Seth pwns the Left and the Right back in 1973

Blogger's note: I can't emphasize enough, btw, that if you only get one Seth book, get this one. I can post bits and pieces, but the whole picture becomes viscerally more clear from reading the book in its entirety and having it around as a reference. Mine is in tatters. 

Seth, The Nature of Personal Reality,  Session 650

Many believe that it is “good” and morally superior to be Christian, white, wealthy and in excellent health. Now, the word “male” can also be added to this list of preferred attributes. These people may be of any age. They may come from any economic environment. Now if you happen to be Protestant, male, white, American, rich, and healthy, at least within the framework of your beliefs you can look at yourself with “clear” eyes. Your foundation is shaky, indeed, but at least you fit within it for the moment. You will notice that I added “Protestant” to our value system, as well as “American.” If, however, you hold this group of beliefs and you fall short - that is, if in some way you do not fit in - then even within that system you are in trouble.

In that chart of belief, disease, poverty, femininity to some extent, non-Christian concepts, and a non-Caucasian racial heritage, are all considered wrong to one degree or another.  Now: Any intrusion of other beliefs here will be considered threatening. Both racial problems and religious dissension will be rationalized from the standpoint of these beliefs. Some of my readers may consider themselves quite enlightened, believing, for example, in reincarnation as a series of consecutive lives.  However, they may then use that concept to justify their belief in the inferiority of other races. They may say that since an individual chose his or her problems in this life-deciding for instance to be born black, or poor, or both-that karma is being worked out; therefore such issues should not be adjusted through a change of law or custom. Period.

On the left side, looking at a second diagram, you will find people in this case, and in this country, of a more “liberal” frame of mind. But you will not find them quite as liberal if you understand that they are as prejudiced in one direction as the first group is in another.

Here we have a system of belief in which it is wrong to be white, American, or wealthy, or even at all well-off in financial terms. All of the distortions in Christianity are apparent, where the first group is blind to them, of course. Here, though, wealth and a white skin are not only bad, but obvious symptoms of moral deterioration. If the first system of beliefs sees money and goods as a sign of God’s blessing, the second group views all material possessions as evidence of spiritual decay.  Here the exotic is romanticized, the foreign held up, the picturesque seen as the real. Black skin or brown skin becomes the criteria of spiritual perfection, and poverty as a badge of honor to be worn not only proudly, but often to be used as an aggressive tool. The people who follow these belief systems think that they are right. Their living style, community affiliations, and political leanings will be in direct opposition to the “white-wealthy” ethic.

Now, if you happen to be black or brown, poor, and believe in this system, you will at least feel secure within it. If you are instead white and wealthy and hold such beliefs, you will think yourself quite inferior indeed, and do everything in your power to show how picturesque and liberal and open-minded and black or brown you can be while still being white, fairly well-off, and perhaps secretly addicted to your Christianity.  You will doubtlessly have Buddhas tastefully displayed, and Indian beads.”

Seth: Mankind is One Race

Seth, The Unknown Reality, Vol. 1, Session 697

If a portion of the RACE is hurt it may take a while before ‘you’ feel the pain, but the entire unconscious mechanism of the species will try to heal the wound. Consciously you can facilitate that development, and admit your brotherhood with all other living beings. The healing will take place far quicker if you do. A biological brotherhood exists, an inner empathy on cellular levels, connecting all individuals of the species with one another. This is the result of a biological idealization. It exists in all species, and CONNECTS all species.

The race suffers when any of its members die of starvation or disease, even as a whole plant suffers if a group of its leaves are ‘unhappy’. In the same way all members of the species are benefited by the happiness, health, and fulfillment of any of those individuals who compose it. Man can be aware of the vast medium of probabilities in which he exists, and therefore consciously choose those best suited to those idealizations that point toward his greatest fulfillment. One part of the species cannot grow or develop at the expense of the other portions for very long.

© Rob and Laurel Butts

Seth on Susan Boyle

[Not really, but this is Seth on those with difficult life situations from birth, often genetic, saying that they set those as challenges in a previous life. I don't know about this. Maybe. It'd be nice, but... I don't know if I'm buying it. Personally, I think I'm going to call bullshit on this one.]

"Suppose the worst, that in this life you have the following background: you are poor, you are of a minority race, you are not intellectual, you are a woman, you have a severe physical defect and you are no beauty. Now you set these challenges for yourself in a so-called past life. This does not mean that you cannot use all of your courage and resolution to solve these problems. You set them in the hope that you will solve them. You did not set them like millstones about your neck, hoping ahead of time that you would drown.

