“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At the supper table tonight Jane and I discussed our painting and writing, and said we hoped Seth would discuss several problems that had arisen in these fields. I was particularly interested in the painting information, and spent some little time explaining why to Jane.

Not only this, but he needs other interests to refresh him. I have in the past suggested he resume painting. The yoga is good, excellent for him. It should be done joyfully. He need not always be so serious. These points sound obvious, but they should be followed. This gives the inner self freedom. He has been hammering again, though now he hammers with a better purpose. (Smile.)

One more note. Ruburt should remember to keep other interests also. This lets him take his conscious attention away from psychic matters and allows them freedom. Dancing, gardening, painting. He can afford to play. (Humor.) Now that he is “good,” in quotes, he need not make a saint of himself overnight. (Emphatic.)

It was a tool of your art. It was also a part of your talent. It added to the dimension of your work, but to some degree it was also adopted as a protective mechanism, to give you some feeling of separation. Your mother’s emotionalism frightened you so that you distrusted strong feeling, even while you must use it, and be vividly aware of it in order to paint.

In this life therefore this high technical ability allowed you to paint, for without it you would have been too frightened of the inner sensibilities necessary. It has always had these two meanings for you, these two faces.

The precise delineation helped create the subject of the painting beautifully, with almost “supernatural” in quotes, precision. Yet the lines also served to protect you from that which you were painting, and from the feeling involved.

In the beginning you could not have painted if you had not allowed yourself to develop this technique, which allowed you to use emotion and yet contain it. (Long pause.) These elements helped form and define your abilities, adding to their particular and peculiar nature.

At times you have been afraid of putting too much of yourself in your work, as if the painting then could imprison you. In the back of your mind you thought of your mother and father, imprisoned in their house. The house an emotional framework, but quite physical.

When you paint the land, do so thinking in terms having to do with its past as well as present and future. Its inner development that has resulted in its present form, the energy behind the form. Remember in your painting the relationship of one object to another, not in terms of space necessarily, the interrelationship of the vitality that forms the objects; the vibrating always changing reality within, say, the skin of the apple or the orange, the quite living consciousness within the molecules that make up what seems to be the solid surface of the fruits’ skin.