“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now: While Ruburt is not a child he operates emotionally with a child’s simplicity, and is at his best in direct personal encounter with you or with his friends, for example. With the same directness he does not want anything to do with people he dislikes, for whatever reason.

He was so direct emotionally that he idealized what he thought of as your relative detachment. This of course is old. At one time he felt his emotional spontaneity was indeed admired by you and encouraged, and he blossomed. Then he felt it threatened you—that it would form a barrier between you. He felt that you thought he wanted more than you could give—or wanted to give, practically speaking.

He believed that emotional freedom would be construed as chaos, that while you said be spontaneous, you meant “Be spontaneous when it is convenient.” Beside the personality differences, however, work was also involved. Spontaneous love-making for example would cut into the work schedule that both of you had evolved.

He felt it unfair to keep at you for emotional expression of love through verbalization and touch when it was not natural to you. In self-protection he tried to become the same way, to inhibit his sexuality because of what he thought of as your temperamental differences, and also because of the work schedule interruptions.

You are “above” some of his hassles, but familiar with them, so you can help by offering encouragement precisely when he is down. If his “downness” depresses you, as is natural, imagine how much more it depresses him, and try then to find your own footing.

Strangely enough, in encouraging his spontaneity you are encouraging your own, because often he acts for both of you. It is futile to say that life should not involve challenges. You have accepted them. They are accepted to be solved. You are seeing what happens when spontaneity becomes hampered through beliefs, and in your early life you believed you must hamper it in yourself. You are seeing what happened to your brothers. You are seeing what happened to your father.

Ruburt is learning to understand the nature of the mind in a way he could not understand it second-handed, playing games, and in condensed form you are learning about the human condition. What you said today is true: You must learn to understand the creativity and responsibility of consciousness. Yet you yourself often said in the past that suggestion could not be that important. Suggestion causes your reality. The suggestions you give are given as a result of your beliefs.

Suggestions can change beliefs, for beliefs are only accepted habitual suggestions. When you use so-called positive suggestions you must implement them through action, but gently. You have each been structuring your experience largely through Ruburt’s symptoms—both of you, so that when Ruburt might momentarily feel free you would remind him of his limitations, and when you might forget them Ruburt would remind you.

Now. I want Ruburt to keep a pendulum by the bed. In the morning suggestions given with the pendulum, and both of you participating. He is not to feel ashamed of his body in your eyes, regardless of its condition. Again, in one night I can only give you so much, but he grew afraid, and you helped him today to combat that fear: He was frightened that the body could not change, and your belief that it could was of great help.