“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The difficulties with the hand were not meant to threaten your artistic self. You feared they were. They were meant, in some instances, to protect your artistic self, if you recall our last session. Therefore the fear was a conscious one, and basically unwarranted. The unconscious was not (underlined) threatening your artistic self. You were afraid that it was, or that unwittingly the symptoms would bring this about.

The unconscious was trying to protect your artistic self. If you wanted to stay home and paint all day badly enough, then it would hamper your hand motions at work. Do you follow that or should I elaborate?

(I was thinking this over. I followed it all right, but at the same time I was wondering why the unconscious, when it saw how I was taking the symptom, didn’t get busy and eliminate it and set me at rest. I will have to ask the question, etc.)

It mirrored your attitudes toward your job, not toward your art in that regard. The fear that the artistic self was being threatened led to a certain panic that impeded the flow of information you were trying to suggest to the unconscious.

The understanding that the artistic self was not being threatened should allow you to relax sufficiently for the suggestions to take effect more. You were as a result distrustful of the subconscious, and this hampered the suggestions. You felt, if it were threatening your artistic self, what could you expect from it when you had always supposed previously that it upheld the creative drive? Your deduction you see was false—the earlier deduction that it threatened the painting.

There was no great diversion. The unconscious was trying to give you what it thought you wanted, in that respect, now. If you wanted to leave your job badly enough and could not consciously decide to do so, then it would force the situation for you in the most obvious way possible.

(Jane had been speaking very softly, in a very dry and husky voice that I thought was getting worse by the minute. But at my words Seth suddenly boomed through very loud and clear with no voice problem, and quite humorously:)