“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There are many still waiting to be sparked, whose lives are, relatively now, unenriched by a mental and psychic environment that you two take for granted. There are those who do not even as yet “enjoy their creaturehood,” thinking it beneath them while still being unable to reach through and beyond it.

Great talent requires great spontaneity, not great discipline. Spontaneity knows its own order, and will see that it flows in proper, free, orderly directions. Ruburt has been trying to dam his spontaneity to make sure it flows only through his work, and in doing so has hampered both his life and his work.

In so doing he has cut down on the psychic information he could otherwise receive. You cannot shut down, or slow down certain methods of communication, or try to block out some neurological frameworks so that other portions will operate more effectively. It does not work that way.

While Ruburt felt he was doing the right thing, he would put up with almost any inconvenience, or make almost any sacrifice. He must understand that no sacrifice is ever required.

How many distractions do you honestly feel are automatically cut out because of Ruburt’s condition? How much isolation do those symptoms provide you? How do they automatically cut down on ordinary give-and-take with neighbors and friends that Ruburt might otherwise engage in?

(A quick, and probably partial answer: I do not know how much I may have counted upon Jane’s symptoms in the past to furnish a private world in which I could work. If I ever felt this way it was quite hidden from myself. I do think that the point of no return there was passed some time ago—several years, in fact. Now I think that any such benefits as isolation cannot compare with the price paid to achieve such a state. How could watching my wife hobble along possibly be considered a fair price to pay for privacy? The time spent in performing such simple chores as limping down the stairs and out to the car, for example, is far more on a daily basis than any that would be spent chatting with a neighbor, or even visiting, etc. And above all, the symptoms are not worth it to achieve isolation, for ironically the resultant time to work has lost the one ingredient that is important above all: peace of mind in which to carry out the appointed tasks.)

Now: for you this question: what do you still get out of Ruburt’s symptoms?

(When these private sessions first began in earnest perhaps a few months or a year ago, this was one of the first questions I asked. Seth very nicely said that Jane did take my feelings into considerations; but I never thought the answers were very satisfactory, and without checking the record I do not remember any benefits flowing from the session.)

Ruburt’s symptoms help provide the isolation. His continuing love provides however the climate, the steady reassuring climate, the only climate in which you dare to taste that isolation. He fears his spontaneity directed toward you sexually and emotionally would threaten you. So do you. You equate emotionalism with your mother. Ruburt equates spontaneity with emotionalism, therefore he imagines that his spontaneity will threaten your art.

You are not clear here.... This is enough for this evening but Ruburt has been afraid that his energy, spontaneously released, could threaten both of your prized abilities. This is not, again, to place his condition at your doorstep by any means. It is to show you that you have a private and a joint reality, and that your purposes merge, and so do your beliefs.

(Or when I HAVE decided to get better and improve, I’d change my mind at any “danger”; or I’d get better awhile to make Rob feel better when I think he’d rather just have a normal wife. [But he could have chosen somebody else and he chose me because I had these ideas about work, wouldn’t threaten him with kids, make him get a regular job, keep us focused, etc. What other wife could do that? Stupid.] Apparently I feel that’s why he married me, and what we had in common.

(Like if I have to make a choice to be like others, I’d waste time like they do, fritter away energies etc., let go. We haven’t even got discipline to get up at a decent hour much less work as we should.

(All of this has to be turned to finding different methods quickly and an examination of the original theses, and the need for discipline to begin with. What did I give up to get what I’ve got? Do I really want to keep it up and how can I keep good results and get rid of method? Do I really want to end up as an invalid with R. devoting time to me and anything left over to his work, what would this get either of us?

1. I still feel guilty doing creative stuff like poetry in work time when it might not sell. How about part of day working on whatever book I’m doing and part on poetry?

4. Can’t count on Rob to do much financially, would think it self-betrayal on his part to get a job, and he always complained at Artistic. I felt he had to have his chance and was confident I could swing the financial end without buying a house, etc., anyhow.

5. Symptoms keep me at my work, can’t do much else; they stop me from frittering away my time, provide built-in discipline that makes up for other people’s work hours. Like we don’t get up early when we don’t have to; if I didn’t have to stay in and work, would I?

6. Now I feel I should be working at Aspects instead of poetry... I put up with that conflict and do poetry anyhow now and then; sloppy thinking in here and feel Tam won’t really go for poetry.

7. With the symptoms Rob does lots of chores I think he wouldn’t do otherwise, freeing me to work? Keeps me from wasting my time with housework; think it’s degrading for R. as a male to do chores so much so the symptoms give us both an excuse; also gives him an excuse for not knowing for sure what he wants to do, paint or whatever, he can blame it on lack of concentration because of me.

10. At same time I think you should go out each day, exercise, see people, do other things for balance, but this is later stuff? and really just want to write and distrust those impulses. And when I feel them, they’re charged.

11. I think all this is for Rob’s good as much as mine despite my fears and his fears for me. One thing I can give him; buy time for him to do whatever he wants, be free of family and money problems, if he worries about me he isn’t going to feel responsible to get a job and my symptoms give him an excuse not to socially (old ideas) and the symptoms cut down on my flamboyance which has class to express itself in. It’s kept in work where it can’t threaten our framework.)