“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.)

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.

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.

(Humorously:) I would make a good marriage counselor.

(“You certainly would.”)

The early remarks by the young psychologist had thoroughly frightened him, and he was not ready to go into the deeper implications. He was quite simply terrified. He felt also then that you would give or withhold physical love according to his performance on the tests. But as foolish as that sounds, you see, it was based on these roles that you both accepted.

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?

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.

Now give us a moment. Some of this of course can be and has been turned to your advantage. Your tendency toward feeling safe in noncontact situations means that you do not want models in your studio, yet you are highly intrigued by personality. This has led you to develop psychic abilities for creative purposes—that you would not have needed nor sought otherwise.

In later years you loosened up considerably. You still would not want to deal with the intrusive, and to you, immediately disruptive emotions that would be obvious in a sitter. With them you would want to handle the emotion with kid gloves, precisely because of course you are so sensitive to emotion.

For this reason you also feel that they are not challenging to produce, as compared with your other paintings. Ordinarily you seldom paint women, feeling that in such paintings emotions would be too blatantly displayed. You may have to watch a tendency to masculinize your women if you seriously begin to do such work, for you may feel, again, that harsher lines are necessary to hold the emotional element in check.

(“Very good. I would like that.”)

I simply would prefer we not stray away from the book too long.