“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.

This happens in any relationship. You have said, I believe, something to the effect that the house or the money meant little in the light of. Ruburt’s condition: meaningless chatter in a way, since if you did not have the money or the house, that would not mean that Ruburt was necessarily in excellent physical condition.

He applied those methods of his own, but they differed from yours only in degree. You would not go so far. To a large extent, however, you agreed on retreat rather than response. To some extent now, you applied discipline in your work and lives to protect yourself against response to a world that you felt was insane, in direct conflict with artistic pursuits, and in which you felt quite alien —both of you, that is, as a unit.

Since you both held those attitudes and saw those beliefs everywhere reinforced, naturally enough in your experience, then in the overall it would be most miraculously unusual if one of you did not physically retreat. Your nature allowed you to try. You found it intolerable, and recovered. Because of Ruburt’s other characteristics personally, he tried it on for size, and found it fit with considerable chafing. But overall that way of life, to some extent has suited you both.

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.

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.

(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.

(After the session I told Jane that my concern wasn’t so much with meeting important people, as that their interest in what we do would imply some sort of acceptance or understanding on the parts of those who occupy dominant positions in society, the arts, or whatever. And I think we are well aware that many of the young people we do hear from will occupy those positions of power in tomorrow’s world. I see nothing amiss with us having some fun on our own in the meantime, though—provided we’re both willing, and understand the terms of the “games.”)