“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

Because you saw yourself with such specialized focus, unknowingly you blocked out stimuli that as a painter you could have used. Because of your joint ideas—you, the artist, Ruburt the writer—then your financial contribution was strictly limited by both of you to that one field.

With a different focus, you for example can paint and write, utilizing both abilities to the best, and sell both. The old framework was so restrictive that your ideas of secrecy, protection and privacy made you want to protect yourself to such a degree that you did not want your paintings to sell, to share them with others. You wanted to protect them—the products of your ability, as well as your ability, from the world.

Both of you, so far, still believe that your spontaneity must be measured out because of those specialized focuses, and for no other reason. That focus has prevented you each from seeing what you have, from using it fully in all areas, and from recognizing your achievements, creatively, financially, and otherwise.

Ruburt used his body as a symbol of the entire situation, and the symptoms as a way of maintaining privacy, and lack of distraction on both of your parts—again, inhibiting sexual freedom, spontaneous outings that threatened both of your ideas. He would go so far, throw out test balloons, and meet with your disapproval. The disapproval was yours, and you saw his fears projected upon you. You were both happy when he showed some improvement, because neither of you wanted physical disability carried too far, but as soon as he showed signs of being free enough so that he could really take a trip, or dance, you both clamped down. He always waited to see what you would do, and these episodes, again, occurred after enough improvement, so that first he wanted to go out. Sometimes he forced himself to, thinking he was denying you the pleasure of your bars and outings. But despite what you said, he saw that you did indeed disapprove.

Now. The psychic work, which is a natural extension of both of your creative abilities, could not be fully utilized by you, individually or jointly, while you maintained such a rigid, specialized focus. Ruburt feared that it might be taking you from your one true purpose as a painter. Not realizing, either of you, your financial contribution through the works, you felt and so did he, after Artistic, that he carried the brunt financially.

At the same time, and somewhat because of your attitudes, he felt his womanly reality a threat to both of you as artists. A new organization is more than in the making. It is happening on both of your parts, and I am bringing it to the surface of your attention.

In this framework you see yourselves as individuals and as partners in a remarkable creative endeavor that will develop your main abilities easily, and without strain and inhibition. The correspondence has suffered because it has represented your attitudes toward people. As a writer, Ruburt resented the time. As a psychic and incidentally the person, he wanted to answer. The mail also represented business—people who buy books. Inquiries for help, to both of you, represented distractions, those who would take your time, in the old terms, and give nothing.

Giving himself psychic spontaneity might mean somehow giving into that spontaneity that both of you feared. Whenever psychic developments show themselves then, Ruburt improves in health, as he allows his energies their spontaneous play and expression. This flows into his writing, his physical condition, and your private lives.