“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now give us a moment.... Those beliefs at that time helped give rise to further conservatism on Ruburt’s part. Now: in certain terms physical activity—sports—intrigued you. They were highly acceptable masculine pursuits. They were mainstream America. They allowed you to participate with others. To communicate with them on one level, while at other levels you preferred solitude, painting and writing; and you always observed.

The hay fever began early, the example set by your father, and you used it to temper your activities in terms of sports in particular, because your intents overall did not want you to go in that direction. You kept those physical abilities around, though—the feeling for sports—in school, with the idea that you could fall back upon them if need be. But you would have considered that a partial failure. Your high-school art teacher, Miss Bowman, lent you the money to study art in New York City.

Simple-enough incidents, like shoveling the driveway, can bother you because they arouse old conflicts having to do with your earlier situation and the decision, say, to explore your mental and creative abilities rather than to pursue the physical ones in the excellence of sports.

The excellence in sports, however, also involved the accepted thing to do. Sports even then were looked up to. Rewards were instantaneous for good performance. This involves black-and-white thinking again, however, for you thought of “perfect performance” in sports—high excellence. Something like the driveway usually involves an inner dilemma: “Shall I do creative work or physical activity?” in rather absolute terms.

The driveway involves the sports situation, and also the mainline-America theme—for shouldn’t you be shoveling the walk like your neighbor? This involves questions like “How different am I from my neighbor? What does he think of me, working at home?” et cetera.