“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Your father’s creativity, as mentioned [in earlier, unpublished sessions] had its side of secrecy, privacy and aloneness … you identified creatively with his private nature. The writing self became latent as the sportsman did, yet the writing self and the artist were closely bound. You felt conflicts at times. It never occurred to you that the two aspects could release one another — one illuminating the other — and both be fulfilled. Instead you saw them as basically conflicting. Time spent writing meant time not spent painting. You believed the painting self had to be protected … as you felt that your father had to protect his creative self in the household …

(In mentioning my “sportsman self,” Seth referred to information he’d given about three of my probable selves in a private session on January 30, 1974 — just a few days before starting “Unknown” Reality. The session contains many personal insights that I now recognize as being quite true. But even without Seth’s help, interesting results can flow from an awareness of the probable-self concept: The reader can begin to intuitively consider his or her own probable selves, or those of others who may be closely related psychically or physically. I’m not writing here about rationalizing the existence of one or more probable selves to account for personal shortcomings in this reality, however, but of simply using the idea to enlarge our basic notions of the human potential. See Note I for Session 679.

(Here’s Seth to me in that January session:) You, for example, could have excelled at certain sports, where Ruburt had no such inclinations. You chose to concentrate on artistic endeavors as you grew and learned through various areas and periods — that is, you tried and enjoyed sports, and writing; and after a while you decided upon the painting self as the particular focus upon which you would build a life.

Give us a moment … Your father’s inventiveness would also be used in the same manner, as source material, by whichever self you chose to become. There are many choices. I am using here three only to show you how those primary aspects of your personality operate now in your present condition …

[...] I added that perhaps the important thing for us now was to observe our unfolding lives with Seth’s ideas of the larger, or whole self, in mind, and so achieve insights we could interpret in terms of probabilities. So we decided not to ask Seth to backtrack and give us material about the son my mother’s probable self had had in her reality, even though that son was a probable self of mine.

[...] On other levels, laws of dynamics apply to the energy sources of the self. Think of a given “self” as a nucleus of an energy gestalt of consciousness. [...]

[...] (To me:) Your “sportsman self”* was never endowed with the same kind of force as that of your artistic or writing self. [...]

[...] The father that you knew was the probable self, therefore. That probable self, however, dealt with emotional realities that the other avoided, and this was indeed his sole intent.