“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Some of this has to do with current mass beliefs, based on the idea of the mechanics of the body being more important than the thoughts behind the body’s working. You have been told that sitting down for hours is unhealthy, that stiffness results, and so forth. To some extent Ruburt believes it, and believes that the body must suffer if it sits for long periods, and so forth. The body is quite equipped on its own to remain flexible, and left alone will perform a variety of small motions while sitting, for example, to insure its flexibility. Ruburt believes now that it is wrong not to go out each day. Certainly I have suggested in the past that he go out, but in line with the circumstances at the time, and the condition to which his beliefs had led him.

(10:03.) You were quite correct in your assessment of Monday night—about Ruburt being determined to use his abilities; and also in the balance that is being more or less maintained. There are however definite points of both additional energy, and therefore insights available at different times. There are too many reasons to be given in this session, but they apply generally to each individual, having to do with the nature of the psyche’s “initial” entry into your system. I am hinting here of connections with astrology, though certainly not with the astrology currently known.

For Ruburt, spring and fall are periods when all of his energy rouses at a highly creative level, and insights are particularly valuable at such times. The period before an individual’s birth is enacted again symbolically, but in new ways, each year. The seeking toward birth is a spiritual stimuli that is then re-enacted, but in new creative ways: so that Ruburt in winter, particularly in late winter, is on the one hand working toward new births of energy and creativity; and on the other is aware of the very need for such new birth, that would be implied in a before-birth situation.

Your temperaments are different, yet in your way at a somewhat later area, you experience the same kind of phenomena in a yearly cycle. In winter, whatever attitudes Ruburt has are intensified, emphasized, worked with, but it is not a period conducive of change or fluidity.

According to the ideas of course this can be highly advantageous, unfortunate, or fall any place between. Give us time.... Each personality would definitely translate all of this in its own way. I cannot emphasize that enough. Ruburt, however, equates winter, to some extent, with being unborn, however. Naturally, high winds or snowstorms used to exhilarate him and act as stimuli, but overall his physical being always exhibited its greatest health, flexibility and exuberance in the other seasons. With the physical condition to some extent the tendencies in winter were overemphasized. He does not naturally feel as great a rapport, then, as he does in the other seasons.

He has been telling himself that he must go out in the face of some other tendencies, then, that ordinarily, in a good state of flexibility, would be relatively unnoticed. That is not a particularly important point, but given here simply to give you an idea of other issues that operate, having to do with a personality’s natural leanings toward certain seasonal conditions.

Give us a moment.... I am not speaking, you understand, of any kind of predetermination, but of temperamental tendencies used differently by each individual. In winter Ruburt bores in. It is even a type of hibernation, that could result in a restful period.

The purposes were there. The methods were left open. You were correct in assuming that Ruburt would not let the situation go beyond a certain point. I said that the methods were left open, and at one time you contemplated for yourself the same kind of situation, but turned aside from it after a taste of what it meant, or could mean.

You have been deeply concerned in other lives also with the human condition, and worked in many areas. One of the reasons you chose not to have children was to devote yourselves to that end now. For your particular purposes you also needed to be free of many strong emotional attachments—not because such attachments are not good, but because for you and your purposes they would blur the issues.

The whole point however was to transcend the method itself, but the method could not be pretended. When this is clearly understood then you and he will see that the method is only half experienced, for the method itself includes triumph over the conditions. If this is not understood then the method seems purposeless to a large degree.

The method also, in an odd way, allows others to relate to Ruburt. When, as he will, he recovers his flexibility, then he is talking as someone who has overcome, and had something to overcome. It is easy to say that he has maligned his body, but the entire personality is body and mind and all, and the body itself has learned some comprehensions and joys also, having to do with sense appreciation, that some people never physically, now, experience. The other half of the method therefore lies in dropping it, and this was built in from the beginning.

Your part of the purpose of course was to witness Ruburt’s condition, and therefore give you an emotional realization of the nature of the nature of beliefs as they applied not only to the two of you, but to others. Ruburt’s vitality, then, despite the conditions, would also serve to remind you of the indomitable vitality of the race, and your part in trying to set forth ideas and directions that would be of benefit.

I have given enough for the night, but it is an important session. We will continue with the book, but when I have something to say to you personally, I will feel free to do so.