Real Talk World

By Elizabeth Rose Campbell,
Published in The Sun Magazine, JUNE 1982

In Issue #75 of THE SUN, I began a series on Seth, a non-physical personality who has written six books through Jane Roberts of Elmira, New York while she is in a self-induced trance state.

Some of the earliest SUNs included Seth-inspired articles, and its publishing history as “A Magazine of Ideas” often pivoted around Seth’s premise: “Any perception is action; it changes that upon which it acts, and in so doing is itself changed.”

When pain motivates change, growth is more likely to be perceived as a relief, even a reward for having suffered, rather than as a conscious choice which is always available. In the Seth framework, there is no reason to suffer, to wait passively for change. Change is awakened by enthusiasm for one’s greatest imaginable good. There is no evil but a wide margin for error — “All seeming opposites are other faces of the one supreme drive toward creativity.” Over-identification with limiting beliefs is stripped naked by Seth; the stripping away is not a killing but a feast.

At worst, the Seth books are impressive collector items for advocates of change who only pay lip service to the ideas in them. At best, the Seth books can profoundly affect a reader ready for them, whether they seem to be science fiction, fine art, or a travel guide to the deep self.

By selecting specific topics and paraphrasing Seth extensively, I hoped to avoid distorting the brilliant thread of clarity that unifies every topic Seth touches upon. But due to the innumerable times when I have used Seth as a springboard to an enlarged personal understanding, I tell my own story too.

— Elizabeth Campbell

“You can learn more from watching the animals than you can from a guru . . . or from reading my book. But first you must divest yourself of the idea that your creaturehood is suspect. Your humanness did not emerge by refusing your animal heritage, but upon an extension of what it is.”

— Seth, The Nature of Personal Reality

As a baby, my heartbeat was a drum of propulsion toward a presence who was large, white, and waited for me to mount him: my horse. No self-image except one that merged with his. A night sky. Open landscape. A slow patient journey which never passed landmarks but amplified some purpose, and reassured me my horse was no “he.” There was us, and when I was on his back, I knew who I was.

By the age of four or five, I could no longer hear his call. The heartbeat had settled somewhere deep inside. The sense of joint intentions with my horse withdrew. Every loss since is linked to this first step into separateness, and creates intersections everywhere that circle home. Seth is one that reminds me they are found first in inner landscapes, not the outer, and I do not need to do what I did at five, set up a sad substitute on the bedrail, a homemade saddle, bob up and down, searching for the right word, semblances of my horse’s forgotten name: equus, oranus, eliazur? No words worked so I cruised the neighborhood, declared the white horse had come, was my own, tied up in the family garage. The cry was “Come see!” and over we would rush. For the two or three minutes en route I was the key, had announced the divine in broad daylight. But there was no horse, I had lied, fed my sorrow at my own expense, became suspect.

I finally got my own horse, and together we acted out the mobility I’d known in the beginning, leaving the rest of the world behind, exploring territories that were forbidden on foot. I was cocky and tough by then, pretty cool, leaned back in the saddle and said, “Hey man,” spoke in a Texan drawl, I joked about the original “imaginary horse,” and called this horse nothing cosmic but Fart Face, to keep him in his place. I was scared of him when I wasn’t on his back. Blaze wasn’t white, but big and black. I was “Betsy,” an eighty pound person too tiny to tighten a saddle girth, too short to mount Blaze except on a stile.

I made him plod through town, but when we hit an empty farm road, dusty and long, I never held him back, never fought him, and we flew, his feet pounding the earth, body fully extended. Afterwards I’d slide off and hold his head while he scratched it against me. We’d broken the barrier, my scare was gone.

“Each of your beliefs . . . has its own unique origin and feeling patterns, so you must for yourself travel back through your beliefs and your own feelings until intellectually and emotionally you realize your rightness, your completely original existence in time and space as you know it.

This knowing will give you the conscious knowledge that is a counterpart of the animal’s unconscious comprehension.

— Seth, The Nature of Personal Reality

There was a time, says Seth, when there was tremendous overlap among all species, and the combinations were more experimental and consciously devoted to enhancing the quality of all life on the planet. There were animals, man-animals, and “modern man,” a species identical to the one we know today, co-existing. There was everything our mythologies have ever suggested: giants, dwarfs, half-human monkeys, and animal doctors who initiated the unknowing to herbology, realms of medicine to which we are only now beginning to return. There was a species of large water birds who sang songs of great beauty and complex language and led the earthbound men and women to areas of feeding and safety. There was the greatest cooperation among the species, and within this time lay the inner impetus and innate comprehension of all future probabilities, and an eagerness to live it all.

The largest experiment involved producing a species “that would be a part of the earth, and yet become aware co-creators of it . . . The emerging consciousness had to have, latently at least, the capacity to become aware of world conditions. When man knew no more than a simple tribal life, his brain already had the capacity to learn anything it must, for one day it would be responsible for the life of a planet.”

The blossoming of imagination “initiated the largest possibilities and at the same time put great strain upon the biological creature whose entire corporeal structure would now react not only to present objective situations, but imaginative ones.”

We denied nature as a temporary aid to develop a specialization which did not rely upon instinct. Ego had emerged, with no programming but the freedom to explore all ideas, including those that questioned our grace. Letting go of our animal comprehension was necessary for the ego to grow, but with it went the directive memory of the great cooperative venture of the earth, the awareness that the slain beast is tomorrow’s hunter, that the entire environment pulsates with a consciousness we are connected to, and destined to love as ourselves.

It is much more the nature of a cat, to unthinkingly erase its boundaries, to merge with a tree, with a bird it is stalking, with a human being it seeks to comfort when she cries. It is only humans that censor strains of life with which we are unfamiliar, and behave like bigots, dissecting every form we imagine is a lesser, a loser, doomed to serving humanity’s obsession with tearing life apart to understand it.

“When you dissect an animal,” writes Seth, “. . . you are still dealing only with the ‘inside’ of exterior reality, or with another level of outsideness. . . . There is a difference between this and the ‘withinness’ out of which all matter springs. It is there that the blueprints for reality are found.”

Seth says the inner intent always forms any exterior change, which contradicts the Darwinian assumption that outer motivation propels the development of new abilities. It is not the survival of the fittest that is the prime purpose of a species. Survival is merely the means by which a species can attain its goal of enhancing the quality of life, as it experiences life through itself. If survival brings vast suffering, distorting the nature of life as to “almost make a mockery of it,” the species will destroy itself. “The sacredness of life cannot be sacrificed for life’s convenience. . . . Those who sacrifice any kind if life along the way lose some respect for all life, human life included. The ends do not justify the means.”

I live in the country, in the middle of a forest that is turning green, white dogwood blossoms littering the ground like confetti. The wind rocks my small house like a tornado of change, the earth radiates warmth I had forgotten, satisfies a hunger I could not name in the last few weeks of winter. The birds are back. I come out, go wild with the rake, work until dark, clear paths that will one day connect, be a circle, make accessible the most healing combinations of earth, wind, sun and water I have found here.

I lay a fire at dusk at the edge of a large ravine, come back at midnight, the moon nearly full. I light the fire, crawl close, and cry. I am happy, at home, free to be crazy, talk nonsense to my cat. I use a voice I hide from humans, say, “BumperBumperBumper-Boy, Bumper Boy, Sssss, Son, Bump Bump.” The dogs’ tails thump-thump at the sound of my voice. Seb, a dog, tells a joke, his voice starting in a low rumble, “ggrrRumph, ROW ROW!” I laugh, hold my sides, howl “ROW ROW ROW” back at him, and the cat comes, curious. “Pddyeer? Pddyeer?” I look at him as longingly as at a lover, he gazes steadily back, pure white panther body crouched in front of the fire opposite me, making magic with a flick of his tail. He has one amber eye, one azure blue eye, and I am forever trying to track what he sees.

