“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.

That freedom is then, and has been, applied in other areas that are not so apparent, and has helped both his attitude and health.

The dancing was left open to some extent because it was not a daytime activity that conflicted with his other beliefs so directly.

As a result then of other beliefs Ruburt withdrew from the challenges of physical activity. Simply deciding on a conscious level to reenter that arena, in his present state, shows in itself a change of belief, for before he did not want to try, and considered it a threat to his work.

He feels inadequate enough in that regard. Give us a moment. You, who do not have the physical difficulty, should now make an effort to initiate such things on your own. Ruburt realizes that he must no longer structure his life through his symptoms. You must realize that also, for there your ideas of limitation simply prolong them.

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.

This, you see, is connected with the trailer idea, and I am telling you because you still do not understand the importance of belief and imagination combined. He has gone ahead despite, in this case, your negative interpretation, and seen himself under certain conditions traveling in a trailer, writing, granted, but in front of strangers in a bathing suit or shorts, and he does not want to look like a bony witch. So already in his mind he is gaining weight, seeing himself fairly agile—but he felt this was in spite of your attitudes, not with your enthusiasm or understanding.

He felt that in your world and interpretation his ideas were Pollyanna, but I tell you that is practical creativity—and it can wipe out many negative beliefs, more in a moment than you can realize.

When you imagine trips or any physical activity and carry them out, you are concentrating upon freedom, not limitations, and then you have those freedoms to build upon. Now with the tooth difficulty Ruburt did this, in his literal manner, while working with the preliminary beliefs at the same time.

Give us a moment. I mentioned and suggested his rising very early for several reasons, knowing full well a challenge and resistance would result. The morning stiffness has to do now with subsidiary beliefs and expectations, and also with the natural condition of the body in its present shape.

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.

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.

For some time until recently he was afraid, as mentioned, that his body could not recuperate. That is why any physical achievement or normal activity is to be encouraged. The belief behind all of this is simple, and you have it—that all of his energy, concentration, and attention had to be devoted to his work. Because he is so literal-minded this was his interpretation of it.

Now some of this is connected with ideas of sex in earlier years, adolescence. If a male writer or artist had to work to develop his abilities, then a woman had to work twice as hard. You also picked of course a woman you knew would not want children, but Ruburt felt a division between his biological nature and his art back then.

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.

Ruburt must assure himself that he can perform adequately physically, that this is physically possible, and then that he can do it while using his full abilities as a writer, as a creative person.

Now. The resistances are two. The most important one is that Ruburt must make a conscious effort not only to alter his habits but to handle what he thinks of now as distractions by conscious effort, the changing of a pattern, rather than by unconscious limitations on the body. So of course a dilemma is implied.

Beside this, when beginning such a venture, time must be allowed for the waking-sleep patterns to be adopted. The eating patterns also, and he will want to eat more. But such change represents at his level of behavior a definite attempt to substitute conscious alterations to seek the same ends.

It also provides Ruburt however with constant stress, as he becomes consciously aware of other distractions, in his terms—physical wishes to do things that come in conflict with his staying at his table.