“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.

He had no sportsman-like background; on the contrary, a lack of ordinary physical orientation and interaction. His identification with the importance of the mind, then, and his focus as a writer, allowed him to inhibit physical motion in a way you would not have done. The dancing represents Ruburt’s end of the sportsman proposition—his gymnastics.

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.

He, when he had reached the point where he will go out again, is by then defiant, angry, joyous and exultant by turns. Each dance is a victory because he first had to get over the fear of walking to the dance floor, and he looks hopefully to you for your support that he does not look too badly. He yearns for any sign of your approval, and sexual recognition.

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.