“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There is a significance in your dancing dilemma that neither of you have come to grips with—having to do with each of your natures and characteristics and ways of looking at a situation. Of course projection is involved, on both of your parts, and not therefore simply on Ruburt’s . He to some extent (underlined twice) recognizes his projections, is consciously aware of them, and tries to deal with them, but in that particular situation you do not recognize yours, though you understand to some degree your different individual reactions.

Ruburt realizes the desperation behind his own sudden impetus to dance, and the effort behind it. He realizes you do not experience this, and does attempt to make adjustments on your behalf. He does this particularly since he realizes he cannot count upon his reactions. The next time out he might be willing to dance, and be relatively unable.

What neither of you realized is the acuteness with which you choose the situations. You have not gone to establishments where dancing is the usual thing, where a dance floor is available. Granted there are other reasons for it, nevertheless you choose to begin with a situation in which dancing is not the norm, where it requires on anyone’s part particular effort, and a spotlighted situation.

If you shy away from dramatic public exhibitions of emotionalism under the best circumstances, then here you are faced with a situation in which you see it thrust upon you by someone you love, and in your eyes under the poorest of circumstances. The physical conditions, the floor, the act of dancing when others are not, these circumstances are not to your liking. Beside that Ruburt, you feel, is not at his best physically speaking. The situation then is highly charged.

Ruburt feels if you love him you will make the effort, but you retreat. Other things are involved. He has had several drinks before he reaches that point of deciding to dance, or to ask you to. You project upon him the attributes of emotional extravagance that you fear in your mother. That is, what you interpreted as such. Quite simply to you it seemed not the place or the time, precisely because to Ruburt it did seem the place and the time. To him this meant that his emotional mobility could be expressed privately at home under conditions you both found acceptable, but not physically through the body. Yet both of you chose conditions that were not “proper” in those terms to begin with, and hence highlighted the situation so you could understand it. It is more difficult in a way for Ruburt without the highlighted situation, yet easier for you. The spotlight serves as an impetus for him, and as an impediment to some extent for you—so he was trying to use the spotlight as an impetus for action precisely because he doubted his abilities. Now: that is enough for this evening. My heartiest regards to you both, and a fond good evening.