“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now both of you have to some extent the false belief that you must protect your abilities against the world and its values, and distractions. You therefore place yourselves in a framework of threat in which your abilities must be cautiously presented, and yourselves in an environment against which you must take self-saving methods.

The world is thirsty for whatever intimations of joy and immortality it can get. It is highly in need of both of your abilities, and will not reject them.

Ruburt sees the two of you against the world. He has taken precautions to protect you and himself. The spontaneity he feared might interfere with his abilities is precisely the key that will release them and him. It is important that you, Joseph, also examine your beliefs honestly in regard to your work and spontaneity, and your relationship with the world.

(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.)

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.

(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.