"What are you?"

[jbseth]

Hi All,

If someone you know comes up to you and asks you, "What are you?" specifically from a context of what religious / philosophical association or background do you follow, such as, are you a Catholic, a Christian, a Buddhist, etc. How do you reply?


For me, personally, I definitely don't consider myself a Christian. Neither do I consider myself a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Moslem, a follower of the Hebrew religion nor a follower of Wicca, for example. I also don't consider myself an Atheist, or a Humanist, as I do believe in All That Is. In addition to this I also don't consider myself a Freudian or a Jungian for example.

Typically, I consider myself a "Sethian". Then from this, I explain who Jane Roberts and Seth were and briefly, what Seth had to say (there is no death, you create your reality via your beliefs, All That Is) .


How do you describe yourself, when someone you know comes up to you and asks you, "What are you?"


-jbseth

[T.M.]

Till I know the person well, I loosely identify as Christian. Isn't too far from the truth. I try to follow most of the 10 commandments and believe in Jesus, and am living in a mostly Christian community, by choice.

I generally will talk to a person for awhile before I get too deeply into what I believe and why. Mostly because I think it the rare few who not only believe you create your own reality, it's even rarer to find the person actively working on it.

[LarryH]

When my former wife, who is a member here, moved to Greenville, SC, someone asked her, "What church do you go too?" I believe she was offended by the question, and I don't remember how she responded. If she sees this, maybe she can clarify. The only time I can remember being asked what spiritual category I placed myself in, on a questionnaire, I answered "Mystic". Some day, I will have to look up what that means. 

[Deb]

Great question, I get asked that once in a while and if they word it exactly that way, I say I am me. Next, when they look confused, I say I don't follow a religion per se. Then the question turns to, "do you believe in God?" And I say not in the traditional sense. This seems to really confuse people. They generally ask, "well then, what DO you believe in?" I try to go as general as possible, saying that I feel God is not a person, but a benign and loving consciousness the permeates everything. They usually stop asking questions at that point.

Recently I've come back into contact with my former in-laws, there's illness there and after decades of little to no contact my father in law has been calling me often. They are Jewish. He confessed to me recently that he prays to Jesus every night (he assumed that I'm Catholic, but I actually gave up on religion at 15). He apparently moved away from the Jewish religion when he was 15, and turned to Jesus. I think I'm the only person in that family that knows that about him, including his wife and kids. My former mother in law, on the other hand, told me recently that I'm an atheist. I don't know where that came from, we'd never really discussed religion.

While I love everything Seth, I don't consider it a religion. People, friends, have asked me about Seth/Jane Roberts and what that's all about. That's hard, I really need to sit down some day and come up with something brief and concise to say that people will understand. Generally I say it's a combination of philosophy and physics — it's about the true nature of reality.

@LarryH I looked up the definition of mystic, and I think you've got something there.

[jbseth]

That's hard, I really need to sit down some day and come up with something brief and concise to say that people will understand.

Hi Deb,

Yeah, you know, I think that I'm looking for the same thing. I'd like to come up with something that I could use to explain to people what Seth is all about. Maybe I'll take a look at that.

-jbseth

[Sena]

I also don't consider myself an Atheist

jbseth, I don't consider myself an atheist either. Atheism is an incoherent position. To be an atheist you have to first imagine monotheism, i.e. a powerful male personal god up there in the sky who is obsessed with punishing the misdeeds of humans, then you deny that such a god exists. Richard Dawkins rides the high horse of monotheism.
I reject monotheism, but I think that All That Is is a useful concept. By All That Is, I don't imagine a person either male or female. I consider that all conscious beings, human or otherwise, participate in the nature of All That Is, and are co-creators. I see Nature as a manifestation of All That Is.
Am I a pantheist? Probably not. A panthiest first imagines the god of monotheism and then says that god is the same as Nature.

[Sena]

While I love everything Seth, I don't consider it a religion.

Deb, I don't consider it a religion either.
Definition of religion:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion

"the service and worship of God or the supernatural" - I don't worship All That Is.

"a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith" - That is close, but I accept Seth's teachings because they seem to coincide with my personal experience.

[Sena]

Recently I've come back into contact with my former in-laws, there's illness there and after decades of little to no contact my father in law has been calling me often. They are Jewish. He confessed to me recently that he prays to Jesus every night

Deb, I can understand that someone who has a chronic illness in himself or in his family would want some kind figure to pray to. Jesus has been hyped for 2000 years by skillful advertisers. The sad thing is that when you pray to someone above, you are reinforcing your own helplessness.

[Deb]

Yeah, you know, I think that I'm looking for the same thing. I'd like to come up with something that I could use to explain to people what Seth is all about. Maybe I'll take a look at that.

Sounds like a new topic to me. Maybe we can work on that here as a team, since probably every person who is a Seth fan has been in the position to explain what the materials are about. The hardest part for me is the channeling aspect, people roll their eyes. The same people who insist the Bible was written by God through men.

The sad thing is that when you pray to someone above, you are reinforcing your own helplessness.

Yep. This is a family that has long embraced victimhood. Anything that goes "wrong" for them has always been blamed on other people, with great distortion of the facts.

[Sena]

This is a family that has long embraced victimhood.

Deb, Christ crucified is the ultimate victim.

"To the intelligent, even the symbolism of the Crucifixion is abhorrent. Does this mean, however, that such a crucifixion did not occur? It may not have occurred, in one place and in one time, and to one called Christ; but because man has created the myth, he created the Crucifixion out of his own need; and this Crucifixion, which historically did not occur, as the myth says it occurred, nevertheless has as much reality, and more, than it would have had, had it occurred in so-called hard fact. So the intelligent adult now knows, does he not, that no one individual but superior being exists as God in some heaven, threatening hell to the sinners and disbelievers? For many reasons the idea does not make logical sense. You never emotionally believed it. Ruburt did. So the hard fact would seem to be that there is no God." (from "The Early Sessions: Book 2 of The Seth Material" by Jane Roberts, Robert Butts)

From the Kindle edition: http://amzn.eu/bPzFsI3

[chasman]

hi Sena,
       I searched at finding seth.com., and got results:

https://findingseth.com/q/resurrection/

[Sena]

hi Sena,
I searched at finding seth.com., and got results:

https://findingseth.com/q/resurrection/

Hi chasman, I realized that bringing up the resurrection brings up a whole new can of worms, so I deleted that part of my post!

[Deb]

Deb, Christ crucified is the ultimate victim.

Yes, my ex father in law got a double dose—he's a Jewish Closet Christian, the family following all Jewish traditions and blaming anti-Semitism for a lot of things, lots of lawsuits. They even threatened to sue me when my marriage fell apart, but that's now forgotten history. So if he also bought into the crucifixion story on top of anti-Semitism, wow... He often would ask me if I knew that Jesus was a Jew and not a Christian and I never knew why he was asking me. Now that's beginning to make more sense.

He's 92 now, I just listen to him.

[LenKop]

I tell them I'm a musician.

When they begin God-talk, I quote Beethoven -

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy"

then i tell them i'm into heavy metal and for some reason the conversation abruptly ends...

Len

[inavalan]

This reminds of a dialogue from "The Big Chill":

- How's your life?
- Great.
- Yours?
- Not so great.
- We're telling the truth ...
- You heard about my divorce.
- Yeah, I'm really sorry.