“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He was afraid that the body spontaneity would lead him away from mental and psychic agility. Since you are physical creatures the messages of the soul must be translated through the flesh, and to impede the flesh is to dim those communications. He has had to use far more energy to get those messages than is necessary, because he has impeded some of the sections through which information flows. He has cut down on some stimuli, and therefore slowed neurological messages.

The individual feels the presence of great energy, and is unsure as to how to use it. Picasso let it go freely. Ruburt wonders how much wasted energy went into Picasso’s antics—that should have gone into his work. Van Gogh and Cézanne were afraid of their energy, and with all they did could have done far more. Picasso’s free flow of energy in all areas freed energy for his work, and did not detract from it. He kept his channels to energy open, therefore the energy flowed through his work freely, and in a short period of time he could produce a painting that might take years for another as gifted to produce, who husbanded his talent as a miser.

Those purposes involve each of you and your work, and those methods that you think are necessary to direct your energies “properly,” husband your energy, and protect you from what you think of as a hostile world. You are as afraid of your energies as Ruburt is. He is afraid of not directing them into his “work.” He is convinced that he must protect you and himself from any spontaneity not reflected in work, and from the world.

You are afraid of releasing your energy into your work, for fear it will carry you beyond all ordinary relationships—simply because your father’s creativity seemed to cut him off from his wife and sons, and to lead to isolation. Creative success, not necessarily in terms of money, but creative fulfillment, becomes then a threat in which you see yourself cut off and isolated—while isolation is precisely what you think you must have to fulfill your abilities.

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.

(An added note: I now also realize that my not having an outside job helps Jane perpetuate her symptoms—the idea of “protecting” me against the world, etc. —see page 12. I’m very afraid now that my not “working” signifies my tacit approval, to her, of her course of action. I may have to get outside work to break this pattern—for break it I must, if only for the sake of my own feelings and reactions. I may even go so far as to sell paintings—but something will be done.

(Or when I love Rob so much and I’m afraid that I’m robbing him by knocking out qualities in me that he loved and that I can’t get them back or be lovely again [despite what I wrote above].