“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He has several important gifts of character, now, as separate from abilities. One is enduring persistence, massive inner intensity directed toward his goals. There is also an ability to endure unpleasantness, or even pain, if he believes it is for a great-enough principle.

Now all of these qualities are noteworthy and can be used to advantage. The built-in problem is that he will pursue a course with dogged stubbornness and determination once he has adopted it, until it results in the desired end or is proven disastrous.

Now this has been consistent in all of his behavior. For what he believes in he will try to jump any hurdle, and be willing to suffer almost any indignity. On the other hand he resents the slightest inconvenience that is not connected with his goals, and rises up vehemently against even the slightest restraint that he considers beside the board, or aside from your joint and individual purposes.

He railed, again, about the psychic work, but this, while important, was deeply recognized as a part of his nature, an extension of it long before he consciously accepted it. Do you follow me?

Now. Intuitively he has always believed that you should leave Artistic. He was somewhat frightened over the circumstances some years ago, when you had no money behind you, but even then intuitively he felt you should do so.

(After I resumed my seat:) The conflict was obvious, then, he had determined to write, to make his living in that manner. He refused to make a pattern of jobs. At my instigation he began the classes, which led him, though slowly, into other areas of financial development.

He has determined that he will not push you in any way. Because of your age difference he took it for granted that you knew more than he, and when he had pushed you to Florida it had not worked. He determined he would never push you again.

He was ready for you to leave Artistic and take your chances as soon as you had a thousand in the bank. You see his nature.

As a woman he appreciated your concern for security, and part of him was frightened to think of your giving up the income then, but the greater intuitive part felt that you should do so. He would not support you with a job, but he would do so through his books and other endeavors.

You did lose communication for some time. He did not know if you were really satisfied with your work or not. If you were, then he did not see why you did not take the chance. If you were not then all the more reason why you should take it, to give yourself the additional time. He felt deeply disloyal to think that you should be doing something you had obviously decided not to do as yet.

He felt when or if he spoke of this you were deeply hurt, thinking he did not understand your sacrifice—the job, but he did not want your sacrifice. He wanted you free to do your painting. He thought that you would not be satisfied to quit unless he had a job, and this he could not do because of his own commitment to his work.

He felt trapped, then. He withdrew physically, throwing all the more energy, he thought, into this course of trying to produce a book good enough to free you both. When the rewards financially began to pile up and you did not make a move, he began to think it was futile.

It was you who always said you wanted to put all of your energy into your work. You, whom he followed with such enthusiasm. He would waste his body for you and his work, but you would not take that step. He could not understand why. Operating, again, on his part were those doubts: could he really make a go of it if you quit? But he was more than willing to try if given the chance.

In your discussions you came back to: “Yes, but I can’t depend on you to take a job to help out.” Of course you couldn’t. He thought that was understood. He could help you his own way, and that was not his way. His commitment forbade it. He thought your commitment forbid you, too. He felt in the last years that he could sustain you both financially, with your psychic support, if the stimuli were there, and he knew you were doing what you wanted to.

He has no intentions of getting a job, but he considers this a tribute on his part and yours. He began to feel that the status quo would last. He wanted the impetus to come from you, yet realized that your concern for him, lately, made this relatively impossible. So he seemed caught.

Beyond this the daily and yearly steady living pattern was frightening to him in personal ways. He had always determined and said that he would not marry someone who stuck in a house on the corner of Main and such and such a street. This meant simply that the conventionally-accepted pattern was not acceptable to him.

He saw the two of you writing and painting together. Since you have no other close contacts this emotional bond was important. Because he concentrates with such intentness he needs changes of environment physically as counterpoint. He saw himself writing books, then taking a trip to break the routine, returning again and plunging into work.

He long ago relinquished the idea of freely dashing around the countryside. He needs a home base deeply, as you do, but your job here also restrained you both. He felt you did not understand this need, that it was not logical.

The money meant little if it did not bring you what you wanted or even provide an environment that was more desirable. He thought: another book, more money in the bank to pay taxes on, you still at your job, no trips, just another book for more money. He felt you were throwing his gift back in his face.

This is apart from the creative endeavor of the books. For these—to do his thing—he drained his body because he thought he had to, and for what reward?

He was also afraid of losing what you had, disrupting the pattern of current life, particularly if you did not feel ready. He became deeply worried for you, and looked to you for leadership. He felt you abandoned him as far as your joint concern with your work was concerned.

The psychic work took up more of your time. The obvious to him was to quit your job (Jane, as Seth, almost laughed), paint, and have the time you needed. You seemed willing to make no adjustments of any kind. At the same time he felt you would begin to resent the time spent from your work, but you would cling to the job like a lifeline until it was too late.

As he saw your friends making adjustments to the best of their ability, he became more frightened. It seemed neither of you would make a move physically. He felt imprisoned in the second story of the house with his work, but he gritted his teeth and continued.

