Who is God? Your Spiritual Guide.

Abraham, Sydney, Australia 12/13/09

Abraham: You have to know that since we are vibrationally projecting, since we are all vibration, that it isn't possible for this creation of you to be standing there singularly. You are vibrationally a cooperative component with so much more,  and it is that cadre of vibration that man sometimes calls "God" that is your Spiritual Guide, you see. It doesn't matter what label you give it.

Someone said to us, "Abraham I have come from religion and I don't hear you speak much of God," and we said we don't talk about anything else. But we don't talk about it in the way you've been hearing it because you talk about God from outside the Vortex and we talk about God from inside the Vortex. You talk about God as if you are not God, and we know that you are that which you call God.You talk about God as if you are separated from God, and we talk about God with the intention of bringing you into alignment and Oneness with that which you call God. And mostly, we don't use the word God because it takes you out of the Vortex.

You talk about God as One Who Punishes.  You've made God petty, and immature, and irrational, and arbitrary, and we know nothing like that in this Vortex of Creation. There is only consistent, eternal, always-offered Unconditional Love that is God, you see. And when you find something other than that, you've tuned into something different from that, you see. And so if we were standing in your physical shoes, that is the Spiritual Guide we would be reaching for and your emotions will take you right to it.

You will find it through Love and you will find it through Passion. You will find it through Eagerness, and through Happiness and through Joy. You will find it through Trust. You will find it through Worthiness. You will find it through  Satisfaction. You will find it through reaching for Ease and Flow, Ease and Flow. In other words, it's a feeling. It's an emotion. It is a State of Being which is represented to you by the way you feel.

So when someone says, " Who is God"

You say, "It is Love."

And they say, "No, not what does it feel like, Who is It?"

"It is Love."

"Well, have you seen God?"

I know God. I feel God. It is Knowledge. It is Certainty. It is Sureness. It is Stability. It is Wellness. It is Friskiness.


© Abraham Hicks Publications

Everything Is In the Eye of the Beholder

Abraham - Washington, DC 5-10-08

Blogger's note: This began as a story about Jerry getting different diagnoses from different dentists, but quickly segued into something larger.

Abraham: That is a bit of the reason that we say as all things are in the eye of the beholder, in other words, it doesn't mean that those dentists were seeing something they thought needed to be tended to, but anytime, and we mean this in the kindest way - anytime you are co-creating with any other, their intentions become a part of the recipe.

It would be very helpful, that before you co-create with another, that the two of you, however many are playing together, make some effort to acknowledge that your intentions are similar. In other words, the win-win situation where you have a need that a doctor or a dentist can fulfill and they have a need that you as their clientele can fill. It's all part of that. You have something they can fulfill and you have something they can fulfill. It's sort of like when you know more clearly what you do want, you almost always attract that from the people with whom you are interacting.

We would not be concerned about those teeth, that aren't going to be around for long anyway. We would instead ask ourselves, "What was going on in my vibration that evoked that response from that person. Especially when there were no cavities to be found."

"Why would somebody look into my motives and find motives that aren't there? Why would somebody look into my ideas and find things to disagree with that aren't even there? Why would anyone see anything wrong?"

It is because everything is in the eye of the beholder. People see things in you that are not even there because they are looking for things that are active within THEM. And if there's even the slightest thing that resonates with something in them, then it amplifies and magnifies and they see that it is big when it isn't.

We've been talking this all day today. When someone is arguing with you or sees fault in you and they are not liking what they see, say to them and mean it kindly, but mean it sincerely... say, "You're seeing something that must be vibrationally active in you, and I think this is more about you then it is about me." And everytime you say that you will be accurate.

So when you see someone, and they are having a bad day, it is much more about their bad day then about you. Its always about the beholder! Everything is about the beholder!

So what you want to do is be aware of what your seeing in others; that's what you want to be aware of. Don't worry about what people are seeing in you, don't worry about the love they're not giving you, let your awareness be upon what your putting out, let your awareness be more about HOW MUCH YOU ARE LOVING! Thats what you should be interested in.

We wouldn't be running around saying, "Who loves me. Who doesn't love me." We'd be saying "Who do I love. What is it about you that I love. What is it about you that I use as my excuse to see what source sees!"

© Abraham-Hicks Publications

Esther's Recurring Lackful Relationship Dream

Abraham-Hicks, excerpt from G-10/16/93

Esther kept having a recurring dream. For many years after she and her mate were together, she dreamed that she could not find him. She thought she knew where he was but she couldn't find him. She knew the number where he could be reached but when she would dial it, it wouldn't ring. Her fingers would punch right through the phone , the telephone would turn into cheese or something. Or it would ring it would ring and he couldn't hear.

It was just a variety of things keeping them from connecting. And when Esther started to interact with Abraham she said "Abraham is this dream about all that time before I found him? All these years I was looking for him and had not found him?"

And we said No, your dream is current, your dream is about your NOW!! And Esther said "What do you mean?" and we said in your wanting of this delicious relationship - again we keep wanting to come back to every subject being two subjects- in your awareness of what you are wanting, you spend more time thinking about the absence of it.

And when Esther thought about it she realized that was accurate. She worried that he would get run over. She worried that he would stop loving her. She worried that he would find someone he loved more. In other words, even though it was her very passionate, strong, ever present desire that this relationship would last forever, more than 50 percent of her thoughts were upon what would happen if it didn't.

Because she didn't know about flowing energy. In other words, she was still believing that its about fate or chance or luck or circumstances. So she was feeling lucky that she had him, but not sure that she could hold onto him!! You see what we are talking about?

And so when we said to Esther you have been projecting so much lackful thought relative to this relationship Your dream ... your inner being is showing you a probable future where you won't know where he is! A probable future where your negative lackful vibration is going to create something you do NOT want.

