“Earth is a nice place, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” A twist on an old quote, I believe—but the fact is, you are physical creatures because you do like to live on earth, you do like the conditions, you do enjoy overall the particular kind of challenge and the particular kind of perception, knowledge and understanding that the earthly environment provides.
That environment, in your terms, certainly includes suffering. If joy has always been one of the characteristics of earth experience, so has suffering, and the subject will be covered in this book. Here, however, I only want to mention one facet, and that is the importance of physical sensation, of whatever kind—for the life of the body provides you, among all things, with a life of sensation, of feeling, a spectrum that must include the experience of all possible sensations within its overall range.
Now as you will see, all creatures, regardless of their degree, can and do choose, within their spheres of reality, those sensations that they will experience—but to one extent or another all, sensations are felt.
We will later discuss the part of the mind and its interpretation, for example, of painful stimuli, but I want to make the point that those attracted to physical life are first and foremost tasters of sensation. Outside of that, basically, there are all kinds of mental distinctions made among stimuli.
The body is made to react. It is made to feel life and vitality by reacting to an environment that is not itself, by encountering what you might call natural stress. The body maintains its equilibrium by reacting against gravity, by coming in contact with other bodies, by changing its own sensations, by glorifying in the balance between balance and off-balance.
The body consciousness is therefore given a superb sense of its own reality, a sureness of identity, a sense of innate safety and security, that allows it to not only function but to grow in the physical world. It is endowed with a sense of boldness, daring, a sense of natural power. It is perfectly formed to fit into its environment — and the environment is perfectly formed to have such creatures.
The entities, or units of consciousness—those ancient fragments that burst into objectivity from the vast and infinite psychological realms of All That Is—dared all, for they joyfully abandoned themselves in space and time. They created new psychological entities, opened up an area of divine creativity that “until then” had been closed, and therefore to that degree, extended the experience and immense existence of All That Is.
For in so abandoning themselves they were not of course abandoned, since they contained within themselves their inherent relationship with All That Is. In those terms All That Is became physical also, aroused at its divine depth by the thrusting of each grass blade through the soil into the air, aroused by each birth and by each moment of each creature’s existence.
All That Is, therefore, is immersed within your world, present in each hypothetical point, and forms the very fabric from which each portion of matter is created.
Session 894, Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume 1,
Copyright © 1986, Jane Roberts and Robert F. Butts. Current copyright holder – Laurel Davies-Butts.
Here is a related Seth quote, posted Online by Oceanside Rick:
“Now the acquiescence that dwells within your atoms and molecules is an acquiescence that has to do with creativity that knows no negation, that realizes, instead, only the benefits and the joys and the reality of That Which Is, and within this acquiescence there is no denial and no negation for all things are experienced, recognized, and accepted as a part of All That Is.”
The Early Class Sessions, Book 3, Copyright © 3/23/71, Jane Roberts and Robert F. Butts. Current copyright holder – Laurel Davies-Butts.
