“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Many parents find it difficult to express love verbally in a positive, open, unabashed manner. The child, however, according to circumstances, may hear only the order “Brush your teeth.”

Ruburt is verbal. He loves to talk. He likes to hear you talk. Oftentimes your stomach upsets you because your love for Ruburt makes you concerned, and in most instances the stimulus is money. An occasion will arise, or a period of time, in which your love for him wants to find expression. You do this by expressing your concern that his work is not being duly appreciated in monetary terms (as I did this evening).

You might feel he is being taken advantage of. You do not say “I love you. I admire your work so that I want to see it duly appreciated.” Verbally oriented, Ruburt hears only an implied order, or criticism. The conflict with the stomach always involves money, however—taxes sometimes, for example—and implies a period or situation in which you think he is being taken advantage of.

You are particularly sensitive here because of the male beliefs of your culture, and the feeling that Ruburt’s books are his rather than, say, yours. You want to show him that you appreciate that by your concern, but you do not express the love verbally half as much. Period.

This is because those expressions were natural in your family. Love would never be clearly expressed through a clear channel. It might be expressed through action that did not, however, directly involve love’s expression. Your father might make things for you, for example. But after your childhood state he avoided caresses or verbal expressions.

Your mother’s verbal expressions were often aggressive tools used against your father—that is, when your mother expressed love to you verbally, the words were so chosen that they became verbal assaults against your father.

(10:43.) Your stance with the world is involved. Behind it all, however, is the feeling that you do not express your love verbally, or through touch, to Ruburt, so that instead you look out for ways that feel he is being taken advantage of; and through that concern, you express your love. He does not understand this.

Intellectually he accepts it, but emotionally he yearns for that direct expression. The child may think “My teeth are fine, why yell at me to brush them?” Ruburt thinks “What is there that allows you to speak your concern more actively than your love?” He is verbally oriented. Words have rhythm—emotional rhythms, to which he is acutely attuned. You are saying “I love you. My art is, for whatever reasons, private. I respect it. It involves a method of expression, and a primary stance of my life, regardless of what it brings or does not bring. I am sorry that somehow I cannot use it in the way that you use your writing, and even in the way that I can use mine. When I think that others take advantage of you in monetary terms—government, publisher, or public—it makes me wonder why. I wish that my painting could bring you abundance in social ways also. I feel guilty sometimes when I paint for that reason. I know that you understand on deep levels. I wish I could express my love verbally, but if not, I will express it is this fashion.”

You identified fairly strongly with your father as a boy. He seldom expressed love verbally toward your mother. He felt that the worst would happen in any given set of circumstances. You long believed emotionally that it was unrealistic to express love or hope, for circumstances would surely prove such expectations to be foolish.

He became extremely frightened when he went to the dentist (last month, 6 weeks), and when you again expressed your concern, but not your love: “I’m afraid you’ve had it,” you said. He was of course afraid of the same thing. But he interpreted your remark verbally as you made it, knowing you love him, but having to search through the concern.