“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The confident inner self will let the ego manipulate in the physical world, but will not allow it to become fiercely overprotective. Your work contains the strength of your inner self in many ways. Your particular ego’s function is to show this work to the world as you know it. I hesitate, and I mean this, to offer practical advice to one who tries to be so practical. But my dear Joseph, there is no true practicality in smothering your abilities by working in a position where you cannot use your abilities. You will not be paid for abilities you cannot use, since I know you must think in financial terms. Your ego’s job is to help you trade your true abilities for your daily bread.

A job which prevents you from using these abilities is at best a compromise and at worst a soul-stunting experience. At the present time you both are maintaining your physical status very well. If you are worried about social status, I am afraid I am not much help, but I will say this: Things will get better because you allowed yourself to expand. Fear always contracts.

She would have talked the landlord into taking one week’s rent instead of two months’ rent in advance. There is a supermarket three blocks away where she would have gotten a job that would have lasted seven months. At the end of this time you would have had a job in an advertising firm. You would have gotten by very well. You would not have stayed at the advertising firm over eighteen months. However Jane would have worked in an art gallery—this experience was ahead of her, not foreordained but ahead of her in any case. You would have ended up in the same gallery.

(The Mr. Burrell referred to here was Jane’s employer, the manager of a supermarket in Marathon where Jane worked for a few weeks as a cashier. It was a job she hated.)

It was for this reason that Jane was antagonistic to Mr. Burrell from the beginning, and filled with panic. What set her off was not the disappointment over the teaching job, which fell through, but the sequence of events, such as Mr. Burrell’s advances and her subconscious knowledge of her father’s nature.

(Jane had become increasingly nervous on the job, and finally made a mistake on her register which cost her 13.00.

(Nor did I understand what was happening, beyond the obvious fact that she was coming to hate the job. I was doing some samples for a business venture with a relative that offered a chance of rather handsome monetary rewards if successful; our agreement was that Jane would hold a temporary job in the meantime.

(Jane finally became unable to eat breakfast before going to work. She had cramps, and then her thyroid gland began to act up. I had never met her employer, but gradually understood that he had made advances by innuendo. I told Jane to stay home and went to the store and quit her job for her; by chance the manager was not there at the time.

(Jane required the help of a doctor in bringing her thyroid under control. I obtained a job painting signs in Marathon for a few days. We then left Marathon for Pennsylvania, a few days before the hurricane devastated the town.)

She would have taken a private plane to Minneapolis. The plane would have crashed, and she would not have survived. So if you think of opportunities missed think also of tragedies avoided, because but for you she would have taken the job to get out of Sayre. I wanted to bring all these points up this evening so that you will see that while you did not always take the best course, you had the sense between you to avoid the worst ones.