“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Yet when he improved he felt that he did not want those “new distractions,” and so the power of his will still kept the body down. [...] He is not one to work in many areas at once. [...] In all of this probabilities are involved, so in all points of the past he touched points of probable healings. [...]

His paper today is important, not because he has to make that kind of decision, but because he believed in it and chose a physical orientation. He should definitely every day now reread the sessions that he has collected separately on work and spontaneity—and if you value my recommendations, this is a must. He does not have any disease—the body still can right itself, as of now.

In that respect, and in that respect alone, he felt helpless. He wanted to feel helpless there, for the reasons given. He has since realized at various times that the method has outlived its purpose—but the resulting feeling of helplessness has impeded his progress. [...] He is amazingly resilient. [...]

He wanted to write, to use his creative and psychic abilities to the fullest, and so he cut down all distractions. His literal mind led him on the one hand to a rich diet of creativity and psychic experience, and to a situation in which he and Joseph could finally be financially free and not in that way threatened.

He left you things to do in your own way. He worked with photography because he could not paint. He could not create himself. He could not see himself in physical surroundings. As the photographer he was often out of the picture. He did not leave you empty-handed.

[...] You were on your mother’s lap, in their bedroom, and he said simply “goodbye”, to you both. And you both knew that he meant it. [...] He went out of the house and when he returned he was not the same man. Yet you understood subconsciously, and he left in you that moment the desire to create.

He did not leave you with no thought. He left you what he thought was the best he had to give you, a need for creativity that he could not express in physical terms. (Long pause, eyes closed, head down.) He left for your young brother a sense (smile) of sweetness, an innocent, untouched quality that will always sustain him.

[...] He is one rung of the ladder, yet he is also part of the rung above him, and the rung below. Because you cannot put your finger upon him does not mean that he does not exist, and that he has not helped you fulfill yourself, and that he has not helped teach the woman you know as your mother.

He used them indiscriminately. [...] He let them run away with him, and is doubly afraid now. He used little common sense, and was overly emotional, reading signs where there were none, and ignoring the fine intellect that he had even then.

[...] Your own illness did literally terrify him, and he feared that if he faced his true doubts concerning my existence, that he would hurt you.

[...] He was frightened of her, you see, and therefore frightened of the abilities. There is a growing acceptance on the part of the whole personality now; as he sees these abilities help others, his students for example, he grows to trust them more.

He was never afraid of me. He was afraid for portions of himself, for reasons having little to do with me, per se. (Pause.) The spontaneous self he was afraid of. [...]

In a previous life he was your son by blood. He died in that life in an accident. He came back to tell you there was no death—you would not listen, hear or believe. This time he came back and was a son to you. [...] He came to tell you there was no death. [...] He chose to stay here to tell you. [...]

In past he also died by water. [...] He also knew her in this life. [...] She was his wife in the past life, when he died at 32. [...] He did. He would not want to die by land. [...]

He chose to leave when he did, when you would miss him most and question most. [...] He played the harmonica as a sailor. [...]

[...] He is teaching you. (Teach you love—he would not die.)

[...] He felt that when he had initiated action in the past that it had not worked, and he was then afraid of initiating new action, so he kept waiting for you to do so. [...]

None of this was spoken, and he felt it disloyal. He felt that you would interpret any such feelings on his part as aspersions against your manhood. He was finally driven to voice some of these attitudes as the years passed; particularly after your 50th birthday and his 40th, he became literally panic-stricken, yet you did nothing, to his way of thinking.

He did not want to admit these feelings to you or himself. He felt also, in the past, that if he told you to leave the job, and it did not work out as you wanted, that you would blame him, as he thought (underlined) you blamed him for the move from Sayre.

Again, your loving encouragement that he can, for example, go down a step is highly important and supportive. Because of the reasons given earlier in this session, he retreats and hypnotizes his muscles into believing they cannot act such and such a way. He tries quite honestly to perform an act while believing he cannot, so that the muscles do fight themselves, and hurt quite painfully.

He tempers the bitterness with understanding more than he realizes however, and because of his particular sense of right and wrong, he overly blames himself for what bitterness he has. He is learning now, finally, to be more flexible. [...]

