“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Each painting that you create represents the death of the self that you were before you created it. The changing self forever dies in this manner, and yet only this symbolic death insures psychic survival. There is no basic moral problem then when you consider the true nature of aggression, for it is highly creative, and without destruction there would be no existence. These are two faces of the same coin.

The ego, as a rule, is frightfully leery of such action, since to it an out-of-body experience always symbolizes physical death. At the same time the ego becomes more assured after successful projections, since it discovers itself not only intact but immeasurably enriched. Indeed, the ego both fights, fears and desires any creative act. Any creative act, including the production of any art, necessitates a momentary release from the ego, an escape from it, which the ego fears.

(3rd Question: “What’s that about a black cat?” “A distant connection. (Pause.) A loss of an advantage, or period of poor luck.” See the explanation re. the black cat on page 328. Seth’s additional data here conjures up the thought that the neighbor’s black cat also serves as the classic symbol of bad or poor luck; the connection here being the failing health of my father, and the failing health in a more drastic way of Mr. Meeker, the father-in-law of my brother Loren. It was while at Loren’s that my mother sent us the greeting card. When she called us on August 14, she, of course, discussed the health both of my father and Mr. Meeker.