“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He feels, actually, an overly severe sense of responsibility to support himself, and not be as his mother was, a financial burden. At the same time however there is this determination to make his financial way through writing, and so far he has been caught between.

Now. Friday, his two books came. They had not been paid for as yet, and he had lost some money earlier. On the way to work he found some sweaters he wanted. To some degree he felt guilty, wanting the sweaters when he had already lost money, and when they were obviously meant to replace the sweaters of his mother.

The impetus behind the compulsive activity was fear, and the fear was directed against the mother. The compulsive behavior was also intermixed with religious connotations, the crucifix and rosary being part of the objects used at times. The desire to move furniture at times represents an attempt to break highly ritualized behavior on his part, and is constructive. When it becomes frantic of course it is a sign that the technique is not working.

He often projected these onto his mother, so that she became the symbol of all evil, at various times in any case. This regardless of the harmful qualities of her own nature, the mother’s.

Now, he tried to block off subconscious feelings concerning his mother because he could not afford, he felt, to react to them, and there was little avenue for expression of his aggressive feelings toward her. She knew this and mocked him, daring him to kill her physically.

The spontaneous self when it did escape, you see, managed to do so only under circumstances where the explosive impulses shattered their way through. In the years between there was some considerable improvement in balance. When the situations developed which we have discussed, setting off the old conflicts, again you see, then the discipline idea was short-circuited back to the old compulsive behavior, though in different form, and with the old religious connotation of self-denial. The old fear of spontaneity returned, and the methodical attempt to deny subconscious impulses; the old feeling of unworthiness was also activated, and the body duly denied. Now this self-denial began in the Catholic home, and he was peculiarly prone to accept it. It was part of the old Catholic training, and he fell for it under a new guise. (Jane spent over a year in such a home while her mother was hospitalized for arthritis.)

In some ways, quite understandable. Old guilts held regularly in normal balance concerning his mother then leapt upward. The adult wondered then, had he misjudged the mother? Was not the mother at last sending him presents? To punish himself he attempted to give himself his mother’s symptoms, to put the shoe on the other foot, so to speak, almost in a religiouslike atonement.

Ruburt correctly interpreted the evening symptoms that sometimes occur. There is some identification with the mother here, based on highly falsified data; if he becomes the mother, then the mother cannot hurt him. And in all such identifications, there is the feeling that by becoming that which one fears, there is safety. This is obviously wrong and dangerous.

Ruburt’s mother is part of an entity, and he should remember this. He does not have arthritis, although he has been mimicking the symptoms, and could in time hypnotize himself into believing he did have the disease, though this is highly improbable given his own constitution. The spontaneous self happens to be basically more powerful and far more sensible than the ego, and would never stand for this development. It would doubtless cause some sort of an explosion however, in order to prevent any such occurrence.