“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This I did not suspect.) Another point. You also felt that the symptoms would take Ruburt’s mind off of his own for a change, and also let you see how, if or when your reactions to other people were changed or altered because of your indisposition. (They were.)

For other material, now: again, some of this will sound simple and apparent. He has a rich emotional nature, and he responds emotionally. Programs, his weekly programs for example, are often a benefit to him, if they are not too extensive, because they give him a short-range challenge which he enjoys.

His attempt to have you encourage him up and down and running, is a not-too-well disguised attempt for further emotional involvement on your part. He would be as upset as you over a smothering closeness. However often he simply feels lonely—not necessarily for your physical presence, for you are often in the house, but for emotional recognition that you are apt to forget about.

Once someone gets through your surface restrictive tendencies, obvious ones, then your spontaneity flows to the surface. Once someone gets through Ruburt’s open spontaneous characteristics they are apt to wonder what happened, because he will often not let them get any further. (A very acute pair of points.) Hence the fact that his students remain students as a rule, and not personal friends. As you know, those who get through all the way find a bedrock loyalty. But the spontaneous emotional character warms up, brightens, and refreshes what can be a morose inner self at times. Therefore your emotional response to him is important for that reason.

You have not been able to ignore him since he had his symptoms. You might be angry at him, in which case there was a definite emotional response, or disgusted; he thought in the past, the dim past, disgusted enough to leave him—but you could not ignore him.

He has mixed feelings about you and his book. On the one hand he would like you to read it as he goes along, and at times he envisions enthusiastic discussions about it. He thinks you have emotionally closed off from it since you never ask him about it. On the other hand he fears your disapproval and criticism, and thinks you will look for flaws, and so he lets matters stand there.

Now give us a moment. It seemed to him lately that you did not want to dance when he felt at his best, and you wanted him to when he felt less well. Both of you have been making adjustments since our last two sessions, and in a way Ruburt’s knees represented the same kind of problem as your symptoms—matters brought to the head, and yet not acted upon.

Now. Several other points that we will elaborate on later. In his books he is facing challenges he did not face earlier. Before, a book was a novel. He wrote it through, and that was the end of it. It was all intuitive, emotional and fictional. He did not need to deal with details, the same kind of organization and overall planning.

A draft took him little time. The nonfiction involves him in projects that are of longer duration, and he is handling them very well. He was used to more frequent creative challenges, lesser ones in a way, rather than long-term projects, and he was not capable in the past of the planning for example that is now a part of his creative endeavors.

As a result however he does feel the lack of more frequent, fresh, completely different inspirational material. This can be satisfied through the poetry. Short-term challenges of any kind that are at all practical are excellent to break up for him the longer-term purpose of his book.

A concerted effort should be made, either to have him face the issue and solve it, or to avoid it completely. He thought of getting up at four again. What he does is not nearly as important, obviously, as his feelings toward it—and he has highly negative feelings that cause him symptoms when he does not get up and believes he should. I will cover this much more thoroughly however.

At the risk of being repetitive: if he concentrates upon his work, the morning issue will take care of itself, and by work I mean not only his writing, but his own individual psychic endeavors. He measures what he does daily against what you do daily, and feels automatically guilty if you do more than he, or even if he is doing watercolors while you are typing a session.

He still feels guilty about you going to work in the morning, and not getting up just rubs his nose in it further. He is saying “I may not have to go out to work like you do, but I am punishing myself for it, so do not blame me.”

(“Yes....” There followed a short exchange between Seth and me, after he asked if I had any questions. I mentioned the one I’d come up with the other day: what other names has he had in various lives? A list of the names would be interesting, I thought. Seth agreed. He now suggested I ask the question again later, saying the list would run several pages long. He then wished us goodnight in his usual manner, at 10:50.