So with this story we think you are hearing what we are saying. What you are wanting to do is as we said earlier several times today. You are wanting to think about this relationship that you want and feel good about it at the same time. So that instead of it evoking from you a yearning lonely feeling, you are wanting the thought of it to evoke a feeling of ecstasy , a feeling of empowerment . And when you are able to shift the way you feel about it, it is our promise to you, you will then allow into your experience that which you are wanting.

© Abraham-Hicks Publications

Become "UnHurtable"

Abraham - Tarrytown, NY 10/09/2004

When someone adores you, in their appreciation of you, they are in alignment with Source Energy, and they are flooding it all over you. And since it is activated in them, it is activated in you, so you got this really good thing going. But then as you become dependent upon their appreciation of you in order to feel that way, when they withdraw their appreciation of you, and you haven't learned to connect to that Source Energy yourself, then you feel like a puppet that someone has let go of the strings.

And so if you are a confident person, if you've shown yourself that you are free no matter what anyone else thinks, and that you can feel good no matter whats happening around you, if you've been practicing that unconditional love that says 'I'm going to feel good because I wanna feel good', and I'm going to scramble around, by darn, and find something that is going to make me feel good even in a field of things that don't feel good, because my connection to source matters to me more than all other things put together' - then nothing that anybody could ever do would get you off your game.

You've been looking toward what others think - you've been so trained that way that you transfer that to your new love. You say I care so much about how you feel about me, that I will disregard how I FEEL. And then that one being the fickle one, LETS YOU DOWN, EVERY TIME. No one can hold you consistently as their object of their attention as Source would.

Everyone is blaming everyone else for their own insecurity. We have to say YOU ARE insecure because you didn't decide to be secure. You are not strong because YOU decided somebody else was strong, which made you weak. You don't feel good, because you didn't INSIST on feeling good. And then you didn't practice it, and then you say YOU hurt my feelings. We would get in a place where our feelings are UNHURTABLE. We would be in a place where we are so connected to source that it didn't matter WHAT anyone was thinking or saying or doing!

© Abraham-Hicks Publications

In Love = In the Vortex

Abraham- Los Angeles, CA 09/06/09 (Hat tip to David on Yahoo Groups.)

Guest: My wife says I'm "different".... We're each other's best friend, we do love each other, but she's just not 'in love' with me anymore. Something has shifted and I don't know what.

Abraham: That "in love" thing is not what people think it is. First of all, no one is ever 'in love', unless they're in the Vortex. Never. Because in the Vortex is connected with Source.

So what happens is, you're young, you're more carefree, or you're distracted from stuff that's bothering you, by each other, so you inspire each other into the Vortex. "Ahh! Aha!" You're in the Vortex and you're looking at each other, and there's all that physical good stuff. And there you are in the Vortex, in the Vortex, in the Vortex, "In Love, In Love, In Love."

And then, you step into life, and you're out of the Vortex and you say, "You don't love me anymore, I don't feel the same way." And we say, it has nothing to do with THEM, it has to do with whether you're in the Vortex or out of the Vortex, in the Vortex or out of the Vortex.

That feeling of 'in love' is that feeling of 'in alignment' as you hold someone as the positive object of attention, you see.

© Abraham-Hicks Publications

Hate Men? Or Women...but still want a relationship? Good Luck.

Excerpt from Abraham's latest book "The Vortex"- p. 91

She Wants Someone, But Not That One

Jerry: Okay, so what would you say about a woman who seems to feel good about herself, who continues to express her desire for a mate, but who disqualifies them, one by one, as the parade of men moves through her experience?

Abraham: Her desire for a mate keeps the men coming, but her belief in bad relationships causes her to push them away. And her attention to unwanted characteristics makes it impossible for the characteristics that she desires to come her way.

If she is continually focusing upon what she does not like in the men coming to her, her chronic attention to the lack in others is keeping her from being in alignment with Who She Really Is, and under those conditions, she cannot be feeling good about herself or about anyone.

Finding lack in others is not the path to liking what you see in yourself.

If you are a person who has trained yourself to look for positive aspects, you will find them in yourself as well as in others. If you are a person who has trained yourself to look for negative aspects, you will find them in yourself as well as in others. Therefore, it is always accurate to say that no one who is critical of others really likes themselves. It defies Law. Whenever you see those who are very critical of others, you are actually seeing people who do not like themselves.

© Abraham-Hicks Publications

Seth: Love is Always a Protection

Seth, The Early Sessions, Book 4, Session 176

(Blogger's Background Note: Jane/Ruburt's mother was bedridden throughout most of her childhood and could be very emotionally abusive.)

Seth: He [Ruburt] would do his mother no harm, and for this reason she can do him no harm. The desire and the intent to do violence almost inevitably brings forth violence. We are involved here in somewhat of a basic problem, hardly Ruburt's alone, that will someday take up many sessions. For like does indeed attract like. If you hate, you will be hated. You will attract hate.

There are definite reasons for this. The reasons have been known and forgotten, but the very practical fact remains. If Ruburt would indeed do his mother harm if the opportunity presented itself, then he would indeed be in danger of harm...

...Ruburt's love for you, his ABILITY to love in general, is his protection. So he has nothing to fear. Love is ALWAYS a protection, in a quite literal manner; in a biological and electromagnetic and chemical and psychic manner.

(c) Robert Butts

Seth: It is Unnatural to Harness the Power of Love to Dominate

Seth, The Nature of the Psyche, Sess 774

I am not saying here that any given sexual performance is "wrong," or meaningless, or debased, if it is not accompanied by the sentiments of love and devotion. Over a period of time, however, the expression of sex will follow the inclinations of the heart. These inclinations will color sexual expression, then. To that degree, it is "unnatural" to have sexual desire for someone whom you dislike or look down upon. The sexual ideas of domination and submission have no part in the natural life of your species, or that of the animals. Again, you interpret animal behavior according to your own beliefs.

