“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“On Friday, October 23, 1981, I received the following message from Seth: ‘Attend to what is directly before you. You have no responsibility to save the world or find the solutions to all problems—but to attend to your particular personal corner of the universe. As each person does that, the world saves itself.’

Dawn is breaking.
Why should I lie in bed
worrying about my body or the world?
Before time was recorded
dawn has followed dusk
and all the creatures of the earth
have been couched
in the loving context
of their times.

“After writing the above poem I felt a sense of faith—and realized that like many I’d become afraid of faith itself. It was a fear hidden in my deepest aspects….”

You share Framework 1 activity with others, for that world largely surrounds you, but remember, I am speaking in analogies to make certain points, for every person’s life has its Framework-2 orientations. Your creative endeavors have brought you good rewards (long pause) in more areas than you realize, but part of your account was in an ordinary savings structure so that you were, in those areas, somewhat restricted—and restricted by Framework 1’s largely trial-and-error framework. [...]

[...] You do it by changing over your accounts in whatever areas you are concerned, from the old savings account to the super-account with its nearly double rewards for the same effort. [...] You withdraw the account by trying to exert more effort in Framework 1, instead of letting the account take care of itself.

[...] The whole thing seems to me to be a symbolic turning point in world history, full of danger in the terms of Framework 1. To me, all the parties involved in the dispute seem helpless and frightened; it echoes similar conscious-mind threats that I think the species has created for itself throughout recorded history.)

Your aspirations are a part of your world view. [...] Your world view includes your attitudes toward your parents, and toward their parents. [...] Your world view must include your beliefs about the body and the mind, about religion, history, and philosophy—and you stand as an entity, a psychological entity, in the center of this inner world.

You accept certain ideas and beliefs as a part of your world view, as everyone does. As a youngster, you—and also Ruburt—challenged many of “the world’s” beliefs, and refused to accept them as a part of your personalized world views.

(To me:)Your world view, for example, involves your knowledge and comprehension of government and politics as you perceive them, through reading or television. [...] Your world view includes paintings that exist in your imagination, as well as paintings done in your terms “so far.”

In this way, with the words spoken “Let thy will be done,” the self could free itself from its own misconceptions, and attract from Framework 2 benefits that it might otherwise not be knowledgeable enough to request. [...] It brings forth the world of your experience in that world, and so it is your source also.

[...] From it flow all of the known facts of your world. [...] Literal minds, looking for evidential proof, would insist that the physical body itself must rise, ascending, hence the related stories, the misinterpretation of data. [...]

[...] When Christ said “Believe in me, and you will be saved,” he meant “Believe in your relationship to God, in that you are his son, as I am, and you will surely be saved.” [...]

[...] Obviously the physical world itself attains its organization through a staggering cooperation. [...]

[...] A belief in the principles given, without equivocation, will save even the tooth that is loosest. [...] Ruburt must completely believe, however, that that tooth can be saved.

[...] It is not against you, nor is the world. [...]

(10:16.) Your physicians can point to lives saved by sophisticated technology. [...] It seems that such lives would have been saved with modern procedures. [...]

[...] So, of course, your mass world is also affected. [...]

[...] If you want to “discover” how things work, then your journey must eventually lead you into the dimensions that lie within the world you know.

[...] There isn’t any saving of the world necessary, we agreed. The world doesn’t need to be saved. [...]

[...] I guess I’ve been brooding because I fell into that trap Seth talks about — of thinking that I’ve got to save the world….”

[...] Autistic children, in many cases, now, are those who have picked up the idea that the world is so unsafe that it is better not to communicate with it at all, as long as their demands or needs are being met. When the child is fed and clothed and cared for, then it continues its behavior, and the behavior itself does (underlined) serve its needs.

[...] The same applies to medicine, of course, when in its worthy purpose to save life, its methods often lead to quite unworthy experimentation (see Note 3 for Session 850), so that life is destroyed for the sake of saving, say, a greater number of lives. [...]

[...] Nor is the natural world in any way the result of competitiveness among species. If that were the case you would have no world at all.

[...] We have tried to outline for you many beliefs that undermine your private integrity as individuals, and contribute to the very definite troubles current in the mass world.

Each creature is born proud of itself, and loving itself. [...]

I am mentioning this only to stress the fact that self-delight and self-approval (long pause) are natural characteristics — characteristics that actually make your entire physical world, and world of experience, possible.

[...] Their motion is directed by electrons, so that within itself the nail actually experiences constant motion. [...]

[...] That fear is precisely what keeps Ruburt from saving the teeth so far. The teeth business has to do also with Darwinian concepts of age, with thought of the animal not surviving, and in your world that is ridiculous. [...] He must not be so afraid, then, of losing the teeth—and then perhaps he can save them. [...]

[...] Under its banner of suggestion, however, the great parade of men and other living creatures are observed so that the hypothesis brings about its own hypnotic focus—so that creatures, man, and indeed the universe itself, seem to behave in certain highly ritualized fashions. [...]

In deepest terms the world had an outside only. [...]

At various times this one God of Carter’s seems to have said, on more unearthly subjects, that the Jews would be saved, while our infidels languished in the deepest hell, or that the Mohammedans would be saved—and throughout history as you know it, and as you do not know it, the stories have thrived. [...]

