“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

He did it precisely for that reason, although he was not consciously aware that he was trying to bring the problem out into the open. You distrusted spontaneous relations most of all, for those were the ones most likely (laugh) to produce the feared results. Therefore when you had relations you nicely and symbolically, with beautiful unconscious irony, made sure that they happened when you wanted them least, either on a scheduled basis or when one or you was tired, or when there was every good possibility to believe that you might be interrupted.

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.

This is the meaning of the dreams he had in the past about divorce. He feels completely uncherished, and therefore he does not nourish his body, because he does not want more of it. Now in that way, and he could not explain it to you because he did not understand it, he did feel completely divorced by you, particularly when he was at nursery school. He felt you had divorced his body, but not you see his mind.

Now you feel more actively threatened when the two of you reach the opposite end of closeness and contact, where you feel that despite all your precautions pregnancy might result. You withdraw emotionally, and it is at this point that Ruburt then begins his reactions. Precisely at the point where he feels pressed enough to practically and symbolically invade your working studio with intimacy in mind, and spontaneous intimacy at that—that is the point that you quickly begin an emotional and physical retreat.

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.

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.

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.)

(“He can always work back here in the studio on mornings and all day Fridays. I’ve told him that many times.” I work all day Friday at Artistic.)

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.

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.

A point I want to make: these are small but significant attitudes of his. I suggested frequently the up and down movements and the running, because he must set those legs into activity. I stressed however that he should make a game of it. As you know we have met severe blockage here, and I can now tell you the reasons.

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.

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.

He also to some degree was angry at me, as a male. He partially identified some of my traits with some of yours, so if he was mad at you for telling him, literally to his way of thinking, to hurt himself five times a day by getting up and down from the floor, he was twice as mad at me.

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.

I will tell you another of his secrets. In the past, though he knew that he exaggerated, when his legs were bothering him he automatically looked for the nearest available parking place when you were driving. He would never ask you to park close to your destination. He felt it a sign of weakness on his part to even think of it, yet he also felt that on occasion you showed an annoying lack of sympathy or understanding, and at his worst moments he would feel that you purposely chose a place further away—that it was for his own good, you thought, that he face the humiliation in realizing in what poor condition he was. This would automatically cause all kinds of symptoms, needless to say.

He did not feel you sympathized with him at all on a physical level, and he felt that his and your attitudes of dealing with the whole matter mentally through suggestion, was a way of further implementing the difficulty—the physical divorce.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Weekend mornings you are here to observe. Then to top it off, following his subconscious reasoning here, for he has scarcely been aware of this, you would not only observe him, but to his way of thinking, force him to make a public spectacle of his condition. He went through all kinds of pretenses, smiling when he tried to go down the stairs, trying to tell himself that it did not hurt, and far too upset to make use of the unending line of positive suggestions he tried frantically to give himself.

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.

The spontaneity of action as a result however was extremely difficult. The energy has been blocked. You saw it briefly in his fit of anger. Because of your past-life connections—and I will see to it that you get this material—he chose to put all his eggs in one basket, so to speak, as you did. But he also chose to divest himself of any distracting family references in later life, as far as his own parents were concerned.

He relates warmly to others, but he relates deeply only to you. His nature is strongly emotional, so he becomes more panicky than you when you approach, again, the far side of your safe-contact line, where you become panicky when you reach the close side of the same line.

You have however unknowingly an unconscious supportive relationship simply as a result of the identity of your family. You may dislike it, or isolate yourself from it, but it exists. He has never known that particular kind of belonging, and therefore his sense of belonging in that regard is connected with you alone.

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.

On one level Ruburt grossly misinterpreted your reaction here; since he was susceptible and knew it in his work area, he erroneously supposed you would be. The fact is that Ruburt, working, attracts you sexually, and you working attract Ruburt sexually. You however, being the male breadwinner as well as artist, feel most threatened by sex when you are working, because pregnancy could threaten the artist. So your attitudes in that regard, and reactions, will be mixed but usually adverse.