“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

Now. You knew you needed training and experience to do any writing. You would never consciously face what appeared to be the conflict between writing and painting. You would not take the time out consciously from painting to write. In the framework there was a nagging conflict. You managed to get the training, the experience, in such a way that you by-passed the seeming conflict.

Because of that specialized, limited focus, however, to varying degrees each of you were divided within yourselves. Ruburt feared that the psychic work conflicted with the writer, and detracted from you in your focus as an artist. This was apparent in the most minute circumstances, and colored your lives. Did Ruburt feel like making love during your working hours in earlier years, you actively discouraged him, and told him through actions and words that displays of innocent affection turned you on sexually, and disturbed you when you wanted to paint.

Now. Remember what I said the other night, about the lack of encouragement there on your part. It is highly interesting, considering your ease of mobility, and brings in many more aspects than you realize. For Ruburt, dancing, his one inclination to flaunt himself, comes into direct conflict with your ideas of privacy and secrecy. When he is obviously not in the best of physical condition and then wants to dance, this to you is showing his weakness to the world. You, with your history of athletic behavior, and your love of “perfect motion,” immediately contrast his activities with the time when he danced with the greatest of ease.