“The idea of a meaningless universe . . . is in itself a highly creative imaginative act. Animals . . . could not imagine such an idiocy, so that the theory shows the incredible accomplishment of an obviously ordered mind and intellect that can imagine itself to be the result of nonorder, or chaos — you have a creature who is capable of ‘mapping’ its own brain, imagining that the brain’s fantastic regulated order could emerge from a reality that has no meaning.”

— Seth, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events

The spider’s web is to the spider, says Seth, an artistic achievement that is life, actualized ideals. “It amazes the spiders that flies so kindly fall into those webs.”

Nature itself is civilization for the animals, and sense data rather than intellectual data allows them to participate in the drama of the seasons, in which they are co-creators. They know their impact on reality, and never seek to protect their individuality because they so totally accept it. They have emotions and can imagine events that have never happened to them, though in a much more limited way than we do. They anticipate mating. They do not dwell on potential threats, or pleasures. They live them, as they happen. They make choices, but not on the “thinking” level we occupy although they have “ideas” structured by an alien framework where there is no good or bad but natural impulses to maintain a quality of life. They do not fear death or disease, both of which they know as balances of nature which do not threaten but enhance their futures, because they are spirit-identified before they are body-identified.

If we have a shared language, it is the language of love, “a basic nonverbal one with deep biological connotations. It is the initial basic language from which all others spring, for all languages’ purposes rise from those qualities natural to love’s expression — the desire to communicate, create, explore, and to join with the beloved.”

Aggression is used by the animals to prevent combat, not initiate it. A dog’s barking is perfectly spontaneous, and yet ritualized, with a clearly understood meaning. In our society, the various steps in an aggressive encounter have become unclear, cloaked. Violence has been confused with aggression, and the creative power of aggression to prevent violence denied. “Violence is a distortion of aggression. . . . The sense of power felt during such episodes is the result of repressed energy suddenly released, but the individual is always at the mercy of that energy then — submerged within it, and passively carried with it.” Animals do not experience guilt and conscience as we do, but they work for what Seth calls “value fulfillment,” the development of values which increase the quality of whatever life the being feels at its center, multiplies it, “in a way that has nothing to do with quantity.”

Every species is a different brand of selfhood, no higher or lower than any other. Our species is in a state of transition and has developed a unique consciousness that has barely begun. What lies latent is unpredictable, unfinished, and the time is ripe for artificial divisions to be dispensed with.

“You must return, wiser creatures, to the nature that spawned you — not only as loving caretakers but as partners with the other species of the earth,” says Seth.

I have no horse now, rarely ride. But in my dreams, I often find myself at a narrow bridge above a Grand Canyon void. A horse appears, sure-footed and safe. He carries me across, disappears when we reach the other side, and I look back, see the bridge broadened with our passing become permanent.

****

(I discovered The Sun Magazine from North Carolina while looking for material related to Seth and Jane Roberts Online. It’s a great magazine! As it turned out there were three articles written by Elizabeth Rose Campbell in 1982 about Seth  and how much he has impacted her life. With permission from the Editor, I’ve been allowed to republish them on Real Talk World. Her writing is so engaging I wish I could have talked with her but she left our house in 2004. Enjoy! – Pete)

Channeled by Daniel Scranton

“Greetings. We are the Arcturian Council. We are pleased to connect with all of you.

We have been sensing the changes that are taking on your world right now as a result of the equinox energies that you have now downloaded a large portion of. You have been able to assimilate these energies, and you are raising the level of consciousness there on Earth at this time with the help of the equinox energies. You are also experiencing the minor shift that occurs in a change of season. Now, as you progress into the remainder of the year 2020, it will become clearer to all of you that you have in fact evolved as a human race, because of the way in which you all have been accessing more of your hearts through this root chakra cleansing and clearing that you are all going through at this time together.

The root chakra is all about life and death, abundance and poverty, health and sickness, and feeling safe and secure in a home versus being vulnerable and without a home. This virus is affecting all aspects of the root chakra that we have just mentioned, and so you all have an opportunity now to determine for yourselves what you want to replace the fear, trauma, and judgment within your root chakras. As you take on more of these equinox energies, and you run them through your physical bodies, you are of course also running them through your chakras.

And so, you are being given an opportunity to re-create your world, your society, and your sense of mortality and physicality because of all that you are facing right now. We see all that you are doing right now as positive, and we can see you taking the human collective consciousness to that next level, to that higher echelon. We can see more and more of you dipping your toes into the fifth dimensional frequencies as a result of what you have been living there on Earth.

Now is a time to be very intentional, and it is a time to fill those root chakras up with the beautiful high frequency energies coming in. It is a time for you all to get creative, to use those beautiful imaginations of yours, and to stand tall and strong in the knowing that you have accelerated the process of becoming your higher selves because of what you have been willing to endure. Now is a time to feel very proud of yourselves and how you are handling the coronavirus in the midst of the equinox energies. We are very proud of you, and we will continue to work with you in the astral plane to help you create this new world that we are all so excited about here in the higher realms.

We are the Arcturian Council, and we have enjoyed connecting with you.”

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By Elizabeth Rose Campbell,
Published in The Sun Magazine, March 1982

In the last issue of THE SUN, I began a series on Seth, the “energy personality essence” who has written six books through Jane Roberts while she is in a trance or dissociated state. Seth is no romantic “spirit guide” intent on comforting widows that a deceased spouse lives on, and Jane Roberts is no publicity-hungry medium claiming contact with “higher forces” who offer predictions for the next presidential race.

In 1963, writer Jane Roberts had an out-of-body experience one evening after she sat down to write poetry. When she “woke up,” she discovered she had written a manuscript. Neither Jane nor her artist husband Robert Butts had ever expressed any interest in psychic phenomena or altered states; they regarded themselves as serious artists, unconventional only in their somewhat reclusive lifestyle and unmaterialistic values. Neither had ever used any mind-altering drugs, unless cigarettes and beer count. Jane’s out-of-body experience and the resulting manuscript (complete with title: “The Physical Universe as Idea Construction”) was inexplicable, unasked for, a little frightening, and therefore all the more intriguing. As conservative as they were at that time, they could not ignore Jane’s experience. With some embarrassment, they purchased a Ouija Board. After the first sessions, the pointer spelled out messages from someone who called himself Seth. Soon after that, Jane began to hear the words in her mind before Seth spelled them out, and followed her impulse to speak them aloud. Since that time, Seth has dictated six books in a rather long-winded and dedicated delivery (19 years, fours hours weekly) with one purpose: to remind us of the abilities of consciousness.

This theme is hypnotically repeated in the six Seth books in a thousand different ways: we create our own reality. The books require that a reader have considerable curiosity about creativity; your homework is in no way done for you, nor is one relieved from the task of serious study with gossipy asides Seth certainly could indulge in if he chose. He never mentions which current world figures he thinks are good guys or bad. He doesn’t tell you what to eat, what to expect, when Atlantis will rise, when California will fall into the ocean, or when we will discover a cure for cancer. No drama.

