“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause.) Sometimes you think of suicide as ignominious and passive, but of war as aggressive and powerful. Both are equally the result of passivity and distorted aggression, and of natural pathways of communication not used or understood. You think of flowers in terms of gentleness, beauty and “goodness,” and yet every time a new bud opens there is a great thrust of joyful aggression that is hardly passive, and a daring and courage that reaches actively outward. Without aggression your body would be denied its growth, the cells within it caught in inertia. Aggressiveness is at the base of the magnificent bursting of creativity.

To some degree we will touch upon those dilemmas in this book. In your society and to some extent in others, the natural communication of aggression has broken down. You confuse violence with aggression, and do not understand aggression’s creative activity or its purpose as a method of communication to prevent violence.

Birth is an aggressive action — the thrust outward with great impetus of a self from within a body into a new environment. Any creative idea is aggressive. Violence is not aggressive. It is instead a passive surrender to emotion which is not understood or evaluated, only feared, and at the same time sought.

Now all of this serves to impede constructive and creative spontaneity, and when this does find its way though, it is in such an explosive manner that he fears it because it seems undisciplined. If he lets go creatively he fears his aggressions will also be expressed spontaneously. But spontaneously released aggressions are not only natural but beneficial.

[...] It will also help to point out that he has positively used many of these elements creatively. He must not project an exaggerated idea of the power of aggression. [...]

Legitimate response, legitimate aggressive—(It is interesting to note that Jane stumbled over the word aggressive, even speaking as Seth)—response, is no problem, for there is no buildup behind it. [...] Often in such situations he will hurt himself because he has an exaggerated (underlined) idea of the hurt any normal aggressive reaction, from a frown to a verbal one, can have.

[...] The tension between the two leads him to temper aggressiveness with creativity, or to use aggressiveness creatively.

[...] The characteristics of the animus provide the aggressive thrust that returns the personality back outward into physical activities, triumphantly holding the products of creativity that the anima characteristics have secured.

(9:58.) Your reality exists in a particular area of activity in which aggressive qualities, thrusting-outward characteristics, are supremely necessary to prevent a falling back into the infinite possibilities from which you have only lately emerged. Yet from this unconscious bed of possibilities you derive your strength, your creativity, and the fragile yet powerful kind of individual consciousness that is your own.

Birth is perhaps the most forceful aggression, in your terms, of which you are capable in your system of reality (emphatically). In the same way, the growth of any idea into temporal realization is the result of creative aggression. It is impossible to try to erase true aggressiveness. [...]

Normal aggressiveness flows with strong patterns of energy, giving motive power to all of your thoughts whether you consciously regard them as positive or negative, good or bad. (Very definitely:) The same thrusting creative surge brings them all forth. [...]

[...] Your material form is alive through natural aggression, the poised, forceful and directed action that is the carrier for creativity.

The aggressive nature of symbols is little understood, nor the relationship between aggression and creativity. These are far from opposing characteristics, and without an aggressive thrust, symbols would lack their high mobility. [...]

It is both the creative and aggressive aspects of consciousness that allow it to use symbols, to move through various levels of experience, and the aggressive nature of thought that so propels it, despite your knowledge, into realities that you do not understand.

Aggressiveness and passivity are both behind symbols of birth, for both are needed. [...] Inertia results when aggressiveness and creativity are not in the proper proportions, when consciousness leans too severely in one direction or another, when the flow of symbols is either too quick or too slow for the particular psychological environment in which you dwell.

[...] However he began his creative life very early as an outlet, you see, for aggressive and violent feelings. [...]

You grew up in an environment, my dear friend, in which violence and aggressiveness became one, were expressed in some degree by both parents. [...] Your father’s aggressiveness, normal male aggressiveness, was blocked up, and directed against your mother. You longed to express your natural violence, you normal aggressiveness, and you also feared to do so, and dwelled mainly in your own world.

