“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He is a senior executive. She is a woman with children grown, and they have a fine home in the country. They are, as Ruburt declared so emphatically, nice people, well-intended people.

Along the way, they discovered those original standards were wanting (hoarsely). They did what they thought they were supposed to do, but do not feel nearly the sense of accomplishment or pleasure with their lives that they once expected. Ruburt is fond of both of them, as you are, but he saw them in their actuality, as themselves and as representative of many people in general.

They actually represent the ways in which beliefs can dull native qualities of mind and heart alike, so that the intellect seems opaque, and emotional relationships are unduly tangled. Ruburt is working with the nature of impulses, and old ideas about impulses, spontaneity and discipline rose to mind, for the family situation of your brother and his wife almost typifies the kind of situation that Ruburt was determined to avoid. And he thought, what was the entire affair, really, for it seemed to lack any kind of discipline. It seemed to him, with the force of old beliefs, that Ida, Richard and the children were indeed driven willy-nilly by contradictory impulses, and that their lives lack any organizing inner purpose.

The boy (David, who has quit school) had an automobile accident. What was that but impulsiveness, unthinking behavior? Ruburt had used all kinds of discipline, you see, lest he fall back into the common ground from which it seemed most people came from.

(Pause.) You have always been a hero, and yet a mystery to your brother Dick, a source of pride and yet of embarrassment. He considers studying dreams feminine, and to paint pictures of them presents a second mystery (intently). His own buried intuitional abilities, however, have always acted as a bridge between you, so that he feels a close affinity that he does not understand. He feels some affinity to Ruburt for the same reason, but Ruburt also upsets him, because he disapproves of women who think, and is very frightened because Ida in later years has started to criticize some of their joint beliefs.

But Ruburt thought: “This is what most people are like, and if I give in to my impulses, will the days slide by me like that?”

Ruburt wrote a poem yesterday morning (Thursday), considering it afterward briefly, wondering whether it was really good enough to type as it was, throwing off in an odd moment a thought, a concept that would represent the highest revelation to Ida, if she could understand what it means.

Ida and Dick both believe to a far greater extent, again, than you two ever did, that the self is unsavory and dangerous. Ida was afraid to see the psychologist again, for fear that therapy would throw up evidence of this feared evil thing, and Dick is afraid of writing poetry again lest the intuitions upset his life. He used meditation as a tranquilizer to dull his senses and mind, and not for understanding himself. Ruburt’s impulses gave birth to his poetry, to his writing, and to the freedom of his intellect and the heavy-handed discipline has always been impeding.

Ruburt has been doing well, with your help.

Incidentally, Ruburt “should” get up at such times (as when Jane woke up feeling so uncomfortable in the early morning).