Sometimes I buy People magazine when I’ve had too much of Seth. I am a reluctant scholar of anything; why then, are the Seth books the only body of work I have ever committed myself to? Because Seth slices through any seeds of dogma in my psyche, and fans my determination to be a responsible human being without once saying “you ought to be.” Because Seth has become my friend, dependable and loving and human, despite his formless state, a delight when he pokes fun at people with Messiah complexes, calls Jane’s cat “a sweet creature,” with a smile and no condescension, and makes asides which reveal how much he loves his work. Who does he say he is? He admits that there is overlap in his consciousness and Jane’s, but he also exists independently of her. In comparing himself to earthbound philosophers who live in bodies, he said, “I am not such a philosopher that I can compare my own thoughts and works with those of the noted professionals . . . I think I am — if you will forgive me — in my own way more earthy than those other gentlemen.

“I am — again in my way — more rambunctious and playful. The word ‘truth’ is a heavy one, and the more times it is repeated the more distant and inaccessible it seems. I do not put labels on my own theories, and I explain — or I try to explain — my most ‘profound’ statements by adding a dash of zest, a smidgeon of humor, an egotistical touch of humility. I consider myself an exuberant psychological explorer, finding myself, at my own request, happily set adrift among universes, able to shout with a loud and hearty voice from the hypothetical shore of one to another, news of what I have found and am still finding.”

Somehow, what he is finding is knowledge I already know, we all already know, but have forgotten. I have always, particularly on blacker days, had visions of a “future” self, wiser and more expansive, who reaches back to me, outstretched hands crossing eons of time and space, infusing me with a faith and fire I could never ignore. I identify with Jane as the longing learner who asked questions with such a vehemence that she broke barriers most of us maintain, and I identify with Seth as one who trusts life totally, who sends back to smaller selves a how-to book describing nuts-and-bolts care for an eternally changing consciousness.

As Seth symbolizes trust in life, suicide can symbolize distrust of life, and so I chose, for the second installment of the Seth series, Seth on suicide.

Seth suggests that all deaths are suicides in a sense, as all life forms choose their time of death on subconscious levels. But the context in which we choose to die is as significant and inter-connected to whom we are becoming as the context in which we choose to live.

I find it hard to accept that all deaths are chosen, that millions of Jews obligingly walked into crematoriums, that seventy-five people with plans to go to Florida volunteered to drown in a plane which crashed into an icy Potomac River, that an acquaintance really wanted to die when she deliberately jumped off of a mountain top in Colorado last October.

But what if they did, on some level? One cannot appreciate the options of belief Seth offers if one clings to the level where life is all there is, where we wait for a tragic finger of fate to tear us away from the known, the familiar, our precious plans to catch up with our fantasies.

Not only is “life after death” an inherent assumption in the Seth books, but such ancient concepts as reincarnation, and newer ones like “probable realities” create the open-ended universe Seth says we live in.

Seth’s storyline does not feel to me like an invention to soothe earthly egos frightened of their own mortality. Mortality, says Seth, is in a sense “real,” but in a universe which has no closed systems. “Events spin like electrons, affecting all psychological and psychic systems as well as biological ones. It is true to say that each individual dies alone, for no one else can die that death. It is also true that part of the species dies with each death, and is reborn with each birth,” writes Seth.

If dying is a biological necessity to insure the continued vitality of the species and each individual knows inherently that he or she must die physically in order to survive spiritually and psychically, as Seth says, then why is a fear of death so real to so many? Why do we yearn for assurance that our individuality is not “curtly dismissed” at death? Perhaps it is not due to the tyrant ego, earthbound and hungry for more, but merely due to the desire to be, as it confronts its preferences of how to be, in what form, in what circumstance, with no recipe book except the one we create.

We cannot deny death. But neither can we deny the glimpses of an enduring validity, of prime purpose behind our lives and our deaths, and “it is to that knowing portion of each individual that I address myself,” says Seth.

Our beliefs shape that purpose and the purpose can only grow as much as the beliefs are flexible, and are not mistaken for “truth.” According to Seth, power is only dangerous when an individual’s natural impulses to express purpose have been denied repeatedly, until the creative impulses are intensely focused into highly ritualized and rigid patterns of belief and behavior, which fear any other pattern. When the creative impulse to be is given natural expression, private lives and civilization are changed for the better. “Psychologically, your impulses are as vital to your being as physical organs are. They are as altruistic, or unselfish, as your physical organs are.” But that’s under “ideal” conditions. How many people do you know who live under “ideal” conditions? What are ideal conditions?

Seth maintains that if we live in a flawed world, it is not because we are essentially flawed; it is because we have forgotten how to trust our most immediate and familiar selves. “The inner self is not remote . . . not divorced from your most intimate desires and affairs, but instead communicates through your own smallest gestures, through your smallest ideal.” If one believes that the spiritually wise, intuitive self is remotely inaccessible, residing in a grandiose ideal, then the gap between experience and the ideal becomes a gulf only an interfering God could bridge. Therefore the bewildered self who created the ideal distrusts itself all the more, and typically projects the distrust rather than owning it. A physical death may be demanded by the self in an effort to detour the distrust.

On November 18, 1978, more than 900 Americans led by the Reverend Jim Jones poisoned themselves in a mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. Seth was in the midst of dictating The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events at the time. He described the people who died as victims of “an epidemic of beliefs,” who killed others and themselves for the sake of ideals, not an uncommon act in human history, and hardly one to celebrate.

The Jonestown suicides represent the results of religious fanaticism, “inverted idealists” who are not content to manifest their dreams step by step, in practical, peaceful expression, but feel that any act is justifiable in the pursuit of an ideal. Whether it is a religious ideal or a scientific ideal, Seth describes the sacrifice of life as a means to serve the sacredness of life as the most self-defeating strategy our species has invented.

When Jane and Rob speculated on the connections between the mass suicides at Guyana and the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident, which occurred a mere six months apart, Seth agreed that the two events represent obviously connected examples of the belief, “The ends justify the means.”

“Religion and science both loudly proclaim their search for truth, although they are seemingly involved in completely opposing systems. They both treat their beliefs as truths, with which no one should tamper . . . Right now your cultish religions exist in response to the cultish behavior of science.” Seth equates cults with fanaticism, and “you are a fanatic if you consider killing for the pursuit of your ideal.” Cults thrive on fear, and seek to sabotage any belief or trust in spontaneous change, in the freedom to rewrite the script. Seth insists that we have a natural immunity against all thoughts and beliefs that do not fit in with our own. No one need be a party to a suicide, whether it expresses itself as a living death of distrust in one’s own power to choose, or as a soldier bearing arms under a nationalistic banner. “. . . Wars are basically examples of mass suicide,” says Seth, “embarked upon . . . with all of the battle’s paraphernalia, carried out through mass suggestion, and . . . by men who are convinced that the universe is unsafe, that the self cannot be trusted, and that strangers are always hostile.”

It is odd to trust so much someone I cannot see, cannot touch, but Seth’s ability to trace the subtlest wiring of human belief, no matter how tangled or blocked, to the original impulse to be, fine-tunes my ability to forgive the most murderous act, to walk past any school of thought that encourages fear in any form. Seth’s oceanic desire is to remind us that no death comes unbidden, that death is as spontaneous a creation as our own lives, engineered by our beliefs, which, no matter how distorted, cannot destroy in some final deed of discipline the impulse to be.

“For in the miraculous spontaneity of the sun, there is discipline that utterly escapes you, and a knowledge beyond any that we know. And in the spontaneous playing of the bees from flower to flower, there is a discipline beyond any that you know, and laws that follow their own knowledge, and joy that is beyond command. For true discipline, you see, is found only in spontaneity. Spontaneity knows its own order.”

