“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We sat for the session at 9, but just then a neighbor began cutting his grass with a power mower. Our windows were open and the sound seemed especially bothersome. We waited for the job to be done, which took half an hour. By then we were both quite upset, although I think Jane’s unease stemmed more from my reaction to the noise, than it did from any noise itself.)

Ruburt in his own way recognizes the charge behind what you say. Sound to him does not have the same meaning, though he may dislike the noise. He interprets your remarks therefore as aimed against distractions in general, recognizing your symbolism, and this makes him uneasy because in his own life he has taken the steps he has to cut down distractions.

He is correct. The beliefs behind these were quite applicable and helpful to a youthful personality. His writing, as much as art does, sprang from periods of deep thinking, isolation, and involved strong tendencies to go inward more or less alone.

Ruburt’s set of beliefs for some time were so invisible, and he identified with them so completely, that it was extremely difficult for him to examine them in the light of the present and his now situation.

The paper written today should be discussed by both of you so that those ideas are brought completely into the open where he can consciously and intellectually examine them. Your emotions follow your beliefs. For many reasons then he was convinced that his course was correct. His methods began to alarm him, but even when they did, and he realized that he was making a bargain of a sort, he still believed in the premise that made a bargain necessary.

Because many of his ideas and beliefs were also bound up with you, your work, your ideas and his interpretations of them, then your relationship became entwined. Initially the beliefs were accepted because he had been taught to believe to fear his energy. On the other hand it was his pride. Now in another kind of life-style, with another kind of personality, the same belief might have been dispensed with easily. If energy flows in conventional accepted patterns it is not feared.

Give us a moment.... He had, as you mentioned, the inner knowledge of his own abilities that had, he felt, to be used. After his first marriage he determined, with the help of your love, to find a suitable framework. His natural abilities are unconventionally tuned, highly spontaneous, working through intuitive loops; in a certain way, now, from a normally conscious viewpoint, unpredictable.

(Intently, as above:) His nature then on other levels would follow the same pattern. He felt that this same quality, physically translated, led to a physical spontaneity that would make the inner spontaneity more difficult to achieve. Spontaneity and energy used in his work was one thing, but allowed physical translation, he felt, could mean bizarre, unreasonable physical complications.

If he were as spontaneous physically as he was mentally, then his living situation could become unstable. In your early relationship this could mean anything from sudden trips across country, an overactive social life, or even sexual attraction to men outside of marriage.

Before you moved here he felt that his energy had been too spontaneously used physically.

He was then just over 30, and felt that his abilities had not begun to show fruition. The beliefs gathered momentum then, coming from structures from childhood that he felt he could use, and from you ideas, which then, were very much like his.

There are other issues of which he has been lately somewhat aware, connected here for example. In the beginning the symptoms made certain that he would not have to get a job. That fear no longer operates. The belief as he wrote it alone was simply that to do his creative work he had to curtail other activities. In the beginning as an apprentice writer this was to allow him to develop.

When he found himself becoming at all known after the tour, the symptoms, after having lifted to a large degree, returned with a vengeance, because then he was suddenly, to his way of thinking, besieged by distractions of a different kind. Then he was also afraid that this spontaneity and unconventionally attuned energy could be misdirected, again physically away from work. He could become for example a television personality.

Now: your attitude and his interpretation of it, to him, clearly jibed. Such courses would also represent distractions to you. He thought you hated distractions, and for a period of time he felt that you thought him one.

His writing seemed dependent upon the curtailment of activities of other kinds. Give us a moment.... When the system was set up, for many reasons having to do with relative youth and lack of experience, he did not have any confidence in his conscious ability to say no, to hold to a “line of attack.” He was afraid he would be swept willy-nilly. He was also afraid, particularly when he tried teaching, that he might be led to give up and settle for another occupation that would bring automatic respectability, money, and some prestige.

Give me a moment. I want to organize this so it makes sense to you... For other reasons, the fear of pregnancy for example, physical spontaneity was also suspect, and here again you were involved. Not that you consciously approved the methods used, but he had his situation and yours always in mind, and was convinced he was acting for both of your interest.

Now these are his interpretations, but whenever you rejected his spontaneous advances, for whatever reasons you may have had, this helped reinforce that idea. There was, my dear friend, little danger of Ruburt becoming pregnant, when spontaneous passionate moments on both of your parts were cut out.

Give us time.... He had schooled himself to believe that distractions of any kind had to be eliminated. This means that in writing a book he withdrew, and more and more, physically speaking. It was his idea of training. The issues were also operating between you, as his paper on belief indicates.

