Life Is Good

Physical existence is sacred and good. There is nothing wrong with it.

Atoms and molecules, they are holy. Your consciousness is holy and so is your little toe.

. . . But All-That-Is is now within you. You do not have to traverse worlds, you do not have to meet hopeless little gods at doorways to let you know whether or not you can enter or follow through on tests as some psychics tell you. You do not have to take upon yourselves definite rituals.

You have only to look within yourself for the source of exaltation, creativity and song."

(Seth/Jane Roberts, 7/6/71)

Life is good - physical life, that is. All of it, from the lovely grandchild my daughter birthed last year to the roiling worms turning my kitchen scraps to new earth.

How many of us learned as children that this life was a sort of battlefield for good and evil to which we were sentenced until death liberated us into a non-physical paradise? Except that we simultaneously observed that death was the most fearsome of fates, to be avoided at, literally, all costs.

Meanwhile, the men who marched off to war and did not return were beatified for giving their lives to save the rest of us. Their death, to those left behind, was anticipated and honorable, a glorious end, even if the battlefield reality was somewhat more ignominious.

And in our halls of worship, Death, by name, seemed synonymous with Evil, something to be conquered, vanquished, defeated. The dangers of "the flesh" lurked, waiting to pounce. Even the new age movement has focused on other-worldly venues as most conducive to full spiritual development, the dense deadweight of the body preventing much of our progress as souls.

Our western ambivalence about physical existence has haunted thinkers and despots, believers and philosophers, the aggrieved and the indifferent alike, throughout time. We are transfixed by physical beauty - whether a beautiful sunrise or stunning Helen herself. But we struggle to make peace with a world that teems with life, even as it rewards our years with apparent annihilation.

Long before a host of channeled archangelic voices began to admonish us about planetary shifts, Seth encouraged his students to face physical life head- on. Cheap wine and cheaper beer livened the classes at which he frequently popped in, through the medium of Jane Roberts. By turns boisterous, tender, rollicking, or profound, Seth made his students see the miracle of consciousness thrusting forth as the world we know.

Many times Seth pulled the curtain away from the wizard by exposing the ill-conceived notion that we are separate from each other, the natural world, or even All-That-Is, his term for what we might call God.

Instead, he revealed a dazzling universe, always expanding, changing, growing, creating --a glittering panoply of nature, ideas, and human achievements. No endeavor in this universe is without merit, no act forgotten or without purpose. Every idea is worth exploring, even if discarded later, and the human body is a churning kaleidoscope of conscious matter, bursting with, and from, life itself.

Standing before such a virtual river, can we but respond with clothes thrown aside as we run for the water's edge? The weeds and grasses tickle our skin, and the sand and mud of the banks tingle long- forgotten portals on our feet. With the sun hot on our heads just as we split the water bodily, we find ourselves rushing downstream, no longer apart, no longer detached observers.

Once we remember our true nature, speak to the Divine within us, and release ourselves to the great creative force of which we are a part, no small detail of our daily lives will be without wonder or appreciation, be it physical or otherwise. Indeed, Life is Good.