*****

(I discovered The Sun Magazine from North Carolina while looking for material related to Seth and Jane Roberts Online. It’s a great magazine! As it turned out there were three articles written by Elizabeth Rose Campbell in 1982 about Seth  and how much he has impacted her life. With permission from the Editor, I’ve been allowed to reprint them on Real Talk World. Her writing is so engaging I wish I could have talked with her but she left our house in 2004. Enjoy! – Pete)

By Elizabeth Rose Campbell,
Published in The Sun Magazine, February 1982

“Each of you creates your own physical reality. . . .”

For all my love of coziness, homey simplicities, the friend on the phone, the cat crying at the door, good coffee and my own bed, travel lures me like a preacher to the promised land.

Foreign countries and climates, uncertain destinations, the crowded train, the empty city at two a.m. are springboards to altered time and space, to the self stripped to barest essentials, good manners finally meaning, merely, tolerance for the unknown.

When I returned from a 99-day trek through Europe in 1974, I felt unhinged from an American past, politics, from a territorial boundary of “us” and “them,” from a fear of foreign philosophies. I came home ready to go again but my inner itinerary whispered no, not again, for a long time.

Six months later, a book came into my hands that brought back the best of travel. Not the beauty of waking on a beach in Greece, or recrossing paths with fellow travellers, but to lands of belief beyond anything I’d ever encountered, with a guide called Seth.

The repeated message of Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts is “that each of you create your own physical reality; and en masse, you create both the glories and the terrors that exist within your earthly experience. Until you realize that you are the creators, you will refuse to accept this responsibility.”

The circumstances of Seth’s author status — he is a non-physical being — no longer seem extraordinary to me, but bear describing in view of the armor our society insists upon inserting between itself and anything invisible, much less a bodiless Seth.

One evening in 1963, Jane Roberts sat down to write poetry and “suddenly my consciousness left my body, and my mind was barraged by ideas that were astonishing and new to me at the time.” When she “woke up,” she discovered that she had produced a manuscript, entitled The Physical Universe as Idea Construction. She began researching psychic activity with her husband Robert Butts, and experimented with a Ouija board. “After the first few sessions, the pointer spelled out messages that claimed to come from a personality named Seth,” wrote Jane, in the introduction to Seth Speaks. “Neither Rob or I had any psychic background, and when I began to anticipate the board’s replies, I took it for granted that they were coming from my subconscious. Not long after, however, I felt impelled to say the words aloud, and within a month I was speaking for Seth while in a trance state.”

Since that time, Jane Roberts has authored sixteen books, five of them dictated by the personality called Seth, in 4,000 hours of twice-weekly “Seth sessions.” According to Robert Butts, who has recorded every Seth session, Jane goes in and out of trance very quickly, with open eyes. As Seth, her eyes widen and darken, her mannerisms become more angular, her facial muscles rearrange themselves, and her voice deepens. Robert Butts describes her transformation into Seth as “original, and absorbing to watch and participate in. Regardless of degree, Seth is uniquely and kindly present. I am listening to, and exchanging dialogue with, another personality.”

After reading the five Seth books which were published between 1972 and 1982, and the nine books authored by an out-of-trance Jane Roberts, there is no question in my mind that the Seth books were not written by Jane Roberts, but by a personality which merges with Jane’s, and is larger, to put it mildly. Jane’s books grope to convey the multi-dimensional nature of reality. Seth’s automatically invoke it, never seem stilted or dry.

I speak with the inner vitality that is inherent within each of my readers, with the inner knowledge that also belongs to them.

You are given the gift of the gods; you create your reality according to your beliefs; yours is the creative energy that makes your world; there are no limitations to the self except those you believe in.

I am Seth. I speak my name joyfully, though names are not important . . .

You create your life through the inner power of your being, whose source is within you and yet beyond the selves that you know. Use those creative abilities with understanding abandon. Honor yourselves and move through the godliness of your being.

— The Nature of Personal Reality

Seth’s utmost compassion for all beliefs, no matter how small or stern, fearful or expansive, create a hothouse for self-examination, with Seth’s instructions urging one on, his competency as a writer so attuned to the power of language, the poignancy of change, that one feels compelled to awaken the inner equal to such gracious humor, wit, intelligence, and empathy.

But he is not a God, merely a fellow traveller who writes, “Permanency and stability basically have nothing to do with form, but with the integration of pleasure, purpose, accomplishment, and identity. I ‘travel’ to many other levels of existence in order to fulfill my duties, which are primarily those of a teacher and educator, and I use whatever aids and techniques serve me best within those systems.”

Seth is an elder but an equal, who insists, “Basically you are no more of a physical being than I am, and I have donned and discarded more bodies than I care to tell. . . . Consciousness creates form. It is not the other way around. . . .” He repeats the theme that we create our own realities in thousands of ways, in Seth Speaks (1972), The Nature of Personal Reality (1974), The “Unknown” Reality (Volume 1, 1977; Volume 2, 1979), The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979), and The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events (1981). He covers the psychological activity of atoms, Hiroshima, Three Mile Island, reincarnation, potential realities, the simultaneous past and future, pollution, photosynthesis, viruses, violence, the sexual characteristics of personality after physical death, and more. No topic is taboo with Seth. Whether he is discussing quasars or the Crusades, Seth’s focus is consistently on the innate abilities of energy in every form, everywhere, to do more than cope, but rather to bring the greatest weakness to eternal awareness and transform it to a strength.

Despite Seth’s self-knowledge fueling my own, I stumble over the textbook nakedness he has chosen to wear, with not so much as a hand-scribbled doodle drawn in the margin by Rob. Rob plays scribe to Seth, taking down every word he says, often including intonations, every hem and haw, when the doorbell rings, the minute they started the session, the minute they stopped. Through the years I’ve made my peace with Rob and Jane’s circumstances, their need not to cushion the reader with a host or hostess’s congenial persuasions, a cup of hot tea, a delightful digression from the matters at hand — Seth, and his multitude of books backed up behind him like patient pack mules, waiting to be delivered.

Does Jane resent it? Where does she “go” when Seth steps in? In God of Jane, she writes that she is not unconscious but conscious in a different way, at a more concentrated level, with a greater capacity for a rich blend of consciousness in which her own altered awareness “is only one of the psychological ingredients.” “This state of perception has nothing to do with classical pathological dissociation,” writes Jane. She doesn’t feel possessed or invaded. “I don’t feel that some super spirit has ‘taken over’ my body. Instead it’s as if practicing some precise psychological art, one that is ancient and poorly understood in our culture; or as if I’m learning a psychological science that helps me map the contours of consciousness itself. . . .”

She describes it as “almost always an exhilarating experience, like riding some perfect gigantic ninth wave of energy, knowing exactly how and when to ‘jump in,’ and feeling absolutely safe and supported even when embarked upon such a strange psychological flight.

“ . . . In this analogy, Seth is that ninth wave of energy — an energy that is aware, unique, individualistic, and yet endowed with all of the general characteristics of energy itself; as if his consciousness rises like some super-real mental creature from the tidal waves of a primal ocean of energy, so that he is himself and yet a part of a greater reality. And by prearrangement, I wait by the shores of my own private mind until I sense the approach of that psychological surge. Then throwing off the clothes of my usual consciousness I mentally jump in, striking that wave at a certain point and making an intersection with it that results in the phenomenon of Seth as he appears in our sessions. . . .

