“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

First of all, let us get a clearer view of your own intents through the years. Looking at your parents, you decided early that you would have a certain kind of relationship with a woman—a closeness that your father did not have with your mother—one that involved many facets of your own personality and with its purposes. Otherwise you would not have married.

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.

If you were pleased with your work right now the chores of the house would scarcely take your notice. You would have them done, or do them, but your creative energy and your thoughts would be involved with your creativity, and the chores at times would give you a necessary enjoyed change. The chores you have to do, either of you, are laughable.

(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.

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.

(10:42.) Great talent requires great spontaneity. Neither of you really believe it. You put up barriers to protect the creative self from the exterior world, which you fear would destroy it, and from the interior world, for left alone the creative self might just slam paint upon a canvas without discipline, or might show more than we are willing to show. We do not trust ourselves to spontaneously develop our own technique. Spontaneity knows its own order. Order springs from spontaneity, and spontaneity from order.