“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The word combines all of his goals—physical and creative—into one clear focus in which there is no ambiguity. In a way then the word, with its intent and meaning, has tremendous power, to which the body is responding. Responsive: that word does not imply retreat. It also implies the ability to respond. The energy to act. The joints have all begun to move better. In some cases now this means, relatively speaking, slight enough motion, but highly important.

Suggestions such as I have given you are meaningless if any improvement is faced by an attitude that says “Such a minute improvement is meaningless,” or “This has happened before, and gone nowhere”—and so I wanted those attitudes completely routed out. I also would greatly like the two of you to remember your own considerable natural creativity, innovative ideas, and usual independence of thought (all amused)—those are your assets. They should be applied with the idea of helping Ruburt to improve.

Again, his condition does represent the one area where both of you have felt cowed, often hopeless, and as if your abilities worked in all directions but that one. The important point is, that that area was the one area in which you did not use those abilities—nor should either of you spend time bemoaning what has happened, or dwelling upon “what people can do to themselves.” This is not only waste of time, but it adversely affects your creativity, and that frame of mind will never generate solutions, but only further difficulties in any area (emphatically).

Some men are fools. Some men are murderers. Some people do not give a whit for your privacy or your work. Some people do not understand artists, or any creative endeavor. None of these remarks apply to all people, however, or even to a majority of people. You can, however, collect information and statistics applying to any one group, and keep collecting it until you find that you do live in a reality in which all men certainly seem to be fools, or murderers, or hostile to creative people.

Constantly applied tension leads to any and all physical problems. In the face of the circumstances you did well—avoiding drugs, for example. In many cases, when people make the necessary decisions that would otherwise restore their bodies, medical drugs have so muddied body orientation that the affair is further complicated. If you continue as you are going, the overall body responsiveness will certainly continue. But do remember what I have said about applying your individual and joint feeling of creativity and inventiveness in those directions.

As Ruburt’s body becomes more responsive, it means also that he is becoming more responsive not just physically but in all areas. He thinks he feels uncomfortable with other people on such occasions because he is physically uncomfortable, sitting for long periods, or because he feels in an inferior physical condition. Instead, of course, he felt in such a position before the symptoms showed—as each of you felt, and were convinced in black-and-white fashion, that creative people were misunderstood, held in inferior position in the world, and were generally considered oddballs.

Ruburt’s own abilities he considered represented even the furthest reaches of the creative realm, therefore putting him in twice as inferior a position. In the light of your beliefs, the better you considered your own works, the worse your position in society, and your opinion of your fellow men: the better the creator, the worse his social position, the greater the ridicule.

It is dangerous to use generalities. You are not popular novelists. Popular novelists are also individuals, with a certain amount of creative talent. Many of them feel almost the prisoner of abilities that will only extend so far, and no further. The mass attention and the money, that at times you either envied them or scorned them for, is often a badge to them of their own inadequacies—a compensation that is held a curse, so do not deal in generalities of that kind.

I am more concerned that the ideas of responsiveness be followed now, and that you apply your feelings of creativity to the situation. When Ruburt does not feel ashamed to meet guests, it will seem to him that this is because he is so physically improved. Actually the improvements follow and are the physical materialization of his responsiveness to himself, and to the natural world.