“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You forget Ruburt’s literal-mindedness, and you overlook it. He can use it to advantage. His beliefs, for the reasons you are uncovering, led him to believe he was inferior in the physical arena, and so he withdrew from it.

The core beliefs and the resulting subsidiary beliefs are interrelated and work back to back, one to the other. The literal-mindedness applies. That is why the dancing is important. There is a difference between saying “we danced,” to Ruburt, regardless of how well he danced, and the belief that he could not dance at all. True, that is a subsidiary issue, but it is one where he has insisted upon keeping some physical freedom open.

Now any other physical arena of that kind, opened, is highly beneficial because of that literal-mindedness, and each time this happens the predominating beliefs are to that extent weakened. Here is something else that he can do. He has proven it to himself, therefore. He is free to move in that regard.

Your life is not—and I repeat—not as limited as you believe it is. You are not using the freedoms that you have. These freedoms used, particularly in view of Ruburt’s literal-mindedness, would do much to weaken the beliefs in powerlessness that exist.

With Ruburt’s literal-mindedness, again, there is a big difference, a vital one, between freely imagining a trailer trip which then becomes a probable beneficial reality, and being told it will not work.

It is precisely the challenge of things like dancing when he is in poor shape, but coming through when others are watching, or a trailer trip, or riding a bicycle when it seems impossible, or climbing a tree, that has the imaginative literal qualities that inspires him to change beliefs, whether or not those issues in that way make sense to you.

When you imagine trips or any physical activity and carry them out, you are concentrating upon freedom, not limitations, and then you have those freedoms to build upon. Now with the tooth difficulty Ruburt did this, in his literal manner, while working with the preliminary beliefs at the same time.

For some time until recently he was afraid, as mentioned, that his body could not recuperate. That is why any physical achievement or normal activity is to be encouraged. The belief behind all of this is simple, and you have it—that all of his energy, concentration, and attention had to be devoted to his work. Because he is so literal-minded this was his interpretation of it.