“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I am the creative self. You see me in the poetry, the psychic developments, and Sumari, but I have been forced to follow certain lines, as you suspected, despite my nature. Far more than Ruburt suspects from the beginning, his natural creative drives were also used to their ends, both religious, social, and as a way of gaining approval.

Sometimes his intellect has worked with me, sometimes not. I am far more resilient, pliable, flexible and daring then other elements of his personality, which are fear-ridden. Some of his attitudes have to do with his parents, in that he fears he could become like his father—undisciplined and slack, loose and amoral.

His mother’s scorn told him this was a part of a bad blood heritage, an inevitable part of his condition. Ruburt felt that his mother only liked him because of his writing. In the early novels his repressed feelings could be expressed. They were creative, but also safety valves. I made art out of them.

You know that panic is behind such repression, and a misguided idea of self protection. Inhibiting thoughts inevitably inhibit body motion. For his own benefit and mine, two or three times a week he should sit down and write out his feelings, as he began to do last summer. All kinds of repressions will come to the surface.

You must understand that for nearly 20 years he lived in an environment in which expression of dissent brought instant retaliation of the most frightening kind. Outright punishment—hair-pulling or cursing. Verbal humiliation was easiest to bear, but his mother would immediately show all kinds of extremely serious symptoms, for which Ruburt would be adamantly blamed.

His mother would pretend suicide just to punish him. He felt therefore that he caused your illness, that in a way you were punishing him for the frivolousness that made him suggest you leave a conventional background and your parents, and go with his father in Florida.

When you became sick he thought “Aha, mother was right, I do destroy everyone I touch, and now I have made my husband sick.” There is a great division of energy, as there is in all creators, but in his case between the need for spontaneity and discipline, safety and freedom, and these are clearly seen in the body’s condition right now.

Quite unwittingly because of your own nature, you tilted the balance for a while. He picked up your ideas of discipline in the beginning, then latched upon them in his own way. He felt you did not trust his judgment, remembering what he thought of as key points in your life, when his judgment seemed wrong or when it was criticized.

These seemingly small episodes were nevertheless important. Because in the beginning you emphasized discipline, he felt you did not think him capable of exerting it on his own; that while you were attracted to his spontaneity you feared it and his energy. He felt that you believed that, given a free hand, his habits would be too exuberant. He would have, or would keep, odd hours, no schedule, be messy.

(9:15.) He felt for some time that you were intrigued by the spontaneous parts of his personality, as long as they could be controlled, kept proper and in their place. This had to do with the love-making also. He tried then, because of his loyalty to you, to temper the percentages—to be more one way than the other. You had this effect because he did idealize you to such a degree. It was not a fault of yours.

After that he feared deeply that all adverse comment of his, or negative remarks, would make you worse. Your illness frightened him more than anything else since his life with his mother, because he could not allow you of all people to be ill because of him, as explained.

He felt his success put you in a poor light in your mother’s eyes, and the eyes of society. An impoverished artist as a husband he could take with great pride. Once the part-time job continued and kept continuing however, once you had a job steadily, then he felt that others compared you, not with other artists but with other ordinary men who had jobs. And there, under those conditions, you made poor showing.

You did not communicate yourself too well. Because of his abilities he picked up your feelings all too clearly, but because of his fears he picked up your negative feelings. He was afraid you were not an artist after all. He knew you were not a Sunday painter, but he felt you were greatly repressed in your work, and that any breakthrough could only come when you focused upon it, your work, regardless of other consequences.

He therefore did not discuss any issues with you concerning his own discouragements or fears as they happened. He felt guilty enough because you were working. He did not want to lay extra burdens on you, but he came to resent everything that was provided by a job.

(A small incident to illustrate: Yesterday morning at 8 AM, the tenant in the efficiency next door played the radio very loud outside our window for over an hour. We both were mad, and felt like yelling, etc. Later that morning I asked the man and his wife to not do that. They agreed. [This morning we slept undisturbed.] But when I came inside after speaking to them, Jane said, “I wouldn’t dare do that.” At the same time she was smiling, and very pleased that I’d spoken up. [I had decided to speak up regardless of the consequences, though.]