“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You show a certain picture of yourself to the world. You stress certain characteristics, and show them to others. There are habitual patterns of behavior that operate, as you more or less stabilize your picture of yourself in relationship with families and friends. Sometimes that picture is a fairly faithful representation, and sometimes people make artificial portraits of themselves, and instead of speaking for themselves to others, they let their artificial portraits do it for them.

Let us look at his painting. He digs into it, this present one, concentrates. Forgets how much he loves to paint, and considers all the problems involved in a new technique. And considers how he can never be as good as you in that regard. He uses effort. He forgets his ease, and the same thing applies to “trying to get better.”

Psychocybernetics (underlined) is a good handbook, very simplified, with some distortions, but its premise is quite correct: you do hypnotize yourself into such situations. I want to make a point that Ruburt can often interpret relaxation as depression, because the loss of tension can still be frightening. You have actually helped in that regard. The dreams show your activity in Framework 2 —and again, may I recommend on Ruburt’s part some sense of creativity in his physical situation? Even suggestions should be given playfully, not heavy-handedly. For his point-of-power exercises have him just playfully for five minutes pretend—knowing that it is a game—that he feels perfectly normal and relaxed. Let him consider impulses also playfully, not looking at each one as if it were as important as the ending of the world.