“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now. I would like to give you some more personal material. Incidentally, Ruburt read the chapter on which we are working, and was newly astonished. (Chapter 15 of Seth’s own book, Seth Speaks.)

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.

With Ruburt of course it leads to work blockages, particularly along poetry lines where the emotions appear very clearly. Ruburt saw today that the intellectual portions of the self, and even the literal-mindedness, served an excellent purpose in allowing him to objectify highly intuitive material, and to give it actuality in the world that you know. He did not understand this earlier.

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.

You would be grateful then when Ruburt did originate such a crisis, simply because the pressure behind the repressed feelings was more painful then, so that it was defeating its own purpose. You helped initiate these crises in your own way then, by intensifying the noncontact behavior that you knew would cause Ruburt to take steps. On occasion you increased your own noncontact behavior when he did not react when you thought he should.

This would cause considerable panic on your part. On the other hand of course Ruburt also expected you to come up with and initiate the noncontact behavior when he felt that your relationship was getting too close for comfort, that his physical love for you might lead him some time to neglect consciously or unconsciously proper contraceptive behavior.

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.

When Ruburt feels comfortable in your relationship he is much more predisposed to cook and to eat. The kitchen once more becomes a sacred place of nourishment to him, and the food that he prepares is much more nourishing to your bodies, because of his attitude and its results upon the atoms and molecules composing the food.

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.

You had always counted upon him to be freely spontaneous, and could not understand his reactions. When you told him to be spontaneous he was all the more confused. Earlier in both of your minds, Ruburt was the spontaneous part of the relationship, hence for many reasons the unpredictable element. You were the discipline element, the reasoning part. Neither of you were fully willing to work out these seemingly (underlined) contradictory elements of your own personalities. For of course your personality has some strongly spontaneous and intuitive elements, as you now know, and Ruburt also has very definite, now too definite, tendencies toward discipline.

For a while then you were willing, comparatively speaking, to let Ruburt express the spontaneous, strongly spontaneous, elements of both of your personalities; with the joys and perils involved, and denying him the responsibility of learning how to temper and use spontaneity. He was willing to let you express the reasoning, deliberate qualities of both of your personalities—the deliberating elements, and to that extent not permitting you to fully express your own spontaneity. You would not learn to use and enjoy it while he did it for you.

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.

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.

We will resume dictation Monday, and after the last break present your questions then. I did not want to leave you with the impression that these basic tendencies of yours and Ruburt’s were negative, for they have and will serve good purposes. You will be much better able to deal with them and use them constructively now however, for the unconscious material has been brought to the surface where it can be assimilated and understood.

Hopefully Ruburt should have his period within about six days.If he does not, then he will have it at the next regular time.