“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The mother wanted success for the child, and yet Ruburt felt (pause) that success would also be resented by the mother, that the mother would be jealous of it. The mother wanted success for the daughter so that the daughter could share the fruits of the success and provide for her. While Ruburt had no money there was no fear of this.

Any push toward success became a threat to your virility; a push from a woman became to you a double threat to your virility. You felt as if she threatened to castrate you. Ruburt has been aware of this. This is one of the main reasons that he suffers from strong feelings of disloyalty whenever he allows himself to wish that you were more successful in your work, artistically or financially.

The psychic abilities appeared precisely when he needed an extra drive toward success, and a way toward success that would not be instantly recognized as such.

You both became involved in the psychic work. He felt therefore that you would feel his success was yours also. He thought at that time that you were simply jealous of him. Your reaction to the ESP book quite literally terrified him. He then realized that you did not want either of you to be successful.

(This afternoon while painting the thought came to me that Jane’s trouble was that she was avoiding success; and success was looming ever closer with the advertising campaign planned for her ESP book, the near-completion of the dream book, etc. [...] I wondered if the unworthy feeling and the fact of success could be linked through the symptoms.

[...] He would avoid success like a plague. He would have been successful long before this. [...]

[...] He sends out messages pressing for the success of his original book, and sends out equally strong ones urging that it not be accepted, that it is not a huge success. [...]

When you did not expect success, really, then you did not threaten him. Now you expect success, and he feels even beforehand an added threat. [...]

Actual continued success on the other hand would have been a definite experience that you could have met together, say then another tour. [...] The slowdown however gave him ambiguous feelings, lest success on his part meant further time from your own painting, which you would resent; so that in that respect continued success at tours would be at the expense of your valued painting time.

[...] Books were to bring instant success. The taste of limited success whetted his appetite during your tour. [...]

He is very worried that you will not find success, recognition that is, or money of a large nature, and does not feel that he should if you do not. [...]

[...] If your mother thinks Ruburt is more successful than you, then obviously she can see that Ruburt is paying for it. [...]

[...] He feels guilty when you are working if he is not, for fear you will think his success is coming too easily. Assurances on your part will be exceedingly successful.

(Humorously:) He wants you to be a success while you are young enough to enjoy it. (I laughed.) Because he is younger he feels he should not be successful first. [...]

Ruburt feels disloyal himself to even question your own success, and this is an important point. [...]

To the effect that you do want him to succeed, that his success will help you both. [...]

[...] Since your reaction when Rebellers was published, he feared that you would grow to hate him for any success, if you did not succeed, since his success he felt was largely at your expense—you bought him the time in which to work.

[...] He felt that the trappings of success might be a real threat to your working time, and therefore to your ultimate success—that you would resent this beforehand, rather than, say, discuss it and so forth. [...]

[...] He felt that any success of his that was not matched by you pulled you down in your parents’ eyes, and was therefore part victory and part defeat. [...]

[...] While you vigorously upheld the sessions, he still felt that to some extent, again, their success would undermine you.

I am trying to tell you that you have concentrated as strongly at times in a negative manner on success symbols (pause), as others might in a positive manner to acquire them. In either case the focus upon success symbols was there. [...] Instead of course the concentration should be upon fulfilling your abilities, all of them, and financial success will come.

[...] You know, I am sure, that if you are successful as a person and as an artist, then financial success will follow.

[...] Make certain that your idea of success is not merely financial, or concerned overly with the acquisition of the material objects that you do not now have.

[...] This is apart from your conflicting ideas concerning success, but colors them.

Both of you have seen yourselves in the past in a rather specialized light, and interpreted your success, or lack of it, or progress or lack of it, in one particular area only; and you had at least, each of you, a tendency to view the other in the same manner, though this was far more emphasized on Ruburt’s part. So you thought of yourself as an artist, primarily, and judged your success, or lack of it, through that focus, and generally through that focus only.

Viewing you as he viewed himself, using the same logic, he was afraid however that basically you felt our work a detriment to your own, and that its success, while pleasing you on the one hand, might prevent you from success as an artist because you would not have the time, and that you would basically resent it. [...]

That is the kind of success that matters. It is only preconceived ideas of a specialized nature that prevent you from seeing that you are successes.

[...] I told Jane I thought the book would be very successful.

[...] He can expect an overall successful class arrangement, however, over a sustained period, successful in all main aspects. He will have to work for success, but this is the kind of success he is personally equipped to work for and achieve.

For the same reason you are also obsessed with the idea of cause and effect, with the illusion of successive time bringing forth the other. Here we have two of your most basic idea camouflage structures: your conception of time as a succession, and your idea of cause and effect.

[...] Nor is there a succession of moments that follow one after the other; and without a succession of moments following one after the other you can see that the idea of cause and effect becomes meaningless. [...]

