“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Both of you have seen yourselves in the past in a rather specialized light, and interpreted your success, or lack of it, or progress or lack of it, in one particular area only; and you had at least, each of you, a tendency to view the other in the same manner, though this was far more emphasized on Ruburt’s part. So you thought of yourself as an artist, primarily, and judged your success, or lack of it, through that focus, and generally through that focus only.

Viewing you as he viewed himself, using the same logic, he was afraid however that basically you felt our work a detriment to your own, and that its success, while pleasing you on the one hand, might prevent you from success as an artist because you would not have the time, and that you would basically resent it. You always encouraged him in our work, and he knew this. Still, your part in it conflicted with his ideas of you and what you wanted.

Now: Larry (Herschaft) is touched by your paintings, and by your reality as it is translated through your paintings. Your freedom as an artist will come precisely when you free yourself from identifying exclusively with that image in your relationship with yourself and the world. Then you are free to use your abilities, for your survival does not depend upon them. Do you follow me?

I suggest you read the session I gave concerning the importance of the person from which the artist or writer springs. I suggest also that Ruburt read it especially. All of the individual and joint inhibitions you have placed upon yourselves spring directly from those specialized versions of yourselves.

Sex became dangerous—not to protect your persons—which would be delighted, but to protect your rigid, limited ideas of your “artistic selves”—the writer and the artist might be threatened, and so your personal lives must suffer, and the persons be shoved away.

Now if you can understand that, and those reactions in the sexual area, then you can understand how Ruburt simply carried them further than you would; the same rationale applies. The artist and the writer are not dependent upon such inhibiting factors, but instead limited by them.

You each produced despite your individual and joint efforts to inhibit other areas of your life; to protect a limited, old idea of what an artist and a writer are. You may take your break.

Here I want to continue with our earlier discussion—(humorously:) or monologue. The man and woman that you each are, are not threatened by love-making, parties, evenings out or vacations. The writer and the artist are not threatened either by those activities—but each of you in your own way have, until now, believed that they were.

In a different way, you both react as far as love-making is concerned. You each have an odd ingrown idea that writers and artists exist somehow apart from their personhood. They may be tortured or agonized like ordinary human beings, but they cannot be fulfilled like ordinary human beings—they cannot have friends or share confidences, or let down their hair with each other. They must somehow dwell alone and apart.

They can express their personhood freely—in those areas that do not threaten their creativity, but as the idea grows, there are few areas left. Your creativity as artists is dependent upon the fulfillment of your personhood, not upon its denial. You have feelings from your backgrounds that to share is to be vulnerable, to lose what you have, and the feeling that you can save your abilities only by cutting yourselves off from others.