“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After supper I asked Jane if she’d hold a private session for me, since I felt so bad. On Saturday, October 27, I’d evidently come down with a “bug” of some kind —whether physical or psychological, and haven’t felt good at all since. At first I’d thought I was going into a beneficial relaxation episode like that I’d experienced on April 23, 1979. We’d been working hard, and when I lay down for a nap Saturday afternoon I felt relaxation effects. “Thank God for relaxation,” I told myself again and again as I fell asleep, hoping the effects would rejuvenate me. But I ended up with the cold chills, and for the next week was in often severe pain in the joints and muscles. We’d seen recent notices on TV of a local bug going around, but I didn’t know if that was involved or not. The worst part of the whole thing was that I developed urinary difficulties during the malaise: urination became very painful indeed, and I had a strong sense of blockage and impairment at times. I always managed to “go,” but it often took a while, and was very uncomfortable.

(The little I’ve worked with the pendulum tells me my troubles are rooted in money attitudes, as well as the production time I’ve lost on Mass Events for the last two weeks and more. I thought I was doing something by working hard on that book, to get it underway in an organized fashion, I told Jane as we sat for the session—so what happened? I added that I wouldn’t put up with the kind of hassles involving Prentice-Hall beyond a certain point—that I’d take some kind of drastic action in order to rid myself of the problems connected with dealing with someone I no longer respect. This would involve holding the sessions, but letting Jane herself do any work about producing books for the market. I would go back to painting, try to sell some, and possibly end up with a part-time job for ready money—anything to break the vicious mental pattern of distrust I seem to keep creating. I believe that Jane at last understands that I’m quite capable of reacting that way, that I would refuse to indefinitely put up with our present kind of hassles with Prentice-Hall, or any other entity. I explained that I had such thoughts when we moved to Pinnacle Road, and could easily revive them and try a different kind of life.

(I might add that on the telephone with Tam the day before yesterday I really lit into Tam—rather to his surprise, I think. But I was determined that he understand our feelings—or mine, at least, in no uncertain terms, for as we talked I could feel him start using words to paper over our upset about foreign rights; I felt that his tactics would only make it possible for the whole thing to happen again with succeeding books, and that I was going to short-circuit at once. I believe my reactions, which were loud and clear, paid off, for Tam called Jane yesterday to find out, in his own way, whether I was mad at him personally. Jane said I wasn’t, of course—but of course I was.

As she was in life, she would not have understood in any case unless the money definitely came from a recognizable, socially accepted output on your part. To some extent, the affair of Crowder’s death made you look at yourself through what you thought were your mother’s eyes. You were judging yourself, and have, with some regularity, according to those standards. This is at an emotional level, of which of course you do not intellectually approve.

In a fashion you see your father as inventive, creative, and highly vulnerable. These ideas merge with conventional beliefs about age, so that it seems you must take stock. But when you take stock with the feelings we are describing as the emotional yardsticks, those feelings consider valid only the beliefs that go along with them—a traditional male role: the accumulation of money through traditional means—and they discount as legitimate the accumulation of knowledge or wisdom as a pursuit of life. Your mother would say “posh.”

And particularly they would declare as futile and nonsensical the concentration upon issues or work that does not immediately bring ordinarily recognizable prestige, or a sense of belonging.

(9:20.) Now you are in a position where you see the intersection point where art meets the practical world. That point is the publishing house. With painting it would be the gallery. You do not understand that your own abilities give you a far clearer picture of the “ideal,” for example. You have understood that visually you see details that others do not—simply the world at large. In the same fashion, however, you see, say, book jackets, ideal situations, in a way that the people in the business world simply do not—and you do become literally outraged when their vision proves to be so inadequate.

Give us a moment.... in a fashion Ruburt and Tam’s seemingly emotional, fairly spontaneous relationship has represented good common business sense on Ruburt’s part. Regardless of what better deals businesswise you may or may not have made in the past, both of you would have been highly discomfited by any frequent change of publishers. Part of your personal problem now is because you feel you have cut off the easy flow of creative energy into your painting and into Mass Reality, and even to some extent—on your part, now—because the contracts are unsigned, and the flow in that area momentarily is somewhat impeded.

Give us a moment.... Ruburt does not feel that you are amiss because you are not “making money on your own,” but he feels deeply your own discontent in that area, and he feels bewildered—for years ago you said so often that it would be great if you could just paint or write without worrying about money. He feels that you are highly dissatisfied. He would do anything that you wanted. You would do far better, however, to think of painting rather than a simple job, which would certainly seem like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

It would be nice if you learned to appreciate your own abilities both as an artist and as a writer (louder). It would be nice if you learned to appreciate your comparative financial freedom, instead of arguing with yourself as to whether or not you deserve it, or whether or not you are a good male if you accept it.

A good artist, of course, who was free of such nonsense, would accept it gladly without a qualm.

(Long pause at 9:55.) I do not want to define for you an ideal picture to which you can never live up. That is, I do not want your practical experience of life to seem inferior as you are in the process of learning how to live in a new fashion. The patterns of give-and-take between you and others are actually very simple to describe and delicate at a certain level of activity. There is some material of course that I have not given, though I will, because it would seem to you initially that in the light of what is possible, you were doing poorly—where instead in the light of your reality at this time, you are doing well. You must realize that you are judging your behavior by standards that are very high indeed, and that you are in a situation in which, say, all of the facts are not yet in. You have been geared to disapprove of yourselves, you have been taught to judge your performance in a very shallow fashion, according to social mores and sexual affiliation, and when you are breaking out of those patterns, you may indeed feel betwixt and between.

I would actually of course never tell you to get a job or not—nor would I be perturbed at any decisions you might make. Personally, however, if I might be so bold, I would think that any such time might better be put to use in painting, if I were a painter.

I would give some thought then to my self-image, and to the image of an individual who is highly gifted as a painter, as a writer, as a thinker, and I would endeavor to loosen myself from any bonds that prevented me from using those abilities—in particular any sexual ones that defined my identity in terms of money alone.

I would try to be content with the self that I am, and rejoice in my uniqueness, and tell myself that my energy could flow freely in all areas of my life, and the physical problem will then easily clear itself.