“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

These people (the Borledim) believe, then, in the natural goodness of sex, the body, and the family unit — however those attributes are understood in the physical society to which they belong. As a rule they possess an enchanting spontaneity, however, and all of their creative abilities go into the family group and the production of children. These are not rigid parents, though, blindly following conventions, but people who see family life as a fine living creative art, and children as masterpieces in flesh and blood. Far from devouring their offspring by an excess of overprotective care, they joyfully send their children out into the world, knowing that in their terms the masterpieces must complete themselves, and that they have helped with the underpainting.

[The Borledim] are the stock that so far has always seen to it that your species continues despite catastrophes, and they are more or less equally distributed about the planet and in all nationalities. They are most like the Sumari. They have the same love of the arts, the same general attitudes. They will usually seek fairly stable political situations in which to bear their children, as the Sumari will to produce their art. They demand a certain amount of freedom for their children, however, and while they are not political activists, like the Sumari their ideas often spring to prominence before large social changes, and help initiate them. The one big difference is that the Sumari deal primarily with creativity and the arts, and often subordinate family life (as Jane and I have done), while this family thinks of offspring in the terms of living art; everything else is subordinated to that “ideal.”

(So far, Jane and I haven’t been able to find a home that we intuitively feel is the right one, although the place on Foster Avenue has intrigued us considerably since we first saw it on February 3. [Since then we’ve looked at many other houses.] Last Thursday afternoon [February 13], Jane was busy with her creative writing class so I went house hunting alone. Without feeling any great curiosity I checked out one place we’d seen before: the hill house. Once again I thought it wouldn’t do for us. Jane agreed when I asked her about it at the supper table.⁷

I suggested that you take it (but see my note in the material at next break). It would have been good for you both, but you were afraid of it, and your feelings had much to do with the contract being turned down (by the Veteran’s Administration). That house represented what each of you thought of as unbridled, undisciplined creativity. It was dirty and cluttered. The artist had children who ran about without any control. There was much playfulness there, however, that could have tempered some of your great mutual seriousness at the time. You did not choose to accept such a probability then, any more than you could have accepted my advice all the way. The authorities turned the contract down — but the authorities stood for the inner disciplinarians, and you did not want to share your road with the world; nor did you want, later, to share your driveway (for the Sayre house) with your neighbor.