Dominance and submission have often been used in religious literature in periods when love and devotion were separated from sexuality. They became unified only through religious visions or experiences, for only God's love was seen as "good enough" to justify a sexuality otherwise felt to be animalistic. Instead, the words "domination" and "submission" have to do with areas of consciousness and its development. Because of interpretations mentioned earlier in this book, you adopted a prominent line of consciousness that to a certain extent was bent upon dominating nature. You considered this male in essence. The female principle then became connected with the earth and all those elements of its life over which you as a species hoped to gain power.

(9:47.) God, therefore, became male. The love and devotion that might otherwise be connected with the facets of nature and the female principle had to be "snatched away from" any natural attraction to sexuality. In such a way, religion, echoing your state of consciousness, was able to harness the powers of love and use them for purposes of domination. They became state-oriented. A man's love and devotion was a political gain. Fervor was as important as a government's treasury, for a state could count upon the devotion of its lieutenants in the same way that many fanatics will work without money for a cause.

(Long pause.) Give us a moment... (A one-minute pause at 9:56)

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 on intimate experience. You cannot love someone you do not know...

(Session 774 continued here.)


(c) Robert Butts

Seth: YCYOR Police Persecution

Seth (ESP Class, 3-19-74): 

After discussion of Seth’s remarks, Tom was relating what had been to him a quite disturbing encounter with a police officer recently. Seth returned, speaking to Tom:

Seth: You were so gloriously angry at the police officer because you did not express your natural anger at your children and did not feel able to do so fully, or to follow through with your feelings toward them. You feel persecuted by the police because they represent authority to you because you have not emotionally come to terms with yourself—in terms of authority—so they bear the brunt.

You also feel that your own emotions are underground, and that you must physically express them through body motion. You do not understand the nature of true force or aggression, and so it seems to you that they should be expressed through forceful and aggressive, in your terms, body reactions. You wanted to hit him in the face! You did not consciously accept the fact that you wanted to kick him.

Now listen!! You are used to following your emotions—only so far. Then you clamp down upon them. If you would follow them all the way, you would not be frightened of them. You think that physical action and boxing, for example, or karate, or physical motion is the only way to express aggressive action within an acceptable framework.

Now, you have work to do with your emotions, and listen to me, and for now at least do not interrupt. Argue with me after you have come to terms with your own emotional being.

You are as afraid, for example, of expressing the aggression of love fully as you are of those other emotions. Now, you may argue with me later when you read a transcript of what I have said. And my best wishes to you!

Seth: The Choice of Life and Death is Always Yours

Seth, The Nature of Personal Reality, SESSION 646, MARCH 7, 1973, 10:28 P.M. WEDNESDAY

Rob: (Just yesterday Jane received a letter from a woman who described the onset, a few years ago, of extraordinary feelings of transcendent love for mankind. Her profound emotions still continued, although she had them under control. She had told no one about them, though, and wanted to know if we could ask Seth about their meaning. In addition, she had recently received a medical verdict about the certainty of her death within a year or two.)

Seth: Now. A note to the woman whose letter you have there.

Give us a moment. . .

No man or woman consciously knows for sure which day will be the last for him or her in this particular life, that each calls the present one. Mortality with its birth and death is the framework in which the soul, for now, is expressed in flesh. Birth and death contain between them the earthly experience that you perceive as happening within a given period of time, through various seasons, and involving unique perceptions within areas of space-encountered with other human beings, all to one extent or another sharing with you events caused by the intersection of the self and time and space.

Birth and death then have their function, intensifying and focusing your attention. Life seems more dear in your terms, corporeal terms, because of the existence of death. It seems, perhaps, easier to have no conscious idea of the year or time that death might occur. Unconsciously of course each man and woman knows, and yet hides the knowledge.

The knowledge is usually hidden for many reasons, but the fact of death, personal death, is never forgotten. It seems obvious, but the full enjoyment of life would be impossible in the framework, now, of earthly reality without the knowledge of death.

You have been given an opportunity to study life and to experience it more fully than you ever have before in this existence. Its intensity and brilliance, its contrasts and similarities, its joys and its sorrows, are here for you to perceive, whose eyes are opened by the fact of the doctor’s pronouncement.

Now I tell you: That intensification, appreciated and understood, and the experience of life and living, accepted unconditionally, can bring you in this lifetime another birth in which the doctor’s pronouncements are meaningless. Spiritually the death sentence given you is another chance at life, if you are freely able to accept life with all of its conditions and to feel its full dimensions, for that alone will rejuvenate your spiritual and physical self.

The experience that you wrote of was significant on several levels, and of course was meant to reassure you ahead of time because of the events you knew would occur. The experience was to inform you emotionally and spiritually of the great meaning of each individual, portray the lovely brilliance that is within each human being, and let you know that the integrity of the self and the soul exists beyond the possibility of annihilation, as you yourself will continue to exist regardless of which path you choose to take ---dying within two years, or living physically on for many more. In other words, you will continue to exist and to be fulfilled within that love you sensed.

You felt before, unconsciously, that you were drifting and that life had little meaning. Beneath the surface of events you felt unfulfilled, and felt that you had great courage and abilities with never a chance to use them, and no “heroic” episodes then to rouse you to fuller understanding, and no real impetus to lift you or to bring excitement into your days.

Unconsciously, therefore, you chose a situation in which a crisis was precipitated, rousing all the greatest elements of heart and soul, so that they must strain to understand, to perceive, to triumph. And so you shall, in whatever way is most important for you, and you will learn more and be more fulfilled than you would have been had those conditions not been initiated.

This does not mean that there were not other ways available that you could have chosen. You chose the set of conditions that you did because in past existences you were so terrified of death that you tried to hide its knowledge from yourself, and this time you placed it in the forefront of your attention.

In the entire fabric of your existence, this life is a brilliant, eternally unique and precious portion, but only a portion, from which you emerge with joy and understanding, whether you die tomorrow or in years to come. The choice of life and death is always yours. Life and death are but two faces of your eternal, ever-changing existence, however. Feel and appreciate the joy of your own being. Many live into their nineties’ without ever appreciating to that extent the beauty of their being. You have lived before, and will again, and your new life, in your terms, springs out of the old, and is growing in the old and contained within it as the seed is already contained within the flower.

