“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I finished typing last Monday’s session just before we sat for this one. At my request Jane read the page of notes I’d attached to the end of the session. I didn’t ask that she or Seth comment on the notes, but at least I’d made it possible for either one to do so. Among other things I’d written that Monday’s session was even better than I’d thought it was.

Now under many situations people, again, behave in the same manner. They use portions of themselves as hostages—or as in Ruburt’s case they use a portion of themselves not so much as hostages, but they take a part of the self under “protective custody.” This almost always occurs when there are misunderstandings in particular areas between the picture of the self or the world as painted by the intellect, and the picture of the world or of the self painted by the emotions.

At the basis of almost all problems of any nature there is a point where value fulfillment is being denied. The point is not so much to search for what is wrong, but to discover what expression is denied, even while it is sought for. That is, the individual has a problem because there is a blockage of value fulfillment in a given area.

Ruburt took a portion of himself into protective custody—not wishing to do that portion any damage, but simply to restrain it, to teach it discipline. Some people take portions of themselves, again, as hostages, restraining such portions with the idea of punishing them for imagined wrongs, or for actions not understood.

Ruburt’s intellect and his emotions, working together, work joyfully in his writing, his psychic endeavors, and his subjective experience in general. They unite and stimulate his creative abilities so that he does what comes naturally, easily and vitally to him, searching out his own view of reality—but in certain areas the intellect and the emotions begin to separate in their visions of the picture of the world. The intellect (long pause, eyes closed) disapproves of certain feelings and emotions because the intellect, allied with (pause) the social aspects of reality, thinks in terms of a public face, or respectability, of its position with other adults in the world.

(9:37.) Over a period of time you ended up with two exaggerated postures —artificial ones—with the spontaneous elements of the personality straining for the full use of their abilities (in parentheses: value fulfillment), and the reasoning one determined to pursue such endeavors—but with caution. The intellect’s reasons, however, were not entirely its own, but only appeared to be because the opposing camps were so out of communication. The intellect actually quite unknowingly made those reasoning deductions on an emotional basis from an outdated picture of the world, held jointly by emotions and intellect years ago in Ruburt’s childhood.

We are now involved with reassuring Ruburt that it is safe to move, and ultimately that it is safe to relax. We are trying to reassure him that relaxation is indeed a part of a creative process, and that it also makes all other motion possible. (Pause.) Such a statement can be accepted by all portions of the self, but it must be emphasized time and time again. In the meantime, there can seem to be other reasons, different ones, that crop up to make his attitudes seem more rational. These are part of the modes of behavior adopted by the portion of the self held in custody, so to speak.

At any given time, then, he may not feel it right to relax, because he has thus-and-thus a chore to perform, or because of the hour, or for any other reasons that will all serve to hide the fact that he is afraid of relaxing. He thinks he fears relaxing because then he will do nothing—but instead he is afraid of letting go because he fears he will go too far, and put himself in an unsafe position in the world. Some of your own earlier attitudes should help you relate to that kind of rationale.