“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The span of a god’s love can perhaps equally hold within its vision the existences of all individuals at one time in an infinite loving glance that beholds each person, seeing each with all his or her peculiar characteristics and tendencies. Such a god’s glance would delight in each person’s difference from each other person. This would not be a blanket love, a soupy porridge of a glance in which individuality melted, but a love based on a full understanding of each individual. The emotion of love brings you closest to an understanding of the nature of All That Is. Love incites dedication, commitment. It specifies. You cannot, therefore, honestly insist that you love humanity and all people equally if you do not love one other person. If you do not love yourself, it is quite difficult to love another.

To love someone, you must appreciate how that person differs from yourself and from others. You must hold that person in mind so that to some extent love is a kind of meditation — a loving focus upon another individual. Once you experience that kind of love you can translate it into other terms. The love itself spreads out, expands, so that you can then see others in love’s light.

Some people are naturally solitary. They want to live lone lives, and are content. Most, however, have a need for enduring, close relationships. These provide both a psychic and social framework for personal growth, understanding, and development. It is an easy enough matter to shout to the skies: “I love my fellow men,” when on the other hand you form no strong, enduring relationship with others. It is easy to claim an equal love for all members of the species, but love itself requires an understanding that at your level of activity is based upon intimate experience. You cannot love someone you do not know — not unless you water down the definition of love so much that it becomes meaningless.

Love, therefore, can contain hate very nicely. Hatred can contain love and be driven by it, particularly by an idealized love. (Pause.) You “hate” something that separates you from a loved object. It is precisely because the object is loved that it is so disliked if expectations are not met. You may love a parent, and if the parent does not seem to return the love and denies your expectations, then you may “hate” the same parent because of the love that leads you to expect more. The hatred is meant to get you your love back. It is supposed to lead to a communication from you, stating your feelings — clearing the air, so to speak, and bringing you closer to the love object. Hatred is not the denial of love, then, but an attempt to regain it, and a painful recognition of circumstances that separate you from it.

(Slowly:) In the same way, it is possible to love your fellow human beings on a grand scale, while at times hating them precisely because they so often seem to fall short of that love. When you rage against humanity it is because you love it. To deny the existence of hate then is to deny love. [...] You do not love someone simply because you associate portions of yourself with another. You often do love another individual because such a person evokes within you glimpses of your own “idealized” self.

(Pause at 11:34.) The loved one draws your best from you. [...] In the other’s love you sense your potential. [...] This vision is quite able to perceive the difference between the practical and the ideal, so that in ascendant periods of love the discrepancies in, say, actual behavior are overlooked and considered relatively unimportant.

Instead, you have put love into very definite categories, so that its existence is right only under the most limited conditions. Love goes underground, but springs up in distorted forms and exaggerated tendencies. [...] As a species, presently at least in the Western world, you equate sex and love. You imagine that sexual expression is the only one natural to love. Love, in other words, must it seems express itself exclusively through the exploration (humorously and deeper), in one way or another, of the beloved’s sexual portions.

The love and cooperation that forms the basis of all life, however, shows itself in many ways. [...] In larger terms, it is as natural for a man to love a man, and for a woman to love a woman, as it is to show love for the opposite sex. [...]

(Pause at 10:02.) Since love and sex are equated, obvious conflicts arise. Mother love is the only category that is considered wholesome, and therefore nonsexual under most conditions. A father can feel very guilty about his love for his children, for he has been conditioned to believe that love is expressed only through sex, or else it is unmanly, while sex with one’s children is taboo.

[...] The cat taught you to love again and to open up again. [...] The love which was awakened is to be directed in other areas, and you may speak when I am finished, but for this one time I will have my say. [...]

The cat awakened your love. [...] Now though it seems to you perhaps at this point tragic, the facts are that the real tragedy would have occurred had the cat lived, in your terms, and had you curled up in it, in your house on the corner, and turned your love inward to the animal rather than outward, for there are people who need it. [...]

[...] You do not think in terms of those who need love and affection and who are more lonely than yourself, lacking children, and who are looking for not only affection but the simple courtesy that another individual can show by recognizing their existence. You were not able to translate or transform that love outward. [...]

When you love others, you grant them their innate freedom and do not cravenly insist that they always attend you. There are no divisions to love. There is no basic difference between the love of a child for a parent, a parent for a child, a wife for a husband, a brother for a sister. There are only various expressions and characteristics of love, and all love affirms. [...]

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” Turn this around and say, “Love yourself as you love your neighbor,” for often you will recognize the goodness in another and ignore it in yourself. [...] Genuine self-pride is the loving recognition of your own integrity and value. [...]

You are putting love on such a plane that you divorce yourself from your real feelings, and do not recognize the loving emotions that are the basis for your discontent. [...] If, instead, you allowed yourself to free the feeling of love that is actually behind your dissatisfaction, then it alone would allow you to see the loving characteristics in the race that now escape your observation to a large degree.

