“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If you believe, however, that you must have one at the expense of the other, then you will always face a dilemma between exterior and subjective activity. Your friends the Gallaghers inhibit their subjective natures strongly, both of them (as I was speculating about the other day). They are indeed afraid of aging, and so press onward in more and more exterior activity, because they fear that age will show itself there first. They forget the nature of “youthful thoughts.” They believe there is a polarity, and they have chosen the other side.

When you were both children, to some degree each of you felt that you were different because of your intense subjective activity—and to some extent, and different for both of you—you felt that you had to “fight for” the freedom to pursue subjective reality.

When you were both working outside with jobs, out in the community, going to bars and dancing, seeing neighbors often and having parties, you disapproved of yourselves because you were not sufficiently subjective, isolated, et cetera.

(10:28. “Well, once again we find ourselves at odds with society,” I said to Jane as we talked. “This time it’s over exercise and related ideas. I don’t know whether to get mad at our friends, or ourselves, or both.” Actually I felt pretty resentful about the whole situation. I guess; it seemed that Jane and I were incredibly dense about understanding what had been going on for the past decade. I remarked about the opinions of others when they read our deleted material after our deaths, for instance, whereupon Jane said that more than once she’d had the idea of destroying all our personal material when we were older.

These ideas, with the last session, have to do with Ruburt’s partitioning of his spontaneity, for he also felt that you had to choose one way or the other, and that to protect your subjective freedom you had to inhibit the externally oriented spontaneity that was sanctioned by most of the society, because you could not do both. This is, again—and to some extent—on both your parts, black-and-white thinking.

Here, as opposed to the apartment, where the life-styles were seemingly in a more transitory situation, you have both again dramatized yourselves to some degree as outsiders in a negative fashion, disapprovingly seeing yourselves in relationship to your neighbors, but not constructively. You could instead have stressed your positive and constructive differences, for your move to the neighborhood, again, to some extent—excuse the constant qualifying—your move has helped the neighbors see themselves in a different light.

Give us a moment.... You can see how Ruburt’s body responds when he suspends self-disapproval, and when he allies himself with his nature, and when you both suspend your sense of hopelessness in that area. If you continue as you are, you can indeed expect quite startling improvements—but you are not to compare, either of you, Ruburt’s condition with the Gallaghers’ skiing, anymore than they could compare their attempts at subjective journeying with Ruburt’s inner soaring. Avoid absolutes.

You have both moved through many periods of understanding, where others might have stopped, and the going-ahead always involves new challenges. Your friend Bill Gallagher’s operation represented a triumph on his part, for he regained his health in one important area—an achievement of worth. But it also represented a failure of a kind, a stopping-point at a certain level of development.