He also felt that you reacted to his improvement by feeling threatened yourself, that you disapproved of it. Two particular beliefs here: The party at Bega’s, and your “tirade” —his interpretation, about his dealing with Prentice on one particular occasion. For reference it is in his notebook.

These two events made him pull in his horns; or rather, his interpretation of them in the light of your relationship. He always felt now, and work this out yourselves, that you focused upon the most negative aspects of his condition, and ignored any improvement as minute. But more, that you almost disapproved of them, that you expected him to be in poor shape. So he would hide any he felt from you often for fear you would crush them, or make him lose whatever small confidence in himself physically he’d gained.

The tooth difficulty arose because of the conflicts of wanting a new contract while thinking of spending money for a house. Also his great difficulty physically when you were looking at houses. He felt that you wanted one but that you were refusing to do what you could do—move to a rented place, and that did excite him.

The symptoms became intensified. The tooth symptoms however brought up a system of beliefs through his writing, and he faced some of them quite directly in a crisis situation. He saw what could happen when beliefs are allowed to run astray, and he attacked some then quite directly, and won out. The contract for my book, on a physical level, relieved him.

The beliefs had built up then to such an extent that highly ritualized behavior was involved. He had to be at his desk at certain times immediately. Now that has vanished. He worked that through out of sheer desperation.

The reason that he could not get rid of the symptoms was simply that he believed them necessary requirements to his work. The symptoms and curtailment of activities were invisibly combined, so that he did not realize you could consciously set up a system in which you could work freely without distractions, and be perfectly free to do whatever else you wanted otherwise.

Until that distinction was seen then he felt his writing dependent upon the symptoms. They were retained in order to maintain concentration, period. When a book was being produced, and afterward.

These ideas were a part of his youth, and therefore nostalgically connected with it also. Give us a moment, and rest your hand.

When you talk about people being insane, and point out the negative aspects of the race, Ruburt becomes highly uncomfortable because to him this means he has to protect himself against them, and justifies his behavior. On the other hand he becomes angry and frightened because it is precisely to protect himself against such “people, activities, and events” that he has tried to isolate himself.

Hearing you voice the same opinions, he becomes mad at them or at you, for he knows that those reactions of yours helped him form his fear of the world—helped, but are not responsible.

If you did not know that Ruburt could indeed manage to dance, though not in the wildest fashion, then you would not believe it when “faced” with the reality of his behavior around the house. You would think he could not do it.

Now when Ruburt imaginatively saw the trailer, and so forth (on our Sunday drive last weekend) and experienced that mobility in imagination, your reaction was the same as the one used for my analogy above. In his way he was using an excellent procedure, and what you thought of as reminding him of the facts was instead inhibiting freedom.

Symbolic interpretations immediately became obvious, and yet brought out into the open, as in tonight’s episode. I do not want to duplicate material, but Ruburt’s seeing you working without symptoms was of great benefit. Your reaction then to the noise was upsetting, which is quite all right, because now your reactions there can be consciously assimilated. Your reaction is to yell about the condition, yet you do not move. His has been to say little and to withdraw. Though your particular interpretations of distractions may vary, to him the noise itself, for example, is not so charged. But quite rightly he recognizes the noise as your symbol for distraction.

Gradually his belief system led to more restrictive behavior, even to some extent impeding inner flow. The psychic was suspect in the beginning, as it seemed to conflict with his writing ideas. This was largely cleared through my books and Seven.

Letters and calls were interpreted as distractions mainly—as another pull upon his energies. He recognized the psychic source of his writing, which cleared the psychic area in that respect, finally. But he was afraid that the spontaneity denied in physical life would run rampant now in inner psychic experience.

The sex was denied on a physical level to a large extent, as he read so-called psychic books. Much of this is based on the youthful feeling he had to direct his energy toward his work. He found his physical age frightening for a while, and was therefore not able to use the experience gained with age. To give up the youthful ideas was to admit that he was no longer the young writer.

To let these ideas go was to let his youth go, and to admit that many of those ideas, believed in so strongly and so stubbornly, were not working any longer. Even your remarks about a black-haired wife meant the image of a woman in her 20’s—the-younger-than-you obviously youthful, spontaneous and cute wife; not a 44-year-old woman with experience behind her, some sense, and who could stand on her own feet, but a much younger version, youthful enough to get into trouble, and to be humorously watched in that regard.

When he thinks in such terms he sees an old woman, crippled and alone, incapacitated, in a home, and the fear brings a feeling of powerlessness, not one of strength. The beliefs mentioned added up to beliefs on a physical level so that Ruburt believed that his arms and legs could not straighten out, that he could not physically walk well.