“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt, wanting a certain kind of career, tried to be less feminine. You thought of your father in many ways as feminine—passive, and of your mother—in many ways, now—as aggressive and male, though she was emotional. In any case Ruburt thought of your art as noncompetitive, solitary, intuitive, and opposed to the stereotyped masculine role. So if he gives in to an impulse to cry then he feels he forces you to behave in a stereotyped male way—in a role you have rejected, and rightly so.

He also feels that crying is dependent in a feminine way, and goes against the fact that he has rejected the stereotyped feminine role. With such a small example, however, you see how such roles, even when they are largely denied, have a bearing and limit expression.

You are so focused in your roles, however; so intrigued by the reality that you have created, so entranced by the problems, challenges, hopes, and sorrows of your particular roles that you have forgotten they are of your own creation. [...]

I am speaking of the portion of you who is taking part in this particular period piece, however; and that particular portion of your entire personality is so focused within this drama that you are not aware of the others in which you also play a role. [...]

[...] It is only because you focus in this particular role now that you identify your entire being with it. [...]

[...] They must, however, come to understand their roles as actors, “finally” from their roles, and through another act of comprehension, return to the entity.

[...] These personalities willingly take roles, knowing that they are roles, in order to lead the others toward the necessary realization and development. [...]

[...] The thoughts that you think, for example, in your actor’s roles, are still completely unique and lead to new creativity. [...]

[...] For the ego is acquainted with only its role. It can find refreshment only within the limitations of the reality which it was formed to meet; and when it looks about with the best of intentions and sees disasters and terrors, it does not know that these others also play their roles, and that the roles are temporary.

We all have our roles. As we exist within various fields we focus upon these roles to the exclusion of much else.

That part of us as you know which deals with these roles is the ego, which lives intimately the role which was assigned to it by the whole self, of which it is a part.

[...] It is necessary of course that you believe in your role. The difficulty is that you must believe in your role, and yet also realize that it is a role that you, the inner self, have chosen. [...]

[...] In a reincarnational sense, the personality for a while takes the role of a sick person, as an actor would, and is completely immersed in it. Obviously again, more dimensions are involved here than in an actor’s role. [...] The person in the reincarnational role is as immersed in it as possible. He decides to take the role for various reasons of his own, and the inner self knows that the role was chosen.

[...] The young are more freewheeling in their thoughts before they accept sexual roles, and the old are more freewheeling in theirs because they have discarded their sexual roles. I did not say that old or young had no sexual expression — but that both groups did not identify their identities with their sexual roles. [...]

[...] To whatever degree, more than their contemporaries, they do not allow sexual roles to blind them psychologically. [...]

[...] In many cases the person is truer to his or her own identity in childhood or old age, when greater individual freedom is allowed, and sexual roles are more flexible.

At the risk of repeating myself, your in quotes “role” to one extent was restrictive in the sexual and emotional area; you were the one who drew the line. It was partially a distorted, unconscious understanding of this that led Ruburt to the exaggerated projection of that restrictive role to those other areas of your life.

Because of this role, adopted rather early on both of your parts in your married life, and because of his dim, distorted and hidden perception of it, he was vastly astonished at your permissive attitude when our sessions began.

[...] When you encouraged the sessions in the beginning so strongly, he was taken back for to him you were not fulfilling the implied role. [...]

[...] During what is called the sexually active time; the larger dimensions of personhood become strictly narrowed into sexually stereotyped roles — and all aspects of identity that do not fit are ignored or denied. The fact is that few people fit those roles. [...]

[...] I am not speaking here of anything so simple as merely allowing women more freedom, or relieving men from the conventional breadwinner’s role. [...]

[...] Beside this, they have lost their conventional sexual roles, in which they earlier expressed their energy.

[...] In that joint venture it made little difference which of you accepted the role that would in one way or another prevent the both of you from misusing power, for the one role would be passive while the other was active.

[...] In one way or another, however, you have not accepted the traditional social roles. [...]

[...] At times, however, you refused to lead in this life when circumstances might have warranted a more active role at particular times, because in that previous life you would not buck Ruburt, and because you also were more cautious this time about the use of personal power.

(10:55.) No sex will be considered better than the other, or any role in society, when each individual is aware of his own or her own experience at many levels of society and in many roles. [...]

[...] The actors may “return,” time and time again, in different roles. [...]

(9:10.) Behind the actors in the dramas, there are more powerful entities who are quite beyond role-playing. [...]

[...] Have him read or read to him—the recent passages dealing with the use of the conscious mind and the use of the subconscious mind, when I discussed their various roles. [...]

(I read to her Seth’s opening paragraphs of yesterday’s session; these dealt with the roles of the conscious and subconscious minds. [...]

[...] For a few days, again, have Ruburt read those portions I have given, dealing with the roles of the conscious and subconscious minds. [...]

The eldest brother in the Kennedy family initially intended to take President Kennedy’s role. The two were closely bound, but the elder refused the role.

[...] With all of this and his knowledge and acceptance of his role, and his choice of the role, there is still a tremendous will on other levels to survive within your system. [...]

His effectiveness and his role are completed, however. [...]

[...] [Each has his or her] own favorite kind of role, even if the role be that of a maverick. To the actors, of course, their roles become strong parts of their personal experiences, while those who observe the plays take part largely as observers.

[...] Shows must be done on time, actors assigned their roles. Our hypothetical director will know which actors are free, which actors prefer character roles, which ones are heroes or heroines, and which smiling Don Juan always gets the girl — and in general who plays the good guys and the bad guys.

[...] On Jane’s childhood, fear of aggression; religion; my role, etc. [...]

They do not come to you necessarily in church or when you are playing the fine banker’s role; or when you (Brad) are playing the failure’s role, for you play the role of the failure as beautifully as he plays the role of the banker, and with as much finesse if that makes you feel any better. [...]

[...] You can feel this within you when you turn your backs upon the roles that you presently play. Then you can learn the meaning of those roles, for there is meaning in them. [...]

(In the deleted session for April 16, 1979 Seth remarked that Jane “used to feel embarrassed because he made more money in those terms than you, and certainly this played some role initially in the symptoms.” [...]

[...] Actually, he is free of sex roles, and refuses stereotypes of any kind. [...]

That “work,” however, is in your case the natural gift of the first man described—and he, it seems, must work under the demands of the second man, taking all of his ideas of time, sexual roles, and social demands into consideration. [...]

[...] Nor would he be necessarily more fulfilled in that role, and it is that imagined, frightening role against which he pushes, and then retreats.

[...] There is no need for him to feel cowardly, or inferior, for not “living up to” that role.

1. In Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality Seth began developing his theory of counterparts — that the larger psychological self, or entity, of each of us manifests not just one physical life in any given century, say, but several, so as to gain that much more experience in a variety of roles involving different ages, nationalities and languages, sexual orientations, family roles, and so forth. [...]

In the next portion of this book we will discuss people who are frightened of themselves, then, and the roles that they seek in private and social behavior. [...]

[...] We will discuss the ways in which this can be encouraged, as well as the role of the conscious mind as the director of “the soul in chemical clothes.”