Love itself seems to quicken the physical senses, so that even the most minute gestures attain additional significance and meaning. Myths and tales are formed in which those who love communicate, though one is dead while the other lives. The experience of love also deepens the joy of the moment, even while it seems to emphasize the briefness of mortality. Though love’s expression brilliantly illuminates its instant, at the same time that momentary brilliance contains within it an intensity that defies time, and is somehow eternal.

[...] The expression of love is not confined to your own species, therefore, nor is tenderness, loyalty, or concern. Love indeed does have its own language — 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.

(Long pause at 11:22.) Give us a moment… Speaking historically in your terms, man first identified with nature, and loved it, for he saw it as an extension of himself even while he felt himself a part of its expression. [...] He did not identify as himself alone, but because of his love, he identified also with all those portions of nature with which he came into contact. This love was biologically ingrained in him, and is even now biologically pertinent.

[...] He loves to talk. [...] Oftentimes your stomach upsets you because your love for Ruburt makes you concerned, and in most instances the stimulus is money. An occasion will arise, or a period of time, in which your love for him wants to find expression. [...]

[...] Your stomach problem is basically the result of your feelings about what you consider to be a lack of communication, a blocking of your natural love. From your background, regardless of your intellectual beliefs, now, you learned to mask your expressions of love or exuberance, lest they be misunderstood. You learned to express love through worry or concern.

[...] The child may think “My teeth are fine, why yell at me to brush them?” Ruburt thinks “What is there that allows you to speak your concern more actively than your love?” He is verbally oriented. [...] You are saying “I love you. [...] I wish I could express my love verbally, but if not, I will express it is this fashion.”

As mentioned earlier in other sessions he felt, erroneously, for some time that your love for him depended upon his performance as a writer and in sessions, since it could not be his by right. He had to test the love therefore by skipping sessions to see if you still loved him. [...]

On one level then the sessions were an attempt to retain your love and give him a right to it. Hence his later feelings that you loved him only for the sessions carried a certain charge. [...] He would quite literally do anything to retain your love—hence his feelings sometimes that you sent him out on this psychic pilgrimage. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Give us time… He did not feel that any love was his by right, yours or anyone else’s: therefore he did not feel worthy of it, and in the face of any difficulty between you he suspected it, thought then that you no longer loved him.

Love exists whether or not it is sexually expressed, though it is natural for love to seek expression. Love implies loyalty. [...] In your society, however, identity is so related to sexual stereotypes that few people know themselves well enough to understand the nature of love, and to make any such commitments.

[...] The male, then, is thought to want sex whether or not he has any love response to the woman in question — or sometimes to desire her precisely because he does not love her. In such cases, sex becomes not an expression of love, but an expression of derision or scorn.

So women, accepting these ideas often, seek for a situation in which they too can feel free to express their sexual desires openly, whether or not any love is involved. Yet loyalty is love’s partner, and the primates display such evidence in varying degrees. The male in particular has been taught to separate love and sex, so that a schizophrenic condition results that tears apart his psyche — in operational terms — as he lives his life.

New paragraph: As simply put as possible, love is the force out of which being comes, and we will consider this statement much more thoroughly later in this book. Love seeks expression and creativity. Sexual expression is one way that love seeks creativity. [...] Love finds expression through the arts, religion, play, and helpful actions toward others. [...]

Love can be expressed quite legitimately through the arts. [...] Many natural artists in any field normally express love through such creative endeavors, rather than through sexual actions.

[...] Again, here, sexual encounters are a natural part of love’s expression, but they are not the limit of love’s expression.

[...] You feel the need for a great love, but you have the great love and do not realize it. [...]

[...] You are worth while, and unique and glorious, whether or not you are loved by a man. You have a purpose and it is yours to fulfill, whether or not you are loved by a man.

Now I speak to you honestly, and while you may find my words harsh they are spoken with both love and compassion, and (underlined) understanding of your innermost thoughts. Your salvation lies in giving up personal male love and marriage as (underlined) a condition for existence. [...]

[...] They stress love of mankind, while at the same time cutting down on strong personal affiliations of a loving nature, so that love itself cannot seek its expression in concrete terms. Yet human love specifies, makes distinctions. [...] They preach of love while allowing any given individual to love no particular person, and by forcing each individual to cut any bonds of love previously established. [...]

Such systems distort the very nature of idealism by placing the ideal in such an exalted position that it can never be attained, for by giving up the self you have you are to attain instead a wholly pure, wholly loving, idealized, spiritual self. This self will love each other fellow being without reservations, distinctions, or judgment. [...]

[...] Your Mrs. Patterson represents your own love for your fellow men and fellow women (with gentle emphasis), and expresses a deep compassion for the situation of your species at this time.