We are all travelers, whatever our position, and as one traveler to another, I salute you. 

End of reply.

Abe: Can You Trust Men?

Blogger note: This post is a transcript of an mp3 from twitter.com/AbrahamFan.

Abraham - G-7-24-04

Q: I want to trust men…

A: You don’t want to trust men. You don’t want to trust men. You want to be able to think about men and feel good at the same time. Get rid of that ‘trust’ word; that ‘trust’ word will trip you up. IOW, you want to be able to think of a man, or think of men, or think of yourself with a man, or think of yourself in a relationship with a man, and feel good at the same time. And you have to train yourself to do that. And when you do, one that feels like that can come to you, you see.

There are so many words like ‘love’ and ‘trust’ and ‘worthiness’ that just activate all this chaos in you. And ‘trust’ is really one of those words. How do you trust… We’ll tell you what you can trust. You can trust that law of attraction will match you up with what you’re putting out there.

So instead of saying, ‘I don’t trust men,’ say, ’I’ve been offering a vibration that brings to me stuff I don’t want. I think I’ll change my vibration.’ So now suddenly, it’s not about whether they’re trustworthy or not, it’s about whether you’re practiced in your vibration. Whole different thing, isn’t it?

When you say, ‘No, this isn’t an issue of being able to trust them. This is an issue of me being able to soothe myself into a place that I can let the things in that I want in. I’m in charge of what comes to me.’

You’re right, the opening was for you because you and so many others are saying ‘you need to be different so that I can feel better.’ And we say, ‘Good Luck’ because they don’t owe it to you, they don’t even care about you, and it’s not because they’re bad; it’s because they are selfishly-oriented, too.

You finally got to say, ‘I’m selfishly-oriented. You’re selfishly oriented. I’m selfishly-oriented. You’re selfishly-oriented.’

And then in time you’ll be able to stop saying, ‘You need to do something different. You need to take me into consideration first.‘ Because what you’re saying to them is ‘You have to give up what matters most to you.’

Now there are a lot of churches, there are a lot of social structures that would teach that that’s the way you’re supposed to be, but it goes cross current of the whole nature of the universe. Everyone is oriented from the perspective of self and you care passionately about how you feel.

Feel the difference between saying, ‘You care more about you than you do about me, and that hurts my feelings,’ and saying, ‘You care more about you, than you do me and that’s normal. And I care more about me, than I do about you, and that’s normal.’ And what’s not normal is me thinking that if I care about how you care about me that you’ll be able to change how you care about me so that I will feel better. That’s…. never going to work.

So then you say, ‘Oh, so you care more about your feelings than you do my feelings. Oh yeah… that’s how we all are. Never mind.’

And then you don’t say, ‘I can’t trust you to do what I need you to do,’ you say, ‘I trust you to do what you need to do and I wouldn’t ask you to distort your experience, and do what I need you to do because that can never last; that’s why I’ve concluded that none of you are trustworthy. None of you are willing to give up what is most important to you for me. I’ve been barking up the wrong tree all this time. So what I want to do is just beat the drum of who I am purely and clearly and proudly and the Universe will bring someone to me that matches me. I can trust that.’

(c) Abraham Hicks

Abraham on the Relationship We All Want

Abraham - San Diego 2/7/04B

Abraham: Do you know the relationship that you are all looking for? Do you know what it really is?

You want the relationship between you and You. And when you meet a person who looks fondly at you, or who is appreciative of you, or someone you look fondly upon, or someone you appreciate, it just hooks you up to your Inner Being, which is what you want all along.

So the relationship you are all looking for is the relationship between you and you. And everything else is just helpful in that, really. Don’t you find that interesting? That what you really want is a reason to vibrationally connect with who you really are.

And so, you ask so much of people because you say to them, “You need to be the one who causes me to feel good.” And what we want to say to all of you is if any of you are without the relationship of your dreams right now, that’s a wonderful thing because now you have an opportunity to work on the relationship that really matters first and foremost. And then, in that connection, the relationship of your dreams will come. But you are going to discover the relationship of your dreams is really your own Inner Being. It’s that infusion of clarity and confidence and wellness, that’s what you are reaching for.

And it is nice to have a human friend who holds you as their object of attention and adores you right into your connection, but we want you experience greater independence than that. We want you to say to you lovers, “I love you, but I don’t live for you because Source Energy flows through me. You are a catalyst to my wellbeing, but you are not essential to my wellbeing because I’ve got that figured out on my own. I have reached for thoughts that give me relief. And I have relieved myself all the way into my full connection of who I really am. And now we can just dance and play together.”

Can you feel how you take them off the hook? In other words, do you know how many men would flock to you…? (ALL OF THEM!) …if they knew that you would allow them to be as they are and you would not hold them responsible for your happiness?

That’s what everyone wants. How much bondage is there in believing that your happiness depends on me, so I’ve got to figure out what you want, and stand on my head in all those different ways, and it’s not even possible!

The greatest gift you can give anyone is to be happy. And we will take that further. The greatest gift you can give to any partner, past, present or future is to be so connected with who you truly are that they are irrelevant to your connection. And when they are irrelevant to your connection, then you are going to have a really good time together.

Pathwork: The Forces of Love, Eros, Sex

Blogger Note: This post is an anomaly - neither Seth, nor Abraham, but material from a woman named Eva Pierrakos called The Pathwork. The style is more formal and "religious" than more current teachings, but I hope the reader will bear with that because the information is valuable.  I have broken it into a few extra paragraphs for easier online readability.

Pathwork Guide, Lecture No. 44 (link accesses .pdf file), 01/15/59

THE FORCES OF LOVE, EROS, AND SEX

Tonight I would like to discuss three particular forces in the universe. These are the love force, as it manifests between the sexes, the erotic force, and the sex force. These are three distinctly different principles, or forces, that manifest on each plane in a different way—from the highest to the lowest. Humanity has always confused these three principles. In fact, it is often ignored that these three separate forces exist and what the differences are. There is so much confusion about this among human beings that it will be quite useful for my friends to hear once how it is in reality.

