“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

During Western years of adulthood, consciousness is focused most intently in one specific area of activity and physical manipulation. From childhood, the mind is trained to use its argumentative, separating qualities above all others. Creativity is allowed to flow only through certain highly limited, accepted channels.

In this value system the black races are feared, as, basically, the aged are feared. The blacks are considered the primitives. To them are assigned creative musical abilities, for example, but for a long time these were “underground” activities: They gave birth to acceptable musical productions but were not admitted themselves into the concert halls of the respectable nation.

Applied to old age, the color black denotes a returning to those unconscious forces. Now all of this so far is from the standpoint of American and Western belief. It is simply the reality in which many of my readers are involved. In other “underground” systems of belief, however, black is seen as a symbol of great knowledge, power and strength. When this is carried to an extreme you wind up with devil cults, in which the poorly understood powers of creativity and exuberance rush out in distorted form; the undersides of consciousness are then glorified at the expense of the other, white, “conscious and objective” values.

Often in the aged you find such frameworks coming into being naturally, but those who awaken spontaneously after four hours consider themselves insomniacs because of their beliefs, and so cannot utilize their experience properly. Both the conscious and unconscious would operate far more effectively, however, under an abbreviated sleeping program, and for those involved in “creative” endeavors this kind of schedule would bring greater intuition and applied knowledge.

(11:37.) There is a give-and-take chemical reaction, or rather chemical rhythms of reactions, that are far more effective in the shorter sleep periods. Many of you sleep through periods that should be those of your greatest creativity and alertness, in which the conscious and unconscious are most beautifully focused and at one. The conscious mind is often drugged with sleep just when it could be deriving its greatest benefits from the unconscious, and be able to poise most meaningfully in the reality that you know. In these instances the beauty and illumination of your dream state can be clear in the conscious mind, and used to enrich your physical life. Contrasts in your experience will appear to you in their united clarity.