“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This of course gave you at that time a different orientation of consciousness. Man did not see himself pitted against the elements, but allied with them, whatever their mood or behavior. I have explained that kind of consciousness fairly well in portions of Psyche that Ruburt is reading. Man could exult in nature’s energy, power, and splendor, even in the midst of the most fierce storm —in which, indeed, his life might be in danger.

He felt himself to be a portion of the storm, however, and felt the storm as a vast magnification of his own emotional reality—even as he felt the body of the earth itself to be, beside itself, the magnification of his own emotional reality and that of others.

In your terms, with time, historically, he began to lose this identification, so that an emotional separation began to occur between man and the elements, between man and the other manifestations of nature. He still sensed nature’s grandeur—(louder:) but that grandeur was no longer his own, and he felt less and less a part of it. Nature became an exterior power, more of an adversary, even though man has a love for the earth, the fields, and the grain that they yielded.

Self-disapproval in that context became a virtue, for indeed survival depended, it seemed, upon constant self and tribal evaluation. None of this has anything to do with natural guilt, as described in Personal Reality. Now man does feel a certain amount of natural guilt when he loses his identification with nature, for that identification leads to intuitive connections with nature’s greater source.

I will give you some (stereotypes): Ruburt is stubborn. He never forgets a slight. Ruburt is fiercely loyal. Joseph deals in details. His mind is logical rather than intuitive. Ruburt is spontaneous. Joseph is not. All of these are labels, and quite relative. Ruburt is loyal to you. He was not loyal, in those terms, to Walter Zeh, or he would still be with him. Ruburt is spontaneous—but if he were all that spontaneous he would be walking better. You, Joseph, are spontaneous. You do not have to think before you cross the floor—where there Ruburt is aware of the slightest detail—the arrangement of his body or the furniture, the lay of the floor.

When you look for “what is wrong,” you are feeding self-disapproval. When you are looking for the reasons behind a condition, that is different. The two attitudes, while they may seem similar, are really quite opposite in their intent and effect. Ruburt recognized self-disapproval today (after her nap). He saw that the feeling itself was the culprit. He disapproved of himself because of his condition, or so he thought, and he has felt that way often. The self-disapproval causes the condition, however, and not the other way around. This got through to him.

His eye muscles are basically elastic, not weakened. The fact that they are responding in closeup reading is a case in point. Many eye difficulties have to do with body posture. I suggested hot towels for the knees—and said that this would help the eyes. I repeat that recommendation. The position of the knees is tied into the positioning of the head and neck areas. The heat, applied to the knees when the body is sitting and relaxed, releases the neck tension, and that helps bring the eyes into better balance.

The yawning is excellent, and also helps the entire head-neck area. Ruburt does not like to take his new teeth out. Taking them out at night, however, would give the jaws greater leeway for relaxation.

The pendulum will not work, of course, if your self-disapproval is paramount, for then you cannot trust your own answers. Ruburt should concentrate upon his ideas and creativity. I have said this so often, and yet I repeat: concentration upon a problem magnifies it.