“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You both comment often about Ruburt’s literal mind, forgetting that it is most knowledgeable as far as symbolic content is concerned. His interpretation of your dreams should make that apparent. So he spoke of his new chair and the Wanda incident and the piece of jewelry (from Frank) in one breath. Quite acute.

That fear led you to make, during your short drive, a quick and quite a desperate entreaty into Framework 2. Wanda had several errands, the bank merely one, and it was her lunch hour. She thought of making the bank trip after lunch—that is, after eating—and instead changed her mind so that you met. She never forgot the help you two gave her one night, when she was frightened, and that connects you to her in Framework 2.

(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.

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.

I have told you steadily that Ruburt has no disease. Diseases are simply groups of symptoms that you have categorized in certain orders to begin with. He approved of his mind. For many reasons given in earlier sessions, he related mentally. Nothing wrong in that. You both had exaggerated ideas, or distorted ones, about the nature of creativity, and about people who were creative, and you considered yourselves rightly as creative people.

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.