“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If you believe that your own great energy can lead others astray, you are actually saying that others have no power of their own. Ruburt has been extremely cautious in the past, wanting to make sure, as mentioned, that he was not leading others down the proverbial garden path. He did not feel the same way about his poetry, which largely in its way states the same messages that our own books do.

The books are different, however, while the poetry carries the more clearly recognizable stamp of his accepted identity, so he was afraid that I would lead people astray unwittingly perhaps, through the energy and power of our communications. That worry persisted, regardless of what kind of status he assigned to me. The relationship, of course, is unusual: very few people have such issues to contend with. Ruburt discovered how basically easy it was to have our sessions. But also how basically easy it was for his, say, Cézanne and James books also, for creatively he moved very quickly.

(Long pause at 9:54.) Ideas of using considerable caution have been with him for that matter before the sessions began, when he recognized his own energy, the ease with which he could encounter people. As for example when he acted as a salesperson years ago, sometimes gathering small groups at the street corners in Florida. He learned to fear his own energy to some extent—or rather, he believed that he must be very cautious in its use. Those habits were there, again, before the sessions began, and they have their basis in the church’s concepts of the sinful nature of the basic self.

Most people operate at one largely exclusive state of consciousness. Even most creative work is done at the recognized threshold of the normal waking consciousness. Ruburt was presented with—or presented himself with—a situation in which large portions of his creative life appeared in books that were written in another state of consciousness entirely. Little wonder, then, that he felt he must alert all natural and normal controls.

(Long pause.) He felt it his duty to examine his psychic material with supercritical force, since it seemed to come from the other side of consciousness, so to speak, and since it presented such a different picture of all aspects of reality. (Pause.) His symptoms served other purposes as well, though, as has been given often. In a fashion they served as regulators that he felt at one time allowed him to live on an even course, tempering spontaneity or psychic exploration lest it progress too quickly for him to follow, yet also protecting him from other distractions so that he could continue his explorations.

(10:12.) In other words, he felt he needed a countering force for his own spontaneity. He received some ideas of that nature from you in the past. In a way the symptoms were almost a method of presentation that in another fashion completely paralleled your own notes (an excellent point). In that regard they were meant to show that he was as reasonable, orderly, critical and responsible as your notes certainly showed you to be. The symptoms have fluctuated, serving sometimes one purpose more than the other—but what you have overall is a belief in a kind of braking power with which to handle spontaneous activity.

You are in the process of changing your definitions of yourselves as creatures, and each person is in one way or another involved. The idea of the Sinful Self has served as a large portion of that definition for centuries, bringing with it innumerable difficulties, of course. As Ruburt frees himself from that idea, as he must and can, the need for such unnecessary cautionary behavior will dissipate by itself.

Since Ruburt’s work involved him most directly in an examination of the self and in the unknown reaches of the psyche, then his experiences led him into a conflict with the idea of the Sinful Self. One of the main points of his work, and mine, is the definition of the well-intentioned self, of course. Ruburt was to some extent afraid to accept that concept fully—therefore he has been unable to utilize it fully in his mistaken belief that he must maintain a largely critical stance.

He has had such glimmerings briefly in the past, but was not able to separate himself far enough from his physical situation to understand that issue clearly.

In personal terms, he feared that his father abandoned him for that reason, that his mother disliked him for that reason, for each person will interpret the belief in his or her own life according to circumstances.

(Again I was surprised, and groped for words as Seth sat quietly waiting. “Wait a minute.... Are you actually saying that he feels that his mother and father both thought of him as evil—that now he thinks he’s that evil?”)

He thought that he was such a bad person that he drove his parents apart, perhaps caused his mother’s illness, perhaps his grandmother’s death—for which his mother did indeed several times blame him—and that the classical idea of the Sinful Self was individually interpreted in that manner in Ruburt’s personal early life.

His mother told him he ruined everyone he touched. Those experiences were relatively unfortunate enough, but they were a part of the early life of someone who later finds themselves embarked upon in the study of the very nature of the self, so that they led him to believe that strong cautionary methods must be used. Period.

I am not implying that he was so fated to behave. The prosaic reasons for the beliefs, however, do lie in his private background and to that extent in experiences humiliating for an adult to recall. Instead, Ruburt tells himself he should be above such feelings, or that they simply should no longer apply. They are not destined to apply, but there is a give-and-take between the future and the past. Understanding those issues can further help Ruburt give up the entire construct.