“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Questions had begun to accumulate since last Wednesday’s session, of course, and I made notes on a few of them. I suppose they could be summarized in the one I wanted Seth to consider above the others. It stemmed from his material in the session for June 5, when he said that “letting go” could have its frightening aspects for Jane, especially when she relied on such actions to improve her physical abilities like walking. Since she hasn’t been walking much since we embarked on Seth’s new program on June 3, I wondered if her attempts to let go had resulted in some fear on her part. I wondered about whatever beliefs Jane might carry still, that much effort was required in order to accomplish anything worthwhile in Framework 1, even though we might agree that the help we needed must come from Framework 2.

In a sense, to “give up all effort” is almost blasphemous in the light of predominating beliefs to the contrary. Eastern religions are the only ones that even remotely try to approach such a principle, and they do so in highly distorted fashions. Western religion and science promote the ideas of competition, effort, the emphasis upon the will, divorced from the imagination, so that to “give up all effort” can be read as an abdication of responsibility, an indication of laziness and sloth; or in fundamental Christian terms, the devil finds work for idle hands.

The letting-go of effort should be also a mental and psychological stance applied not only to Ruburt’s physical dilemma, but to his—and your—relationships with the subjective and objective worlds. Again, such letting go will indeed always promote action, and get you off dead center, so to speak. This is not a statement of passivity in conventional terms, but a creative releasing of the basic personality from the restraints of hampering beliefs.

Now recently that phrase has been introduced into your suggestions. Because you are so used to the belief in exerting such effort, in the beginning, as I mentioned, some fear can be involved as you begin to let the effort go, while watching to see that you aren’t backsliding instead, or being irresponsible. This letting-go happens naturally just before the initiation of any creative endeavor.