“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:45 PM.) Now. Ruburt never learned how to handle normal aggressive thoughts.

(“Do you mean tonight?”)

He feels that you have not tried to make a success of your art, but have used excuses while blaming him for using excuses; that he tries desperately to sell his books, while you will not lift a finger to sell your paintings; that if he waited until he did his best work, he would never have sold a thing.

(I have for some time thought that Jane needed to sell her writings as a means of justifying her life—whether these writings were her best work was, in that sense, immaterial; she couldn’t possibly wait until her writing was a polished art before beginning to market it. So I don’t believe comparisons between her selling her work, and me selling mine, mean much. I also have an attitude that is quite personal, whether it is a good one or not: I don’t care too much what others think about my painting. Oddly enough, I am sure that my work will end up very successful, both as art and in the marketplace. So I can safely say that in my own way I am trying very hard to make a “success” of my work. Our methods differ markedly, however.

(I told Jane after this session that I’d intended to leave the job in a year or so —in other words, at about this time, rather than when I did. I thought that by now we’d have a good financial backlog built up, and freedom of action. I didn’t realize last year of course that she was so dissatisfied with the psychic image and the books; I blithely assumed that she felt she was doing good work, and that she accepted it, which doesn’t mean that I had any thoughts of ever saying she shouldn’t do any other kind of writing, ever. I had no idea of the bitterness or the depths of her resistance to, or feeling against, being sidetracked, as she sees it, from her main goals in life.)

He was also afraid that you would lose self-respect on your own and he could not bear that. Now you may take a break or end the session.

(11:26. I asked Seth for a break, but this proved to be the end of the session. Both of us were upset, of course. I told Jane that I had been having a change of mind, and that perhaps she shouldn’t contract Seth’s latest book in advance after all. I had become afraid a contract would reinforce the emphasis on psychic work that she wants to get out from under. I told her I would go along with whatever she decided on the contract, but did express my thoughts on it.

(Ideas of self-respect, or its lack, have never meant a thing to me... I am free of such burdens. When I left my job I thought it would please Jane, and of course I was glad to see it go, although I would have waited longer on my own. I must admit I don’t understand why each thing we do seems to make matters worse. What is left in our lives to learn, to uncover? What do other people do? I pity them, I guess.)