“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I’ll note my question here so that it won’t be forgotten, although actually I mentioned it to Jane after tonight’s session had been held. Simply, I thought it would be a good idea if Seth would tell us about what good things we’ve managed to accomplish through the years as far as Jane’s symptoms go. It would be nice to know what hassles we’ve surmounted, that no longer apply. This would seem to imply that others had come along, or been developed by us, to take their place—at least something had been created to take their place. But surely we’ve accomplished some beneficial things too.

(Pause.) Ruburt has felt too responsible to develop his psychic abilities, to produce another “psychically inspired” work of his own. The sense of responsibility of that kind stifles love, which must be free to form its own creativity in its own fashion. Therefore, left alone, Ruburt writes freely, and in an inspired nature because that is (underlined) his nature. It is what he loves to do. When he becomes overly concerned with ideas of responsibility to use his talent, then the love beneath them is smothered to some extent and denied its flow.

When that flow is relatively unimpeded then he is naturally attracted to subjective activity and to performance in the natural world as well. He enjoys seeing people then. To enjoy seeing people is a different thing than expecting yourself to be a public personality, however. Ruburt has been trying out a system of values that is not naturally his own. He has told himself that his art must be used to help people primarily—as if that had been his main goal all along. Art then becomes a method of doing something else—and that idea runs directly contrary to the basic integrity of art, and to art as he truly understands it to be. He therefore often felt forced to do what before he had done because he wanted to.

(Pause.) This led certainly to conflict. The idea of the public image coming through the correspondence, and as it was interpreted by Ruburt, further deepened the feeling of responsibility. Certainly “a great psychic teacher” had a responsibility of some weight (ironically humorous), and therefore it seemed imperative to Ruburt that he not make errors, that he live up to the characteristics generally ascribed to such an image. Thus, some experimentation was cut out (such as?). He began to think that anything less than this public personality was cowardly.

It seemed that this would be thrust upon him, however—that it was expected, and that indeed furthermore he should expect such performance from himself. (Long pause.) His own earlier attitudes about such matters began to seem cowardly, so he tried to divorce himself from them. That idea, however, together with the idea of responsibility, you see, was always in the background.