“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When you have completed a life then it is as if you have finished a living portrait of yourself, using the mediums of space and time. Then you have the painting to examine. The memories and realities within that portrait are yours to learn from and to use as a model for other such living portraits in time and space.

Some are more proficient in using the mediums than others. Some deal with large stormy soulscapes and tumultuous endeavors. Some paint living portraits of themselves in peaceful times and places. Each living self-artist however tries to create the inner self in the material world, and each such portrait is indeed unique.

There are masters in living as there are the Old Masters of painting. Some of the Old Masters were adept at painting scenes of violence, warfare, sagas, with dark and dreary atmospheres, yet each so filled at the same time with life and vitality that the canvases themselves seemed alive. Even paintings of great destruction spoke of the great creative energy behind the talent that vitalized the very medium, and by its very creativity denied the very strength of the destruction so cleverly depicted.

The greatest Old Masters felt the inner self’s great integrity, and its connection with All That Is, and each in his own way through painting tried to represent that energy and show it to others. The energy is behind all. When you look at the great world picture before you in space and time, look at it as you would a multidimensional worldscape, painted by some artist who was all of the great masters in one; and behind the scenes of destruction and conflict, feel the great energy that in itself denies the destruction that is in that case so cleverly depicted.

You cannot say to yourself twenty times a day “There is no peace,’’ and at the same time expect to find some, with any possibility of achieving anything but conflict. There is no other way. Keep your cherished beliefs in conflict, but you will not find peace.

You can be alone in the silence, fairly isolated, and yet filled with conflict if it is within you. You can be surrounded by some noise (as Seth, Jane pointed to the ceiling; someone was moving into the apartment above us) or traffic, and feel its great synthesis with the vitality of life, and it can be conducive to peace. This does not mean that silence at times is not preferable to noise. It means that you make your own reality.

It is easy for you to say that your parents did not appreciate what they had, that they looked at the “bad” side of things all the time, but not quite so easy to see those same attitudes in yourselves.