The sex force is the creative force on any level of existence. In the highest spheres, the same sex force creates spiritual life, spiritual ideas, spiritual concepts and principles as it also does on your earth sphere. But in the lower planes, the pure and unspiritualized sex force creates life as it manifests on that particular sphere, or, let us say, the outer shell or vehicle of the entity destined to live in this sphere.

The erotic force is one of the most potent forces in existence, and it has a great amount of momentum and impact. It is supposed to be the bridge between sex and love, yet it rarely is. In a spiritually highly developed person, the erotic force is used to carry, so to speak, the entity from the erotic experience—which in itself is of short duration—into the permanent state of pure love. The strong momentum of the erotic force alone carries the soul just so far and not further. It is bound to dissolve if the personality does not know how to learn to love, if he or she does not cultivate all the qualities and requirements necessary for true love. Then, and then only, the spark of the erotic force will constantly remain alive. Alone, without love, it cannot. It burns itself out. And this, of course, is the trouble with marriage. Since most people are incapable of pure love, they are also incapable of the ideal marriage.

Eros seems in many ways similar to love. It brings forth impulses in a human being that he would not have otherwise, impulses of unselfishness and affection he might have been incapable of before. This is why eros is so very often confused with love. But it is equally often confused with the pure sex instinct, which also manifests as a great urge.

I would like to show you, my friends, what the spiritual meaning and purpose of the erotic force is, particularly as far as humanity is concerned. Without eros, many people would never experience the great feeling and beauty that is contained in pure love. They would never get the taste of it, and their yearning for love would remain deeply covered in their soul. Their fear of love would constantly remain the stronger urge. 

Eros is the nearest thing to love the undeveloped spirit can experience. It lifts the soul out of her sluggishness, out of mere contentment and vegetation. It causes the soul to surge up, to go out of itself. When this force comes upon the most undeveloped person, he will become able to surpass himself. Even a criminal will feel temporarily, at least towards that one person, a goodness he has never known. The utterly selfish person will, while this feeling lasts, have unselfish impulses. The lazy person will get out of his inertia. The routine-bound person will naturally and without great effort get rid of his static habits, and so on and so forth.  This erotic force will lift the person out of his separateness, be it only for a short time. And this gives the soul a foretaste of unity and teaches the fearful psyche the longing for it; that is, this longing becomes more conscious after the erotic experience. The stronger one has experienced it, the less contentment the soul will find in the pseudosecurity of separateness. During the experience of eros, an otherwise thoroughly self-centered person may even be able to commit a sacrifice. 

So you see, my friends, eros enables the personality to do many things that he is disinclined to do otherwise, things that are closely linked with love. It is easy to see why eros is so often confused with love. Why then is it different from love? Because love is a permanent state in the soul. Love can only exist if, through development and purification, the basis for it is prepared. Love does not come and go at random. But eros does. Eros hits with a sudden force, finding the person often unawares and even unwilling to go through this experience. And only if the soul is prepared to love, has built the foundations for it, will eros be the bridge to that particular form of love as it manifests between the sexes.

Thus you can see how important the erotic force is. Many a human being would never be lifted out of himself, would never see beyond himself, would never be ready for a more conscious search for the breaking down of his own wall of separation unless the erotic force would not “hit” him and get him out of the rut. The erotic experience puts the seed into the soul so that it longs for unity. And unity is the great aim in the plan, for as long as the soul is separate, loneliness and unhappiness must be the result of it. 

The erotic experience enables the personality to long for union with at least one other being. In the heights of the spirit world, union happens with all beings—and thus with God. Therefore, on the earth sphere, the erotic force is a propelling power in itself, regardless of whether or not it is understood in its real meaning, and regardless of the fact that it is often misused and enjoyed while it lasts for its own sake but not utilized to cultivate love in the soul. Then, of course, it peters out. But nevertheless, the effect will inevitably remain in the soul.

Eros suddenly comes to man in certain stages of his life, even to those who are afraid of the apparent risk of the adventure out of their separateness. He who is afraid of his emotions and afraid of life as such will often do anything in his power (subconsciously and ignorantly) to avoid the great experience of unity. Although this fear exists in many, many human beings, there are few, indeed, where there is not some opening in the soul where eros cannot effect it inadvertently. With the fearful soul who resists this life experience, this is good medicine regardless of the fact that sorrow and loss may follow this experience due to other psychological factors too varied to enumerate now. 

However, there are also those who are overemotional, and although they may know other fears of life, they are not afraid of this experience. In fact, the beauty of it is a great temptation to them, and therefore they hunt greedily for it. They look for one subject after another. They are emotionally too ignorant to understand the deep meaning of eros; they are unwilling to learn pure love; they simply use the erotic force for their pleasure; and once it has worn out, they hunt elsewhere. 

This is abuse and cannot remain without effect either. This type of personality will have to make up for this abuse (ignorant as it may have been), just as the overfearful coward will have to make up for trying to cheat life by hiding from it and thus withholding from the soul a valuable medicine if used properly. As I said, with most people of this category, there is a vulnerable point somewhere in the soul through which eros can come in. But there are also a few who have built such a tight wall of fear and pride around their soul that they truly avoid this part of the life experience and so cheat their own development in a certain way. 

This fear might exist because in a former life unhappiness resulted out of this life experience, or perhaps because the soul has greedily abused the beauty of it without building it into love. In both cases, the personality may have resolved to be more careful. If this resolve is too rigid and stringent, the opposite extreme results. In the next incarnation, circumstances will be chosen in such a way that a balance will set in until the soul reaches the harmonious state where no more extreme exists. This applies to all aspects of the personality, thus also regarding this particular subject. In order to approach this harmony, at least to some extent, the proper balance between reason, emotion, and will has to be achieved in the personality.