“ . . . Riding that wave of personified energy, I sense where currents from other realities enter our own world, how our own consciousnesses circle around probable events like fish deciding which morsels to nibble upon; and mostly I sense the eddies and underground caves within our minds where our ideas mix and merge; yours and mine.”

The most common criticism I hear of the Seth books is that “they are too intellectual.” Seth can be professorial, but that seems perfectly designed to approach Jane — who must let Seth borrow her body — from the exact angle of her prejudices. In many ways, Jane Roberts has not easily lent her self to an association with psychic phenomena, altered states of consciousness, and it is easy to feel her discomfort in the early Seth books, her scandalized intellect listening to Seth’s rap, her inner psychologist eager to find a loophole through which to reveal diseased intentions. She relaxed over their 20-year friendship; Seth’s desires proved to be simple and harmless. “We have never told anybody to do anything,” he said in 1978, “except to face up to the abilities of consciousness.” Jane’s own writing continues to improve dramatically, her descriptive faculties soaring to Seth’s at times. Still, Jane and Seth seem separate.

Some of Jane’s poetry, which feels embarrassingly flat to me, Seth praises for what it is, and I feel his love of humanity personalized in his love for Jane, her beliefs and word choices, her own business. I am touched by this delicate detachment in Seth from seeing results, from making demands that we complete ourselves in one bold stroke of perfection, now.

“Man is in the process of becoming,” he writes in The Nature of the Psyche. “His works are flawed — but they are the flawed apprentice works of a genius artist in the making, whose failures are indeed momentous and grotesque only in the light of his sensed genius, which ever leads him and directs him onward.”

1975, the year I bought my first Seth book, was also the year I bought a SUN, then “North Carolina’s Magazine of Ideas.” In it was a review of Seth Speaks, which I was in the midst of rereading and indexing, fascinated that I finally had the book in my hand I’d been reading ahead all my life to find. Sy Safransky’s review of Seth Speaks echoed everything I felt, and the reverberations brought tears to my eyes, made me pick up the phone, thank the man for saying it so well. He wrote, “ . . . There are worse sins than nudging your neighbor to look at the rainbow.

Given a glimpse of infinity I’m hard pressed not to blurt it out over dinner. As I read Seth Speaks, all those loose pieces of understanding — the assorted souvenirs of my journeys through inner space, meditations, psychedelics — fell into place. No New Age cant. No cryptic pearls. No kissing the feet of the guru. Just the facts, friend. If they’re reading books a hundred years from now, they’ll be reading this one . . . If his words evoke for you the same renewed wonder at the possibilities of creation, the same suggestion of undreamt-of expression, unacknowledged realities, and unlimited self-realization, I might escape a little of the karmic shit storm that comes from saying: read this book.”

THE SUN magazine has been powerfully influenced by Seth’s influence on Sy. Appropriate then, that with the 75th issue of THE SUN, we begin the first of a series, celebrating Seth. – ERC.

(I discovered The Sun Magazine from North Carolina while looking for material related to Seth and Jane Roberts Online. It’s a great magazine! As it turned out there were three articles written by Elizabeth Rose Campbell in 1982 about Seth  and how much he has impacted her life. With permission from the Editor, I’ve been allowed to reprint them on Real Talk World. Her writing is so engaging I wish I could have talked with her but she left our house in 2004. Enjoy! – Pete)

(Jane Roberts died September 5, 1984. This excerpt from the Introduction to Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness, was started by Rob Butts thirteen months after Jane died. The book was published in 1987 by Stillpoint Publishing, Walpole, New Hampshire. Rob is the original Copyright holder, which is now held by his widow, Laurel Davies Butts. Both Rob and Laurel organized unpublished material from Seth and Jane for this book and added support material to make sense of it all. To give you some idea of what’s included in this book, here are some chapter headings:

Chapter 1 – Dreams, Creativity, and the Unconscious
Chapter 7 – The Inner Senses
Chapter 12 – Dream Recall: How to Remember Your Dreams
Chapter 14 – Dreams and Health
Chapter 19 – Out-of-Body Experiences from the Dream State
Chapter 22 – The Inside of Consciousness. – Pete)

*****

Rob:

“I first heard from my unseen correspondent, Valerie Wood, not long after Jane had died thirteen months ago. I sent her one of the cards I’d had printed, giving a few details about Jane’s death and stating my determination to carry on with our work. Valerie responded with some poetry relative to Jane’s passing, and my reactions to her death, that I interpreted at once as being very evocative of Jane and me. At the time I didn’t know what to believe about the source of the material, even while I found it reinforcing my own contacts with Jane. Were Valerie’s messages from her own subconscious? From Jane’s world view? From Jane herself?

“I wrote Valerie that she was gifted psychically and suggested that she might cautiously proceed with learning more about her abilities, to whatever extent she chose. Valerie is thirty-eight years old, and lives with her husband in a western state; they have two children. She works part time in the field of education. She is developing her gifts through study and practice. During the year she sent me a number of messages “from” and about Jane. Some of them subjectively feel right to me; they effortlessly mirror or echo the way the Jane I lived with for almost thirty years often talked and wrote. In fact, at times I found the similarities between the contents of those messages and my ideas of Jane’s own ambience to be striking.

“Valerie’s material raises as many questions as it gives answers for, of course. Are her messages really from Jane, or is she “only” telepathically picking up from me what I want to hear, and flashing it back to me from her trance states — as communications from Jane? An unbelieving scientist would say that Valerie is hardly in touch with a discarnate Jane, since science doesn’t accept survival (after) death. Nor would the idea of reaching Jane’s world view be considered telepathy from me, for both of those concepts are scientifically unacceptable. The most parsimonious view — the simplest, stingiest one — would be that through studying the Seth material Valerie subconsciously divines the replies I want from my dead wife, and in all subjective innocence comes through with her trance messages for me, to fit my own stubborn belief in Jane’s survival.

“I may be projecting my own fears here, but I don’t agree with the scientific rejection of all portions of the schemata listed above. The objections don’t feel right to me. They question not only Valerie’s sincerity and performance but my own, as well. I keep thinking about the twenty years of ideas and study that Jane and I put into the Seth material. Surely my contacts with her, and the work of gifted, dedicated people like Valerie, show us human potential in very challenging ways, hinting at how much we have yet to learn about our individual and collective consciousnesses. And out of my own selfish need and longing for my wife, who is dead, I want people to read her books so that they can understand her great contributions.

“Right now, though, I want to present a message from Valerie that she received upon awakening at 6:30 A.M. on September 6, 1985 — some six weeks ago, in other words, and a year and a day after Jane died.

(But first this note: In Appendix 19 for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, I offer material from Jane and from Seth about that atonal, very distant-sounding Seth Two. I quote myself as writing that “Seth Two exists in relation to Seth in somewhat the same manner that Seth does to Jane, although that analogy shouldn’t be carried very far”)

“Just as received from Valerie Wood, and with her permission:

For Rob

You will join me as I have joined others.
No physical form or physical thought
can express my existence.
The term love, with its message
of caring for another,
is the most important of our
messages in the physical.
Seth Two is to me now what Seth was to you.
I am a step higher but not removed.
Yet, I have changed enough since “my
death” that it is difficult,
at times, to relate to your existence.
The love and the emotions you feel
are the connectives between us.
My love for you has not changed but expanded
in a way you do not comprehend.
Physical needs are for physical beings,
and I understand and know this.
Touch is important at your level.
My new or returned mind loves you more
deeply than in our earth time together,
but it is also much more
understanding of physical need.
When I said, “Be for me as I would
be for thee,” I didn’t mean to limit you.
Be the physical person you need to be,
as you are physical for a limited and
for a purposeful reason.
Enjoy physical reality between others,
for the mind endures and exists
beyond your understanding and existence.
I love you as you were
and as we will be.
Your now is for you to enjoy.
I never judge your actions, and this
I repeat with love and utmost understanding.
Be yourself and in being yourself
you will be for me as I would be for thee.
You do well and I watch you often.
Continue to love physical life
while you are physical.

