“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

Ruburt felt it would be more difficult for him, so he applied the additional discipline. Only lately have you really made an effort to examine those habits. They have been deeply ingrained. Whenever you apply yourself in such ways, you collect data that seems to support your ideas, so that unless efforts are made to change, the picture becomes grossly exaggerated—and to that extent unrealistic.

(Seth’s material earlier this evening, about responsiveness to the world, in whatever form one chose, reminded me of an idea I’d mentioned to Jane last week. I’d dropped it because I became unsure of the reactions on both of our parts. The idea involved our concentration for just five minutes a day—say when we lay down for our naps—on sending out suggestions to the effect that we’d hear from people we wanted to hear from, either/or by letter or in person. Obviously the people would be well-enough known for us to have heard of them. But I’d been thinking that it might be a way to break our habits of retreat. I became concerned, though, about whether our beliefs had changed enough to make such contacts possible, or welcome to us if they did materialize.

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.