As a rule you do not express these feelings in the area where they would normally be expressed, and you also use them as a basis for creative work. [...] You are twice angry at Ruburt’s lack of aggressiveness in the business world, therefore.

Natural aggression provides the charge for all creativity. Now reading this, many readers will be taken back, for they believe that love is the impetus, and that love is opposed to aggression. [...] Natural aggression is the creative loving thrust forward, the way in which love is activated, the fuel through whose agency love propels itself. (With emphasis:) Aggression in the most basic terms has nothing to do with physical violence as you think of it, but with the force through which love is perpetuated and creatively renewed.

The connections between creativity and aggression have never been understood in your society. A misunderstanding of true aggression can lead into a fear of all emotion, and cause you to cut yourself off from one of nature’s best therapies.

[...] Each has a basis in natural aggression.

[...] The male’s aggressive tendencies, often taken as basic characteristics of the species itself, are a case in point. This is an exaggerated, learned aggressive response, not natural in those terms in your species, or as interpreted in any other species.

His rage turns outward as aggression. It is the highest idiocy, however, to project that artificial aggression outward upon the animal kingdom in general. [...]

[...] The facts are that dreams involve high acts of creativity. [...] These creative acts are then fitted together through associative processes that come together most precisely to form the dream events.

Joseph is now facing the fact of his own aggressions, as he never really did to any strong extent in the past. Consciously recalling the dreams is excellent, since the subconscious data is at least to some extent consciously assimilated, and in the dreams aggressive tendencies are indeed released and worked out in an actual manner, as satisfying to the subconscious as if they were worked out within the physical field. And to some extent through muscular action, even in dreams such aggressions find physical outlet also, and save you quite a few aches and pains, by the way.

Again, you Joseph feared aggression in the past so strongly that you would not allow yourself to even recall such dreams a year ago. Ruburt has no such knowledge of aggressive dreams, a very few, and this is also significant. [...]

[...] Lately the dreams have featured a lot of aggressive action on my part, and it had been my own idea also that this aggressiveness released was a good thing.

As in the material that Ruburt received ahead of time for his own use, natural aggression is cleansing and highly creative — the thrust behind all emotions.

[...] These methods release your withheld natural aggressiveness. You may feel that you are swamped by emotion, but trust it — again, it is the motion of your being, and it arouses your own creativity. [...]

[...] Dealing with thoughts and feelings as just directed at least roots you firmly in the integrity of your present experience, and allows its innate motion and natural creativity to thrust toward a therapeutic solution.

[...] The anima or woman within will rouse him to make compensating actions, causing an upsurge of intuitive abilities, bringing a creative element to offset aggressiveness.

Ideally, left alone, these operations would result in a balance individually and en masse, where aggressiveness was always used creatively, as indeed it can and should be.

[...] The anima serves not only as a personal but as a mass-civilizing influence, mellowing strongly aggressive tendencies and serving also as a bridge both in communicating with women in a family relationship, and in communication also as it is applied through the arts and verbalization.

[...] (See Chapter Six, and the 633rd session in Chapter Eight.) Augustus felt powerless, considering power in terms of aggression and violence, so he isolated that portion of himself from himself and projected it into a “second self.” [...] Because his basic concept held aggressiveness and power as one, however, then the strength to act automatically meant the strength to be aggressive. And here aggression was equated with violence.

[...] Both imply great action and vitality, and an aggressive thrust that has nothing to do with violence. Yet many people have physical symptoms or suffer unpleasant situations because they are afraid to utilize their own power of action, and equate power with aggression — meaning violence. [...]

(Pause.) Love is propelled by all of the elements of natural aggression, and it is powerful; yet because you have made such divisions between good and evil, love appears to be weak and violence strong. [...] The male in your society is taught to personify aggressiveness with all of those antisocial attitudes that he cannot normally demonstrate. [...]

[...] The creative function and basis that has been distorted into the idea of aggression — the urge to act — was not understood. [...]

