“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:05.) I do not want to duplicate material. At one time, however, you briefly curtailed physical activity for what you considered the sake of your subjective freedom. You quickly dismissed that idea after a taste of it. Ruburt accepted that idea, believing he must make a choice. All of this, you see, must be considered in the light of our last session, for it involves varying degrees of self-disapproval and polarities of thought, so that the contradictions occurred in your experience—though there were more, of course, in basic terms.

You believed that you should be outgoing, vigorous, somewhat competitive, and you believed you should be socially oriented, while at the same time you believed that those things conflicted in a basic way with other drives. You felt you should be introverted, have periods of isolation, time to sit and think, to write and paint, to look inward rather than outward. In periods of intense inner activity that were enjoyable and productive, you disapproved of yourselves because you were not at the same time socially oriented, vigorously involved in exercises, or physically oriented pursuits, and so you disapproved of yourselves.

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.

You felt you could not merge the separate groups of attributes because they were diametrically opposed in your minds. Instead, of course, there are gradations of behavior, and patterns or rhythms in your lives that would naturally flow one into the other, released from the artificial polarities. The polarities are artificial, but there is no doubt that in your society and times the exterior-tuned consciousness is the most paramount. It, of course, by its nature, is not given to introspection, so it does not question its stance as deeply. So some of this disapproval has to do with your own attitudes about the attitudes of others as they view your lives.

You find yourselves landowners somewhat. You see others shoveling their walks themselves. You disapprove of yourself for not doing so. You feel you could not do so—that you are not physically that vigorous (as I told Jane today). This is symbolic of course of your attitudes. For you feel that the life-styles are completely different, and polarized.

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.

You have fallen for the same conventionalized beliefs that they have, only you chose the subjective side. They were so afraid of subjective thought that they ran willy-nilly in the other direction, and they envy your choice—again, to some degree. In summer, you think you should do the lawn. You feel that conflicts with your subjective interests, and that the two are not compatible. You see Joe frantically mow his lawn. You are contemptuous—somewhat—and envious at the same time. The same applies to the snow, so you disapprove of yourself whether you have the grass or the snow taken care of—or whether you try to do it yourself.

Give us a moment.... Some of your inner feelings are difficult for me to express, because they are in so many layers that I am not sure of their relative importance. To some extent, again then, the sale of a book, a new sale, is somehow connected in your mind with disapproval of yourself, Joseph, in that Ruburt seems able to express what I think you interpret as competitiveness, that you feel you are not expressing—and you add that to your arsenal of disapproval. (Very good.)

At certain stages your experience relatively coincides—relatively—with events in the past, so that some material attains double strength. Generally, however, your hopes and faith in Ruburt’s recovery became somewhat eroded. Your feelings of hopelessness were the result, as given in the last session, but nowhere did you thoroughly work out in the past the problems of self-disapproval; or if one managed to attain a foothold, the other did not, so you could not properly reinforce each other creatively, and became quickly discouraged.

This summer, you compared your way of life with those polarized ideas, with the way of life of the construction men, for example. The disapproval causes you to exaggerate the differences, rather than glorify them as you should —though glorify may be too strong a word. Ruburt’s physical condition becomes a materialization of those concepts, exaggerated, so that he is not able to go forth in the world, believing the polarity so great, with him and subjective activity having the disadvantage.

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.

All Ruburt wants is normal motion. You saw the response in his leg this evening. The important neck and jaw areas are definitely releasing, and the eyes will swiftly begin to resume their normal activity—if you continue as you are. Your own physical vigor is there, and can express itself, comparatively speaking —comparatively speaking—with far greater ease once you rid yourself of those polarized concepts and the disapproval that goes with them.