Until later. (Jane.)

“Rob,” Valerie wrote at the end of her material, “I hope this has meaning for you, and whether it is Jane’s, or my subconscious words, it is beautiful, wise and useful — best to you until next time.”

“Indeed. A commitment is required upon my part in this case: I think that Valerie’s message for me is from Jane. A possible qualification of that belief can be that the material is inter-wound with data Valerie picked up from Jane’s world view, where Jane wouldn’t have necessarily been involved — only the body of her personalized and emotional experience in physical life. I cannot objectively prove either of those propositions. Yet I have my own intuitive proof, because I strongly feel that the contents of Valerie’s message fit very well both the physical and the nonphysical Jane Roberts.

“Aside from the obvious reassurances Jane is quoted as offering to me, as a physical creature, I could comment extensively upon some of the other points she makes — especially the two I briefly refer to below; the reader may enlarge upon portions of the message also, depending upon what he or she understands of the Seth-Jane philosophy. Jane remarked, “Yet, I have changed enough since ‘my death’ that it is difficult, at times, to relate to your existence.” And, “My love for you has not changed but expanded in a way you do not comprehend.” How interesting these statements are! Does Jane contradict herself in them? No — yet the meanings within them require intuitive exploration and conscious comprehension. They’re very personal observations that at the same time echo that mystery of life I’m always referring to.”

Channeled by Daniel Scranton

(To understand how thoughts shape our actions and experiences, let’s look at the Story of Creation in the Bible. It doesn’t matter if the events depicted are historically real or not. Our thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions, can still be influenced by them just because they exist, seen or unseen. For example, just by hearing or reading the word “Flu,” we can catch it, depending on how open we are to suggestion. I saw the word “Flu” written on a road one night and came down with it the next day. Another time, a passenger on my bus asked if I had the flu and followed that up with the comment that, “everyone I know is getting it.” Again, I came down with the flu the next day.

After this unpleasant demonstration, I decided to harden myself against the power of suggestion. I reminded myself that I should be the one to control my thoughts, not other people. – Excerpt from Religion’s Role in Shaping Human Behavior. – Pete)

 

“Greetings. We are the Arcturian Council. We are pleased to connect with all of you.

We have begun to explore the implications of the fear-mongering that has been going on there on your world because of this corona virus situation, and we know that certain people are susceptible to fear-mongering. They are the ones being targeted at this time, and keeping you all in fear has been a very successful way to keep you all in check. But as we have said in an earlier transmission, the amount of compassion that is being generated for those who have gotten sick, and for the families and friends of the deceased, far outweighs the negative effect of the fear-mongering.

Each of you who is awake is being called at this time to be a part of the compassionate blanket of energy that humanity needs right now. Humans need to feel secure about their health and well-being, and those of you who are there to be the light-workers at this time are the ones to construct that blanket of energy, that healing love and light, and to throw it over the entire planet at this time. See yourselves working with the other light-workers, the other healers, the other compassionate ones, all around the planet to co-create this healing, loving, compassionate energy, and imagine yourselves holding that blanket around the entire population at this time.

Hold space for those who are living in fear that they will get sick and possibly even die. This is a gigantic root chakra cleanse for humanity, and when you are cleansing, there are side effects. You do experience pain during a cleanse because you are releasing that which is toxic. There have been enough now who have suffered from the coronavirus to have completed the root chakra cleanse, but the fear is still present because some of these fears are fears that have been generated in this lifetime and are just floating around in people’s energy fields.

The cleansing of the energy fields of each and every human being of the fears that they hold onto is the final step here, and you are the ones to help bring about this final purging with a gentle kindness in your hearts for those who are feeling the fear. You are the ones who are being called at this time to be strong, to be balanced, to be grounded, and to know that your vibration will always determine how much health and well-being you hold in your body. Knowing that, holding that truth in your consciousness, is also what is needed at this time for the collective.

We are the Arcturian Council, and we have enjoyed connecting with you.”

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(Here is part 3 in My Story Room, under the heading: What do You do when Life as a Human Being is More Painful than Pleasant? Remember, thoughts are “things” with a reality of their own and each of us, an artist. With thoughts in the form of beliefs, attitudes, values and expectations, we paint the landscape of our lives. In other words, thinking, feeling, acting and reacting is where All That Is begins, from dreams to reality. – Pete)

At the age of 36, I was so unhappy with myself and life I was at my wit’s end. In early December, 1977, my growing depression turned into a severe panic attack. My wife, children, and I were shopping in Macy’s in the Stonestown Galleria Shopping Mall in San Francisco. For whatever reason, discomfort quickly turned into the feeling of being an utter failure as a person, husband, and father. All I wanted to do was sit on the floor in the middle of Macy’s and cry. I didn’t, but it was what I wanted to do.

Several days after this incident, Sandra asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I said nothing because she was the only one working at the time. She insisted on getting me something so I put together a list of six books for her to choose from. They were all metaphysical books and very popular at the time.

Even though she shopped at two of the largest bookstores in San Francisco, she couldn’t find any of the books on my list. Did someone have something else in mind for me? Caught between giving up and wanting to find something I would like, her eyes kept exploring the covers of the books around her. Finally, they stopped on one particularly interesting looking book. It was Seth Speaks – the Eternal Validity of the Soul.

Somehow, Sandra felt a connection with the image of Jane Roberts channeling Seth on the cover of Bantam Book’s purple paperback edition of Seth Speaks. Jane not only wrote her own books, she served as a channel for Seth, a non-physical entity, who dictated his books through her. I am so glad Sandra bought this book for me. It was the best present I’ve ever received, apart from her, Crystal, and Evan, my family. That Christmas in 1977 was the best one for me, ever!

After opening Seth Speaks, I couldn’t put it down. At last someone was talking to me about the nature of Being and Creation in a way that made sense. He talked about things that humans seldom do, things that many of us experience but never share for fear of being ridiculed in this earthbound egocentric world of thought and limitation. You know what I mean. Seth made me feel free to be me in my oneness with and separation from All That Is, as both a product of creation and creation itself. I didn’t make Seth’s ideas my own. They were my own! All he did was remind me of that.

Where did my fear, anger, and depression come from? They came from being told that I’m bad and I can’t trust my body or my thoughts and feelings because “they will always betray you (the nun in What I Learned in Catholic School).”

Ideas don’t remain attached to their source. Once conceived, they become part of the collective consciousness of All That Is. In other words, they become available for all of us to play with. Seth is an independent source of knowledge, as is everyone and everything we ever come into contact with whether it’s in dreams or waking reality.

How does Consciousness Create Reality?

First, All That Is thinks, feels, acts and reacts; therefore, we ARE. As we think, feel, act and react, we create. To change what we create, we must change what we think and feel, how we act and react.

For a great example, read Genesis – a Lucid Creation Dream. When we accept ourselves as both products of creation and creation itself, we begin to learn about what that means. This dream clearly shows how powerful we all are in controlling our circumstances, not only in dreams but in life. For more on the nature of being and creation, read The Ball of Light.

What we think and feel, individually and collectively, forms our intent, which in turn forms our reality.

