“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt suddenly found himself then exploring very strange grounds indeed—and without the earlier sustaining hope. For all the recognized systems were wanting. He did not have to examine each one minutely, for his abilities, after some familiarization, left him with the knowledge of their merits. The stated discernible hypotheses of the various systems are one thing—but their invisible root assumptions are something else. Ruburt tried to put his understanding to practical use in terms of daily life, your relationship, work, finances, his classes, yet he found himself with definite physical hassles. You have encountered them through your relationship with him. In certain areas you both have blazed ahead. Those deeply seated, invisible, cultural assumptions still operated, however. Some of them you both dismissed for the very simple reason that they never temperamentally suited you to begin with. Others you dismissed because you grew in wisdom.

The codicils will offer new hypotheses upon which private life can be based, and in this they are highly important. It is almost impossible for you, individually or together, to look back and see those beliefs you have dispensed with that were limiting, but the framework still lingered. These are ideas, then, that Ruburt must get through his head. It was necessary in the old frame of reference, that he believe his body could not work properly. It was a method of operation that allowed him to go ahead with what he felt was reasonable caution. While it limited his inner and outer potential to some degree, he still felt overall that he was going ahead as fast as he dared to.

In your system insanity means uncontrolled behavior largely, so he began putting more and more control upon his physical actions, so that no one could say his work was the result of instability. He tried not to appear nervous, but in control, while he was temperamentally and physically fast.

(Pause at 10:40.) Put together beliefs in a hostile world and an untrustworthy self, and you end up in difficulty if you are working with other concepts that tell you that spontaneity is good and that the self is to be trusted. For in the old framework those ideas make no sense. If you do not challenge them then you never come to the point of conflict. You do not even know that you have been taught to fear your own being. It never occurs to you to trust it! You go from expert to expert in whatever field of difficulty arises, and you have far more problems than you two have. Still, things seem to mesh together, for everything is the same color gray.

Ruburt felt that he needed protection. He also felt he had to discipline himself because he could not trust himself, and his symptoms served, again, to keep him at his work. Your society puts great stress upon the belief that there is a division between inner and outer, physical and mental activity. It is healthy to be athletic, unhealthy to sit at your desk. Your civilization believes that the body is a mechanical organism alone. If you use it, it works. If you sit as your desk it will become stiff. So the beliefs go. Ruburt was also tinged by those concepts, so if he had to make a choice, he chose the writer’s cramp.

The body is a miraculous organism, changing in every moment. He believes that if it is not used “properly” it will not work correctly.

This is also based on cultural-sexual beliefs. He is afraid that you will not love him if he does not take the traditional woman role, and that if he does not he has no right to expect such gallantry. Both of you, however, were highly suspicious of sexuality in connection with your work, and you, Joseph, did feel it a trap, which is why you married late. Ruburt tried to hide what he thought of as characteristics that would frighten you—but the need itself was only camouflaged.

(11:02.) When you begin examining the strands of beliefs, you are working with your own experience. You can make marvelous strides in one direction, and still be held back in others by webs that didn’t show up before, because you were not pressing against them.

(11:09.) You can decide that you like to work alone—that you do not want to do tours—not because the world is hostile, but simply because that is your way. When the phone rings it is the hostile world out there, so it seems. That was what your father (to me) thought when his phone rang.

Now—a closing remark.... Your organizational structures are based of course on cultural beliefs. I will not go into them now as they apply to organizations—but we do not need that structure. There are inner communications far more potent, and we are working with those.