“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt’s lapses have become quite noticeable to him, in contrast with the renewed air of freedom that he has indeed felt lately. He has also, however, begun to project, in small ways, in a quite positive manner, and felt impulses that before he denied.

The arms have been exercised in new ways. He has felt like performing some physical activities—getting the meal today. (Jane’s first in many many months.) The impulse automatically led him to perform physical acts that before he simply would not have done, so desire and impulse mobilize the body.

I have mentioned this before, but your environment is a symbol of your inner life and beliefs; one appears physical to you while the inner life does not. The physical body responds to stimulus from outside and from within. Ruburt’s newer activity enlarges the physical stimulation possible—the different view of your house and grounds, for example; or preparing one meal automatically reminds him of others that he will want to prepare.

He takes new interest in what food is in your cupboard or refrigerator. The interest propels him to look. Today through such activities he found himself, if in a simple fashion, taking a few steps without his table to get where he wanted to go. I am going into this material because it shows how desire works in any area. His thoughts were on what he wanted to do, though he very definitely had to consider the means, the getting about.

(10:15.) To him, it seems like the kitchen is suddenly a room, because he has opened a room up in his mind. You cannot exactly say that each object is a symbol of a belief that specifically, and yet any alterations that you willfully make in your behavior with the objects of your intimate environment represent alterations of beliefs. There is a constant give-and-take between the two. In mundane terms each piece of furniture is a symbol—you have conscious feelings about it. When you change a room around you are altering beliefs in an observable way.

Excellent health is to be sought, it would certainly seem. Men have committed crimes in misguided searches for an ideal. Great acts of heroism have also resulted, however, and men, it seems, have spent themselves in following an ideal that they hoped to actualize for the rest of mankind. Why does the body not protest if men have nearly starved, or become the scorn of their fellows, or whatever? The answer is that as beneficial, as desirable, as good health is, and the performance of an excellent body, man’s pursuit of other kinds of accomplishment, his equally strong desire for knowledge, and his insatiable curiosity, his pursuit of the ideal, often lead him into pathways that result in the body’s difficulties.

You had a period of acceptance under your belt, in comics, that you left. Ruburt did not. (An important point to remember.) He was determined to go his own way. His being demanded expression through the use of its abilities, and despite his need to be accepted by others he began to exaggerate the threat of their disapproval into scorn. When he began to sell his work, he felt to some degree, now, dependent upon the acceptance of the others in the world—for if they did not accept him at all they would not buy his books. Your own feelings about the world did not help in that regard.

The two of you exaggerated your position. You saw yourselves in opposition to the world. Ruburt was afraid his need for the world’s acceptance might lead him out into it again, where he would necessarily meet scorn, for he thought in absolutes.

It is important that he used to promise himself that he would go on tours or television if he became well. This was actually a threat he held over his own head. You must both realize that he can indeed recover completely—and you must both want him to. Do not forget Framework 2. Ruburt need not go abroad in the world to promote our ideas, nor have I ever suggested it. The ideas are best promoted through these sessions, and books—and not by hasty encounters on television, where answers must be simplified and ideas diluted, but in the reasoned writings that build in their own way, tell Ruburt, resting upon the great framework of the intuitions’ knowledge. And remind him that spontaneity knows it own order.

He is afraid, of course, that if he “gives into” impulses other than writing for a day or so that he is lax, yet the exercise and relaxation of the body refreshes the soul and allows the intuitions their clear vision. If he can stand it, I would like him to take until Monday to follow his impulses, whether or not writing is involved. Then, as of Monday, he can begin to correlate the new physical activity with his writing, gently, by settling upon three hours a day of the basic “time put in”—but with the stress upon creativity, ideas, and free creative play that may or may not include Seven on any given day.

Ruburt’s way of forgetting past books is a natural and good one for him. It conflicts with your natural way. The two ways can complement each other if you understand this, as you are beginning to. In your society, with your ideas, you have paved a way for yourselves. The books sustain you financially. People do accept you, and in a way that is quite important to their pocketbooks, and in times that are not financially good. Forget the taxes. If they seem unfair to you, they are unfair to many—you are not being singled out in that regard.

The eyeglass dream portion: the old black frames of the glasses represented old beliefs. They were dropped into the water, the realm of Ruburt’s fears, by a young man who represented an earlier self who thought success was a male prerogative. The glasses came up cleansed, but together again, and the frames were updated—so that Ruburt’s fears, encountered as he is doing of late, actually allow him to see better and clear his vision. For they dissolve, and vision is restored.