The few remarks he made never showed his deep emotional discontent. You would say “But you will not get a job,” or “You are not able to,” and that would make him think you did not understand at all. Of course he would not, and you should not.

He appreciated the time you gave him, but he did not want the sacrifice of yourself. It was to his way of thinking a perverted gift, for which he could give no adequate acknowledgment—a gift that denied what you wanted was no gift but an unendurable burden.

He felt you should know this. He would never bring it up. His fear was too great. You would think he would not understand, or that he did not appreciate what you were doing. With what he was putting himself through, unnecessarily—but he did not realize it—then he could not understand why you did not insist on doing what you said you wanted to do. Either that, or admit you did not want it.

Much of this had to do with the picture in his mind, quite unconscious, of what he expected life to be. It involved both of you working against any impediment together, taking trips together, and having a freedom in that regard, a mobility because of your life-style.

Symbolically the job meant to him a great psychic rift, after, now, he felt you had enough money in the bank to hold you awhile. This did not operate, obviously, when you did not have the means. He worked then to get them.

He felt you resented his being home. You used to say “You don’t know what it is to punch a time clock,” he thought resentfully. He took it as an accusation. He felt deeply that you had no one but yourself to blame if you did not quit. The money was there to be used, and you were blaming him when he did not deserve it to that degree.

These thoughts smacked of disloyalty. He would not admit them consciously. He was afraid of demanding that you quit for fear you would say “I will quit if you get a job,” and this he could not do because of his own commitment.

When he moved into this apartment the idea was “If Rob will not use the money then at least I will have more space.” He felt deeply misunderstood despite any ideas of logic or reason in conventional terms. He felt deeply that you should have left years ago, that your own intuition should have told you this. He was at a loss to understand why you did not, or why it seemed (underlined) you would insist upon a job on his part before you would leave.

With the dream book he felt, beside the material already given that it was useless. There would be more money in the bank and to him is was blood money, rotten or spoiled like fruit overripe and unused. He felt you were denying your own talent and abilities. You told him to trust himself constantly but you gave him no example, only words, for you did not trust yourself to that degree.

He knew quite well that you would be both casting yourselves adrift financially in conventional terms. He remembered in the past how he felt withdrawing money from the bank. He was quite aware of his own fears also, but he felt that the stimulus would offset these, and that you would not add your courage to his when he was faltering. Unless he did something, he felt, the status quo would continue.

The morning symptoms are clearly related to the fact that you work mornings. The exaggerated weekend symptoms are related to two factors: One, the chores that he feels you thoroughly resent, and two, the Sunday situation when your mother is home. He feels that all of you are not being kind to her, merely supporting her, to bolster up your own ideas of yourselves as sons. This also has to do with disruptions not connected with your work, for which he has no patience.

Now. He considers the achievements highly important. It is for that reason that, misguidedly, he drained his physical energy and cut out all distractions.

He was also very deeply aware of your part in them, in the sessions, and in your support. To that extent they were their own reward. The secondary benefits, to him now, the financial rewards, lay latent. He felt they should be plowed back in—used for you and your work, and that you were not taking advantage of these secondary rewards, that they lay unused when they should furnish you, now, with the opportunity to do your painting.

He felt that it was inevitable, or should be, for you at one time to devote yourself to your painting, that you knew this, that is was always ahead of you, and that it was being unnecessarily put off.

He was afraid that you would grow more deeply to resent this, and that you would not rouse yourself in time to do what you must do. In the beginning he was afraid of taking the chance, but not taking the chance became finally unbearable. He was afraid you would not do it. He did not want to be the one to apply the stimulus. He wanted that to come from you.

Because of his love and loyalty he is deeply concerned about your work, and development. He was afraid of casting you into a situation before you were ready, and it seemed to him if you did not initiate the action you were not ready. He is afraid, naturally enough of the change, but the fear of not making it is far greater. He is determined that you have the chance despite any consequences, despite natural fears or anything else.

He is also intuitively sure that without the stimulus you will never develop your abilities fully. There will be other crutches to fall back on. He knows that this is something you must do, that it is more important even than financial insecurity, that a deep portion of your being will be forever unsatisfied if that course in not followed.

He feels that he is forcing the issue, but that he must force it now. He fears that there can be no more reasons legitimate enough to deter you, it is a challenge you know you must face, and that the best service he can be to you is to bring it to a head.

Automatically the living conditions will be far more to his liking. You will automatically have a freedom with time and space. He is banking on the stimuli to bring about greater book sales, greater productivity, further books and sales to help finance the establishment while you encounter your own abilities.

He feels you will be psychically more together, working more effectively as a unit, that your efforts will be directed more clearly toward what you want. It is the life-style he feels that is natural to you, and if you deviate from it for too long you become less unified and relatively listless. He feels then you will be working once again actively toward a common goal, with a life-style suited more daily to your natures.