It seems to you that you have, perhaps, but one chance as a species to solve your problems, or be destroyed by your own aggression, by your own lack of understanding and spirituality. [...]

[...] When the mind signaled strong aggression, the body would not react. [...]

[...] Now this kind of projection, this extension of identity, is the true nature and the creative aspect of aggression. This and not war, is the meaning of aggression. It is a forward thrust of creative activity, forever extending itself in this manner, and instantly changed, and no longer what it was.

Projection then is aggression. The self thrusts forward into new dimensions, and this is creative. Painting a picture is aggressive. [...]

A projection, an out-of-body experience, is a creative act, and again all creative acts are basically aggressive. [...]

[...] He can show his aggressive nature, which is basically his creative nature, but he does not have to deal with it. [...] He has not learned the difference between violence and creativity, though they are closely allied, and he is frightened of the similarity.

[...] He will adopt the female role, which is more natural to his personality, and be more at ease with creative functions at the spontaneous level. [...] The mother-love experience has done much however to balance a too-aggressive nature.

You have the impulse to think of the male as disciplined, yet the raw male elements are unthinkingly aggressive, and the raw female elements are indiscriminately creative.

[...] In your system of beliefs, however, it is often identified as feminine, along with the artistic productions that emerge from its creativity. [...] In the same manner, aggression is usually understood to be violent assertive action, male-oriented, while female elements are identified in terms of the nurturing principle.

You imagine, however, that the male is aggressive, active, logical-minded, inventive, outwardly oriented, a builder of civilizations. [...] The unconscious therefore seems to be female, and the feminine characteristics are usually given as passive, intuitive, nurturing, creative, uninventive, concerned with preserving the status quo, disliking change. [...]

Males who are creatively gifted find themselves in some dilemma, for their rich, sensed creativity comes into direct conflict with their ideas of virility. [...]

Violence, in your level, is the other face of creativity, but you do not realize it and it is you who have set up the separation. [...] All living is a thrusting out toward, and joyful thrusting out toward, the energy that you have not learned, as yet, to use creatively, you call violence. It has great potentials for creativity, and it is up to you now to learn how to use it creatively for it is another face of creativity. [...]

[...] It allowed him to release aggression in a much less violent manner than he would have in the past. It also, however, allowed him to see the picture of his own aggression as it existed on a subconscious level of his mind. The aggression that he feared was not so great and big and powerful and black and hairy and threatening as he thought. [...]

[...] They did not face the issue of creative energy and how to use it. [...] Learn what energy and life is, and then you will use it creatively and you will not fear it. [...]

Feelings of violence accumulated early, but in his family there were no acceptable ways of releasing normal aggressive feelings. [...] This meant the banishing of thoughts or impulses that were sexually inspired along various lines, aggressive, or even just unconventional. [...]

[...] Because of Augustus’s particular temperament and nature, however, and his native though conventionally undeveloped creativity, he formed a structure rather than destroying one.

In his normal condition Augustus thought of his own powerlessness — for he had denied himself normal aggressive action — and felt this weak. [...]

[...] It has to do with the real nature of aggression and passivity,¹ which you have allowed yourselves to forget … Birth is an aggressive experience. Passivity is based upon the joyful recognition of natural aggression. [...]

(Without a break Jane went from her Seth trance into another very creative mode of consciousness. [...]

Now, some of these problems are simply those of the creative personality emerging, in Ruburt’s individual case, in their own way. They should not be overemphasized however, for the creative personality, by the very standards of creativity that it adopts, becomes a focal point for varying conflicts that in many other kinds of personalities are never allowed to emerge. [...]

[...] In any creativity there must be a magnification. [...] Without this there is no creativity. [...] Certain personality characteristics are exaggerated quite purposefully by the creative personality, to act as a lens to intensify experience.

[...] The creative personality does indeed have the potential use of greater amounts of energy, the latent capability for emerging psychic insights. The creative personality is striving to be born in new dimensions, to release entirely original concepts, regardless of the field of activity chosen.