The erotic experience will often mingle with the sexual urge, but it does not always have to be that way. These three forces—love, eros, and sex—often appear completely separately, while sometimes two mingle. Let us say eros and sex; or eros and love, as much as the soul is capable of; or sex and a semblance of love, again as far as the capacity reaches. Only in the ideal case do all three forces mingle harmoniously.

The pure sex force is utterly selfish. Where sex exists without eros and without love, it is referred to as “animalistic.” Pure sex exists in all living creatures: animals, plants, and minerals. Eros begins with the stage of development where the soul is incarnated as a human being. And pure love is to be found in the higher spiritual realms. This does not mean that the former two do not exist anymore with the higher developed being, but rather that all three blend in harmoniously and are refined, becoming less and less selfish. Nor does this mean that a human being cannot try to attempt this harmonious blend of all three forces.

In rare cases, eros without sex and love exists too, at least for a limited time. It is what is referred to as “platonic love.” But usually, sooner or later, at least with the somewhat healthy person, eros and sex mingle. The sex force, instead of being suppressed, is taken up, so to speak, by the erotic force, and both flow in one current. The more these three forces remain separate, the unhealthier the personality is.

Another possibility, particularly in relationships of long standing, is the combination of a certain kind of love (it cannot be perfect unless all three forces blend together, but let us say the nearest thing to it) and sex, but without eros. There is a certain amount of affection, companionship, fondness, mutual respect, and a sex relationship that is crudely sexual without the erotic spark that has evaporated some time ago. When eros is missing, the sex relationship must eventually suffer. 

Now this is the problem with most marriages, my friends. And there is hardly a human being who is not puzzled by this question of what to do to maintain that spark in a relationship that seems to evaporate the more habit and knowledge of one another sets in. You may not have thought of it in exactly the terms I am using, thinking of three distinct forces; yet you know and sense that something goes out of a marriage that was present at the beginning, this certain spark that is actually eros. You find yourself in a vicious circle and thus think that marriage is a hopeless proposition. No, my friends, it is not, even if you cannot as yet attain the ideal stage.

But let me now tell you about the ideal partnership love between two people. I said already that all three forces have to be represented. With love, you do not seem to have much difficulty, for in most cases one would not marry if there did not exist at least the willingness to love. I will not discuss at this point the extreme cases when a person makes an immature choice. I am discussing the case where the choice is a mature one, and yet one cannot get over the pitfall of time and habit because elusive eros has disappeared. With sex it is the same. The sex force is present in most healthy human beings and may only begin to fade, particularly with women, when eros has left. Men may then seek eros elsewhere. For the sexual relationship must eventually suffer if eros is not maintained. 

And how can you keep eros? That is the big question, my dear ones. And this question I will attempt to answer now. Eros can only be maintained if it is used as a bridge to true partnership in love in its highest sense. And how this is done, we will discuss now. Let us first see what is the main element in the erotic force. When you analyze it, you will find that it is the adventure, the search for the knowledge of the other soul. This desire lives in every created spirit. This inherent life force must bring the entity finally out of separation. Eros strengthens the curiosity to find the other being. As long as there is something new to find in the other soul and as long as you reveal yourself, eros will live. The moment you believe you have found all there is to find and have revealed all there is to reveal, or all you are willing to reveal, eros will leave. It is as simple as that with eros. But where your great error comes in is that you believe there is a limit to the revealing of any soul, yours or another’s. When a certain point of revealing is reached, usually a quite superficial one, one is under the impression this is all there is to it, and one settles down to a placid life without further searching. This far, eros carries you with his strong impact. But after this point is reached, your further will to search the unlimited depths of the other person and voluntarily reveal and share of your own inward search within yourself determines the fact that you have used eros as a bridge to love—which is always determined by your will to learn how to love. 

And in that way, you will maintain the spark of eros contained in your love. Only in this way you will continue to find the other and let yourself be found. There is no limit, for the soul is endless and eternal; a whole lifetime would not suffice to know it. There can never be a point at any time when you know the other soul entirely, nor when you are known entirely. The soul is alive, and nothing that is alive remains static. It changes constantly. It has the possibility to reveal even deeper layers that exist already, apart from any change. The soul is in constant change and movement, as anything spiritual is by its very nature. Spirit means life and life means change. Since soul is spirit, the soul can never be known utterly. If man had the wisdom, he would realize that and make of marriage this marvelous journey of adventure it is supposed to be, forever finding new vistas instead of simply being carried as far as the first momentum of eros. You should use this potent momentum of eros as the propelling force it is to begin with, finding with it and from it the urge to go on further “on your own steam,” so to speak. Then you have brought eros into true love in marriage.

For anyone interested, the rest of lectures, including 44, can be found here.

Seth: Hate, Love, and Reincarnation Part 3

Seth, Seth Speaks, Session 550 cont. - 9/28/70

Seth: Are you following me and this material?

Rob: Sure. Why do you ask?

Seth: You are my first reader.

I would like to make it clear that there is nothing to be gained, either, by hating hatred. You fall into the same trap.

What is needed is a basic trust in the nature of vitality, and faith that all elements of experience are used for a greater good, whether or not you can perceive the way in which “evil “ is transmuted into creativity. What you love will also be part of your experience in this life and others.

The most important idea to be remembered is that no one thrusts the experience of any given lifetime upon you. It is formed faithfully according to your own emotions and beliefs. The great power and energy of love and creativity is apparent in the mere fact of your existence. This is the truth so often forgotten—that[ the combination of] consciousness and existence is continuous and absorbs those elements that seem to you so destructive.

Hate is powerful if you believe it, and yet though you hate life, you will continue to exist. You have made appointments, each of you, that you have forgotten. They were signed, so speak, before you were born in this existence. In many cases the friends that you make were close to you long before you met them in this present life.

This does not mean that everyone in your present acquaintanceship has been known to you, and this certainly does not imply a boring record played over and over again, for each encounter is a new one in its own way. Remembering what I said about families, realize also that towns and villages may also be composed of the past inhabitants of other such towns and villages, transposed with new experiences and backgrounds, as the group tries different experiments.

