“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:37.) Give us a moment.... One or two out of every four or five sessions gets through to you, meaning both of you. Generally in your society, you grow up taught by many sources that self-disapproval is a virtue. Both religion and science, parents and schools, stress that idea, and it is one of the most important causes of mental alienation, spiritual and physical distress.

Behind all of my suggestions and attempts to help you lie realms of historical culture, or personal episodes, that go back to that main unfortunate habit of self-disapproval regarded as virtue. I do not see particularly a benefit to outlining the origin of the concepts throughout history, and you can for yourselves trace them in your personal lives. The intellect’s function seems largely that of a critic.

You are taught to question your motives, your behavior, your feelings, and everything but your beliefs. When you really believe disapproval to be a virtue, and you believe in virtue, then you obviously find yourselves in a position where the more you disapprove of yourself the better person you think you are—a contradiction of the most insidious nature, for how can you approve of a self you disapprove of?

In such a quandary all you can do is add disapproval to disapproval, in some twisted hope that somehow some trust or love of the self will ensue.

Other people will refuse such a situation, and accept one mar, or one mar after another—an organ after organ. Another person will lose job after job. Another person will never find a compatible mate. The symptom or symptoms will follow the area in which the person most strongly disapproves of himself—will hide, distort, or exaggerate those tendencies about which the person feels such disapproval.

Ruburt knew that spontaneity was the basis of his creativity, and of anyone else’s. To that extent you disapproved of it. You felt it could be easily overdone, as say Bill Macdonnel or Van Gogh. Ruburt feared that spontaneity had to be tempered, because spontaneity meant unbridled, rampant, uncontrolled impulse. That belief is a basic one in your society—your religions and your sciences. So in feeling it you were both after all quite conventional.

The effects added to the disapproval, for while one purpose was achieved, his stance and walking were affected. Lately he has realized that spontaneity cannot be treated in such a manner, and that he has given up too much. But your joint disapproval was still there. It makes you uncertain of your abilities, erodes your self-confidence, and prevents you from appreciating your accomplishments—for you feel you must in some way disapprove of them. It prevents you from seeing your individual selves as they are.

(11:05.) Recently I have helped you make some stand against that disapproval. The ommm exercises help, again, because they disengage you and put you in a free drive, relieving the body momentarily at least of stress, and reacquainting it with ease.

Ruburt rediscovered the rune book, hardly by accident. The ommm exercises, with his late understanding, relieved the body enough so that the excellent rune exercises began to work, on his mind as well as his body. He allowed his body, finally, to begin to demonstrate some action. This is because he suspended his self-disapproval for a while.

You did not trust your chair gift because of your own habit of disapproval. You dared to be spontaneous with Wanda. Whenever you suspend that disapproval body and mind automatically function better and together in a smoother fashion. Only your feelings and disapproval and the lack of confidence generated causes the hopelessness about Ruburt’s situation that frequently assails you both.

You learned to communicate your disapproval to each other far better as a rule than you communicated your approval. What Ruburt is doing now is excellent and should be continued. If continued it will pay more benefit than your present attitude allows you to imagine. The ommm exercises, or a version, should be followed by you also, Joseph.