“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt should read that session (for October 22, 1973) and ones immediately previous. The attitudes still stand to some important degree. The contrast represented his own interpretation of his private reality, of course—yet they also represent the main issues involved right now in your society at large.

The same issues underlie your own attitudes, the tension between effort and relaxation, discipline and spontaneity has applied, say, in the creative area as far as painting is concerned. Ruburt set out, of course, to handle his own purposes and challenges, but he chose those in the context of your world, so that in encountering them personally he would encounter them for your society as well. In such ways, the species does handle psychological and psychic issues.

Your morning discussion, concerning Ruburt’s past, was also beneficial, for it is good to remind yourselves of your own (underlined) backgrounds, rather than ever comparing yourselves with other people whose own backgrounds may have little to do with yours. You have both done remarkably well from that viewpoint. When you seem to suffer in contrast to the development or situation of any other specific or generalized persons, it is when you are trying to live up to artificial pictures of yourselves—of people who should have been as knowledgeable years ago as they are now, and who therefore now should be at much greater stages of development.

In a fashion you recognized much of this in your morning discussion about Ruburt’s problem, but it applies to each of you. The idea of Ruburt doing some work in the near future on Rich Bed is therefore a good one.

(10:20.) Again, it goes without saying that in your situations you largely overlook such benefits. Ruburt’s remarks in his essay on love apply here, in regard to its specific nature. That is (pause), it arouses memories from your own most intimate moments in the past, and therefore in its own way records the development of ideas and attitudes that you might otherwise completely overlook. You had friends lately disappointed in marriages and relationships (Sue and Claire). Your own relationship is itself quite extraordinary, precisely in the light of your own backgrounds—not as you think those backgrounds should have been, but as they were.

At Ruburt’s end, it almost seems as if he had our material at hand magically without effort, and therefore should have put it to use at once, learning the lessons of half a lifetime in a few years, and graduating to solve all of his own problems and half of the world’s as well. Against that image of course he feels inadequate, and of course such an image would make him lose faith in himself to some degree; so it is very important that you realize how well you have both done in many areas of activity, and that you reinforce each other in those directions.

There is no need saying Ruburt would be in better physical condition perhaps if the psychic development has not happened—since that development was a part of his natural growth processes. While it may sound unrealistic, the fact remains that much of Ruburt’s problems are indeed caused by a constant comparison with the self that he is, and the self that he and you think he should be (long pause), and to some extent by too much concern about what the world may think or not think.