You understand of course that the theory of successive moments works on your plane, or has worked so far. But as mankind grows even more ambitious then the idea will cease to work for him, and it will be actually discarded on theoretical terms while it is still utilized in its limited fashion in practical mundane terms, as you still find the table useful in practical terms; although theoretically you realize that it is not a solid you still manufacture tables, and you will still use watches long after your scientists discover that the theory of successive passage of moments is antiquated and itself passé.

The distortive illusion of successive moments, and of the resulting conception of cause and effect, are both on your plane the result of the observation by the outer senses, and are practical and useful on your plane and therefore have a certain validity, if for you only.

[...] In Ruburt’s case however success in work does mitigate against the negative beliefs. In the past the balance of success versus failure in his eyes was so tipped at the failure end that he took but a mere breather of relief, then plunged ahead again with the same desperation. [...]

[...] For example, while he was convinced—and he was—that he looked more than his age, and was unattractive, then the time element made him push even harder for success. He saw himself older, and in the light of that his success was not enough.

I am not speaking merely in financial terms either, though since Ruburt is dealing directly with the world through his creative work, then money and reputation have become a symbol of success, that is basically creative. Feeling younger automatically made him more pleased with his success, then.

At the same time you encouraged him to success, but he felt only to a certain point, for the fruits of the success you might find disruptive. In the family to which he has always been sensitive he believed his success put you down, particularly with your mother and Loren. [...]

[...] Some of this did have to do with old ideas that you were angry at him for any success if you had not achieved your own—and more, that the success might take you on tours and further away from your own work, which would make you angrier at him.

His symptoms were meant, in a way, now, in regard to you, to make you feel better, for by contrast you became the success and he the failure. [...]

(Late yesterday afternoon my pendulum told me that Jane’s symptoms stemmed from her feeling that she had failed to become a successful “straight” writer—a novelist, poet, essayist, et al.; that she felt she had failed as the serious writer she had always dreamed of becoming, that the psychic work represented a turning down a wrong path; that actually, basically, the psychic work represented failure to her rather than success. [...]

[...] He speaks of success. What he means is the production of a work of his own in those terms that he considers art, an accomplishment whether or not it brings financial success.

[...] If however he could not achieve the kind of success he wanted, then he might as well have the trappings.

[...] She also told me that to her the idea of stairs represented success and failure—up and down, etc.)

(“Were you successful?”)

I was partially successful.

(Last night Jane had a very successful table-tipping session with her ESP class. [...]

(Last night Jane was especially aware of her success at concentration in getting the table to move.)

His “success” (in quotes) was no success to him. [...]

Forget the idea of man’s work and what your paintings should (underlined) provide, and the idea of fame or success. [...]

[...] Instead you project ponderous ideas of success or failure, consider work as a series of problems to be solved, and forget the idea of spontaneously creating.

[...] He believes and expects success in his hypnosis experiments, and that is why he attains success. [...]

[...] We want success of course, but we also want to know how success is achieved, and so we shall.

[...] However, as you know there is no real progression, moment by successive moment, as you suppose.

[...] For the very attempt, or successful attempt, results in an extension of the self out of the system in which you were nurtured.

To use his abilities freely and fully might therefore mean success, money, and sexual license. Your own ideas about money and success of course influenced his beliefs: your combined ideas now of virtuousness and thrift, as opposed to license. [...]

[...] I want to leave you some surprises; and I repeat that Ruburt intends to enjoy his hard-earned success. [...]

(Anyhow, as I’ve explained to Jane lately, the method seems to be working fairly well, and I expect more success with it once I become accustomed to dealing with it. [...] I hope to revive those early successes, and to make much more practical use of them this time.

[...] The first man is my primary self, who discovers that he must bear the burdens of the second man imposed upon him through cultural beliefs involving taxes, success, the male breadwinner role, and so forth. [...]

[...] All probabilities now point toward success for you both; but remember, as you know, I do not mean a sudden showering. When I speak of success I mean that now you will be able to use your abilities to their fullest. That is success.

[...] (Pause.) Our friend Ruburt must be entirely committed (pause), in order to succeed, but once committed his success is assured.

[...] (Pause.) Through easy success, through in fact a far more shallow route, but the intuitive self would have suffered drastically in your future, and there would have been severe difficulties.

[...] He was naturally concerned about the success of this venture, in which he was involved with others. Seth told Jane to tell him that the venture should be a successful one. [...]

[...] This new departure was not particularly easy for Jane, and none of us wanted her to overdo it, but it was quite successful. [...]

[...] Oddly enough, I am sure that my work will end up very successful, both as art and in the marketplace. So I can safely say that in my own way I am trying very hard to make a “success” of my work. [...]

[...] He is not worried so much that you have not made a great financial success of your art. [...]

He feels that you have not tried to make a success of your art, but have used excuses while blaming him for using excuses; that he tries desperately to sell his books, while you will not lift a finger to sell your paintings; that if he waited until he did his best work, he would never have sold a thing.