“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.

You could have followed still another course—one in which you did not become involved in any intellectual or challenging concepts but bypassed them completely. That kind of painting can be excellent, but it also involves an intense immersion in the emotions, to the exclusion of any important conceptualizing. The greatest kind of painting includes both the intuitions and the intellect, but in your terms this also requires the maturing of the high intellect. You decided to take that course. In a different way Ruburt chose the same journey. Had he not delved into deeper questions, he could very well have been the novelist, going no further than a novelist can into the nature of personality or motivation.

Give us a moment.... You both have blind spots, in other words. These appear in Ruburt’s physical condition. They also appear, not in the work you have done, but in the work you have not done. Sometimes you can see Ruburt’s blind spots, and point them out. Occasionally he can see some of yours. The blind spots of course each have to do with the same issues, though you handle them differently.

I am telling you this as simply as possible, knowing that one day I will get through. Ruburt had his fantasies this morning. When he wrote them down he got on top of them, so to speak, and he could decipher their meaning. At the risk of your considering this Pollyanna, you get what you concentrate upon. When you concentrate upon the limitations and the distractions, then they multiply. They attract others until the present seems filled with them, while other imagined ones rush toward you from the future. When I say to Ruburt “Do not concentrate upon the symptoms because you reinforce them,” then you agree, Joseph, and it makes perfect sense. When you see Ruburt going around for days concentrating upon the physical limitations, then it is oh so clear to you where his difficulty lies. You wonder what is wrong with him, that he cannot understand what he is doing.

Now. I put this to you—that you spend time in the same way, but in your way, concentrating upon all that stands in the way of your work and concentration, until finally your work time seems consumed. Only now and then do you get on top of those thoughts and imaginings. You spend four times as much time worrying about the distractions as the so-called distractions themselves actually take. In doing so you rob yourself of peace of mind. You imagine future distractions, yet when Ruburt projects his symptoms into the future, you see clearly his error—though he may not.

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?

(10:05.) Now: it is obvious to you that Ruburt uses his symptoms to control his spontaneity, to mete it out, so to speak. You would never take on such symptoms. You should by now understand some of your own characteristics. They are like Ruburt’s, only a different mixture. You have often tried to control your painting, rather than to let it go through you onto the canvas. And precisely when you come to a point of sudden spontaneity in work, then you use the matter of distractions to slow you down. You seize upon them because you do not trust your own spontaneity in your work.

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.

Frank can say to Ruburt (Frank called Jane a “tough little bird”—which she liked), “Truly, your legs can straighten. The muscles are tight, but they are not impaired,” and you can agree that this is true. Ruburt is faced with the sensation of tightness, however—there is something there in his experience to deal with, so that his senses can conform to his belief about his body. While he tries to free it he is faced with the lingering, quite valid-seeming evidence of his senses. So you are encountering the evidence of your senses, so that the chores seem to hound you. You do not seem to have time in a day to do what you want. As long as you keep telling yourself those things, they will be true. Ruburt is trying to say “There is nothing basically wrong with my body, though in my reality there seems to be.” That sounds like a legitimate statement to you, and it is. I am telling you that the number of distractions in your life is laughable, though in your experience they appear quite threatening. “I am free to do my painting.” How many times have you said that to yourself—yet in that statement lies great freedom, for you must change your belief.

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.

The answer is so simple that it is ludicrous. It is simply to believe fully in these ideas, and put them to work precisely in those areas of your lives where you are dissatisfied—to apply them to your own thought patterns, and Ruburt to his.

I said once that Ruburt became hypnotized by the symptoms, and you agreed. But you become as hypnotized by your own thought patterns in certain areas. When you do so your accomplishments seem to vanish, and you cannot take comfort from them. It seems that the ideas do not work only when you do not use them. You react differently to the same set of challenges. Your strengths reinforce each other, but so do your misunderstandings.

Ruburt fears that if he were suddenly better he would add to your distractions, so when distractions seem threatening to you he emphasizes the symptoms: if he were better, would you want him to do all the chores? So your ideas about distractions intertwine. If he were better he could help you with the chores—but if he could, would you then withdraw to your studio and leave them all to him? All of this because distractions, so to speak, are considered threats. All of this because you both believe there are serious impediments in the way of creative work, and obstacles ever-present to mitigate against your creativity. So you each react differently. At the same time, because of some cultural beliefs, you are still not all that trustful about creativity to begin with.