“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“I never did resent it.” We had talked about this at times, of course, but now I thought I saw a new angle to things, and felt hope; where before I had thought there were no new angles....)

He wanted you to have what you wanted to have. He considered your painting—and much that he has done has been on your behalf as well as his own. It may seem, as you say, that he did not take your feelings into consideration—as no man wants, on that level, to see his wife at all incapacitated. But in his own way, and no matter how misguided, he was trying to pace himself and his temperament with yours, to play up those mental writing abilities that would help his career, and in which you took such pride—and while doing that, play down qualities that might distract you from your own work, by encouraging physical activities—parties, vacations, travelings, that would further take up your time, when you were already taking time away from your art to help him in psychic work.

The concentration would also provide financial fruits. He would not be making money for both of you that would enable you to paint, etc., but losing it, if he allowed himself the freedom to run all over the place, take vacations, etc. He thought he was buying you time, and for himself as well.

Some of this he is aware of, but all of it was based upon the specializations, the private focuses through which both of you have a tendency to view your lives. You, Joseph, are beloved by many people you do not know. You have enriched their lives, through the notes, through your part in our work. People who are strangers to you consciously feel better because you exist. That is the kind of success that matters.

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.

(A question: But Jane has been having at least one weekly session—in ESP class.... She needs more?)

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.

Ruburt’s condition does put you off, so neither of you have to contend with exuberant physical desire, that might interrupt you. Now, this is mainly, but only mainly, on Ruburt’s part; but it is in deep response to your early attitudes, and some of those still continue: to you it seems obvious where Ruburt “errs,” yet some of your own strategy very neatly escapes you, so that the rationalization so clear to you on Ruburt’s part, is invisible in your own case.

When such an improvement of attitude does occur on Ruburt’s part, it takes considerable courage for him to take or initiate that first step—and you do not ease the way, but in the meantime go along until he makes such a suggestion first. When you finally do both go out, at the most two or three times in a row, something happens. What could it be?

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.

Some of Ruburt’s students would receive great feelings of creative endeavor if you allowed them the simple pleasure of making out envelopes for your (new) letter (to correspondents), but you are afraid of sharing that work, menial as it is. The two of you are doing what you have decided to do, and producing what you have decided to produce. You have put impediments in your way, but you are producing regardless. You are embarked upon a work that you are determined to embark upon. You are successes, whether or not you insist upon thinking of yourselves sometimes as failures.