“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I do not want to set up polarities. I do want to give you some background, however, for some of your attitudes. From childhood in your society, you were as children told in one way or another that it was healthy to enjoy sports and outside activity, to join in games, to be outgoing with playmates, and all of that is of course quite true. Children are also taught, however, that reading for anything but short periods was somehow unhealthy, that daydreaming or staying alone for anything but a brief period meant that the child was withdrawn, and that his activities—or hers—were somehow unnatural.

If you believe, however, that you must have one at the expense of the other, then you will always face a dilemma between exterior and subjective activity. Your friends the Gallaghers inhibit their subjective natures strongly, both of them (as I was speculating about the other day). They are indeed afraid of aging, and so press onward in more and more exterior activity, because they fear that age will show itself there first. They forget the nature of “youthful thoughts.” They believe there is a polarity, and they have chosen the other side.

When you were both children, to some degree each of you felt that you were different because of your intense subjective activity—and to some extent, and different for both of you—you felt that you had to “fight for” the freedom to pursue subjective reality.

Since you are obviously able to enjoy physical activity at times, you chose to remain alone rather than “play with the others.” As you matured you each to some degree carried beliefs that physical activity and subjective activity were somehow, and to varying degrees, opposed to the other—one being accepted by society, and the other frowned upon.

(10:05.) I do not want to duplicate material. At one time, however, you briefly curtailed physical activity for what you considered the sake of your subjective freedom. You quickly dismissed that idea after a taste of it. Ruburt accepted that idea, believing he must make a choice. All of this, you see, must be considered in the light of our last session, for it involves varying degrees of self-disapproval and polarities of thought, so that the contradictions occurred in your experience—though there were more, of course, in basic terms.

You believed that you should be outgoing, vigorous, somewhat competitive, and you believed you should be socially oriented, while at the same time you believed that those things conflicted in a basic way with other drives. You felt you should be introverted, have periods of isolation, time to sit and think, to write and paint, to look inward rather than outward. In periods of intense inner activity that were enjoyable and productive, you disapproved of yourselves because you were not at the same time socially oriented, vigorously involved in exercises, or physically oriented pursuits, and so you disapproved of yourselves.

This does not mean that you should begin shoveling walks tomorrow, with your attitude. There are classic, distorted stories of the weakly scholar as opposed to the hearty sportsman. To some extent the same applies to Ruburt. You are surrounded by propaganda saying that the body will not perform in a healthy, vigorous manner, if you indulge primarily in subjective activity—if you sit at your desk, for example.

Much of the propaganda is nearly invisible. It appears everywhere. The body and mind are one. Bates’s book, or rather philosophy, suggesting that the eyes were not made for reading, is an example of a different kind, implying that there were no books when the eye was created—and so therefore it is not natural for the eye to see letters—while it is natural for the eye to see, say, trees. The body adjusts its rhythms in a quite healthy manner to your activities, and without polarized habits of thought, periods of deep creativity will automatically be followed by periods of walking, natural exercise of one kind or another, in which subjective thought and body motion are synchronized.

(In addition, there is the interesting news from Alan Neuman, regarding his giving Seven to a well-known movie director, as well as showing it to another agent, etc. Jane has records of this activity, but I wanted to mention it here.

(10:49.) Give us a moment.... Ruburt has had excellent results with Emir, and you should rejoice. You do, yet you think at what expense did Emir come—what restrictions of physical activity—and had you been somewhat different, would it all have been necessary?

Now, I want to stress that you must not emphasize your feelings that you are at odds with the world. To some extent or another each person feels at odds with the cultural environment, or worse, with their most intimate companions. You cannot expect to be involved in creative activity of an important sort, and at the same time see through the eyes of others.

This summer, you compared your way of life with those polarized ideas, with the way of life of the construction men, for example. The disapproval causes you to exaggerate the differences, rather than glorify them as you should —though glorify may be too strong a word. Ruburt’s physical condition becomes a materialization of those concepts, exaggerated, so that he is not able to go forth in the world, believing the polarity so great, with him and subjective activity having the disadvantage.

(11:09.) You believed to some degree—varying degrees, but jointly—that subjective activity and creative activity must be achieved at the expense of some physical expression. You obviously did not fall for that to the extent Ruburt did —and all of this must be considered also in the light of the religious and scientific views, with Ruburt particularly, in which the spontaneous self was considered the psychological villain of the society and the individual. The spontaneous self is the guardian—that is what Ruburt is learning.

The Gallaghers trust spontaneity only when it is expressed through physical motion. To some extent, again, Ruburt trusted it only when it was expressed through subjective motion. I suggested that you take walks, Joseph, some time ago, simply to rearouse your natural love of that activity.

All Ruburt wants is normal motion. You saw the response in his leg this evening. The important neck and jaw areas are definitely releasing, and the eyes will swiftly begin to resume their normal activity—if you continue as you are. Your own physical vigor is there, and can express itself, comparatively speaking —comparatively speaking—with far greater ease once you rid yourself of those polarized concepts and the disapproval that goes with them.

Ruburt stands taller—observably. He is using muscles in new ways. Gaining strength and vitality. Your body is already in excellent shape, in general terms—we are not speaking of athletes. It would need, naturally, some period of training if you were thinking of climbing mountains, or expected to ski down a good slope tomorrow—but it is well prepared for normal activity. Only your beliefs impede it—so work with those beliefs before you shovel the drive. It is the dilemma behind the whole thing that is important, the implied conflicts between subjective and objective activity. And the responsibilities you feel this entails.