“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When your relationship becomes uneasy to a certain degree, then this impedes the spontaneity that you allow yourself in your paintings. You are at that point trying to shove beneath awareness certain feelings of yours, mentioned in our last session. You are, say, close to the point on noncontact. Inhibited feelings therefore are at their strongest on your part. Considerable energy is used to continue the repression as the pressure from beneath grows.

As mentioned, the far contact point is somewhat more manageable for you than for Ruburt, but affects you nevertheless. You do not dare allow your intuitions full reign even when you paint at such times for fear that they will carry up with them these repressed feelings.

Now give us a moment. When the point is reached of which I had just spoken, your objectivity comes foremost in your work at the expense of spontaneity. Remember some time ago I mentioned your feeling about oils and the emotions. This is in keeping you see with the fact that you felt more threatened than Ruburt at those boundary-near-contact points. At such times you became more alarmed working with your oils and colors, and wanted a retreat, and sought for greater distance in your paintings.

He would have become instantly alarmed had you not then begun to retreat. This has been a highly formal, ritualized behavior pattern, a psychological dance, so formalized on a subconscious level that it left little leeway for spontaneity, and threatened to freeze you both in highly unconscious regimented behavior. He was to keep you from getting too far apart. You were to keep you from getting too close, and when certain automatic points were approached you both went into your act. For some time the behavior worked. The spontaneity was gradually squeezed out to such a degree that it lost its workability, and both of you were beginning to consider making adjustments. You did not understand the pattern, however. You ran into the invisible danger points and reacted in the old ways.

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.)

Now. Several more points. Some rather simple, but they should be mentioned.

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.

He then got into the habit of checking the spontaneous self at every point, and setting up opposing muscular reactions and tensions. It was simply not possible for me to give you more information at that time than I could. It was precisely, you see, the relationship between spontaneity and discipline operating between yourselves, that was projected upon the sessions, and inhibited any spontaneous comments I could make.

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?

Ruburt is apt to be more adjusting in that area, but here also you see, you have set certain unconscious points, boundaries on either side between what you consider too close contact, and too little. The tendencies operate in all areas, and they provide very constructive guidelines, and are beneficial when they are not carried to extremes, and when the focus is on maintaining the balance between. Because of your fears, both of you had your eyes out instead for the danger points.

In your contact physically with others these tendencies also apply. Ruburt will allow himself to be taken advantage of, for example, more easily than you in personal contacts. This outrages you because your symbolic danger point is brought into focus. It bothers him, but less.