Here are some examples of how Consciousness creates reality:

· Exploring differences between nothing and something creates everything.

· Exploring differences in the oneness of All That Is creates individuals like you and me.

· Exploring differences between you and me creates self and other-awareness.

· Exploring differences between now and then creates Time.

· Exploring differences between here and there creates Space.

Out of curiosity, Consciousness or Aware Energy, creates new dimensions of action for Being and Creation.

By Roger Peterson (Pete)  https://realtalkworld.com

Part 1: What do You do when Life as a Human Being is More Painful than Pleasant? Exploring Thoughts, Feelings, Actions and Reactions in Life.

Part 2: What do You do when Life as a Human Being is More Painful than Pleasant? Religion’s Role in Shaping Human Behavior.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ― R. Buckminster Fuller

What others will not or cannot do for us, we must do for ourselves.

(Here is part 2 in My Story {bed} Room, under the heading: What do You do when Life as a Human Being is More Painful than Pleasant? Remember, thoughts are “things” with a reality of their own and each of us, an artist. With thoughts in the form of beliefs, attitudes, values and expectations, we paint the landscape of our lives. In other words, thinking, feeling, acting and reacting is where All That Is begins, from dreams to reality. – Pete)

To understand how thoughts shape our behavior, let’s look at the Story of Creation in the Bible. It doesn’t matter if the events depicted are historically real or not. Our thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions, can still be influenced by them just because they exist, seen or unseen. For example, just by hearing or reading the word “Flu,” we can catch it, depending on how open we are to suggestion. I saw the word “Flu” written on a road one night and came down with flu the next day. Another time, a passenger on my bus asked if I had the flu and followed that up with “everyone I know is getting it.” Again, I came down with the flu the next day.

After this unpleasant demonstration, I decided to harden myself against the power of suggestion. I reminded myself that I should be the one to control my thoughts, not other people.

Back to the Bible. For our purpose, I chose to use the Vatican version because the English translation is easier to understand.

The Book of Genesis

In Chapter 1, Verse 28, God says to Adam and Eve: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

In Chapter 3, Verse 16, God said to Eve, after she had eaten fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil against God’s command: “I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

So, just like that, Eve lost her status as “help mate,” (equal) to Adam. Now, how many men grow up believing they have the same rights as those given to Adam and how many women support them in this belief? As a man or woman, how do you react to this idea? Do you take it seriously or not? If you were to take it seriously, how would you translate it into reality?

Here is how the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word Dominion:

1. : DOMAIN

2. law : supreme authority : SOVEREIGNTY having dominion over the natural world.

3. law : absolute ownership.

Synonyms for dominion:

ascendance (also ascendence), ascendancy (also ascendency), dominance, domination, hegameny, imperium, predominance, predominancy, preeminence, reign, sovereignty (also sovranty), supremacy.

As you can see, some people have picked up the football and are running hard with the idea of dominion. Harder than God intended? Since this story is still being taught in churches and bible study groups on and off the Internet, how many people in the world today do you think still accept the idea of “Dominion” as a framework for shaping their lives? How big a role do “Gods” play in shaping the structure of our societies and their institutions? How big a role do they play in shaping our lives as individuals?

In Chapter 4 of Genesis, God Introduces a New Dimension for Human Interaction

After Cain and Abel grew up [4:1-4:16], “Cain [4:3] brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel [4:4] for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, [4:5] but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.”

As a result of God’s discrimination, one son is pitted against the other. To make matters worse, “The LORD [4:6] said to Cain, Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen?” Yeah, right, rub it in! Later, Cain kills Abel. God knows it and shames him.

Just like that, value judgment and comparison is introduced, setting one person against the other. Are these shifts in thought and feeling good or bad things? Or, are they challenges chosen by us to further our development as Beings of Aware Energy in our oneness with and separation from All That Is, as both products of and creation itself? Are we part of God becoming?

Here is the Merriam-Webster definition of stewardship:

Stewardship:

1: the office, duties, and obligations of a steward

2: the conducting, supervising, or managing of something, especially, the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care, stewardship of natural resources.

Synonyms for stewardship:

administration, care, charge, conduct, control, direction, governance, government, guidance, handling, intendance, management, operation, oversight, presidency, regulation, running, superintendence, superintendency, supervision.

In Genesis, Chapters 6 and 7, God sees only evil in the world and decides to wipe out all human and animal life with the exception of Noah, “who pleases him.”

Charging Noah and his family with the responsibility of building an Ark and gathering all male and female pairs to repopulate the earth, he creates the idea or dimension of “Stewardship” upon the earth. If you strongly believe in the idea of stewardship, caring for those in need or less fortunate than you, what kind of person will that make you and what kind of reality will you create?

All in This Together

Does All That Is think, feel, act and react? Is this what makes All That Is, possible? If so, doesn’t that make us both one with and separate from All That Is? Doesn’t it make us both products of creation and creation itself? During moments of disaster and times of great stress, don’t we all reach out to higher consciousness or our idea of “God”? At some time in life, don’t we all feel like we’re all in this (Being and Creation) together? Why can’t we feel it more often? How would the world change if we did?

Would there be any change in how we treat ourselves and each other? Definitely! As Beings of Aware Energy, the Source and Substance of All That Is, we are Partners in Evolution, here to live, love, learn and evolve. The challenge of Being and Creation is learning how to use the power of thought and imagination to shape the energy of ideas, the building blocks of creation, into a pleasing reality. The prize is a sense of satisfaction, the feeling of a job well done.

By Roger Peterson (Pete)  https://realtalkworld.com

Part 1: What do You do when Life as a Human Being is More Painful than Pleasant? Exploring Thoughts, Feelings, Actions and Reactions in Life.

Part 3: What do You do when Life as a Human Being is More Painful than Pleasant? Moving Beyond Fear, Anger, and Depression

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ― R. Buckminster Fuller

What others will not or cannot do for us, we must do for ourselves.

(Part 1. The questions below appear in My Story {bed} Room, under the heading: What do You do when Life as a Human Being is More Painful than Pleasant? Remember, thoughts are “things” with a reality of their own and each of us, an artist. With thoughts in the form of beliefs, attitudes, values and expectations, we paint the landscape of our lives. In other words, thinking, feeling, acting and reacting is where All That Is begins, from dreams to reality. – Pete)

How come I never think about how good I am, how much I do, and how well I do it?

As I turned the empty bus into the dark parking lot at the end of my northbound run, out of the blue, I loudly asked myself in great exasperation, how come I never think about how good I am, how much I do, and how well I do it? Yeah, I thought, I only react to my shortcomings and mistakes. Why is that? Why have I always been more concerned about how bad I am than how good I am, how bad others are instead of how good they are? Cultural conditioning?

Even my dreams play into this negative belief structure. I can’t tell you how many dreams I’ve had about building bridges across deep chasms or waterways that were so flawed I couldn’t cross them without falling into one of the many holes I had left unfinished! My holey bridge episodes were extremely exasperating, to say nothing about trying to climb up to roadways whose soft shoulders kept turning into increasingly steep drop-offs while the sand kept becoming softer and softer, making it impossible to make any progress.

Even rooftops played a role in reminding me of how inadequate and unworthy I felt about myself at times. Whether I was sitting or standing on the roof didn’t matter. On these frightening occasions, it seemed the roof came to life with the intent to kill or injure me. I figure it was either that or my Greater Consciousness was telling me to wake up, wise up, and rise up to greater awareness and understanding. What do you think? You know what, I haven’t had a dream like this for a long time. Maybe I’ve moved past the need for them. If so, hallelujah!

