“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt began to overreact more and more, and felt the invisible pull physically. The near and too-far boundaries were uncompromising and arbitrary. A division of responsibility for your relationship was far less satisfactory. The two of you instead now should concentrate your efforts upon forming a generalized, comfortable center, and maintaining that. This will put the concentration of attention in constructive areas, upon warmth and mutual understanding rather than putting the burden of the relationship first on one and then on the other.

Within that area you will both find greater freedom, warmth and creativity. Your work will show great advantage, and the energy that has been bottled up can be released. Understanding the issues will automatically help you form this center. It should be flexible enough now for both of you, and not the formation of one rigid point. (Laugh.)

At the risk of repeating myself, your in quotes “role” to one extent was restrictive in the sexual and emotional area; you were the one who drew the line. It was partially a distorted, unconscious understanding of this that led Ruburt to the exaggerated projection of that restrictive role to those other areas of your life.

He was unused to setting himself up against his own spontaneity so strongly, yet when you did show signs of drawing the line, say, at fear of spontaneous sessions fairly early in the game, he felt on the one hand relieved, and on the other angry at giving up this new prerogative.

He of course reacted to the annoyance on your part. The tests from this standpoint were highly explosive, for he did not understand the situation, and found himself in a position highly ambiguous. You were encouraging him to even further spontaneity on the one hand, to intuitional freedom, and yet to his point of view requiring him to exert all kinds of discipline, which he felt was your role—to follow the intuitions so far, know when to stop at the proper target, and it was here that he first deeply felt you as a taskmaster.

You may take your break. One small point: you both would have denied yourselves strong possibilities of growth had you kept up; do you follow me?

One more sentence: this arrangement automatically sets up artificial barriers between spontaneity and discipline, and colorations that were sexual in nature, leading to deductions such as: spontaneity was dangerous, obviously, since it needed such controls.

In general Ruburt is more easily spontaneous, for example. Over the years you simply did not allow enough leeway for yourselves, but the overall tendencies are perfectly legitimate. They operate quite obviously, also in your relationship with the world at large. You can put up with noncontact comparatively speaking far better than Ruburt, and will be the first one to draw the line here. As in the other areas mentioned, the more personal ones.

Now do you have any questions on the last session, this one, or allied subjects that you want cleared up before we resume dictation next week?