been throughout the history that you follow. (Pause.) Impulses are spontaneous, and you have been taught not to trust the spontaneous portions of your being, but to rely upon your reason and your intellect — which (amused) both operate, incidentally, quite spontaneously, by the way.

I expect then a concentrated effort to spontaneously accept impulses toward action and immediate performance of the act. [...] Now these are simple impulses to get up. Other impulses involve leaving the apartment, going down the stairs. He checks the impulses—now, he checks the natural impulse—to throw his arms out straight away. [...]

He is seldom aware that that impulse is even there, so I want him to look for the impulse whenever a situation would seem to call for that motion, and he will find it… other impulses he is now becoming aware of. [...] This includes the impulses to sink down upon his knees when the occasion warrants it, and to rest upon his hands when the occasion would warrant it.

Now I tell you that he has been checking such impulses a good fifty times a day, this including impulses of which he has not been consciously aware. [...]

[...] He does have a very strong private nature, along with an ability to communicate to others—and as my material stated this morning, a greater understanding of his impulses would lead to a natural balance. He might not want to see anyone for months, in which case his impulses would be to refuse any interviews or whatever. Then the impulses might change overnight, leading to a more sociable time.

(“On a biological basis, impulses are like [or can be compared to] emotional instincts; individually tuned, so that ideally impulses are stimuli toward action—that results as a consequence of complicated inner ‘unconscious’ computations. [...]

(After finishing the library material, Jane called The Village Voice on impulse, but ended up feeling she didn’t do well: She didn’t get to speak to Jim Poett, who was not there, or to his editor. [...] I said I thought it better that she did follow the impulse, though, since anything, any action, was probably better than sitting immobile.

(9:35.) Impulses arise in a natural, spontaneous, constructive response to the abilities, potentials, and needs of the personality. [...] Luckily, the child usually walks before it is old enough to be taught that impulses are wrong, and luckily the child’s natural impulses toward exploration, growth, fulfillment, action and power are strong enough to give it the necessary springboard before your belief systems begin to erode its confidence. [...] The pattern for each adult body existed in the fetus — which again, “luckily,” impulsively, followed its own direction.

[...] (Pause.) Such a person is afraid to trust any one impulse enough to act upon it. [...] 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.

[...] 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. [...] 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.

It should not upset him unduly then if it seems to him that he makes “the wrong decision” at any given time, for the process of becoming aware of the impulses is now the important issue, and then to decide between them. [...] Some ideas for Seven came, and the impulse to write them down. At the same time an inhibited impulse arose—to go to the bathroom—that he had ignored. [...] This resulted in conscious conflict before avoided, and a series of conflicting thoughts and impulses.

[...] If he had written instead, he thought, then he would have been denying the body impulses. The “error” was simply a result of a series of such denied impulses, that he then let loose at once. It is far better, however, to do that and learn than to deny the impulses altogether.

[...] The impulse was strong. His bodily impulse to move and to go to the bathroom was even stronger. [...]

[...] The impulse to have the session came through spontaneously, as it should. [...] He has an almost steady impulse to write. He has an almost steady impulse toward psychic activity, toward creativity. [...]

[...] She became especially aware of her own impulses and fears of what would happen if she gave in to those impulses. [...]

Ideally speaking, your impulses lead you in your own proper direction, knowing the shape of your life, and your abilities and your needs. One impulse may be in response to one need, one to another—but all in all, taken together, they will sustain and guide you to your most fulfilling situation if they are allowed to, and if they are trusted.

[...] You have denied many impulses, or programmed others so that they are allowed expression in only certain forms of action. If any of you do (underlined) still believe in the Freudian or Darwinian selves, then you will be leery about impulses to examine your own consciousness, afraid of what murderous debris might be uncovered. [...] She was afraid that she might discover within herself the buried impulse to kill her husband, or to break up the marriage, but she was sure that her overweight condition hid some unfortunate impulse.

