“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.

The dancing then each time is a positive issue, and acts to weaken the other beliefs, and stands as a contrast. It has been very important that that arena was left clear to some extent.

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

If you act upon a belief in freedom and exert it, then it will automatically show you by contrast that the prior belief in lack of freedom was not in basic terms realistic. The prior belief will be chipped away to that extent. At the same time you must of course work at understanding the prior belief. But at the same time you must make efforts to act according to the new one that you want.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He has felt a love for wherever you lived, and an abiding love for you, but also some conflicts involving the housewifely chores and the writing. You help often, and have always done so, but he felt that because of the male-female relationship any help you gave was something he should be thankful for, that you were doing it out of the extra goodness of your heart—that he should not have to be grateful.

(11:30.) Give us time. A strong impeding belief is the one that the body could not any longer perform no matter what he did, and this largely was the result of a concentration upon negative aspects.

That is why any physical achievements are important. You are correct, however. The badminton was dropped because it succeeded so well—but also because Ruburt was not able then to face the dilemma between the accelerated motion in the game and the slow motion otherwise.

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.

Before, he was even unaware of what he was blocking out—the desire to move, to wash a window, to go outdoors.

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.