“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This is the first session held in the back-room studio, where we were free from a lot of regular and potential distractions. Both of us liked the new arrangement very much, and plan to continue it.)

The both of you, individually, have several goals in common, therefore as a couple you are doubly strong in these areas. They are areas in which individually and together you will brook no interference.

You chose ahead of time therefore to be driven along certain directions. Now. Both of you decided that you would give your lives to creative work. Both of you decided that you would have no children, not only because this fit in with the first goal, but because the energy connected with family life would go into your creative productions, would be saved and available when you began to embark upon the psychic work for which you had also planned.

You overreacted, but merely along the lines of a learning process to insure that the main areas were not violated. You went too far, both of you, in that direction. All touch, to each of you now, was not innocent or joyful encounter; it meant “How far will this lead, and is the time of the month correct?” This applies to you both. Ruburt desperately wanted you to cherish him as a woman, to play and flirt with him. He wanted you to show even innocent animal affection. At the same time however, implied in any such touches, in his mind also was the question “How far will this go?”

You both felt that the most innocent of caresses could destroy the foundation of your lives. This was certainly overcompensation. It tended for a while to erode your relationship, and to some extent to set portions of yourselves against other portions. It drove Ruburt at times to try to deny womanhood, to assure you and herself that her body would not betray you both. He would not have his periods—thus he would show both of you, symbolically, that you need not fear his body, since it obviously was not functioning as a woman’s should.

This was the reason for his outrage last night. He had done what both of you wanted, and now everyone was angry at him, including himself—but he felt (underlined) that he had done it mainly to reassure you.

These ambiguous feelings on both of your parts have much to do with the penis reaction. It does not dare shoot a straight line. (Half humorously.) At the same time that these sexual feelings operated, the two of you have an extremely powerful psychic bond, and a hidden but definite sense of inner identity.

If you realize that unconsciously you both knew of our work from childhood and before, then some of your characteristics will fall into place like mosaic. Ruburt is powerfully attracted to you, and as a woman her psychic center is with yours.

The magnetism is both from past life experiences, and set up ahead of time in this life, so that the both of you would be drawn together and held together, despite the fact of no personal family, no children as a common interest.

Therefore the attraction had to be extremely strong. This applies to you both. Ruburt had to have, and adopted, both strong passive and strongly independent characteristics. The passivity and receptivity as a necessary prerequisite for our work, the independence as a necessary prerequisite to offset the early chosen environment, and also as an aid in dealing with physical communications.

The sense of loyalty was anchored in you, and you both decided upon it before this existence. Therefore you may sense in Ruburt at times confusing inclinations toward high independence in one area, and a self-denying dependence in another. Because he is presently a woman he will react strongly and aggressively if he feels you are drawing too far apart, for this would threaten your life and goals as much as children would—children in your minds being coming too close together. So you have been constantly between the two poles.

Ruburt’s physical system has felt the strain simply because both of you feel that it is his body that would be the threat in the child area. You both become panicky therefore in two main areas—both that would affect your primary directives, to devote yourselves to artistic and psychic work.

Your before-class activities were decided upon because you knew they could not last too long. Now Ruburt chose, as a woman, to have this strong magnetic feeling toward you, and while the same drives pull you both, because he is a woman this time he is, far more than you, sensitive to the lack or ordinary physical endearment. This leads us to a difference in your reactions to these problems.

He reacts personally and deeply when you get too far in the direction toward noncontact. This noncontact simply is more easily accepted, comparatively speaking, by you. He feels however that his body has been almost cursed by you both, and at its worst reaction he interprets fairly prolonged noncontact in the following terms: the way Christ cursed the fig tree, that it dare not bloom, that his body is forsaken by you both, unwanted, an orphan child, so that even his good looks as a woman are suspect.

He feels therefore a strong division, in that his mind is acceptable, that you both value it, but that his body is unacceptable. On the other hand however, with his womanly characteristics, he wants to be stroked and physically loved, and when he is not he feels that you have divorced his body.

Now when Ruburt senses a strong disruption in these main areas he will act up, and strongly. He is trying to see to it, as you are, that your primary purposes are held to. Both of you intuitively realize that your work, both creative and psychic, is bound up in your relationship, for Ruburt helped to bring out in you the freedom to paint, as you knew ahead of time he would.

In both of you, your feelings toward work and children then are closely connected. Ruburt at that time tried to comfort you as a woman, through caresses, and offering frequent sexual comfort. You repulsed him then, feeling that this would only add to the problem, and he began then to build up this feeling of physical divorce.

In a strange fashion the symptoms also served to stress what he felt you were both trying to deny—his femininity, in that he felt at a very unconscious level that they made him helpless and in need of someone to lean upon—a mute call for support to you, and at that level he was outraged that instead of giving him your hand you would offer mental suggestions.

Now give us a moment. I am dealing mainly right now with his attitudes because you did not recognize many of them. Such a physical alienation was bound to have emotional consequences on both of your parts. He did not feel physically loved or wanted by you, but more than this you see, he agreed with the judgment that he felt both of you had made. Had he not agreed, you would have had a different set of problems.

The class sessions incidentally, served to keep the spontaneity available, for the spontaneity of our own sessions suffers when your own relationship is less than the both of you accept. Then it becomes something you want to do and feel you should do, and a strong part of your work, but the spontaneous fountainheads beneath do not have that easy flow. So that that flow does not dry up when it does not operate as fully as it ordinarily can in our own sessions, then it shoots up and appears in class sessions, as a precaution and simply because the fountainhead as such will not dry up, but seeks its natural release. For this reason to some extent you have distrusted the class sessions, feeling that the strong personal basis of the sessions with you and Ruburt was escaping you.

Symbolically you also compared that spontaneous flow with semen, creative abilities, and were jealous of it getting away from you. Ruburt was aware of this on one level. He also felt that this was the main reason why you had nothing to do with class, refused even once to attend it. You felt it was depriving you, not only of, say, a private session if Ruburt did not hold the following regular one; you also felt that the sexual activity you were not getting from Ruburt was being channeled instead psychically where you were getting no benefit. To use this energy in private sessions was all right because it was a joint performance, a private one, and you both directly benefited.

Your relationship exists strongly and validly on many more levels than those between the majority of marriages. You therefore have of course more aspects both for fulfillment and strain to develop. Your work lives are far more intertwined than even you realize, and that is why you cannot isolate one area in your case from another area of activity. This is extremely important, and often overlooked while superficially recognized.

Ruburt would be, and is, susceptible to advances made on your part in the kitchen—the woman’s area; also in the living room, which is fairly neutral to both of you; or in his working place, for he has always been aware of the connection there. The bedroom has been an alarm area for both of you sexually, for the reasons made obvious, I should hope, and your studio has definitely been an alarm area on your part.

My heartiest regards to you both.