“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Notes before session: My sportsman self. My writing and painting selves. Father’s secrecy and my identification. My financial contribution. Jane’s fears. Our creative errors. Our attitudes re Prentice. Our attitudes re correspondence. Jane’s flexibility. Her dancing. My selling paintings. Mother.

I want to return to a discussion of your specialized focus, individually and jointly. Earlier, it was all that you knew—that is, both of you more and more in young years began to identify with what you thought of as your artistic selves, more or less to the exclusion of other portions of the self.

You, for example, could have excelled at certain sports, where Ruburt had no such inclinations. You chose to concentrate in artistic endeavors as you grew and learned through various areas and periods—that is, you tried and enjoyed sports, and writing; and after a while decided upon the painting self as your core of operation, and the particular focus upon which you would build a life.

Give us a moment.... Your father’s inventiveness would also be used in the same manner, as source material, by whichever self you chose to become. There are many such choices. I am using three only to show you how those primary aspects of your personality operate now in your present condition.

Your father’s creativity, as mentioned (in other sessions), before, had its side of secrecy, privacy and aloneness. Again as mentioned, you identified creativity with your father’s private nature. The writing self became latent as the sportsman did, yet the writer self and the artist were closely bound. You felt conflicts at times. It never occurred to you that the two aspects could release one another—one illuminating the other—and both be fulfilled. Instead you saw them, basically now, as conflicting. Time spent writing meant time not spent painting.

You believed the painting self had to be protected. For one reason, you identified your painting creative self with your father, and you felt that he had had to protect his creative self in the household from your mother. As these ideas became entrenched, you actually became more concerned with protecting your ability than with using it. You spent more mental energy setting up barriers to protect it, so that any one instance, say, of interruption or conflict, would immediately arouse the power of the buried fear, and become a symbol for it. You learned repression. Therefore, free time was not enjoyed creatively. You could not paint freely in it, for you were so on guard against distractions that anything could distract you.

You did not, fully now, realize your contribution to Seth Speaks in financial terms, though you understood your creative contribution. Ruburt did not either, until lately, because it was a matter of self-evidence: your contribution financially would come through painting alone. So for a while you were hassled that you were not financially contributing after you left Artistic, and so was Ruburt. You were contributing financially, but neither of you correctly understood this because of that specialized focus.