“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You forget Ruburt’s literal-mindedness, and you overlook it. He can use it to advantage. His beliefs, for the reasons you are uncovering, led him to believe he was inferior in the physical arena, and so he withdrew from it.

Before he did not believe he could handle that consciously, so it is important. Not that you go camping or not go camping, but that you realize the freedoms that you have; use them, encourage any physical ideas of that nature that he has, and do not make him feel inadequate to try.

You do not understand the alterations in beliefs involved that even led him for example to think of that mobility, and how cleverly the idea of work and mobility were combined, or the attempt at correlation involved. The same applies to the karate body image, its significance escaping both of you largely, where Ruburt was seeing himself with a body image combining power, agility, and weight.

It is precisely the challenge of things like dancing when he is in poor shape, but coming through when others are watching, or a trailer trip, or riding a bicycle when it seems impossible, or climbing a tree, that has the imaginative literal qualities that inspires him to change beliefs, whether or not those issues in that way make sense to you.

In trying to show him his realistic condition in the face of such ideas you end up by making him believe also that they are unrealistic, stupid, and that he should not need challenges but only the simple joy of walking across the floor.

He went to an extreme (intently), cutting out physical distractions because he believed that he had to. He was afraid that he would go to the extreme in the other direction. Now he is ready to open up. His beliefs are changing. But in the context of that change, the challenge of extremes still appeals to him. It is this that you have not understood. For that matter neither has he.

The karate image for him is a good one, far more evocative, intuitive, and powerful than his idea say of doing exercises, for it combines, for him, intuitive understanding with physical strength and agility.

Number one also shows your own attitudes, for he is not continuing to lose weight. It stabilized. The karate image will now help him gain, and helps him correlate his ideas of creativity with a different kind of image than he has had before.

Your eating arrangement (in Apartment 5) occurred and in its way helped to stop the loss of weight. The dress was worn deliberately. He was ashamed to be seen in it, and yet it serves a beneficial purpose, for his own love of his body will automatically cause it to gain weight. His pride will do it for him. He was afraid it would make you feel worse. Yet the continuing cover-up physically denies the needed feedback that would be quite automatic as he looks into a mirror for example and knows well he needs to gain more weight.

We will be getting into the second question which is much more difficult and detailed. Take a break or rest your hand and get him a beer while I leave him in trance. Take your choice.

The times that Ruburt managed rather considerable improvements even in the face of strong negative beliefs, were times when he managed to convince himself against all objective evidence that there was nothing wrong with him physically but habitual stiffness. That belief minimized the seeming impediments, allowed greater physical freedom that in its turn by contrast began to lessen the preliminary negative beliefs. That was the summer of which we have spoken, and the conditions did not continue for the reasons given.

Give us time. His idea of work on one level is connected with the working day. His problem, the artificial dilemma that exists in the daylight hours as to how to spend the time, and the fear that ordinary distractions will take him from his work. The dilemma does not exist at night or very early in the morning.

He feels far freer and any work done before the ordinary day begins gives him a sense of physical freedom. Such a situation automatically provides no distractions and a resulting lack of stress. He is freer physically then to work at such times. Intuitively the connection between pleasurable creative activity and the mundane world of having to make money with it is to some extent broken.

When he gets up ahead of you he feels gleeful. He has put one over on you for a change, where usually he sees you as coming out ahead in that regard. He is also relieved that you do not see him immediately, and this alone lessons the stress, for he is afraid that his condition bleakens your morning.

He could quite happily accept your early rising but he felt that you poked fun at him when he spoke of working at night or rising early—again not understanding how he could utilize extremes.

It served a purpose, showing him what his body was capable of, and raises the question of why he was not using it. In all this I must tell you however that you both do still concentrate upon the negative element, and ignore the power of anticipation and its values in changing beliefs.

The procedure I suggested was simply meant as an intermediary, handy method that would allow him to realize he could handle the matter in other ways. The method of itself would also be illuminating enough in many areas to help release him from other beliefs. The effort required is considerable, in a way, yet the knowledge that he could make the effort would be important.