“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After supper tonight Jane became aware of a noticeable straightening of her right leg—the shortest one —so that it appeared to equal her left leg. I measured the angle of change, of opening up, as we talked and saw a good increase. Over the last two days she’s stood taller walking, so this change had been in the works... Her right side generally has been improving from head to toe also. She has walked faster at times, and there has been improvement in the musculature definition of her knees.

Since you are obviously able to enjoy physical activity at times, you chose to remain alone rather than “play with the others.” As you matured you each to some degree carried beliefs that physical activity and subjective activity were somehow, and to varying degrees, opposed to the other—one being accepted by society, and the other frowned upon.

(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.

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.

(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.

(By way of contrast, I want to add here that this week Jane has been notified by Prentice-Hall of their most enthusiastic reception of her children’s book, Emir. Not only that, it appears that Prentice-Hall may have found at the same time the ideal illustrator for the work; black-and-white copies of sample illustrations have been sent to Jane, done by the female artist, with Tam’s assurances that the color is brilliant.

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.

At the same time you think that Ruburt is at least spontaneous in his art, while it seems to you that you are not spontaneous enough in that area.

Now, I want to stress that you must not emphasize your feelings that you are at odds with the world. To some extent or another each person feels at odds with the cultural environment, or worse, with their most intimate companions. You cannot expect to be involved in creative activity of an important sort, and at the same time see through the eyes of others.

The Gallaghers trust spontaneity only when it is expressed through physical motion. To some extent, again, Ruburt trusted it only when it was expressed through subjective motion. I suggested that you take walks, Joseph, some time ago, simply to rearouse your natural love of that activity.

The 1973 book would be a help for you also, if you find the time to look it over. I bid you then a hearty good evening.