Now sometimes, there are also such variations in that the inhabitants of a particular town now may be the reborn inhabitants of those who lived, say, in 1632 in a small Irish village. They may be transposed to a town in Idaho.

Some who wanted to travel from the Old World to the New, may be born in the new one. You must remember also that abilities from past lives are at your disposal for your present use. Your reap your own rewards. Information concerning these is often given to you in the sleep state, and there is a kind of gestalt type of dream, a root dream, by which those who know each other in past lives now communicate.

In such dreams, general mass-information is given, that the individuals then use as they desire. Overall plans for development are made as the group members, say, of a town decide upon its destiny. Some individuals always choose to be born as part of some group—reborn, in other words, with past contemporaries, while others, disdaining such endeavors, return in much more isolated positions.

This is a matter of psychological feeling. Some individuals are more ease, more assured, and more capable working with others in this case. You could consider an analogy in which John Doe follows his kindergarten class all the way through high school. In a reincarnational situation, he would always choose to return with his associates. Others, however, would rather skip from school to school, appearing alone relatively speaking, with greater freedom, more challenge, but without the comforting framework of security chosen by the others.

In each case the individual is the judge, not only to each succeeding life, it’s time, the environment, and historical date, but also of its overall character and methods of accomplishment. There are as many different ways to reincarnate, therefore, as there are inner selves, and each inner self will choose its own characteristic methods.

I will end our session now that the chapters is begun. I have the feeling that we will have some extra sessions in any case.

Now: Give me a moment here. First of all, as a species, in the context of normal usage, you have considered yourselves as apart from rest of nature and consciousness.

Your own survival as a species was your main concern. You considered the other species only in the light of their use to you. You did not have a true conception of the great sacredness of all consciousness, nor of your relationship with it. You are losing your grasp of that great truth.

In the present circumstances you are carrying that idea forward -of species’ survival regardless of the consequences, the idea of changing the environment to suit your own purposes; and this has led you to a disregard of spiritual truths.

In physical reality, therefore, you are seeing the results. Now those personalities who are returning are doing so for various reasons. Some of them are drawn to physical life again because of these attitudes. They are those who in the past, in your terms, strove for physical existence without consideration for the rights of other species. The are driven to return because of their own desires.

The species must learn the value of the individual man. The species is also learning its dependence upon other species, and beginning to comprehend its part in the whole framework in physical reality.

Now: some individuals are being reborn at this time simply to help you understand. They are forcing the issue, and forcing the crisis, for you still have time to change your ways. You are working on two main problems, but both involve the sacredness of the individual, and the individual’s relationship with others and with all physically orientated consciousness.

The problem of War will sooner or later teach you that when you kill another man, basically you will end up killing yourself. The overpopulation problem will teach you if you do not have the loving concern for the environment in which you dwell, it will no longer sustain you—you will not be worthy of it. You will not be destroying the planet, you see. You will not be destroying the birds or the flowers, or the grain or the animals. You will not be worthy of them, and they will be destroying you.

You have set up the problem for yourselves within the framework of your reference. You will not understand your part within the framework of nature until you actually see yourselves in danger of tearing it apart. You will not destroy consciousness. You will not annihilate consciousness of even one leaf, but in your context, if the problem were not solved, these would fade from your experience.

The crisis is a kind of therapy, however. It is a teaching method that you have set up for yourselves because you need it. And you need it now, before your species embarks upon journeys to other physical realities. You must learn your lessons now in your own backyard before you travel to other worlds. So you have brought this upon yourself for that purpose and you will learn.

Seth: Hate, Love, and Reincarnation Part 2

Seth, Seth Speaks, Session 550 cont. - 9/28/70

I spoke earlier of rigid concepts of right and wrong. There is only one way to avoid this problem. Only true compassion and love will lead to an understanding of the nature of good, and only these qualities will serve to annihilate the erroneous and distortive concepts of evil.

The simple fact is that as long as you believe in the concept of evil, it is a reality in your system, and you will always find it manifested. Your belief in it will, therefore, seem highly justified. If you carry this concept through succeeding generations, through reincarnations, then you add to its reality.

Let me try to throw some light upon what I am trying to tell you. First of all, love always involves freedom. If a man says he loves you and yet denies to your freedom, then you often hate him. Yet because of his words you do not feel justified in the emotion. This sort of emotional tangle itself can lead to continued entanglement’s through various lives.

If you hate evil, then be aware of your conception of the word. Hate is restrictive. It narrows down your perception. It is indeed a dark glass that shadows all of your experience. You will find more and more to hate, and bring the hated elements into your own experience

Now: If, for example, you hate a parent, then it becomes quite easy to hate any parents, for in their faces you see and project the original offender. In subsequent lives you may also be drawn into a family and find yourself with the same emotions, for the emotions are the problem, and not those elements that seem to bring them about.

If you hate illness you may bring upon yourself a succeeding life of illness, because the hate has drawn it to you.

Now: If you expand your sense of love, of health, and existence, then you are drawn into this life and in others towards those qualities; again, because they are those upon which you concentrate. A generation that hates war will not bring peace. It generation that loves peace will bring peace.

To die with hatred for any cause or people, or for any reason, is a great disadvantage. You will have all kinds of opportunities now to recreate your personal experience in more beneficial ways, to change your world.

In the next life you will be working with those attitudes that are now yours. If you insist upon harboring hatreds within you now, you are very likely to continue doing so. On the other hand, those sparks of truth, intuition, love, joy, creativity, accomplishments gained now, will work for you then as they do now.

They are, you see, the only true realities. They are the only real foundations of existence. It is foolish, as Rupert once said, to hate a storm or Shake your fist at it and call it names. You laugh if you think of children or natives in such activities. It is useless to personify a storm and treated it as a demon, focusing upon its destructive elements, or those elements that to you appear destructive.