(Jane has really made an effort to recognize, study, and follow her impulses since Seth began emphasizing them two sessions ago in Mass Events. She’s become especially conscious of impulses while working on her new book, Heroics, for, strangely, she’s found herself confronting a series of seemingly contradictory impulses to do other things, such as paint, or reread her old poetry.

(For example, she spent Monday and Tuesday reading poetry she’d written before the sessions began [in 1963], wondering why she didn’t have the impulse to work on Heroics instead. [...] And all of those beliefs stand in the way of trusting my impulses. [...]

(Pause.) When I speak of impulses, many of you will automatically think of impulses that appear contradictory or dangerous or “evil” — and that is because you are so convinced of the basic unworthiness of your being. You have every right to question your impulses, to choose among them, to assess them, but you must be aware of them, acknowledge their existence, for they will lead you to your own true nature. This may involve a lengthy journey for some of you, with your belief systems, for many of your impulses now are the result of the pressure caused by perfectly normal unacknowledged ones in the past. But your impulses reflect the basic impulse of your life. [...]

(Pause.) Your impulses are your closest communication with your inner self, because in the waking state they are the spontaneous urgings toward action, rising from that deep inner knowledge of yourself that you have in dreams. (Intently:) You were born because you had the impulse to be. The universe exists because it had the impulse to be. [...] The urge to be came from within, and that urge is repeated to some extent in each impulse, each urge toward action on the part of man or molecule. If you do not trust the nature of your impulses, then you do not trust the nature of your life, the nature of the universe, or the nature of your own being.

[...] Your impulses are immersed in the quality called faith, for they urge you into action in the faith [that] the moment for action exists. Your beliefs must interact with your impulses, however, and often they can erode that great natural beneficial spontaneity that impulses can provide.

Some people are only aware of — or largely aware of — impulses toward anger, because they have inhibited those natural impulses toward love that would otherwise temper what seemed to be aggressive desires. When you begin trusting yourselves, you start by taking it for granted that to some extent at least you have not trusted yourself or your impulses in the past: You have thought that impulses were dangerous, disruptive, or even evil. So as you begin to learn self-trust, you acknowledge your impulses. [...] Behind them you will almost always find an inhibited impulse — or many of them — that motivated you to move in some ideal direction, to seek a love or understanding so idealized in your mind that it seemed impossible to achieve. You are left with the impulse to strike out.

[...] Many of you believe, moreover, that the physical self’s very nature is evil, that its impulses, left alone, will run in direct opposition to the good of the physical world and society, and fly in the face of the deeper spiritual truths of inner reality. [...] You must, therefore, begin to celebrate your own beings, to look to your own impulses as being the natural connectors between the physical and the nonphysical self. Children trusting their impulses learn to walk, and trusting your impulses, you can find yourselves again.

Again, impulses are inherently good, both spiritually and biologically. [...] (Pause.) Impulses also provide the natural impetus toward those patterns of behavior that serve you best, so that while certain impulses may bunch up toward physical activity, say, others, seemingly contradictory, will lead toward quiet contemplation, so that overall certain balances are maintained.

[...] In Mass Events, though, Seth goes further, maintaining that our private impulses are meant to provide the impetus for the development of our own abilities in a way that will also contribute to the best interests of the species and the natural world as well. He’s speaking of our normal impulses here, those that we’ve been taught are dangerous, chaotic, and contradictory. Seth maintains that we can’t trust ourselves while distrusting our impulses at the same time. Much of this book is concerned with the purposes of our impulses, and the reasons for their poor reputations in the eyes of science and religion. What Seth is really saying here is that our impulses are meant to help us create our own realities on a personal basis in a way that will enhance both our private lives and our civilizations.

