“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A portrait must contain a searching and a deep statement of the human condition, a reaching out toward the mystery that is another person, whether the person exists in your mind, or physical reality, or both. A portrait must contain a journey into personality, and the technique and the form will then follow naturally and spontaneously.

The emphasis would not necessarily (underlined) be upon technique nor detail, though it could be, but upon portraying in one portrait, if you will forgive the phrase, the agony and the ecstasy of individual existence. This is what you often avoid facing.

If you choose the first approach, then you must plunge wholeheartedly into the person you are using as model, and immerse yourself in his reality, and from this let the painting flow.

Either will be some experience for you, I can promise you. (Humorously and emphatic.) Both demand a concentration and focus into the basic reality from which painting comes, rather than upon the painting itself. They will acquaint you with their source.

(10:22. Jane had been in a good trance, and was bleary when she came out of it. She said that whenever I ask questions about painting she “really goes out.” Jane said that at some time when Seth explained the two approaches she strongly felt what he meant.

You need not hammer this. The feeling is what is important. Think of yourself as being flexible creatively. Psychological time, if you contemplate it, will set you free, so that you feel value fulfillment and durability within the time that you know. Do not think in terms regretfully that you have only afternoons in which to work. This restricts you in two main ways.

My approach is freer than what you had thought of, and more effective for that reason.

(10:48. Jane’s trance was deep, but she left it quickly. She remembered little of what she said.)