“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It seems under those conditions that only pessimism can be an adequate response, so that any private or global condition of an adverse nature, left alone, will further deteriorate. Remember, along with these passages, material I gave recently on the uses of the rational mind, and its necessary dependence upon intelligence that it cannot itself directly perceive.

(Long pause at 8:53.) When it seems that left alone Ruburt’s condition will only worsen, you are following those old patterns of conditioned thought, projecting negative situations into the future, imagining the unfortunate outcome or outcomes, and acting as if you operated within a closed system. You are concentrating upon the problem in order to solve it, often scaring yourselves into further depressions.

Even these, however, act as automatic learning devices, and left alone they themselves trigger the necessary creative procedures that would begin corrective measures. When the belief in the Sinful Self is held, however, the very corrective measures themselves are often not trusted.

(Long pause at 9:37.) In Ruburt’s case the core belief, again, in the Sinful Self was hard to differentiate, because it could appear in many other guises. It dropped its most obvious religious coloration for some time, and could simply appear as an unusually strong dedication to work and discipline. The Sinful Self has no use for play, because it believes so fervently that left alone it will indeed be lazy or childish, or fritter itself away—or, looking at it the other way, it fears that left alone it will only play, or will be slothful. You see this most clearly in Protestant theology.