“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

With that loss of identification storms for the first time became truly threatening, capricious, for man’s mind could not intellectually understand the intimate and yet vast connections that the intuitions and emotions had once comprehended. It was then, and in the terms of this discussion, that men felt a division between themselves and “the gods,” for it was then that man began to personify the elements of nature.

Once this was done, nature it seemed could be dealt with, could be cajoled, tricked, or reasoned with as circumstances warranted. If a large area was besieged by stormy weather of any kind, then obviously a god must have somehow disapproved of human action. It was vital that the person so disapproved of be cast out. If any doubt was present then another person would be cast out or sacrificed. Acts were scrutinized so that those offending to the gods could be clearly categorized so that men would not unknowingly offend. Tribal life became a series of ritualized activities. If certain patterns of behavior were followed and the weather was pleasant, then those patterns of behavior must be ones that were safe. If the weather turned disastrous, the people were in a quandary, reexamining the patterns of behavior, finding perhaps minute differences, suspicious variations, that seemed to occur just before the storm—so these became the new sins.

Again, the animal approves of himself, whether he is sick or well, slow or swift. The sick animal wants to get well. It does not disapprove of itself, however, or even think of itself as “a sick animal.” In those terms it might think of itself as an animal who was sick—a big difference—and even then no self-disapproval would be indicated.

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.

You have disapproved of yourself, thinking yourself not spontaneous, and so your belief has often hampered your natural spontaneity, so that you struggled for notes because you thought you must; that was the kind of person you thought you were.

To an important degree, each of you have believed that self-disapproval was indeed constructive or virtuous. You were not on the lookout against it, therefore.

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.