[...] As a result, any show of love is to some extent inhibited unless it can legitimately find expression sexually. In many instances love itself seems wrong because it must imply sexual expression at times when such expression is not possible, or even desired. Some people have a great capacity for love, devotion, and loyalty, which would naturally seek expression in many diverse ways — through strong enduring friendships, devotion to causes in which they believe, through vocations in which they help others. [...]

[...] Only when love and devotion were diverted from the Church was there real concern. [...] The Church believed that sexual experience belonged to the so-called lower or animal instincts, and so did usual human love. On the other hand, spiritual love and devotion could not be muddied by sexual expression, and so any normal strong relationship became a threat to the expression of piety.

[...] Yet women are taught that natural expressions of love, playful caresses, are inappropriate unless an immediate follow-through to a sexual climax is given. [...] They are taught to inhibit the expression of love as a weakness, and yet to perform sexually as often as possible. [...]

[...] When Ruburt fell in love with you, his vigor, strength, and expression rose to the surface. He needed love’s expression on your part, and he spontaneously expressed his own love for you in words and action. [...]

(Very long pause at 8:20.) I want to go back in terms of continuity, and yet also for tonight’s purposes I want to stress the power of love’s expression in automatically combating such negative situations. That is, the expression of love automatically reassures the sinful self that it is indeed not sinful (a statement that at once I found hard to believe, considering its past and recent actions). [...]

[...] Your own love for Ruburt is far more helpful than you realize—and if you can get the feel of that love, it alone can serve as a very potent force that can refresh and revitalize both of your lives. [...]

Ruburt is not a child, but you often do think that your concern automatically expresses your love, and take it for granted that to Ruburt that is clear. While he tells himself that your concern is based on love, and knows it, he felt that love for example last night through feel and touch.

[...] A simple statement of fact, regardless of the reasons: Ruburt has a great but not neurotic need of expressions of love. A child does not always understand that concern for its welfare is the same thing as love. [...]

The parents who say “Brush your teeth because it is good for you, and I want you to be healthy,” may mean “I love you,” but the child would usually prefer a hug and a kiss. [...]

(Seth:) Now I love you and all of you, and I know that you love me. And I hope that that love is somehow distantly able, distantly, distantly to contain some, some, some, some kindly feeling for people like Anita Bryant. [...] Your love for humanity holds. [...] You do not hate anyone that you are not capable of loving. [...] But in the vast range of your emotions, leave room for loves that are very distant, so distant and so alien that you do not recognize them. [...]

[...] Is it American to be a homosexual and love poetry or dancing or music or children? Is it a cliché to think that all homosexuals are sensitive and love music, and children? [...]

[...] It is a world of individuals, and distorting an old historic statement: God must love individuals because he never made anything else. [...]

(11:30.) The condition becomes more worrisome because it now bears the brunt of an unspoken or unexpressed love that is hidden behind his conscious attitude and behavior toward his father. Frank’s father himself was afraid of showing unseeming love, in his terms, toward his family. [...]

It seems that such expressions of love would now come too late. Expressing such love now, however, would show immediate benefits.

[...] He wanted to express love for his father as a child far more openly than he felt his father would allow. [...]

(10:59.) Love is a biological as well as a spiritual characteristic. Basically, love and creativity are synonymous. Love exists without an object. [...] Desire, love, intent, belief and purpose — these form the experience of your body and all the events it perceives. [...]

[...] Events are organized according to laws that involve love, belief, intent, and the intensities with which these are entertained.

Events are attracted or repelled by you according to your loves, beliefs, intents, and purposes. [...]

(10:00.) When you make love you are entrusting yourself to someone else, making a spiritual and biological statement of openness that is understood through all the levels of your experience—even to the cellular. Under such loving conditions healing energies are spontaneously released. In its own fashion such acts of love are beneficially related with the spontaneous behavior of animals. That is, you can behave to some extent at such times with a creature-like sense of trust and spontaneity, and of loving openness of a kind that animals at their best often display. [...]

(Long pause.) Love-making reunites you with your own pasts, and unconscious bodily memory carries you backward to your earliest responses to your own body and that of others. To some extent then the child with all of his wonder about his own body is aroused in each act of love-making, whatever its variety. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s remarks in his essay on love apply here, in regard to its specific nature. [...]

(Pause.) Actually the woman’s condition hid her primary impulse: to communicate better with her husband, to ask him for definite expressions of love. Why did he not love her as much as she loved him? [...]

He could not express his love for her in the terms she wished for he believed that women would, if allowed to, destroy the man’s freedom, and he interpreted the natural need for love as an unfortunate emotional demand. [...]

For example: Many of you believe in the basis of Freudian psychology — that the son naturally wants to displace the father in his mother’s attentions, and that beneath the son’s love for his father, there rages the murderous intent to kill. [...]