All you have to do is realize your own freedom. You form the reality that you know, not esoterically, not symbolically, not philosophically. Some great oversoul doesn't form it for you — you cannot put the burden there, either. You have in the past, collectively and individually, blamed a god or a fate for the nature of your personal realities—those aspects, indeed that you did not like.

The personality is given the greatest gift of all; you get exactly what you want to get. You create from nothing the experience that is your own. If you do not like your experience, then look within yourself and change it. But realize also that you are responsible for your joys and triumphs, and that the energy to create any of these realities comes from the inner self. What you do with it is up to the individual personality."

(During break class members discussed fate and pre-destination.)

"Some evening I would like our lady over here to talk to me about predestination."

(Bernice M.: "I would like you to talk to me about it.")

"You are not 'programmed.' Nothing happens because it must happen. Every thought that you have now changes reality. Not only reality as you know it, but all reality. No act of yours predisposes a future self to act in a particular manner. There are banks of activity from which you can draw or choose not to draw."

(Bernice M.: "Do we make instantaneous decisions? For example, I was thinking of the Los Angeles earthquake today. A man walked out into the street and was killed by a falling brick. What made this one person in the entire building walk out?")

"This particular individual was quite aware of what would occur, on what you would call an unconscious basis. He was not predestined to die. He chose both the time, in your terms, and the method, for reasons of his own."

(Bernice M.: "Regardless of who chose, it was destined that he die.")

"It was not predestined. He chose. No one chose for him."

(Bernice M.: "But he had made the decision before.")

"Before when?"

(Bernice M.: "Before he was killed.")

"He knew that he was ready to go on to other spheres of activity. Unconsciously, he looked about for the means and chose those immediately available. This particular individual, three days earlier, had made the plan. There was no predestination involved. Because a tree branch falls, this does not mean that it was destined to fall in either the particular manner of its fall nor in the timing of the fall. There is a great difference between free choice and predestination."

(Jim H.: "Didn't you say earlier, referring to the woman who was born in a minority race, that here challenges had been set up by a previous personality, in our terms?")

"By the whole self."

(Jim H.: "The decision was made when that previous personality had returned to the whole self for a period of reevaluation?")

"You must realize, again, that we are speaking of divisions for convenience's sake, where none really exists. At the same "time," so to speak, that this personality is born into a minority race, in a completely different era it may be born rich, secure and aristocratic. It is searching out different methods of experience and expansion. Do you follow me?"

(Jim H.: "I understand. I thought you probably meant the challenges had been set up by the whole self.")

"Indeed. Remember, this is your entire identity of which we are speaking. It is only you who are presently aware of but one portion of it; and this portion you insist upon calling yourself. You are the self who makes these decisions."

(Bert C.: "What recourse would the poor individual who was born with all of these seemingly insurmountable handicaps have, were she to say consciously, at the ego level, 'I just don't want any of this. I would have much preferred to have been born aristocratic'?")

"The inner self realizes, however, that potentials are present that would not necessarily be present under other circumstances—abilities that can not only help the present personality but other individuals, and even society at large.

Your main point of contention is brought about by the emotional barriers that are caused by the difference in terms. It is as if you choose to work for a day in the slums. It would be ridiculous for you to choose to do this, and then say to yourself, 'Why did I choose to work in the slums? I would prefer to work on Fifth Avenue.'

You know the reason, and your entire identity knows the reason. You hide it from the present self simply to insure the fact that the present reality is not a pretended one.

A rich man who tries to be poor for a day to learn what poverty is learns little, because he cannot forget the wealth that is available to him. Though he eats the same poor fare as the poor man, and lives in the same poor house for a day—or for a year or five years—he knows he has his mansion to return to. So you hide these things from yourself so that you can relate. You forget your home so that you can return to it enriched.

Consciousness is not made up of balances so much as it is made up of exquisite imbalances, and the focus of awareness is to some degree the result of this state of excitability. In this state all elements are never known because new ones are always being created. I am not speaking of physical elements, but of the psychological characteristics of consciousness, for even those continually merge and change.

You are not now what you were ten minutes earlier. You are not the same being physically, psychologically, spiritually, or psychically, and ten minutes later you will be different again. To deny this is to try to force consciousness into some rigid form from which it cannot ever be freed, to apply rules to it that make a very neat psychological landscape."

from Seth Speaks