“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Even then, however, the enjoyment of the act—in that case playing the piano—is paramount. The sense of enjoyment however does increase and extend individual abilities, and those impulses leading toward enjoyment are meant to serve each individual with a private inbuilt avenue of expression that will help center the person within himself, and within the world—and again, in such a way that both the self and the society are benefited.

For some years, to varying extents, Ruburt and you also to a lesser degree became motivated by ideas of who you should (underlined) be, what you should (underlined) be doing, and what your responsibilities were. That tendency became stronger as our “work” became better known. To some extent—with some important variances, having to do with quite legitimate ideas of art—such feelings have also been behind many of your own responses to, say, the appearance of the books, as public packages in the world (intently). In Ruburt’s case the idea of responsibility became far more pervasive, resulting in what I have referred to as being almost a superself image—an image composed of his ideas of the kind of person he should (underlined) be in his position. That image largely at least ignored his own likes or dislikes. He felt he should do many things, for example, that he did not really like to do at all. Small doses of such attitudes can be handled, of course: people do not have to be entirely satisfied with their own performances in order to be reasonably happy and healthy. Remember that you react to interior events, not just to physical ones.

(Long pause.) As creative people, and as certain kinds of creative people —not being audience performers as musicians, for example—you deal with the creative construction of artistic worlds in which as your friend (painter) William Alexander would say, you are the master magician perhaps—but it is your world primarily, created according to your vision. All of the activities that bring you the largest pleasure in life generally are of that nature. This does not mean that you do not enjoy companionship, or that you do not have a give-and-take with society.

Ruburt began to feel a pressure as the books became better known to carry out a kind of responsibility, not simply to sell books, for example, but to get the message out into the world, to help others—all considerations that seemed to be—he thought—the acceptance of adult behavior on his part: actions that would be more or less expected of him. Again, they were actions that to a large degree went against the grain. They could be performed, however, to some extent, at least some of them, and he could on occasion enjoy them, and he did well enough, for example, with public speaking or the few shows that you did.

He writes because he wants to create a unique world, one in which during the act of creation as a creator he is in charge, and yet while he is in charge he is in contact with a certain magic of creativity that gives him experience with greater realms of being. People of that nature have very private ways, and to some extent now those ways involve a deliberate (long pause) repudiation of the ordinary world—not that they need to stop relating to it, but that they must momentarily forget it in light of another vision. This applies to you as well as to Ruburt. (All very intently.) You do not feel the need to go on tours, for example.

The fact is, however, that he is himself a different kind of person. The radio shows were the least bothersome. He at least could do those at home. He did not want (underlined) particularly to do any of them, though he enjoyed most of them once he began. What he enjoyed, however, was the radio’s fairly secret quality—the fact that he was hidden, and yet his voice went out into the world.

I do not mean to make derogatory statements concerning your social world. Generally speaking, however, the kind of person who performs as a public figure is not the kind of person who could produce highly creative material of an original nature. The public format requires a kind of social shorthand that does not allow for the development or expansion of ideas or creativity, so that the attempt to explain anything like “our work” would be extremely difficult in that regard. We are not speaking to the mass world, and television is set up for the mass audience, for the other-directed part of people.

The overdone sense of responsibility can erode love and satisfaction. Ruburt “loved” to do housework at one time. Later his ideas of responsibility told him he should be working—not because he wanted to be working, but because he should be. At the same time those same worldly concerns led him to wonder about the validity of his own “messages”—and how responsible he was to the world for them—so the symptoms also served to give him a greater sense of caution, to temper creativity, for all the reasons stated in the Sinful-Self material.