“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This noon, driving home from work, I pulled a muscle in my right side while wheeling the car around a corner—one of those painful things that you feel when you cough, breathe deeply, laugh, etc.)

Now it was on the one hand feigned behavior, but the symptoms had to be bothersome enough or they would not have served their purpose. To some extent verbal communication was also minimized. Your “condition” effectively kept Ruburt from making any demands, or from putting any verbal pressure upon you, for he rushed of course to your support.

Your personality structures simply respond at times of course to different stimuli. Both of you can learn to modify these characteristics, but understanding them is basic. Ruburt responds, generally, to people. One reason of course for the classes, and their success. But behind Ruburt’s outgoing characteristics you run into some rather restrictive ones that are more on the surface, generally speaking, in your personality.

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.

(I had to laugh here. In one way, perhaps hard to describe, it is such a perfect observation on Seth’s part—the first sentence of the above paragraph. Jane, as Seth, watched me tolerantly. I had to watch the laughing because it hurt my side, etc.

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.

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.

The morning situation can be handled from any of numerous standpoints, but they should be emotional standpoints. He can imagine himself up ahead of you, as he thought of, surprising you with your breakfast already prepared. That is one solution. It would help if you kissed him in the morning, and made some emotional supportive gesture that also encouraged him to get up.

(“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.