“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now in your dream you got the feeling of that kind of work, or action. It is the given power of the world, the given power of nature. It is the directed force of value fulfillment.² In other terms it is of course the energy of All That Is. The trouble is that the rational view of life has separated man from a sense of his own power source. When he has a problem, the rational approach to its solution seems the only answer, and often, of course, it is no answer at all.

Ruburt wanted to make sure that he was right. (Long pause.) He tried to go ahead and not go ahead at the same time. He tried to be daring and cautious, brave and safe. This applies to some extent to each of you, of course, precisely because you were gifted strongly both intellectually and intuitively. You tried to rationalize your creativity, both of you, to some extent. The rational line of thought finds creativity highly disruptive, so in those terms as highly gifted creative people, you would have encountered some difficulties in any case.

This will allow you to include the feeling of inner, magical “work” into your calculations. It would also begin (underlined) to give you a feeling for the magical support that upholds you both, and your lives — the support that Ruburt can count upon, and that can bring about the solution to his physical difficulties. Here, again, the vital word is ease or effortlessness. If you want to (long pause) feed a dog in the physical world — and he is on the other side of the door — you must open it. In the inner world you or the dog can walk through the door without effort, because desire is action. Desire is action.

Ruburt feels hopeless at times because the assumptions of the rational approach often lead in that direction, and because he has not been certain enough of himself in those other areas to get the kind of long-lasting results he wants. This applies to both of your attitudes at times.

Of course, an entire reorientation (with emphasis) is instead implied, and that entire reorientation will effortlessly bring about a new relationship of Ruburt with his body, with his life, and with the adventure the two of you have embarked upon. He will simply automatically get better, because the framework will allow him to do so.

A few mundane but helpful notes. He must of course be allowed some uninterrupted writing time. Neither of you understand your attitudes toward the bedroom. Both of you avoid making love in it. It is the one room that is not (pause) a part of your overall activities, of course. It seems isolated from your lives. You do not fix it up, for example. This is partially the result of old ideas, where sleep is a separate, isolated part of life, or of the personality.

You enjoy the living room for a nap because of its sensual reaches. Your metabolisms are different, quite naturally, and under the usual situations, given your lunch hour, Ruburt needs a good meal, sometimes certainly between five and six at the latest. Otherwise he experiences a natural physical irritation that is complicated then by other issues. You need your painting time, as you have discovered. He enjoys the twilight hour in his writing room, and though the seasons have something to do with that, still it is a good idea when possible. Your own reassurances are very helpful — and remember that they operate on other than physical terms.

“I dreamed that I was in the kitchen of the hill house, in Elmira, crouched down just inside the room’s glass storm door, which was closed. The kitchen’s inside wooden door was wide open, just to my left. Gus, the friendly old Shetland sheepdog who belonged to our neighbors across the street, came up to the storm door, looking for the handful of dry food I give him each morning when I scatter birdseed in the driveway. Gus was on the other side of the door, on the screened-in back porch, as he should be — only then I saw to my amazement that he was starting to walk through the glass panel in his eagerness to get to the food. I felt his head pushing effortlessly through the glass, and exclaimed about this to Jane, who sat at her usual place at the breakfast table just in back of me. I was really surprised. I had my hands on Gus’s head as he sought to enter the kitchen through the glass.

“I gently pushed against Gus’s head, and he began to back out through the glass. With a sudden inspiration I kept my hands on his head until they went through the glass with him as he withdrew. Then, in order to obtain some physical proof that this was really happening, with my right hand I began to ‘carve’ a squarish hole a few inches across in the glass where Gus’s head had been. I made the opening as the glass began to ‘congeal’. The hole’s sides were smoothly rounded and posed no problem as far as sharp edges went. And I ended up with the proof I wanted — an irregular hole that I had formed in the glass with my fingers. The dream glass was about one-quarter-inch thick — double, say, its ‘real’ thickness.

“After the Gus part of the dream, I saw through the glass door a man standing quite at military attention. He was older, graying, impeccably dressed in the dark blue uniform of an officer of the Navy. He was handsome and tall and slim. He looked something like the blue male I’m painting from a recent dream, although that one is in civilian clothes. There’s a resemblance between the two, but I’m not particularly claiming that the officer is the civilian. I only want to note that this would make the second instance recently in which I might have had the same character appear in separate dreams.

“The Navy man never came through the door like Gus had, though, nor did he speak to me or move. He simply stood at attention on the porch, symbolizing I don’t know what. He was an officer of considerable rank, with a number of stripes on his cuffs. Perhaps the equivalent of an army colonel.

“This is another terrific dream, continuing the one in the last session, in which Rob was constructing an image of the magical self — seeing it as a kind of Captain Marvel character. In this dream, though, he uses the magic himself, making it far more accessible.

Jane did such a fine job interpreting the dream (in my estimation!) that I didn’t bug her for more details. Later, however, I wished that I’d asked her a few questions. I think she’s quite right about the naval officer being a symbol for the more conventional, or rigid, rational self. I would have liked my wife’s comments on my brother Linden being in the dream. He’s a year younger than I am, and lives with his family down in Pennsylvania. He’s become quite religiously oriented, as is his right. I think that as I joyfully talked about my magical exploration in the dream, I was telling him something like: “Hey, there’s more than one way to explore the self, to be religious!” And I think that Linden and I were in correspondence in the dream state, and that in some way he got the message. …