“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In his twenties he could well combine the idea of little money with his writing because he realized it might be that kind of profession, but he became frightened as the years passed. I am simply putting this in consecutive fashion, emphasizing certain points for convenience’s sake now. The check, even in those terms, you see, was important. It is being assimilated along those lines. Then he will be able to feel completely free from that particular kind of long-term charged reaction.

I want it understood that money was not the primary goal, that his early drive to escape his environment was based on the false idea that worth was dependent upon your status. Being a writer would give him status even if he did not make money, though he hoped to.

Now: you had built-in status in Ruburt’s eyes, simply because you were an artist. Status did not imply so much a place in society as a place of self. It held one to some extent aloof from society, being by nature an inbuilt superiority. Carried too far, such an idea can lead to an isolationism in which only work is important, and the daily joys experienced by others become unimportant and trivial. The very intuitive feelings behind the writer image were based upon the mysticism of nature, the joy of creaturehood; and yet pursued with too much literal-mindedness, the determination to write, once equated with work, led to important denials in those precise areas.