“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt in his own way recognizes the charge behind what you say. Sound to him does not have the same meaning, though he may dislike the noise. He interprets your remarks therefore as aimed against distractions in general, recognizing your symbolism, and this makes him uneasy because in his own life he has taken the steps he has to cut down distractions.

Ruburt’s set of beliefs for some time were so invisible, and he identified with them so completely, that it was extremely difficult for him to examine them in the light of the present and his now situation.

Now these are his interpretations, but whenever you rejected his spontaneous advances, for whatever reasons you may have had, this helped reinforce that idea. There was, my dear friend, little danger of Ruburt becoming pregnant, when spontaneous passionate moments on both of your parts were cut out.

You made love when it was safe to do so. Now this involved tricks on both of your parts, to which you both agreed. The conscious material was there. You simply ignored it. You made sure you had a good reason not to make love when Ruburt spontaneously wanted to, and the same applied to him.

In many areas then both of you controlled your spontaneity. For Ruburt this had greater dangers than it did for you because he is geared toward spontaneous action. Other issues would have subsidiary effects, all within the framework. For him the writing abilities had to be allowed freedom. The psychic initiation actually united them. The early novels, published, would have led to another kind of personal problem, since all involved were living. He would still have had to face the world, so to speak. To be free to write freely, he had also to make a certain financial success, or he would need a job.

When you talk about people being insane, and point out the negative aspects of the race, Ruburt becomes highly uncomfortable because to him this means he has to protect himself against them, and justifies his behavior. On the other hand he becomes angry and frightened because it is precisely to protect himself against such “people, activities, and events” that he has tried to isolate himself.

Now. In one respect Ruburt is quite correct: you believe it is safer to express your doubts and negative aspects then to express your enthusiasms or hopes.

If you did not know that Ruburt could indeed manage to dance, though not in the wildest fashion, then you would not believe it when “faced” with the reality of his behavior around the house. You would think he could not do it.

Now when Ruburt imaginatively saw the trailer, and so forth (on our Sunday drive last weekend) and experienced that mobility in imagination, your reaction was the same as the one used for my analogy above. In his way he was using an excellent procedure, and what you thought of as reminding him of the facts was instead inhibiting freedom.

You are to some degree, both of you, using the symptoms as excuses. Ruburt is afraid that if he can operate in a trailer, and he can, that you will find yourselves losing work time, running all over the country, and you are afraid of the same thing. Any project the two of you are attracted to but think will be distracting, you blame on the symptoms. Since this is never challenged you never know whether or not Ruburt can perform.

You say that when my book is finished you will move, yet each of you through the years has said “When this book is finished we will move.” Move or not, you must be consciously aware of your beliefs and deal with them on that level. Now. Ruburt’s coming back in here (Apartment 5) represented a willingness to face beliefs. To come out into the open, so to speak, with you and with the world.

Symbolic interpretations immediately became obvious, and yet brought out into the open, as in tonight’s episode. I do not want to duplicate material, but Ruburt’s seeing you working without symptoms was of great benefit. Your reaction then to the noise was upsetting, which is quite all right, because now your reactions there can be consciously assimilated. Your reaction is to yell about the condition, yet you do not move. His has been to say little and to withdraw. Though your particular interpretations of distractions may vary, to him the noise itself, for example, is not so charged. But quite rightly he recognizes the noise as your symbol for distraction.

Now. From the rich bed of creative imagination springs the physical facts that appear within your lives. Ruburt’s imaginative endeavor with the trailer for example represents the kind of activity that is far more productive than any attempt “to face” the terrible conditions that could result if the situation is not solved.

When he thinks in such terms he sees an old woman, crippled and alone, incapacitated, in a home, and the fear brings a feeling of powerlessness, not one of strength. The beliefs mentioned added up to beliefs on a physical level so that Ruburt believed that his arms and legs could not straighten out, that he could not physically walk well.

Finally it came to that, where earlier he believed he could reverse the process. Now he is at the point where he is beginning to believe he can indeed reverse the process. The point of power is in the present. You must believe it, regardless of what has happened in the past, in your terms. This applies most personally. Improvements can begin and continue in this present. The ideas in Ruburt’s paper tonight are important.

Practically, in the light of the man’s experience, such an activity would seem impossible. You have been looking, both of you, to see how bad Ruburt was, how much worse he would get, until each of you projected the situation into the future until he was nearly bedridden—all in a misguided attempt to get yourselves out of the situation.

Up until now Ruburt felt and believed that despite the unfortunate aspects you were willing to go along. He felt you were not willing on your own to face some issues on a conscious level, and as he grew more frightened he felt that you were willing to let him do this for both of you while you were accusing him because of the symptoms.

As probabilities operate in each moment of your life there are minute improvements in Ruburt’s condition, and minute backslidings; pulsations, really, of reactions. Now if you concentrate upon the improvements with this understanding that facts grow from that creativity, then you begin to structure your attention in the line of those improvements, minute as they appear. And they grow, sometimes slowly, or by leaps and bounds, and the backslidings begin to disappear, and become less and less apparent or meaningful.