“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

High risk sports would not be allowed—excursions across the seas undertaken with “inadequate” provisions, or with rafts. It is not easy, you see, to draw the line, and the species obviously puts itself in risk situations often; and often attains certain triumphs as a result.

Now there are some people who consider overall balance a prerogative, and you will usually find them in decent health, with average concerns, and you will not find them taking risks. The subconscious does not exist, of course. “It” is a highly personalized portion of the self, uniquely tuned. Some people enjoy risks. The body may be in excellent health, and die that way in an accident. But the subconscious knows that the quality of life for that individual involves such exhilaration, and such a person literally chooses that rather than, for example, what someone else might consider a well-balanced long life.

In normal terms in life, while the conditions for life are given, the nature of physical time means that practically speaking life will be full of surprises, for in usual terms you do not know what will happen tomorrow. In that context people take “risks.” They set up prerogatives. They do not usually concentrate with the same intensity in all areas of their lives, so there is seldom what you might think of as any ideal balance. If your health is bad enough, of course, you will die. If you are poor enough, of course, you will starve, or freeze to death in the wintertime. If you are lonely enough you may go mad, as people do in isolation cells.

That “well-balanced life” might well be considered a slow death to our risk seeker, and no moral judgment can be placed on such behavior.

[...] The devastation for many years of a large portion of a state like Pennsylvania, say, should not be risked because of economics, fuel shortages, convenience, apathy, or any other reason. Jane and I passionately believe that instead of concentrating primarily upon nuclear power the United States should be making massive efforts to utilize many other sources of energy — at least until the risks and technologies involved with generating nuclear power are understood much more thoroughly. [...]

[...] We want our nation to embark upon programs to cut, and eventually eliminate for all practical purposes, its continually growing dependence upon foreign oil, for we see great risks in an overreliance upon that course of action; we think those hazards should be obvious to everyone since the oil embargo declared against us in 1973 by the countries of the Middle East. [...]

(Amused:) At the risk of repeating myself, I make these remarks (to me). [...]

[...] For I tell you, at the risk of being misunderstood grossly, that there is only one reality, and value fulfillment, which you may, if you like, equate with goodness.

[...] At the risk of a cliché, I must add here the ancient truth that only fear can hold you back, in any direction.

[...] At the risk of repeating myself, you live in a safe universe (loudly). At the risk of repeating myself you (to me) can no longer equivocate either (loudly). [...]

[...] If you want to change the world for the better, and if you are determined to do so, no matter at what cost to yourself or others, no matter what the risk, and if you believe that those ends justify any means at your disposal, then you are a fanatic.

[...] For example, your ideal may be — for ideals differ — the production of endless energy for the uses of mankind, and you may believe so fervently in that ideal — this added convenience to life — that you considered the hypothetical possibility of that convenience being achieved at the risk of losing some lives along the way. [...]

[...] Using this room increases our sense of privacy, being sheltered from most noise as it is, and the risk of interruptions. [...]

[...] To overlook this point is to risk the adoption on the part of the personality of a more serious illness.

[...] To those people, however, the additional excitement is worth the risk. The risk, in fact, gives them an intensified version of life.⁹

This is obviously not the case with all suicides¹⁰ or would-be suicides, or all risk-takers. [...]

[...] These women have been told that statistically they’re “high risk” prospects for cancer. [...]

[...] If it could be shown that most of the “high risk” women would get cancer, there wouldn’t be arguments about whether such mastectomies are of general value. [...]

[...] Again at the risk of repeating myself: Many of your problems result from the fact that you do not accept the responsibility of your own consciousness. [...]

(Jane pointed out to Sally that she was playing it too safe, that she should take some risks. [...]

The personality has endeavored to right old wrongs, and has succeeded to a great degree, but at the risk of sacrificing inner spontaneity, and even at the risk of losing the very authoritative aspects of his nature, so that there is still a tendency to follow rather than to lead; simply because in the period of the Inquisition he was in a place of authority, he led; and he led men into atrocities committed in the fine name of principle and religion. [...]

[...] At the risk of your considering this Pollyanna, you get what you concentrate upon. [...]

(9:30.) At the risk of really repeating myself, let me state that time as you know it does not exist basically and that all creations are simultaneous. [...]

[...] Your challenge, then, if you believe in the photographs, is to send them out even if it means risking them, rather than refusing the expression of the ideal, which is always self-defeating. [...]

[...] We don’t use our front room for sessions anymore unless we have witnesses, in order to avoid the risk of interruptions. [...]

[...] If you will forgive me Joseph, at the risk, and I do mean the risk, of becoming boring, I would like to repeat briefly: Mental enzymes allow the solidified vitality to change its form. [...]

[...] 2 toward a “cold shutdown,” the state in which the temperature of the water in the reactor’s primary cooling system drops below the boiling point, pressure is reduced, and the risk of a meltdown of the uranium fuel rods in the reactor core is eliminated. [...]

[...] I picked up something about that, too: The real question, for example, isn’t one of planetary pollution, or nuclear wastes, but the beliefs that make such questions even arise, and the attitudes that see an idealized good worth such risks. [...]

[...] I view such tactics as the publisher’s way of guaranteeing their publishing costs with no risk to themselves. [...]