“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This has to do with the attack made on Ruburt by your domestic cat. Several issues are involved: Ruburt’s own mood at the time, for one thing. Now. The cat senses both of your moods immediately. It is psychically very close to you both. Being a house cat, it is closed in with you. As a rule you both radiate strong constructive energy. For a short period of time, Ruburt turned his creative energy, as he knows, I believe, inward rather than outward, knotted it up, misdirected it, did not focus it properly, and turned it into destructive energy.

Now all energy you see is creative energy, and constructive. When it is not properly used it backs up so to speak, and explodes or erupts in what seems to be a destructive manner. This is what happened, to some degree.

Usually his aggressive feelings are automatically sublimated into his work. He grapples with ideas and with words. The destructive energy however found no outlet. It therefore took the point of least resistance, and he quite subconsciously of course projected it upon his pet. It was not that he actually focused the energy purposely upon the cat, merely that the cat’s spongelike psychic nature received it full force.

There is much more here. However he began his creative life very early as an outlet, you see, for aggressive and violent feelings. As an infant and a young child he had a strong temper, which terrified him, and he indulged in childish tantrums. Children know much more than they are given credit for.

The child even then realized that violence and aggression was somehow connected with his mother’s illness. He also, that is Ruburt also, felt the violence that is a part of his father’s personality. Suddenly the tantrums ceased. He held them back in pure terror of the consequences, for suddenly the violent-tempered mother was immobile. He feared the same fate. The father had completely disappeared. To the child the father simply vanished from the face of the earth, an equally fearful fate.

The child took all this as the punishment for violence. The mother now could no longer be violent in act. Not only that, but she was helpless to resist violence. This made the child hold back the most natural of aggressive feelings. In most cases the child can slap the parent. It may be slapped back, but it knows the slap will not really kill the parent. It is pretend.

I am trying to explain this rather thoroughly, for once he realizes these connections he will not need to fear this quite human and natural aggressiveness. It only turns into violence, and into a fear of violence, when it is so meticulously denied.

He does not see his mother because he imagines subconsciously that he is protecting her from his own violence against her, lest after all these years it might erupt. Now this is ridiculous. This restrained violence has been excellently used for creative purposes.

It is only when a break occurs, you see, when the creative energy blocks up, that such difficulties arise. For these reasons it pains him deeply to write, even to an editor, words that are not docile.

The child therefore until its teens dared not be anything but docile. The personality was a strong one however, and the rebellion found no outlet except for creativity. Now the present personality suffers pangs of remorse over the slightest imagined wrong it may do to another.

You grew up in an environment, my dear friend, in which violence and aggressiveness became one, were expressed in some degree by both parents. But this expression was denied to the children, and you longed to retaliate. Your father’s aggressiveness, normal male aggressiveness, was blocked up, and directed against your mother. You longed to express your natural violence, you normal aggressiveness, and you also feared to do so, and dwelled mainly in your own world.

As a rule you do not express these feelings in the area where they would normally be expressed, and you also use them as a basis for creative work. As such they are valuable. You are twice angry at Ruburt’s lack of aggressiveness in the business world, therefore.

All of this needs to be said, you see. You are both learning at a rather amazing rate. In the past you turned some repressed violence inward against yourself. Ruburt’s selling jobs were very practical for a time, for they allowed him to release aggressive feelings. You become angry when you think, rightly, that Ruburt is too docile in his dealings, but this is because you are angry at your own lack of power as a child to retaliate against the atmosphere of violence that you sensed in the child’s home.

You are also angry at Ruburt’s docility because it reminds you of your father’s lack of aggression in his business dealings. When all this is out in the open as it is now, you will find that both of you can deal much more effectively with the outside business world, and you will not be hampered as you both have been.

With what you both know now you should work out an excellent balance, you see, in your business dealings, in the same way that you have worked out an excellent balance in your creative and personal lives.

Now these emotional confessions of Ruburt’s annoy you considerably. They are not necessary. However your annoyance can be tempered with somewhat more understanding, and this in itself will tend to minimize their occurrence. When he indulges in this sort of thing he is feeling rebellious, you see, and this is a result of the built-up aggressive feelings of which I have been speaking.