“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

Ruburt did not want to understand, for he was afraid, in your joint framework, that you would stop painting, and not use the framework you were supposed to, to get money. He thought this would be a failure on your part, for which he would be at least partially responsible. You each had blind spots because your focuses were too specialized and limited.

Ruburt felt he had to protect his writing abilities in the same manner, except that he is by nature more gregarious. He was also poorer than you, and determined never to be so again. The fact that you were not making much money in the framework the two of you accepted, led him to work the harder, determined to publish his work.

After vocally and otherwise objecting for a good eight years, he stopped outwardly objecting. For one thing, he began to agree with you. For another, he was too “proud” to be so humiliated. Did he spontaneously want company, he felt this deeply disloyal to you. He began to discipline himself more and more, trying to fit your image to himself. There were obviously reasons why, on his part, and these, in the past, have been covered. I am speaking of interactions, not blame.

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.

After not going out for a while the fear would reassert itself, of looking ridiculous and facing people, so there would a time until he again became defiant and conquered it. The love of the sportsman for motion can instead be used to encourage him toward physical performance. He saw, the day that you slept (last Saturday, January 26) that he is always afraid of his performance in your eyes—that he gets up more often when you are not watching. This natural love of good bodily performance however can indeed be used, and most effectively to your joint advantage once you realize its source.

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.

He felt that in the world’ s eyes this put you down, since your paintings were not selling. At the same time he could not accept your legitimate financial contribution through the work because he felt that might betray you as an artist. His job then was to encourage you to paint and sell your paintings, for he felt nothing else would satisfy you, and/or satisfy your brothers or your family.

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.

Before this Ruburt considered anything not writing a danger, a threat, or at least felt it a distraction to himself as a writer. He considered such things as a threat to you as an artist.