“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Incidentally, Andrija’s call came late Sunday morning as Jane and I were eating breakfast and reading the paper. Jane picked the phone up after the first ring. As the phone rang, I was tempted to say to her, “That’s going to be a very important call for you.” At once afterward I thought that such an event was quite unlikely on a Sunday morning. I told Jane about my “hunch” immediately after the call; hence, long before her very successful voicing of Seth, Sumari, etc. Later in the day. I was curious after the call to see how we’d react to the visit.

Now: it may seem to most people that an exuberant, always-vital, energetic, healthy body would indeed be one of the greatest gifts of all—a body that never worried or showed signs of any disorder, a body that went ahead on its own, so to speak, propelled by feelings of strength and vigor. This certainly sounds like a fine ideal. Yet I tell you that in such a body you would finally feel like a prisoner, for your moods and reflections, your feelings and your thoughts, would find no responsive mirror in your flesh.

These will be caused by your beliefs and your feelings, but they will not be necessarily negative at all, but a demonstration of the body’s responsiveness. It is not realistic to expect a life of unending, exuberant health, with no momentary lapses of any kind.

Ideally, the body would always right itself after such lapses from exuberant health—but even those lapses often exercise that resiliency. Maintaining that resiliency, then, is the important issue. Many such lapses are exaggerated because of your beliefs, so that they are experienced in a more drastic form than necessary. Generally drugs impede that resiliency.

(To me:)You are stubborn. Your own thoughts wore you out. You needed to let down, and you would not do it. You could not take a vacation, you felt. You worried about time and your painting and “Unknown” Reality, and you would not relax. You worried about other issues that I told you about—taxes and money. You not only worried about the present, but you dwelled upon the “past mistakes.” You remembered doing Ruburt’s Dialogues drawings, and Adventures diagrams, and those thoughts crowded your present. To some extent, it is quite valid to say—though you may not agree with me—that you might as well have had all that work to do now as well.

In the world as you know it, it is quite natural to feel sad, or even despondent at times. These are portions of the emotional reality that are native to your kind. These are not negative states on their own, any more than twilight is less natural than dawn. They are not even unpleasant states on their own. It is natural, then, to feel depressed at times. No one constant emotional state is meant to prevail. There are gradations and nuances of feeling and sensation that sweep through your own experience, the result of quite natural variations. Your overall beliefs, however, can be so exaggerated in a negative manner that finally some people accept as valid the most negative picture of the world.

Now: you can depress the body and the mind through certain drugs, destroying that great natural resiliency. A concentration upon negative thoughts and feelings to the exclusion of all else, will depress the mind and body as surely as any drugs.

Even in your culture you are presented with multitudinous fields of interest and stimuli. Those who consistently choose negative patterns program themselves in those areas, gradually alter the chemical balances within the body. You cannot separate health from philosophy. Each individual has his or her own idea of reality.

The muscles and ligaments have their own characteristics. The body must maintain its overall balance. As Ruburt definitely recovers, certain muscles not adequately used in the past must regain not only agility but strength, and begin to stretch to their natural capacity. They will be sore at times. This is not a negative pattern, however. The very soreness is a sign of the muscle’s reaction—its life.