“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The crisis would have developed on the condition that Ruburt tried to use and develop his spontaneous and intuitive abilities on an adult basis. The cleavage between discipline and spontaneity had long existed; given the all-or-nothing attitude of the personality, there was bound to be a swing, a complete swing from one to the other until the personality learned to combine the two and become more thoroughly integrated.

As long as he acted with relative abandon, as in the early years, relatively unreasoning, then there was no point of conflict. When he tried on the other hand to act in a more reasoning and disciplined manner, when he became convinced of the necessity for discipline and this was in Florida, then he attempted to stifle all spontaneity.

It would have been a mistake of the most tragic order, however, to shy away from the full development of abilities. Otherwise there would have been an extremely rigorous personality, with intuition very strong but firmly held at bay; or a highly disorganized spontaneous personality frittering away its energies without direction.

This would have occurred however on the introduction of any strong spontaneous action. The World as Idea Construction came to him, beside its extrasensory origin, subconsciously, with an exploding effect to save him, because he had so put the lid upon his creative activities after Rebellers, that he had effectively blocked the intuitive self.

Of course you played a part. He felt relatively free in his spontaneity in the beginning with you, for he granted you super-human abilities, relying upon what he thought to be almost absolute strength and stability. He did not have to reason, for you would reason for you both.

You therefore would protect him from the results of his own spontaneity, carried too far, for he never thought in terms of a spontaneity tempered by self-discipline. In Florida he saw his father as the epitome of unreason and uncontrolled spontaneity, which had actually become a hodgepodge of unrelated emotional acts, and he felt you then deserting him symbolically.

Here, when you became ill, he saw you were not omnipotent. You could not basically protect him from himself. You had been his in a basic manner, and he saw that you, his director, did not know where to turn. The hidden and bedrock, latent, strong conscientious self then rose up and took over control, and would not give the spontaneous self then back any of the reins.

A strong breakthrough was needed if the personality was to develop its potentials. The spontaneous self, relegated to the underground, then used all of its strength and forced the issue through opening up the psychic channels, which are very legitimate, and in the past had been an unsuspected deep portion of Ruburt’s personality. The challenge and the conflict were then set.

But without the challenge and the conflict the personality would have had little chance to develop its potential, particularly in terms of understanding. Your own relationship would indeed have deteriorated to some degree. The spontaneity of Ruburt’s nature otherwise would have nearly dried up, and you as well as Ruburt would have sorely missed it. This brings us nearly to the present.

All your parents frightened him, for he saw them as he saw his own father. Often what passed as spontaneity and emotionalism were often unrelated acts of instinctive nature. What seemed to be freedom or free acts were instead the result of unreasoning propulsion.

He feared his own spontaneity then was the result of unreasoning propulsion, and in his early years certainly some of it had been. He could not differentiate, and feared his spontaneous self the more, and he saw you fear your parents’ behavior.

He doubled his discipline, and tried to put the lid upon the spontaneous self. For some time he confused true spontaneity with acts caused by blind propulsion, so he could not trust his spontaneous nature. Your mother for example says what she thinks often. Ruburt therefore thought she was spontaneous; for a while he did not see the blind panic behind the words or acts.

Your father seemed to be, earlier, highly disciplined. Ruburt did not see that the discipline was the result of terror, and was not true discipline. He saw both personalities as frozen, finally, and he thought: if spontaneity and discipline are both false roads, then where do I go? There is no road, and no escape, you see.

He identified strongly with both of your parents, for each of them seemed to signify the warring aspects of himself. He identified with each, hating and loving each for that reason. He did not trust you when you told him to free his intuitive self, now, when the symptoms were bad last year, because he felt you did not trust yourself to be spontaneous in your dealings with him. This is just before your own pendulum sessions.

Some of the confusion was the result of Ruburt’s attitudes toward spontaneity and discipline, toward the spontaneous and strongly conscientious aspects of his personality.

The erroneous attitudes had much to do with the difficulties. He thought of the spontaneous self, his spontaneous self, as joyful, free, intensely creative, but also as somewhat evil, frightening, unreasoning, and liable to lead him to disaster.

He thought of the overly conscientious self as stern, good, boring, constricting and uncreative, but very safe. He never made any serious attempt to integrate his personality, or to understand these portions of himself until recent years. He did not understand that discipline can be an aid to creativity, and that the spontaneous self is good. These erroneous attitudes were built up in this life. They echoed however experience in past lives also.

Only the poetry represented neutral ground. On other areas of life the spontaneous became highly suspect in both social and work areas. In his gallery work experience he did his best to disguise his spontaneous nature, out of his own fear and also as a result of your attitude at that time.

An out-thrust from the spontaneous self was a necessity then. The integration that is taking place will insure an end to such teeter-tottering. Psycho-Cybernetics faithfully followed (underlined) will insure the best possible conscious circumstances to enable the process to come to its speediest conclusions.