“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

And we will have a quiet session, after our last extravaganza. There are several points I would like to make. We have a lot of work still cut out for us, but you will find that it will be handled very easily—almost automatically, requiring little notes but ordinary transcription.

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.

You would wear a constant smile, and your blooming cheeks would often deny the heart’s hard-earned knowledge.

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.

Often your medical beliefs as a culture stabilize conditions that, left alone, would right themselves. As you know, this can apply for example to children being given eyeglasses. In the situation in which you find yourselves, however, eyeglasses become a more practical alternative because you do not possess the proper mental methods to offset the current belief system.

The mind may want to react. The individual may realize that his or her pace has been too fast, and so natural feelings bring about a lethargy of body, or a slight fever, or an indisposition—all quite natural, resilient activities. I do not want this ever to be interpreted to mean, a priori, and in conventional terms, that “suffering is good for the soul.” A reliance and faith in the natural self, however, would be large enough to accept certain indispositions without fear, panic, or doubt. With the best of intent most public health announcements shout the symptoms of critical diseases to the skies, so that the smallest of indispositions becomes the trigger for personal fear on the part of millions. Such announcements actually teach people to fear what might be happening within the body. There is a stress upon disease rather than health.

(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.

At the same time, you could not enjoy such enforced idleness—far be it from that—so the period was highly unpleasant. This was to help you save face: you didn’t take time out because you wanted to, but because you were so miserable that you could not work—and then yelled out in outrage that the body so betrayed you. The body’s resiliency gave you the breathing space that you needed, and would not take consciously. It was responsive to your own desires and needs, where you consciously were not.

A small note: Ruburt’s teeth would have been gone entirely 5 or 6 years ago had he gone to a dentist, if that is any consolation.

I said that the body’s resiliency is far more important than any other consideration. You live in a cultural world. I cannot make decisions for you, based upon your social mores. Ruburt can save the majority of his teeth. Now in certain terms that would be considerable—that is, an achievement. In certain times people lost their teeth, when they did, as Ruburt has, and in a natural fashion. They simply dropped out of your head. The unlucky ones had to have them pulled, by the most torturous of processes. Lucky ones like Ruburt went on chomping merrily with the teeth that were kept, and with the gums between that became quite adequate for the necessary procedures.

Ruburt is not going to be satisfied with such a state, however, nor would you, for in your society it does not work that way. You are concerned with cosmetics. Ideally, Ruburt can regenerate the gums overnight. Practically, the gums are being regenerated, as the rest of his body definitely is. If he does not have his teeth out, he will probably lose two more that are very loose—but not for one or two years. By that time the rest of the teeth will be solid enough to stay in his head, and be operative. One tooth is in the back and probably would not bother him, since no one can see it anyhow. The other would be noticeable. That is your answer—

(10:30.) Now: his body is making an excellent readjustment, as it becomes more and more flexible. I tell you that the recovery is more or less assured—as long as he does not backtrack in beliefs. When he learns he learns, however, so I do not expect backtracking. It might seem that all of this should happen without any soreness, that he should simply feel better and better, but such an attitude would also attempt to deny the body’s resiliency, and to short-circuit it.

In the past you would have been ashamed, jointly, to meet this visitor. Ruburt’s satisfaction with his book, and your reinforcement of its value, put the symptoms in the background.