“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The sportsman that you might have been would have gathered, from that same available background, other attitudes and ideas that would have fit in with his concept of himself, and with his core focus. The childhood camping background served as a rich source material, to be used in any way you chose. The sportsman, the writer or the artist — any of them would utilize that background differently, but well, and in such a way that it peculiarly suited each of them.

Your father’s creativity, as mentioned [in earlier, unpublished sessions] had its side of secrecy, privacy and aloneness … you identified creatively with his private nature.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.

Ruburt’s writing abilities have blossomed because of his psychic experiences. Your painting abilities have also … The psychic breakthrough did not just occur. Your deepest natures called it out of the probable sequence into your joint reality — for a reason, because each of you knew that it could best help you to develop all of your respective abilities to their fullest, and also help others.

The Butts family albums contain numerous photographs of my father as a young man, many of them self-taken with the aid of a timer; he poses with a variety of automobiles and motorcycles through the years before his marriage to my mother in 1917, and afterward, too. Sometimes he’d assembled the vehicles himself, or modified them in his own ways. In 1922 he took his wife and children (I was 3 years old, Linden not yet 2) on a six-month motor trip from the East Coast to California. [...]

In another system of reality your father was — in fact, still is — a well-known inventor, who never married but used his mechanically creative abilities to the fullest while avoiding emotional commitment. [...] His love was for machinery, the speed of motorcycles, mixing creativity with metal. [...]

This was a great fulfillment on his part, for the inventor did not trust himself to feel much emotion, much less give birth to emotional beings. In that other probability in which your parents originally met, your mother married a doctor, became a nurse, and helped her husband in his practice. [...]

Returning east to Sayre, Pa., he opened his auto-repair and battery shop. [...] I think that his exacting mechanical abilities are reflected in Linden’s very realistic models, and are transmuted in the methods I use to solidly “construct” my paintings and to keep the records for the Seth material.