“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(A copy of this session is also being placed in the deleted notebook, since I’d like it to be placed under both categories.) I think it contains some excellent general material that, I told Jane, I was afreaid wouldn’t be seen by anyone if it were filed exclusively under private material.

Ruburt was highly creative, and so following the beliefs of his time, he believed that he must watch his creativity most carefully, for he was determined to use it. He decided early to have no children—but more, to fight any evidence of femininity that might taint his work, or jumble up his dedication to it. He loved you deeply, and does, but he always felt he had to tread a slender line, so as to satisfy the various needs and beliefs that you both had to one extent or another, and those you felt society possessed.

Now: you are creative, but you are a male—and one part of you considered creativity a feminine-like characteristic. If it were tied to money-making, as it once was, then painting became also power-making, and hence acceptable to your American malehood; and I am quite aware of the fact that both of you were, by the standards of your times, quite liberal, more the pity. You would not take your art to the marketplace after you left commercial work, because then, in a manner of speaking now, understand, you considered that the act of a prostitute, for your “feminine feelings” that you felt produced the painting would then be sold for the sake of “the male’s role as provider and bringer of power.”

Both of you, highly creative, find your creativity in conflict with your ideas of sexuality, privately and in your stance with the world. Much of this is involved with the unfortunate myths about this creative person, who is not supposed to be able to deal with the world as well as others, whose idiosyncrasies are exaggerated, and whose very creativity, it is sometimes said, leads to suicide or destruction. No wonder few numbers of creative people persist in the face of such unfortunate beliefs.

(Pause.) This is difficult to verbalize. (Pause.) It was a state when the species became aware of its own thoughts as its own thoughts, and became conscious of the self who thinks. That point released man’s creativity. In your terms, it was the product of the feminine intuitions (though, as you know, such intuitions belong to both sexes). When the passages were written, the species had come to various states of order, achieving certain powers and organizations, and it wanted to maintain the status quo. No more intuitive visions, no more changes, were wanted. Creativity was to follow certain definite roads, so the woman became the villain.

I have given material on that before. To some extent, then, Ruburt became afraid of his own creativity, and so did you. In Ruburt’s case the fear was greater, until it seemed sometimes that if he succeeded in his work he would succeed at some peril: you might be put in an unpleasant light, or he might become a fanatic, displaying those despicable, feminine hysterical qualities. (With much humor:) I hope this session benefits you both. End of session, and a fond good evening.