“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

You feel threatened if you get too far apart or if you come too close together physically. Now knowing this and seeing it clearly in words, you can I am sure make adjustments so that you do not go to those extremes.

Now Ruburt strongly reacted this time positively, when you massaged his leg, because he interprets your feelings toward his symptoms in this manner: you will not comfort his body physically because you do not like it. You tell him to use suggestion, which is a mental tool, and evade the physical contact which to him is proof of the physical divorce, and a reassertion of the mental being valued and the physical denied.

It shows itself in those matters that he does not communicate with you. It shows itself also in a possessive characteristic that is not as obvious as your tendency in the same direction in your own work. He is deeply offended and outraged at any “invasion” into his own territory—the student who goes into his room at break, or the woman peeking at his notebook. This has to do with his feelings of late, of retreating from the main room. (The living room.)

The secrecy also enables him to retreat in anger from you to some extent under the conditions mentioned earlier, and also has much to do with all of this brooding in secret. When he feels closed off from you it is then that he keeps important matters to himself. Because he is talkative this escapes your notice, but he often uses talk as a shield.

It hurt him of course to perform the up and down motions particularly, and he interpreted this to mean that you wanted him to torture and humiliate his body further by forcing it to feel the pain, and that in doing so he was punishing it further. He interpreted this therefore as a punishment of the body, and a mortification in a way of the feminine self.

He wanted you to help him get up and down from the floor, and encourage him. He felt instead that you and I were saying in effect: “You have not hurt yourself enough, now do this five times a day, and you will be a good girl,” and this he simply would not do.

Now when he felt that physical divorce you made various attempts to come closer, and you have made strides since obviously the symptoms have lessened. But one or the other of you would become frightened for the reasons given, and lately Ruburt felt an emotional separation might occur, and was occurring. Here again the threat to the prime directives, for he feels, and so do you, your work and the sessions quake when your relationship goes toward either extreme.

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.

For Ruburt to have a session without you, and for strangers, was something else. Particularly when you felt you were also being denied in your bed. Do you see the connections?

Ruburt sensed this feeling, and it was often in reaction against it that we did not have our next private session, and hence the buried connection: “If you do not love me I will not have a session for you.” He mentioned the Saturday morning occasions himself lately. He gets better as the day goes on, physically.

He has been much more comfortable when he is alone in the mornings and you are at work, because he feels you do not see him at his worst. This is one of the main reasons why he seems to have such great difficulty in getting up in the mornings during the week; where at least he felt he could arise with some dignity alone, and if he was a mess you would not be there to reprove him.

So when you said “You do not try to help yourself,” he was so angry he was nearly speechless. He felt you a stern taskmaster, and the logic as being: the worse you feel the more you should drive yourself. But he felt this also, you see. It was much more important to take a walk when he did not feel good than when he did.

Now this is true. However, he interpreted this to mean “Because I do not want to go, I should,” which is not the same thing. I am not explaining this particular paragraph of material as clearly as I would like. There are some fine distinctions verbally that are difficult to make clear.