When I first said, I love myself, why didn’t I feel anything?

I began saying I love myself on a regular basis after my revelation in the parking lot. It took time but before long, my mind began to show me things about myself that I could love. Thinking I couldn’t or shouldn’t love myself was an idea that had been rattling around in my subconscious since early childhood. My mother used to say, “Anyone who loves themselves gets stuck on themselves.”

I assumed she was implying that once you decide to love yourself, no one else matters. At the time, I didn’t question her assumption outright but I do remember feeling a twinge of doubt about her take on this subject. And of course, there was always someone around to make this belief real, or at least, it seemed that way.

Why was I so shy and defensive around other people?

Maybe it had something to do with being told at the age of five that everyone was “born in sin” because Adam and Eve, of whom “we are all descendants, ate fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil against God’s Command.” The nun teaching the class in catechism immediately followed this bombshell up with another one, “…and you can’t trust the flesh because it will always betray you.” Totally dumbfounded, I protested these claims and when she told me to shut up and pay attention, I turned my back on her for the rest of the class.

The next morning as we lined up outside her classroom, she asked me if I was ready to accept the teachings of the church. Looking her straight in the eye, I said no! In response, she pulled out a heavy-duty eighteen inch wooden ruler she had been hiding inside her habit. Holding my wrist with one hand she beat my knuckles with it as hard as she could. When I couldn’t take the pain any longer and started crying in front of the other students, she stopped hitting me, her mission accomplished.

On the way home from school that day, I told my older brother, Dicky, what happened and said, I was never going to school there again. The next day, I hid behind the church and when we got home, I told my mother what had happened the day before and that I was never going back there again. The following day, Dicky and I both attended the local public school.

In public school, when my new teacher asked me to stand up and introduce myself to the class, I did, and then I told him what the Catholic school taught their students and how they treated them. When I asked him how public schools treat their students his face turned red with rage. Pointing his finger at me, he yelled, “Sit down, shut up and do as I tell you! I’m the teacher and I know what’s best for you.” OMG, that went well!

For more on What I Learned in Catholic School, click the link or visit https://realtalkworld.com and enter the title in the search window.

Are there reasons for what we experience?

Is there another way to look at the experiences we have in life? I think so. For example, many of my experiences during childhood reinforced the idea that I couldn’t trust or believe in myself, or others. Did it feel unpleasant to be told that I couldn’t trust or believe in myself or anyone else? No, it felt terrible! However, if you want to create what you like, how can you do it without knowing what you don’t like?

Take My Recurring Superman Nightmare. I relived it about once a year every year for more than four decades. It was a story about oppression and authoritarianism in the form of a priest and a large and powerful Frankenstein monster that kept chasing me through a park and up the side of an office building, nightmare after nightmare. Out of panic, every time he reached up to grab my ankle, I woke up in bed to save myself. One day, I decided to stop being afraid. The next time my Frankenstein monster reached up to grab my ankle, I turned around in anger and beat him until he fell off the building to the street below. Then I flew out from the building and saw the priest surrounded by a crowd of people.

That was the last time I had that dream. Making people feel weak and dependent on authority is not only one stage of development, it may be essential to the greater development of All That Is. Experiences like this may not be fun but without something to annoy or challenge us, why would we bother to change? Why would we bother to evolve?

Why did I hate my crooked front teeth so much I wanted to destroy them?

I don’t know why I felt so angry but, at some level of consciousness I thought my teeth had the power to choose to grow in straight. I certainly treated them as if they did. Maybe I was using this one obvious flaw as a catchall for all the flaws I believed to be a part of who I was.

It didn’t help matters any that not only did my stepdad refuse to spend money on braces, my mother suggested I use a finger to push on the sharp point of my most crooked front tooth. I tried her remedy a few times and found that it was impossible to push on the sharp point of my tooth for more than a minute or two because of the pain from the intense pressure on my finger. Several minutes at a time, several times a day just wasn’t enough to straighten something out that’s deeply embedded in bone. I don’t know what you think, but in my story having crooked teeth in your preteens was devastating in a culture that values beauty and perfection as highly as ours. It certainly felt devastating to me!

Based on my experiences in life, I have come to believe that there are no accidents and that there are reasons for everything. If this is so, does it mean that my teeth grew in crooked for a reason? Perhaps. What about the nun beating my knuckles and the teacher yelling at me in public school? Were these experiences initiated and controlled by unseen forces to steer me in a particular direction? Who knows? Without experiences like these, how else can we learn about self-pity?

Instead of drawing this discussion out further, let me highlight some of the major areas of thought and feeling (challenges) I faced growing up. You may be able to identify with some of them.

Why was I so confused and fearful about how to be with other people?

Can it be the result of an authoritarian culture based on judgments of right and wrong, good and bad, reinforced by the shame of guilt and the fear of punishment? How else can you exercise control over others and protect yourself? Oh boy, there is so much I want to say about why it’s time to outgrow this strategy!

Why did I feel unworthy and insignificant so much of the time?

My biological father died when I was four years old. He was forty- nine at the time and managed a small grocery store owned by his father and he rarely interacted with my brothers and me. A year after his death, my mother married a plumber who owned a race horse. He made enough money to feed and shelter us, but even as a young boy I knew about class status and both my dad and stepdad were near the bottom rung as blue collar workers. To me that meant my brothers and I, and my mother, were all on the bottom rung of society. I don’t know about them but this discriminatory, class-conscious system made me feel unworthy and unwanted.

Here are several messages many of us receive during childhood. “Sit down, shut up and do as I tell you. I’m the teacher and I know what’s best for you!” – Excerpt from my school experience. “Children should be seen and not heard. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything. What’s wrong with you?”

Whether these messages are conveyed through words, behavior, or organizational structure doesn’t matter. They exist and affect our behavior.

Why did I feel like I wasn’t good enough?

When I asked my mother why she never complimented us (her children), she replied, “I don’t want you to get a fat head.” How many of us as adults feel the same way as my mother? As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t know how to support our children other than provide them with food and shelter, hug them, and go on walks with them. There was so much more I wanted to accomplish as their father but didn’t know how. Maybe that’s why so many of us review our lives later in life. We want to learn what we can from past experiences so we can do better in future lives, if there are any.

Why did I think there was something wrong with me?

When you hear the question, “What’s wrong with you?” or you say, what’s wrong with me to yourself often enough, you begin to believe it.

Why did I hate myself and others sometimes?

Unless it is replaced with love and understanding, hate begets hate.

As a young man, why was I angry with so many people in positions of authority?

Abuse of power. Not everyone seeks a position of authority because they want to serve others. Some do it to serve themselves.

Why did I love animals more than people?

People judge you and animals don’t. Animals may not like who you are or what you do in the moment but they do love you and want to be loved in return.

Why didn’t I know what to tell my children when they were growing up and needed help?

I didn’t agree with much of what I was taught growing up and had too little time and too little experience to figure it out on my own. As a result, I had no clue about what to tell my children, which I found very disturbing. Again, how can you create what you like unless you know what you don’t like?

All the while, I believed in a different story than the ones we currently tell ourselves. Until now, I didn’t know what that story was.

By Roger Peterson (Pete) https://realtalkworld.com

Part 2: What do You do when Life as a Human Being is More Painful than Pleasant? Religion’s Role in Shaping Human Behavior.

Part 3: What do You do when Life as a Human Being is More Painful than Pleasant? Moving Beyond Fear, Anger, and Depression

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ― R. Buckminster Fuller

What others will not or cannot do for us, we must do for ourselves.