Reincarnation, Dreams, and the Hidden Male and Female Within the Self (2)

Seth Speaks, Session 556

Reincarnation, Dreams, and the Hidden Male and Female Within the Self (2)

Reincarnational experiences are a part of the framework of the self, a facet of the multidimensional reality of the living psyche.  These experiences will, therefore, be reflected not only in the dream state, but in other layers of activity.

The fabric of the present self is interwoven with these reincarnational “pasts”, and from them the present self draws unconsciously from its own bank of personality characteristics, activities, and insights.  Often past-life memories come to the surface but are not recognized as such, since they appear in fantasy form, or are projected into art creations.

Many writers of historical pieces, for example, are writing out of direct experience with those times.  Such instances represent an excellent working rapport between the present self and the unconscious, which brings these memories to the surface in such a way that current life is enriched.  More often than not, true awareness of the situation often becomes almost conscious, and just beneath awareness the individual knows the source of this authentic material.

In dreams this reincarnational material is likewise cast into a dramatic mold very frequently.  Beneath all this, the anima and the animus work together, again not opposites but blending characteristics.  Together, of course, they represent the fount of creativity, psychically as well as physically.

The anima represents the necessary initial “inwardness”, the brooding, caring, intuitive, inside-turning characteristics, the inward focusing from which creativity comes.

The word “passive” is a poor one to describe the characteristics of the anima, in that it suggests a lack of motion, and this is hardly the case.  It is true that the anima allows itself to be acted upon, but the motive behind this is the desire and the necessity to tune into other forces that are supremely powerful.  The desire to be swept along, therefore, is as strong with the anima as the opposite desire for rest.  The characteristics of the animus provide the aggressive thrust that returns the personality back outward into physical activities, triumphantly holding the products of creativity that the anima characteristics have secured.

The whole self is obviously the sum of these characteristics, and more.  After the final incarnation, the physical, sexual type of creativity is simply no longer needed.  You do not need to reproduce physically, in other words.  In simple terms the whole self contains male and female characteristics, finely tuned together, blended so that true identity can then arise – for it cannot, when one group of characteristics must be emphasized over the other group, as it must be during your present physical existence.

There are many reasons why the separation has been adopted within your dimension.  The reasons have to do with the particular way in which mankind has chosen to evolve and use his abilities; and I will have more to say regarding this point, but it does not belong in this chapter.

The projection of the man’s anima, or hidden female self, upon his relations is quite natural, and allows him not only to understand them better but to relate with other female existences of his own.  The same is true of the woman’s projection of the animus upon male relatives and friends.  The reality of the anima and the animus is far deeper then than Jung supposed.  Symbolically speaking, the two together represent the whole self with its diverse abilities, desires, and characteristics.

Together they act as a built-in, unconscious stabilizing factor, operating behind the faces of your civilization not only individually but culturally.

Personality as you know it, cannot be understood unless the true meaning of the anima and the animus is taken into consideration.  The reincarnational pattern is generally speaking an open one, in that within it there is room for diversity.  Each whole self has its own individual characteristics.  It can live its lives as it sees fit within the guidelines.  There may be a series of male or female existences, unbroken.  Such a choice has some drawbacks.

There are, however, no rules dictating the sexual development in varying incarnations, except that experience with both sexes must be taken on, and the various characteristics developed.  This does not mean that an equal number of male and female lives must be lived.  Some, for example, find it far easier to develop as one sex or the other, and will need more opportunities for experience as the sex with which they experience difficulty.

The animus and the anima became even more important in these instances when a series of one-sex lives are chosen.  The original pattern for the animus and anima comes from the whole self before reincarnations.  The animus and the anima are born into the individual with the first physical life, and serve as an inner pattern, reminding the personality of its basic unity.  Here is another reason for the strong psychic charge behind these symbols and the godlike quality that they can transmit and project.

The male yearns toward the anima because it represents to the deep unconscious those other characteristics of the whole self that, on the one hand, lie latent, and that, on the other hand, struggle for release.  The tension between the two leads him to temper aggressiveness with creativity, or to use aggressiveness creatively.

Now there are deep correlations between these symbols and the struggle in which mankind is involved.  Your consciousness as you know it, your particular present kind of consciousness, is a statement of awareness brought about by the particular kind of tension, a specific kind of focus arising from the true unconscious of the whole self.

The true unconscious is not unconscious.  Instead, it is so profoundly and unutteringly conscious that it bubbles over.  The life that you know is simply one of the many areas in which it is conscious.  In each facet of its consciousness, literally tremendous power and balance must be maintained to hold aloft this particular consciousness-experience from all others.

Your reality exists in a particular area of activity in which aggressive qualities, thrusting-outward characteristics, are supremely necessary to prevent a falling back into the infinite possibilities from which you have only lately emerged.  Yet from this unconscious bed of possibilities you derive your strength, your creativity, and the fragile yet powerful kind of individual consciousness that is your own.

The two-sex division was adopted, separating and balancing these most necessary but seemingly opposite tendencies.  Only beginning consciousness needs these kinds of controls.  The anima and the animus, therefore, are embedded deeply with their necessary complementary but apparently opposed tendencies, and they are highly important in maintaining the very nature of your human consciousness.

There is also a natural tension, then, between sexes that is based on far deeper causes than physical ones.  The tension results from the nature of your consciousness that arises from the anima, but depends for its continuation upon the “aggressiveness” of the animus.  I have to some extent explained the fascination that one has for the other, as resulting from the inner knowledge of the whole self, that strives to attain true identity as it struggles to combine and fulfill the seemingly opposite tendencies that are a part of it.

At the end of the reincarnational cycle, the whole self is far more developed than it was before.  It has realized and experienced itself in a dimension of reality unknown to it earlier, and in doing so, has of course increased its being.  It is not a matter, then, of a whole self splitting in half, and then simply returning to itself.

Now there are many matters concerning the nature of conception that should be discussed here.  Again, however, there is leeway and many variations.  Usually between lives you choose ahead of time your children, and they choose you as parents.

If you are to be born as a male, then the mother serves as a stimulus to activate the symbol of the anima in you, so that the pattern of your own female lives becomes a portion of your next existence.  Your mother, if you have known her in the past, will find at your birth an upsurge of dreams involving other existences in which the two of you were together.

These may not even be recorded consciously, but in many cases they are, and are then forgotten.  Her own past male lives will help her relate to you as her son.  In some cases new mothers may feel highly aggressive and nervous.  These feelings are sometimes due to the fact that the male son causes an activation of the animus in her, with a resulting charge of aggressive feelings.