When Seth began this manuscript, I was personally working with the idea of “heroic impulses” (those separate from our usual ones) that would operate as inner impetuses toward constructive action. In this book, though, Seth states that it is our normal everyday impulses that we must learn to trust. [...] Our usual impulses? [...] And finally I began to understand: Our normal impulses are heroic, despite our misunderstanding of them. In a way, this entire book is an introduction to our impulses, those we follow and those we deny.

I’ve had my own hassles with impulses, following only those I thought would lead me where I wanted to go, and drastically cutting down those I feared might distract me from my work. Like many other people, I thought that following my impulses was the least dependable way of achieving any goal — unless I was writing, when impulses of a “creative” kind were most acceptable. I didn’t realize that all impulses were creative. As a result of such beliefs, I’ve had a most annoying arthritis-like condition for some years that was, among other things, the result of cutting down impulses toward physical motion.

[...] They try desperately to control themselves and their environment against what seems to be a raging, spontaneous mass of primitive impulses from within, and against a mindless, chaotic, ancient force of nature. [...] The conscious mind must be in control of all actions as much as possible, for such a person feels that only rigid, logical thought is strong enough to hold back such strong impulsive force.

It will be difficult for some people to believe that spontaneity is to be trusted, for they may be only aware of feeling destructive or violent impulses. The idea of expressing impulses spontaneously will be most frightening under those conditions.

Actually the people involved are repressing not violent impulses but natural loving ones. [...] Therefore, they hide those yearnings, and the destructive impulses actually serve to protect them from the expression of love that they have somehow learned to fear.

[...] The body is freeing itself, but greater freedom must be allowed as far as impulses are concerned, so that Ruburt can realize that his impulses are not threatening. A new balance is then set up between impulse and action, that will enrich his work as .well as accelerate the body’s flexibility. I want him to again become aware of his impulses, therefore, for physical action of any kind—whether he is at his table or not. His impulses will wisely provide creative inspiration and physical actualization, so that one adds to the other.

[...] Now there are countering body impulses, and a constant set of checks and balances where the mind is meant to take another look, or where the body says that the biological integrity is in jeopardy. [...]

[...] The most important thing now is to help Ruburt become aware of and react to impulses. [...]

(Long pause.) Those natural impulses, followed, will automatically lead to political and social organizations that become both tools for individual development and implements for the fulfillment of the society. Impulses then would follow easily, in a smooth motion, from private action to social import. When you are taught to block your impulses, and to distrust them, then your organizations become clogged. You are left with vague idealized feelings of wanting to change the world for the better, for example — but you are denied the personal power of your own impulses that would otherwise help direct that idealism by developing your personal abilities. [...]

[...] Each person has his [or her] own ideals, and impulses direct those ideals naturally into their own specific avenues of development — avenues meant to fulfill both the individual and his society. Impulses provide specifications, methods, meanings, definitions. [...]

[...] Are laws an attempt to limit impulses? [...]

It may seem that nations behave only too impulsively, that for example the just-released American hostages were kidnapped as a result of highly impulsive behavior. In fact, that event might only seem to prove that impulsive behavior is basically aggressive, undependable, and chaotic. As a matter of fact, the students took such regrettable actions not because they gave into impulsive behavior, but because the road to true impulsive expression had been blocked so long that such actions became one of the few possible ways of giving vent to certain expressions. When you are a hostage you cannot express your own impulses, of course. [...] It is curtailed because the number of impulses are so drastically reduced by circumstance. [...]

Whenever, and for whatever reasons you block the normally free flow of impulses, you also curtail the exercise of free will, for free will involves you in the experience of choosing between the actualization of one impulse or another. The captors then cut down on the freedom of the hostages by reducing the number of impulses to which the hostages could respond. [...] The telling itself makes the affair seem complex—but whether or not you are dealing with private behavior, with the treatment of one person in regard to his or her own impulses, or whether you are dealing with a mass event of political nature, involving the enforced blockage of impulses on the part of one group toward another, you are necessarily cutting down on the exercise of free will. [...]