He is as stubborn in it as he is in preserving his joy when he is joyful. [...] In periods of spontaneity therefore he will sometimes be overly spontaneous, and in a times of rigidity will be overly rigid.

[...] He felt alone, this his fault, surely as much as yours, though no fault in those terms is meant. At his worse moments, he thought that he could not love a cripple, since he did not love his mother, so how could you.

[...] He felt incapable of motion, you see, and interpreted this physically. Now the symptoms vanish because he realizes he does have mobility and freedom. He did not dare look to the left, nor the right.

[...] He could run, his mother could not. [...] But if he is successful, then he believes he will be successful when he does not deserve it. Therefore evil also, and so he shall not run; running being symbolic of spontaneity. If he gives himself emotional and psychic freedom, then to compensate he will deny himself physical freedom. [...]

For every act he considers uncharitable or sarcastic he must pay. The Harriet poem: for that you see he believes he must pay. The irony of course is carefully chosen— that he choose those symptoms that reminds him of his mother. For she flaunted the neighborhood and the Irish background physically in her youth, and paid, and Ruburt fought it intellectually, and feels he must pay.

He is afraid of the bed and the bedroom. (Pause.) He fears he will die in his sleep and face eternal damnation. There are no windows to escape through, he feels, no available roof. (Pause.) He feels freer under all circumstances in this room (the living room) because he could run out onto the roof.

[...] He was uncontrolled— uncontrollable, lax, slow, and yet evil. [...] If he succeeds he must pay, for if he does not pay, if he does not willingly submit to his own punishment, then there is eternal damnation.

Once more: Ruburt begins to realize he can have full freedom of motion, without feeling that he will be forced to run away. He has a choice of motion now. He can stay and face a situation through, and have full freedom of motion. He will not use motion in a cowardly manner, as he feared. He can also use freedom of motion to help.

He can run without being compelled to run away. (Slowly.) He has a free choice, now. In facing these problems, he is releasing himself through highly traumatic inner psychological dramas. He is not using the situation in a derogatory sense. He is able however, now, to face realities, allow himself motion, and not fear that motion will automatically mean cowardly flight.

[...] He sat on the family porch Sunday to escape the house as he did as a child in Saratoga. [...] Yet he spontaneously kissed the father, and tried to give him strength.

In facing the situation in your parent’s house, he faces and conquers the situation once existing in his mother’s house. There is some resistance, but he now recognizes it as such, and is able to overcome it. [...] He was always afraid that it would.

It is this energy that he must utilize now to finish the two books he has begun. Quite literally again, all he has to do is demand that the energy is available, and it shall be. He uses this energy quite subconsciously in his psychic work. He must demand of himself that the energy be used however under various circumstances. When he does not do this he lets himself down.

He also punishes himself rather unkindly, with sore muscles, incidentally. When he is working at full power he is quite beyond such physical symptoms. He is outside of them. This energy, the use of it, is a natural ability that is part of his personality, and he must use it. For him it results in a smooth performance, for when he does not use it fully then he is besieged by false starts and interruptions.

[...] The system will automatically pace itself, but he must learn to demand that he himself use the energy. It is not available to all to this degree, and he has a tendency to fall back, so to speak, and not to demand the most of himself. [...] I am not suggesting that he run full steam ahead at every moment. I am suggesting that he use the full force of his available energy for every task at hand. He does not know as yet the full strength inherent in this energy. He is a converter, his system tuned toward converting psychic energy.

[...] He broods because he knows he is not working correctly, and then because he broods he cannot work correctly.

He felt ashamed of what he thought you thought of as trivial unimportant matters, homey concerns. He became ashamed of them. [...] He feels you both can be more lenient now since the possibilities have dropped some: because of his age he is less likely to become pregnant, than when he was, say, 30.

[...] You would not accept him as he was unless he was perfect. [...] He felt that unless he became physically perfect again (underlined) you would not love him again in that way he wanted.

He had to be perfect for you in order to be physically perfect, and he felt it impossible to be perfect enough, so that this could be physically materialized. He felt you were rigid in your standards. [...] He was afraid you would become like your father in his treatment of your mother.

He felt—this is an answer to another question—that there was a veiled threat involved in my remark that I would not be dispensed with. [...] He felt angry that often it seemed you trusted me but not him. He was never in danger of any severe emotional or mental difficulties. He would always cope—and in the main creatively, if unconventionally or bizarrely.