Change of form is not destructive. The explosive energy of the storm is highly creative. Consciousness is not annihilated. A storm is part of creativity. You view it from your own perspective, and yet one individual will feel within the storm the unending cycle of creativity, and another will personify it as the work of the devil.

Through all your lives you will interpret the reality that you see in your own way, and that way and will have its effects upon you, and in turn upon others. The man who literally hates, immediately sets himself up in this fashion: He prejudges the nature of reality according to his own limited understanding.

Now I’m emphasizing the issue of hate in this chapter on reincarnation because its results can be so disastrous. A man who hates always believes himself justified. He never hates anything that he believes to be good. He thinks he is being just, therefore, in his hatred, but the hatred itself forms a very strong claim that will follow him throughout his lives, until he learns that only the hatred itself is the destroyer.

You may take a break.  (cont. in next post)

Seth: Hate, Love, and Reincarnation Part 1

Seth, Seth Speaks, Session 550 - 9/28/70

Now: Throughout your reincarnational existences you expand your consciousness, your ideas, your perceptions, your values. You break away from self-adapted restrictions, and you grow spiritually as you learn to step aside from limiting conceptions and dogmas.

Your rate of learning depends entirely upon you, however. Limited, dogmatic, or rigid concepts of good and evil can hold you back. To narrow ideas of the nature of existence can follow you through several lives if you do not choose to be spiritually and psychically flexible.

These rigid ideas can indeed act as leashes, so that you are forced to circle like a tied puppy dog about a very small radius. In such cases through perhaps a group of existences, you will find yourself battling against ideas of good and evil running about in a circle of confusion, doubt, and anxiety.

Your friends and acquaintances will be concerned with the same problems, for you will draw to yourself those with the same concerns. I am telling you again, therefore, that many of your ideas of good and evil are highly distorted and shadow all understanding you have of the nature of reality.

If you form a guilt in your mind, then it is a reality for you, and you must work it out. But many of you form guilts for which there is no adequate cause, and you saddle yourselves with these guilts without reason. In your dimension of activity there appears to be a wild assortment of evils. Let me tell you that he who hates an evil merely creates another one.

Now: From within your point of reference it is often difficult for you perceive that all events work toward creativity, or to trust in the spontaneous creativity of your own natures. Within your system, to kill is obviously is obviously a moral crime, but to kill another in punishment only compounds the original error. Someone very well-known who established a church-if you will, a civilization-once said, “turn the other cheek if you are attacked. “The original meaning of that remark, however, should be understood. You should turn the other cheek because you realize that basically the attacker only attacks himself.

Then you are free, and the reaction is a good one. If you turned the other cheek without this understanding, however, and feel resentful, or if you turn the other cheek out of the feeling of pseudo moral superiority, then the reaction is far from adequate.

Now all of this can be applied to your relationships in your reincarnational existences, and of course it also is highly pertinent to your current daily experience. If you hate another person, that hate may bind you to him through as many lives as you allow the hate to consume you. You draw to yourself in this existence and in all others those qualities upon which you concentrate your attention. If you vividly concern yourself with the injustices you feel have been done to you, then you attract more such experience, and if this goes on, then it will be mirrored in your next existence. It is true that in between lives there is “time “for understanding and contemplation.

Those who do not taken advantage of such opportunities in this life often do not do so when it is over. Consciousness will expand. It will create. It will turn itself inside out to do so. There is nothing outside of yourself that will force you to understand these issues or face them.

It is useless then to say, “When this life is over I will look back upon my experience and mend my ways.” This is like a young man saying, “When I grow old and retire, I will use all those abilities that I am not now developing." You are setting the stage for your “next” life now. The thoughts you think today will in one way or another become the fabric of your next existence. There are no magic words that make you wise, that will fill you with understanding and compassion; that will expand your consciousness.

Your thoughts and everyday experience contain the answers. Any success in this life, any abilities, have been worked out through past experience. They are yours by right. You worked to develop them. If you look about you and your relatives, friends, acquaintances, and business associates, you will also see what kind of person you are, for your drawn to them as they are drawn to you, through very basic inner similarities.

If you examine your thoughts for five minutes at various times during the day for several times a month, you will indeed receive a correct impression of the kind of life you have arranged for yourself in the next existence. If you are not pleased with what you discover, then you had better begin changing the nature of your thoughts and feelings.

As you will see later in this book, you can do so. There is no rule saying that in each life you must meet again those whom you have known before; and yet through the nature of attraction, that is often the case….

You may be born into your present family for many reasons. You may find after death a much stronger relationship emotionally with a personality from a past life. If you’re married, for example, and have no true rapport with your mate, you may instead find a past wife or husband waiting for you.

Often times members of various groups—military groups, church groups, hunting groups, will in another life form family relationships in which they will then work out old problems in new ways. Families must be considered as the gestalts of psychic activity; they have a subjective identity, of which no particular member of the group may be aware.

Families have subconscious purposes, though the individual members of the family may pursue these goals without conscious awareness. Such groups are set up ahead of time, so speak, in between physical existences. Often times four five individuals will set themselves a given challenge, and assign to the various members different parts to play. Then in a physical existence roles will be worked out.

The inner self is always aware of the hidden mechanisms of these family gestalts. Those who of been closely bound through emotional ties often prefer to remain in a closely tied or loosely tied physical relationships that continue through many lifetimes. New relationships are always encouraged however, for you can have ingrown reincarnational “families.” Many of these form physical organizations that are actually manifestations of inner groupings. (cont. in next post)

Seth: Love specifies.

Seth, The Nature of the Psyche, Session 774 (hat tip to Mark Giese.)

Seth: 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.

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 terns. The love itself spreads out, expands, so that you can then see others in love's light.

Love is naturally creative and explorative-that is, you want to creatively explore the aspects of the beloved one. Even characteristics that would otherwise appear as faults attain a certain loving significance. They are accepted ---seen, and yet they make no difference. Because these are still attributes of the beloved one, even the seeming faults are redeemed. The beloved attains prominence over all others.

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.