“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(1. My stomach. Have had a lot of discomfort lately. On June 22 the pendulum told me that my stomach bothers me not because I don’t spend enough time painting, but because I feel guilty at spending the time I do, in view of all the other work with Jane that I feel I should be doing: working on sessions, “Unknown” Reality, etc.

(2. Did I go overboard on “Unknown” Reality? Why did I choose to do notes for that work, let alone publish it in two volumes? [Jane agreed to these procedures, of course.] Were these decisions mistakes?

(5. On the decision we made—Rob to finish “Unknown” Reality, then Psyche, perhaps with my help. [This decision leaves Jane free to do fresh creative work—whatever she wants to do. I understand that it’s vital that she have this freedom.]

We will begin in our own way.

Not only is our own work rather unique, but you have no academic credentials. You have avoided, for example, holding seminars of that nature. In that framework many psychologists, for example, would feel comfortable, but you offer no such bridge to anyone. You avoid “the wild psychic world” of cults, semicults, and so forth, and above all you are individualists who do not play according to game rules.

You have little patience, jointly, with that kind of world. The Hollywood director (Alan Neuman) who called, for example. Ruburt was warm, curious, and solitary. He did not reinforce the director’s sense of his own importance, and the man was used to that. Nor did he speak in the honeyed spiritual tones that the man expected from the psychics he dealt with.

You do not fit any of the current patterns, and you make no effort to—nor do you offer any face-saving devices for scientists of high stature. Anyone of the highest stature will come to you if you offer them personal readings. They will not come to you when you say “You create your own reality” in the same fashion.

Flattery is no social crime. It is a psychological art of its own, taken for granted in all circles. You do not flatter others in personal encounters. You make no effort to cultivate the kind of characteristics involved. Ruburt has them, and ignores them. Some important people, in your terms, do not contact you personally except on rare occasions. Those who bang at your doors are the antisocial, the drifters, the troubled, or those so enthusiastic that they also ignore all social rules, in which case you two rise up in arms.

To some extent you are unable to explain the secret nature of your own painting. You refuse to use it as collateral. Not only that, but your paintings are not an attempt to communicate with the world, or to get anything from it. You think you should—that is, you think you should sell your paintings, or make some effort in that direction. Instead they are communications between yourself and the universe, without the need, necessarily, that others approve or disapprove, or see or not see. In your writing, however, you want to communicate.

(10:53. Jane’s pace throughout had been good, and limited only by my own writing speed. I thought the material was excellent in all respects. I didn’t see how the insights could be better, I told Jane, and will try hard to implement them. I thought part of the material was hilarious, about our attitudes toward the world. I think that Seth’s expression for me of my feelings toward Jane were most accurate and penetrating—the kind of information one could spend months acquiring with the help of others, say. My own pendulum answers had steered me in the right direction, I saw, but were far short of being complete enough. I felt better than I had in some time.

He felt that the female was not temperamentally equipped to naturally handle such problems, and so adopted the symptoms. Because you so often expressed your concerns rather than your love, your fears rather than your hopes, and because of his own nature, the outside world appeared more threatening. He is by nature rather optimistic. From you he believed he learned that optimism was shallow, unrealistic, and that people were not to be trusted. He never believed in conflict. He is not abject, but he believes heartily in having nothing to do with an arena of activity in which he feels he might meet ridicule or criticism.

Your own inclinations and your beliefs did not reinforce his sense of security. The exuberant expression of your love, for your love for him is exuberant, found no expression in the overall of an active, direct, clear route, but was diverted through concern, and through mention of the threats you felt might surround him.

You do not expect the world to understand good work. You expect the artist, in whatever field, who is truly good, to be shunted aside. Your own hopes rise despite those beliefs, and have worked for you. But you have felt jointly that it was unsafe to trust the world; unrealistic; and while you could maintain a mental isolation, Ruburt adopted a physical one.

(11:45.) Ruburt’s own papers, written lately, give his side of the question, explaining why he would react in such a fashion.

You did well today, encouraging him in his house walking. Your original “walk for joy” was an “absolute” by contrast making his attempts seem futile. He is afraid that dependence as a woman threatens you because of his own beliefs. Your encouragement of his independence was interpreted as “Don’t dare be dependent.”

Learn the importance of touch, for both of you rely often too much on purely mental expression. The hot towels on the knees should be begun. You did not make any “errors” with “Unknown” Reality. For one thing, there were no errors to be made.