He felt he let you down also, you see. He had hoped to be a great psychic, in his terms, about then. [...] He completely forgot that personalities have their own choices to make. He had also been reading about the great percentage of successes with faith healers, for example, and he considered this a personal failure of an important magnitude.

(While taking a drive to the drugstore on Sunday, my brother Dick told me he felt he “didn’t have much” as far as money was concerned. He was quite incensed over published reports that 10% of the population in this country controls something like 58% of the wealth, etc. He talked about owning more land, farms, etc., and that what he has, with his wife, represents a compromise as far as acreage, the house, commuting distance, etc., is concerned. To Jane and me, he is very well off indeed.)

[...] He was disappointed in me, also, thinking that I should have been able to save the woman. At the same time he resented being put in the position to begin with. [...] On a deeply unconscious level he worried that perhaps symbolically he did not want to save the woman—who was, incidentally a mother. He felt responsible for his own mother’s suicide attempts, to some degree, and this added to the situation.

At the same time he was feeling that he would not be a great writer either, you were telling him he was using only about a tenth of his abilities, and so in both areas he was not living up to his expectations or yours, to his way of seeing. There are other old tie-ins here, in that he was always considered very good or very bad, in that people always liked him instantly or disliked him instantly. [...]

In that system he saw you nearly ten years older than he, and in those terms unsatisfied; so he must work all the harder against time, and cut out everything else. In that system, as he developed it, there was no time for leisurely meals, showers, shopping trips or mundane enjoyments—only the work was important. [...] The trivialities and moods, the feelings of morning and twilight would be extinguished—so he thought as you told him, and so against many of his natural instincts he tried to obey.

The body’s weight was kept down for the same reasons, because he felt according to those old beliefs, that the body’s sustenance and substance in physical reality was not important in regard to his work. [...] The body with weight and substance might be unmanageable, filled with too much energy, and therefore want the physical activity he thought he must deny it for his work. It is not a matter of what he ate, but chemically what he did with the nourishment.

[...] He is thinking in terms of improvements now, though, and this is an important development. Do not, in your case, over-remind him of what he is “supposed” to do, for he takes this to mean that you do not expect him to do it. He knows well now of your loving concern, and feels your love, and your love-making endeavors are extremely important to both of you.

Now this did finally become so reflected that feeling shunted aside threatened his work, and he finally recognized this. He was afraid of out-of-bodies precisely because he did not have a good enough footing in the present. He did not have the needed support.

[...] He must check himself, however. He is in a habit, for example, now, of not bending down deeply and when he catches himself, he must move as he used to.

[...] As he goes to sleep this evening, have him try imagining a scene in springtime, with him walking briskly or running. When he walks now on the streets, he should keep the mental image just given in his mind, picturing the whole flexible and fleet image, and the inner self will take steps to see that the suitable adjustments are made. He should remember to give frequent suggestions pertaining to relaxation. [...]

[...] He should think of other things, even he counts trees and looks about him. [...] This does not mean he should pretend they do not exist, but they will vanish to the extent that he directs energy away from them.

When Ruburt’s mother went to the hospital in his high-school years, he had a symbolic way of ridding the house of her psychic presence, and to add to his own sense of inner freedom. He threw open the windows, something usually denied him. [...] He also liked to have the radio blaring as a gesture of defiance and freedom, and within limitations, this would be an aid when the windows are opened. [...]

Some was, but when it became conscious he became panic-stricken. [...] He wanted more. He felt hampered by you. At the same time he felt the need to contribute financially, and he felt that you were tying his hands by forcing him to make money in ways in which he was not particularly equipped to do so, while forbidding him to be a success with books.

[...] He felt literally paralyzed, and unable to move. Now he can move, but he still cannot run, you see. He moves much better. He is partially released but far from fully.

He fears that you will interpret this as a threat of castration. Because of his own background you knew that he would not push you in this respect. He has an innate talent for making money, that has not been developed nor used for these reasons; and all suggestions made by him to you have been regarded by you as threats, and he felt that the suggestions were mistakes on his part. [...]

[...] He knew intuitively that he was a psychic. He was also highly anxious to succeed, and knew that he was not doing so.

