“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now this also overshadows your relationship with the males to whom you have come in contact. For you have been, on the one hand, terrified of them, and on the other hand wanted a normal relationship. Give me a moment here —on the one hand you desire more from a relationship with a man than you have any right to expect. No human being could ever deliver what you expect a man to deliver in a relationship. This is because you see the male in terms inspired in you when you were a child. You were terrified of the male, your father. On the other hand, you felt that he did contain wisdom, truth, almost godlike qualities. These qualities you attempt to project into the male that you meet. At the same time you are also terrified because of this background. No man can possibly be as godlike as your inner conception. Therefore, each man is bound to disappoint you. At the same time, you hope and pray subconsciously that the man will disappoint you because this male in your mind has godlike qualities that attract you; on the other, you see him as all powerful and as one who gives out punishment and one who is unreasoning and cruel because you felt that your father was cruel. You are afraid, so to speak, to come under a man’s thumb for this reason, to come under his domination. For to do so is to place yourself in a humble position and a frightening position underneath the male figure. Your terror as a child gave you an inner idea of reality and family group whereby you saw yourself completely powerless and helpless under the domination of this father figure. He was the source of all and yet he could at the same time take all away. And you felt, at the same time, that he would indeed do so. Because you were a male in past lives, you resented this all the more strongly. Give us a moment.

Again this is reflected in the way you drive your car. Now, the difficulties arising from your relationship with your father also gave you other beneficial effects. This feeling is somewhat responsible for your success as a teacher, for example. For you are then in authority, and you would, if you could, drive your students as you drive your car and force them to go 85 miles a minute. You are easier on them than you are on yourself, however, and you make an excellent teacher. In the back of your mind, however, you are always saying—see Daddy, I am doing something well—for this father of yours in your mind is always behind your shoulder watching you and judging you; now this is your attitude that I am describing. You feel that you must be successful or he will punish you, that you must be perfect; therefore you become panic stricken at any sense of failure within you, and you overexaggerate your failings so that you came here tonight to me as if you were two and a half years old. You would not have been at all surprised had Ruburt (Jane) jumped up grabbed a ruler and banged your fingers. Now, a step further, therefore, is that you expect rejection on the part of the male for this reason. Now this only applies to men who are older than you. You are perfectly happy and content with younger males. Give me a moment here.

Now I will tell you the material that I have given you will help you and you should listen to it often. It should make one thing clear. Your Mr. Reed is not Mr. Reed’s Mr. Reed. You are not seeing the man as he is. You are seeing the image that you have projected upon him, and no one can live up to that image. I realize that when you discuss him that you say—I know he has failings. This is to assure yourself that, after all, the male is not so all powerful. But you do not see this man’s good points or failings clearly. Some of the qualities that you imagine in him as virtues are not and some of the qualities that you imagine to be failings are not failings. You will never have any relationship with the Dick Reed that you have projected upon a living human being. You may have a relationship with that human being, but there is a world of difference between that human being and the imagined image of him to which you react. And it is that image that you see when you look at him and when think of him. That imagined image is real in your mind, it is reality. But you cannot project that image upon another human being and deny him his own reality. You have no chance in a thousand lives of having a relationship with the man you think of as being Dick Reed, because you cannot have a two-way relationship with an image that is one-sided and has no flesh. Now give us a moment. While we are beginning a job, we may as well do a good one.

We have only dealt with one side of this relationship. Now this Mr. Reed has his own part to play. And his purposes and your purposes to this point have fit together beautifully, for neither of you have seen the other. He has seen his image of you. For his own reasons, he has not allowed himself to know an individual woman. And he does not want to know an individual woman physically—he does not want to. Give us a moment.

Now, you overreact in a relationship with a male. You are overanxious. You are afraid of making a wrong step. You watch gestures. You constantly explore a face for a sign that you have made an error. You constantly explore an expression for a sign that you are being rejected and this is directly related to your early relationship with your father. For then a slip met with instant retaliation. There is an emotional charge connected, therefore, with any rejection. And as you tried as a child to think ahead of your father to see what he might be angry at, so you do the same thing now in a relationship with a male to whom you are attracted. I will incidentally give you time later to ask questions. I do not promise to answer them, but I promise you the opportunity to ask them. Now, a moment…

Give us a moment. Now, he is afraid of physical contact because he fears plunging wholeheartedly into physical existence and this is his way of holding off. He does not want to accept the ordinary responsibilities of adulthood and has not left his father’s home.

Now, ordinary adult responsibilities, you see, would take him away from these two individuals and so he has taken steps to see that he is not involved. Give us a moment. He is more bound to one of these persons than the other for one was a younger brother. He was extremely religious in his past life and the love of music connected with the church is reflected here. His name was strange, I am not too clear on this. The family name in the past: Achman. (Pat learned that Dick’s family has an Ackerman branch in June 1968.) The first portion like oxtagon.

Both of you to this point have inner problems that prevent you from entering into marriage. There is a difference between a wholesome love for another person and a compulsive need to have that person. You are still asking these questions with the other image before you. You are trying to peek through, but when you asked the question, you had the image before you. Do you see why? (Pat nods yes.) The very fact that you see this shows that you have learned something this evening. And that does me good, for I would not like to speak so long and so hard without feeling that I had managed to get some small point across. Now I will tell you, Joseph, go out into the air and buy your earthly refreshments and return and perhaps I shall join you for a few social moments.