“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You naturally express your nature through your use of the channel of art. Your ability to draw upon that channel is endless. The certain-amount-of-ability idea is highly limiting. It forces upon you a sense of responsibility to use what you have, while instead it should mean simply being what you are, and being what you are (underlined) will automatically produce excellent paintings.

Your knowledge of form now can work for you automatically, serving to give structure to those ideas which will come to you freely and clearly. Your own (in quotes) “psychic abilities” now give you easy (underlined) access to inspiration. You must forget the idea as you have it, that your painting must serve to work out problems. In that framework you set problems.

Forget the idea of man’s work and what your paintings should (underlined) provide, and the idea of fame or success. Let yourself go with the joy of painting what you want to; but forgetting also, again, the idea that your paintings are working out problems, technical or not.

In doodles, in oils, in whatever suits you, and whatever suits you over a period of time, will find its own pattern. Do not harness yourself with the idea that you had (underlined) “so much” (in quotes) ability, and that you have not used it. That is not the case. You have instead an open channel. You chose to spend a good amount of time dealing with form.

You wanted to express ideas in paintings that do not come in youth, and to merge a particular kind of understanding with a particular kind of form. You had an existence in which your art matured early, as Josef in Ruburt’s Seven. You dealt with emotion unrestrained by discipline, and with the feelings of a young man. Josef was not able to paint anything worthwhile past the age of 40, and he turned to a land-owner’s province.

Van Gogh, for your information, was (underlined) obsessed personally with ideas of self-mutilation, and underwent great inner torture. He chose those feelings however so that he could view the world and reality in a certain light. That light enabled him to do what he wanted to but could not fake: paint the world through that particular unique vision.

You place too great a burden upon yourself when you consider your ability something that must (underlined) be used. It flows through you naturally. Many spontaneous ideas for paintings and sketches you automatically reject because of several reasons. They do not fit in with your ideas of work (underlined), or with your idea of what you think you ought (underlined) to do, or because you are being too ponderous, and hence shove away many spontaneously playful ideas.

Now give us a moment. You must recapture the feeling of painting for fun. The play of the gods: your natural expression. Instead you project ponderous ideas of success or failure, consider work as a series of problems to be solved, and forget the idea of spontaneously creating.

Your form is ready. The ideas I have given you will bring that form to free life, however, if you use them. Your emotional life has already been enriched of late with the interactions with Ruburt. You are both doing well in following what I told you. Continue to do so.

(11:22. The portrait discussed above is one I recently finished after many attempts. I nearly discarded it several times, and even now realize its shortcomings. I “saved it”, and learned from it, but it of course bears the scars of the struggle. It’s serving as the basis for new work and ideas also. The long-haired man facing the viewer’s left.