[...] The importance of impulses was stressed in particular, and the acceptance of such an idea is important to Ruburt’s recovery, of course—but also vital in the behavior of nations. [...]

As the number of rejected impulses grows, more and more energy is of course concentrated in this area, the energy that is inherent within the impulses themselves. This sort of grouping together of rejected impulses will occur mainly when the ego’s restrictions are too severe, so hampering that very deep and basic needs of the whole personality are being denied expression. It is therefore for the benefit of the whole personality that these impulses be given expression.

[...] When too many actions are restricted by the ego, they may begin to form impulse patterns or groupings of various rejected impulses. [...]

[...] However when the ego is too restrictive its conception of purposeful action becomes so narrow that many legitimate and necessary impulses are dammed up, forming these rejected action patterns.

Nerve impulses travel outward from the body, invisibly along these pathways in much the same manner as they travel within the body. The pathways are carriers of telepathic thoughts, impulses and desires that travel outward from any given self, altering and changing the seemingly objective events.

In a very real manner events or objects are actually focal points where highly charged psychic impulses are transformed into something that can be physically perceived, a breakthrough into matter. When such highly charged impulses intersect or coincide matter is formed. [...]

Tell Ruburt to do relaxation exercises again for a while each day, and also to allow himself to act in a more impulsive manner, in strong bursts of activity, and particularly to imagine himself moving swiftly and lightly.

He thought of that term before our Framework 1 and 2 material, and his idea was that the impulses came from a part of the self that automatically knew the entire picture of the self’s environment and potentials. He was quite correct, for those impulses arise from the larger self’s immersion in Framework 2, and those impulses led Ruburt to his intuitive inspirations, experiences of psychic events, and to the books. When he becomes overly concerned about writing as work, or with psychic development as something he should do, then he tangles those impulses, and becomes worried that he will not be suitably inspired again.

Now: Ruburt himself hit upon the “heroic impulses”—and what he meant was this: that ideally speaking the individual’s impulses were inner directional signals that, followed, would automatically lead to the greatest fulfillment and development.

[...] He has been inspired, but to paint, because his impulses are quite correct; the painting of flowers leads him to contemplate beauty for beauty’s sake, frees his mind, and also allows for certain kinds of muscular motions that are now beneficial.

[...] Ruburt is working with the nature of impulses, and old ideas about impulses, spontaneity and discipline rose to mind, for the family situation of your brother and his wife almost typifies the kind of situation that Ruburt was determined to avoid. [...] 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.

[...] Generally speaking now, Dick and Ida seldom followed their own impulses; no matter for example how impulsive Dick might have seemed at times in the past. [...]

[...] What was that but impulsiveness, unthinking behavior? [...]

[...] In a fashion the symptoms are a result of overorganization—the distrust of impulses not specifically related to writing time. His writing itself is impulsive, and encouraging impulses of any kind will automatically lead to his impulses to write, and the quick, clear nature of his inspiration. [...]

(And trusting her impulses, Jane slept for a couple of hours this afternoon—yet wasn’t happy with herself for doing so when she awoke. [...]

[...] That is the source of your physical existence—the source of your impulses to begin with, and the more you learn to trust Framework 2 the easier it is for your natural selves to express themselves. [...]

(9:59.) Give us a moment… You will discover the natural, cooperative nature of your impulses, and you will no longer believe that they exist as contradictory or disruptive influences. Your impulses are part of the great multi-action of being. (Pause.) At deeper levels, the impulsive portion of the personality is aware of all actions upon the earth’s surface. You are involved in a cooperative venture, in which your slightest impulse has a greater meaning, and is intimately connected with all other actions. [...]

[...] When you have an impulse to act, it is your own impulse, yet it is also a part of the world’s action. [...] If you accept the fact that man is basically a good creature, then you allow free, natural motions of your own psychic nature — and that nature springs from your impulses, and not in opposition to them.

Beyond that, however, those impulses, again, connect you with the original impulse from which all life emerges.