“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You did not dwell consciously on the kind of woman you wanted. Some men never achieve any kind of creative or stable relationship with a woman, and so they are acutely aware of that lack in their lives. One purpose was met, then, when you married Ruburt. Your desire to paint, per se, did not emerge full blown when you were a young man, and one probable self is happily engaged in commercial artwork. He wonders what would have happened had he done something else. You did not meet Ruburt either until you were in your thirties, so the challenges set were not those that would be solved by a conventionally young man.

Now there must be reasons for that kind of behavior. You make your own reality. If Ruburt’s symptoms represent the seemingly negative aspects of his life, then your dissatisfactions about work represent the same in your private experience. You say to Ruburt “You are using the symptoms as a framework of a sort, in which you feel it safe to progress, though, slowly.” Now in your work you are progressing, but slowly—so why do you magnify the distractions?

Give us a moment.... Ruburt was going to use his abilities come hell or high water. He did use the symptoms as a framework. You are determined to use your abilities, but you are ever on your guard to see that you use your abilities, and that they do not “use you;” so you set up working habits, but you do not allow yourself a real environment of freedom in which to work. You consciously tell yourself over and over that this or that bothers you. You concentrate upon the distractions in the same way that Ruburt does upon his symptoms.

You felt guilty about the picnic table for the same reason. You wanted to be able to buy it for Ruburt, with money from painting. You do not get on top of your own negative thought patterns, therefore, though you can see Ruburt’s to some extent.