[...] He has been exercising as he naturally felt the inclination, and he will feel it—the inclination—more. He is working alone, with only you to give him encouragement, so try at least to provide it when he needs it.

The healing process continues, but he is trying to keep track of it too closely, and concentrating upon its progress. He is not concentrating upon the symptoms—but he is trying to watch his progress with too heavy a hand, if he will forgive the murky analogy.

[...] Now he is free to work joyfully on Aspects, without the old “poisoned drive”—that is, he will be working because he wants to, and not because he feels his existence is dependent upon it.

[...] He will, as he walks around the house, begin to feel the natural inclination to walk further. The reinforcement of these ideas is all that is necessary; the trust that he is on his way to complete flexibility—that is, normal flexibility. He must continue to trust himself, and his dream activity and those periods of relaxation.

When he does not believe his muscles will work, he will not put full strength upon them, for example, and physically weakens the muscle. He must work upon his attitude. He must concentrate in other areas. [...] Not, however, when he concentrates upon his symptoms.

He uses his fingers well when he types, and he uses considerable pressure. [...] He forgets his symptoms to a large degree. He forgets them to a large degree at nursery school and remembers them incidentally afterward.

[...] He should try and see himself walking winningly down the street. When you go dancing, it would help if he wore clothes that he has worn in the past when he danced well, you see. [...]

[...] He will be in better condition than he has been in several years, and he will have learned lessons that will help him immeasurably.

[...] He knew he was free to take time off at any time, but he was afraid that if he did so he might be deprived of the sessions entirely, and such is not the case.

[...] He felt a responsibility, in his terms, to be psychic. Therefore he carried this attitude into the dream state, and rebelled against the idea of working while he slept. [...] For some time therefore he curtailed his own dream activities, projections and other such adventures. He could hardly negate them entirely however.

He has been able to see for himself how inner heaviness of spirit is instantly reflected in his physical condition. He knows this. He is now free enough so that the spontaneous method of working on our book came to him, and he began working upon it in that manner today.

He was still afraid to accept it. He did not know whether he dared yet trust his spontaneity, and imposed upon himself symptoms as limitations.

In past he also died by water. [...] He also knew her in this life. [...] She was his wife in the past life, when he died at 32. [...] He did. He would not want to die by land. He chose to leave when he did when you would miss him most and question most. [...] He played the harmonica as a sailor. [...]

[Seth:] In a previous life he was your son by blood. He died in that life in an accident. He came back to tell you there was no death—you would not listen, hear or believe. This time he came back and was a son to you. [...] He came to tell you there was no death. [...] He chose to stay here to tell you. [...]

[...] He is teaching you. [Teach you love—he would not die?]

He knew only he could teach you this lesson, and no one else whose death would affect you so strongly.

He has become scared. [...] Coming up the stairs the day before yesterday, he proved this to himself. He is, as you are, modest in a way, reticent. He does not want to show weakness. [...] All he needs to know, however, and he is nearly there, is that the body is not restrained by past beliefs. Three weeks will see a literally spectacular change, for he is holding himself back to some extent until he feels you are free to move.

[...] He became frightened that even though he changed beliefs and intentions, that he had gone too far, so that the body could not right itself—that despite desires for freedom, the legs simply could not straighten.

[...] Do not think you are helping him when you take it for granted he does not want to. If he honestly does not feel up to it, then he is free to say so, and you shop alone. [...]

[...] If he cannot, he should feel free to ask you to do so.

He grew afraid of drinking, lest his inhibitions be dropped, and he began getting impressions about other people, and telling them. [...] He had to show that he had psychic abilities, but that he was in control of them. He had to prove that he was a reasonable person. He felt that you would disapprove of many class events, in those classes you did not attend—that you would think he went too far.

He feels guilty, for one thing, that you prepare supper, but if he has not worked as much as he thinks he should have by then, that guilt is added. He feels it is the end of the normal working day for others, and therefore he should have put in so much time.

Ruburt has emphasized the intellect’s critical qualities, so that they serve as an impetus to lead him to this opening that he knows exists, though he only senses it so far, and has experienced it but briefly. It would carry him where intuitively he knows he can go.

Creative work must transcend time, and when he is writing well, time is forgotten. [...] He wrote the poem because he felt like it—scandalous behavior—and also because he had expressed his feelings and written them down.