Another point: the meetings in question alter probabilities, and again in a way that in your terms was hardly possible before, for the world looks on, so to speak. As of now, of course, you live in a survivor’s world, for all of the catastrophes of a worldwide nature that could have happened thus far, have not. [...]

That sort of exposure, in your terms, has not happened before, and of itself it forces both mind and heart to question some dictates that have been taken for granted in the past—for in the past almost any kind of destruction or war or violence was justified if it was done in God’s name, or if the soldiers were marching “on the side of right.”

Most such personages, however, begin to prophesy the end of the world, from which the chosen people — whoever they may be — will be saved. More than a few have rendered specific dates for this worldly foreclosure — dates which have come and gone. [...]

Beneath these ideas is the fear of the mind itself, the belief that its abilities are fine and dependable up to a point — but if it goes too far then it is in trouble.

[...] Usually it means that knowledge itself is somehow dangerous. [...]

[...] implements for nourishment rather than the elegant more artistic connections of sterling silver—which is itself beautiful while also serving a function.... [...] By being so careful with the abilities—actually because I valued them, I end up being their servant, but actually end up using my abilities at the service of others—to help save the world, solve problems, etc.... [...]

First of all, if you realize that the intellect itself is a part of nature, a part of the natural person, a part of magical processes, then you need not overstrain it, force it to feel isolated, or put it in a position in which paranoid tendencies develop. It is itself supported, as your intuitions are, by life’s magical processes. It is supported by the greater energy that gave you and the world birth. That power is working in the world, and in the world of politics, as it is in the world of nature, since you make that distinction.

I have myself heard it said that other creatures behave with a natural grace, save man. I have myself heard it said that all of nature is (pause) content unto itself save man, who is filled with discontent. [...] When you think such thoughts, you think of them at the most strained level of intellectual speculation — that is, the thoughts seem self-evident to the intellect that is forced to operate by itself, relatively speaking, divorced from the self’s other faculties. [...]

(Pause.) The intellect has been taught to divorce itself from its source. [...] When it looks, therefore, at the world of political events, the problems seem insoluble. [...]

(Pause.) Your world is not going to destroy itself. In terms of probabilities the world is both saved and lost. Those who believe in peace will find it, and a world in which peace reigns. [...]

(Just before the session, we saw a newscast of a congressional committee in Washington, with some well-known scientists testifying as to the probable aftereffects of nuclear war—how the instigator would also eventually destroy itself even if the attacked never fired a retaliatory strike at all. [...]

[...] The grasping, licentious attitudes connected with world energy are the results of the same attitudes. [...] It creates more of itself. [...]

[...] And I’m sure that you are each aware of the implications that are involved, in your saving ways —in your dislike of waste (re our new dehumidifier, some old soup I threw out, wine, etc).

In your society talent, even genius, tries to ally itself, at least for a while, with your economic needs, for if the body does not eat the abilities will not survive. [...]

[...] You are born curious about yourself and your world. [...] You are born knowing that you possess a unique, intimate sense of being that is itself, and that seeks its own fulfillment, and the fulfillment of others. [...] You are born seeking to add value to the quality of life, to add characteristics, energies, abilities to life that only you can individually contribute to the world, and to attain a state of being that is uniquely yours, while adding to the value fulfillment of the world.

In the world of religion, however, you are already tainted by original sin: “The mark of Cain” is symbolically upon your foreheads. [...] Automatically condemned, you must do good works, or be baptized, or believe in Christ, or perform other acts in order to be saved or redeemed.

[...] He’s given all he can — or wants to — on the negative beliefs we hold as individuals and societies; he wants to start his next book [my emphasis] on how to positively work our way out of our challenges and create a much better world…. [...]

[...] Like detectives, these search the world, looking in a completely different way than a physical sleuth. The world is probed with your characteristics in mind, seeking for someone else with characteristics that will best suit your own. [...]

[...] If you believe in the sinfulness of the world, for instance, then you will search out from normal sense data those facts that confirm your belief. But beyond that, at other levels you also organize your mental world in such a way that you attract to yourself events that — again — will confirm your beliefs.

[...] And when it seems that the world is devoid of meaning, then some people will make a certain kind of statement through the circumstances connected with their own deaths.

[...] For the “accident” saved the young man’s life, and this was our father’s final gift to the world. [...]

(9:49.) In a way they will feel special—saved from the “clutches of death.” In perhaps a manner that appears strange, they will experience a new sense of their own validity, for if they were saved from death, then something—if only the fates—must have found them worthy. [...]

[...] Jane was especially concerned that every time she improved so far she’d regress because she’d touch upon certain hidden fears that she’d adopted as protection against the world. I added to the discussion by noting that I was deeply concerned that she’d reinforced her own self-doubts through what I said about the world myself, over the years. [...]

[...] You live in a cultural world. [...] Ruburt can save the majority of his teeth. [...]

[...] The procedure itself, the format of the sessions, will no longer need to be stressed, so that more energy can be given to the presented material itself. [...]

In the world as you know it, it is quite natural to feel sad, or even despondent at times. [...] Your overall beliefs, however, can be so exaggerated in a negative manner that finally some people accept as valid the most negative picture of the world.