“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This morning I showed Jane the portrait in oils that I’m working on. It’s of one of my imaginary male heads, and I began it a week ago, following Seth’s material on art for me in the private session for April 9. [See Note 1 for the last session.] I explained to Jane that even while it’s incomplete, the painting contains improvements that I can already tell will be developed further in the next one. Once I start a work in a certain mode, it becomes somewhat set in that expression; this is inevitable if one is to ever complete the physical painting. Those sensed, additional improvements have to wait for the next effort: A creative tension between the present and the future is set up, then—one that I’ve often felt, an impatience to leap ahead to the next step even while I’m still working out the current one. I asked that Seth comment upon the painting tonight if he cared to.

(To me:) Your knowledge knows how to flow through the techniques you have learned, to use them and become part of them, so that a painting emerges with a spontaneous wisdom. That is what you are learning. That is what the painting shows. That is where you are.

To some extent each vision, each subject matter, will itself make minute alterations in technique if you allow it to. Your impulses have shadings as your colors do. They should mix and merge with your brushstrokes, so that the idea of your subject matter is almost magically contained in each spot of paint, and that is what you are learning. Or rather, you are learning to take advantage of your direct cognition.