“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It is difficult to know where to begin, but we will start with your joint beliefs: (a) that you need solitude a good deal of the day in which to work; (b) your definite belief jointly that this solitude is almost impossible to achieve. Those two beliefs are very important, and put you in a quandary. You never seem jointly to satisfy yourselves with any method or program or routine that works—in other words, that gives you peace of mind.

This should be an illuminating session. I certainly hope that later you agree. Let us examine your joint and individual feelings about the need for solitude in which to work, and your disinclination to “hurt people’s feelings” when they intrude.

Why is it that you are so afraid of hurting peoples’ feelings in that regard? There is another belief here, then. You both believe (a) that people will not understand, and (b) that they will feel rejected, and (c) that they will reject you, and you will be left quite alone in the solitude you thought you wanted.

Now Ruburt used his poetry also to exert independence from his mother—which implied, he thought, a certain kind of rejection of Marie. These attitudes cause you to try to maintain some solitude while believing it is almost impossible to achieve, and so this of course is your experience.

Your other attitudes, mentioned earlier, continued, and the more the world seemed to knock at your door, however gently, and the more the mail came, the more convinced you both became that your solitude must be protected. [...]

Now: Ruburt felt that you were more naturally disposed toward solitude and so forth, discipline, more naturally opposed to distractions than he was.

[...] This gave necessary periods of solitude, and helped at one time to channel his abilities. [...]

[...] Ruburt needs solitude, as you do, but also a format of an informal nature, for the emotions of others stimulate his abilities.

[...] This is a simple exercise that can be tried in almost any circumstance, although solitude is important.

It is advantageous from many standpoints to alter your hours, and some alterations do have the advantage of automatically providing solitude. [...]

Now in moments of solitude you may become aware of some of these other streams of consciousness. [...]

[...] To communicate with them on one level, while at other levels you preferred solitude, painting and writing; and you always observed. [...]

[...] Some show great ability in dealing with their contemporaries, while others naturally lean toward solitude and private meditations. [...]

[...] (To me:) Now, you sought solitude. [...]

8. Your impulses will automatically provide you with the proper balance of solitude and company, private and public activity, exercise and rest—for you!

[...] Now no one is saying— me least of all—that you forget ideas of needed solitude. [...]

[...] He, in the old-man body, enjoys the solitude that he always wanted. [...]

[...] The self does not need imaginary fences to protect its privacy, or its safety or its solitude. [...]

[...] If solitude is achieved through living alone, then the personality should so be able to relate itself outward.

You have, in the dream’s meaning, your father who wants to be left alone, who likes to work in solitude, and who is quite uncomfortable with the expression of emotion. [...]

1. Naturally, Seth’s material here began to sound very reminiscent of Jane’s and my own Sumari characteristics — especially those concerning the “mystical sense of connection with nature” that each of us feels, and our individual desires “to work in solitude.”

[...] I feel quite benign this evening, and enjoy our solitude. [...]

You wondered in the secret depths of your mind how well-suited Ruburt was for the solitude you believed necessary to produce good work. [...]

You also both felt that you needed isolation from society, and a position from which you could examine it with some solitude, while still maintaining contacts—and while still affecting it through your works. [...]

[...] The purpose however was two-fold again, the development of an environment in which controls would be there: the symptoms taking the place in this case of the mother’s restrictive presence, and the comparative isolation in the house, the comparative solitude that he felt was necessary then for the emergence of the creative abilities—both of these you see existing in the child environment.