“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We come again to the problem of practicality, and at the risk of repeating myself let me say that in the past Ruburt’s seeming impracticality has been more practical than your intellectual practicality. This is merely because you have not trusted your ego’s ability to offer adequate protection. You have forced it into anxiety so that it overcompensates trying to protect you, and ends up half choking you to death.

For instance, this experience in psychic phenomena would seem to be simply an enjoyable, enlightening, but purely impractical happening. If you were as ego bound as you were last year, you would not have had either the time nor energy nor even the inclination for it. It would not have seemed practical.

Nevertheless it may prove extremely practical in terms of that beloved financial god. If so, and I believe you will find this the case, it is because you did not block it. You may very well find in the future that a good deal of your income is derived in this fashion. But it will not be the main benefit by any means.

When you start out by trying to be practical in cold terms you rarely succeed, because you close yourself away from what does not seem to be practical in your terms. But your terms are not the only terms that apply. The inner self, and I will make these differentiations for you clearly either now or later, the inner self is nourished by many springs. To cut off one is a danger. To cut off many is disastrous, and prevents any sort of practicality, since half of your abilities will not be used.

The confident inner self will let the ego manipulate in the physical world, but will not allow it to become fiercely overprotective. Your work contains the strength of your inner self in many ways. Your particular ego’s function is to show this work to the world as you know it. I hesitate, and I mean this, to offer practical advice to one who tries to be so practical. But my dear Joseph, there is no true practicality in smothering your abilities by working in a position where you cannot use your abilities. You will not be paid for abilities you cannot use, since I know you must think in financial terms. Your ego’s job is to help you trade your true abilities for your daily bread.

You may take a break. If you do not mind, after the break I will continue for a short while. I am trying very hard, Joseph, because dissociation will answer more than one of your particular problems, and practical ones at that. Associations which you may consider impractical are often very practical. I always feel when I speak along these lines as if I must say over and over that I do not intend any shortening of your working hours, only that you have more energy than you realize and that associations, as certainly you must see with your landlord, are often practical. Take your break.

Your impulse at the time was the same as Jane’s, if you remember, but you were afraid of the practical aspects. Your parents would have visited you last year, and be strongly tempted to settle in a small town northeast of Miami, where your father would be amazed at the opportunities in his own business. Things have changed. Free will constantly operates. I will not attempt to give you definite so-called practical advice now, but you can learn from this and the paths will be clear.

Ruburt sensed the growing explosion with your parents, sensed the frigid growth of your ego, and impulsively had to do something. Had you not left at all circumstances would have been far worse in any case, and your parents might have suffered another, but this time fatal, accident. Ruburt of course did not know this in practical terms but he knew it nevertheless.

I would suggest that you keep up a closer correspondence with your younger brother on a personal basis, and I suggest this rather strongly. I would also suggest that you visit your younger brother much more frequently than you have in the past, and indeed that you do not let more than two months go by before you visit him for a weekend. Unlike you and Loren, he does not have a strongly developed ego core to protect him. He is somewhat like a snail without a shell, and could benefit strongly by your affection, shown in a more practical manner.

Inheritance is extremely potent in this case. Your father represents a most tragic example of impulse frozen into inactivity, and practicality which was never practical but molded him into immobility, his powers so encased by fear that he could not manipulate in the physical environment at all.