“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now in close marriages or those of long duration, there is a kind of superimposed family personality, a composite, to which each member contributes, and to which all members respond. In a relationship like yours and Ruburt’s this applies in a very intense manner. What you read in the old session this evening still applies to a large extent. It should be noted, as Ruburt said, that the poverty angle was largely eradicated—yet you (to me) preserve it in your worries about taxes, for example—for those feelings of resentment still help you continue to feel impoverished and virtuous. They serve to disconnect you from any opulent income status—put you back with the poor where you feel you belong; and hence you imagine the greater, the far greater incomes of other people, and in that comparison you come out put-upon—but again, virtuous.

[...] A feeling of self-approval is absolutely necessary for any true sense of well-being; it is not (underlined) virtuous in any way to put yourself down, or to punish yourself, because you do not feel you have lived up to your best behavior at any given time.

Your society teaches that it is almost virtuous to worry. [...]

Some of you will have a contradictory belief that poverty is virtuous, and that wealth is a vice and represents evidence of a spiritual lack. [...]

[...] You think of yourself as virtuous. [...]

[...] It is not virtuous to remind yourself of the poverty of others. [...]

[...] Your own ideas about money and success of course influenced his beliefs: your combined ideas now of virtuousness and thrift, as opposed to license. [...]

[...] It is not virtuous to count your failings. [...]

To an important degree, each of you have believed that self-disapproval was indeed constructive or virtuous. [...]

The difficulty after your dentist visit was partially natural enough, but exaggerated for these reasons, so that the discomfort gave you an acceptable reason for resting—while still being virtuous in your own eyes.

[...] If you find that you are berating yourself because of something you did yesterday, or ten years ago, you are not being virtuous. [...]

[...] It has become virtuous to keep track of these, as if concentrating upon errors will do anything but compound them.

[...] You may feel quite virtuous, for example, in hating evil, or what seems to you to be evil; but if you find yourself concentrating upon either hatred or evil you are creating it. [...]

In your terms, there is a great pleasure to be found in both work and play, in excitement and calm, in exertion and rest (long pause), yet the word “pleasure” itself has often fallen into disrepute, and is frowned at by the virtuous.

Still the old feeling, always an excuse, that poverty is pure and more virtuous. [...]

[...] The poor were virtuous and on the side of God. [...]

[...] They believe this to be a quite holy, virtuous enterprise. [...]

Basically this concern for human welfare is indeed virtuous, but overindulged in it becomes loaded with possibilities that could be most unfortunate. [...]