“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.)

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.

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.