“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Today finally he made important headway. It was obvious to you both that he did not want to get up then, and the question “Why not?” was difficult to ignore. When you finally left to prepare breakfast for yourself, he immediately got up, and barefooted, carrying his shoes and other paraphernalia with him—something you usually do not see him do.

After dinner he wrote several more pages. Yet all in all he had worked a little over three hours. In the material he wrote there was information applied to himself, incomplete, but I will put it in order; and it has to do with the nature of creativity and his beliefs.

Each day became a battle in which what he loved to do had to be transformed into work, with all of its unnatural connotations—to him. As soon as a workroom really became a workroom his creativity made him leave it, so that he could create outside of the work context.

Sometimes after a full writing day, without too much actual creative production, he would do his best work in his free time after supper, when he did not have to work. So then he thought “I will schedule those hours into my writing day,” and suddenly they became prosaic, and often lost their magic because then they became his working hours.

What he loved to do then was equated with work.

Ruburt’s normal “work periods” would often involve nonconventional hours, however, precisely because they were nonconventional. Each morning he felt it his duty to get up at a decent hour to go to work. At the same time artistic work had other connotations. Everything else was unimportant by contrast, so that other pursuits became taboo. If you went out in the day people knew you were not working. You early used the word “chores” for activities in which Ruburt took a childish delight. With his literal-mindedness, and for reasons given in the past, he also began to think of them as chores. Otherwise he would want to do them and not work.

When the work idea is carried to extremes than he is not even free in his so-called work time, because then he inhibits what he thinks of as nonwork ideas, and therefore much creativity. He has usually buried spontaneous desires to do other things, particularly in your apartment, so there were frequent dilemmas, finding of course physical expression in symptoms. There has been some improvement physically however since we began the latest group of sessions; but spasmodic.

A note: in creativity play and work are invisibly entwined. In your society however work often implies something you have to do, a chore that must be performed for monetary reasons. With Ruburt the play-work elements that had once been together became separated; from play-work to work-play, and occasionally the combination simply became work.

Both of you must examine your beliefs, then, for some of them, Joseph, held you back creatively. You are far more a follower of the Protestant work ethic than you realize, and to some extent, for reasons given, Ruburt picked this up from you. That is, you are not to blame for this situation, bust I am dealing with that area this evening. Do you follow me?

Now: your own ideas of work also to some degree impede your progress. The faces that you alone can paint can leap into your mind no matter what you are doing, and they are not dependent upon good lighting, though your final rendition of them might be.

Your creature feelings toward night, dawn and dusk, have much more to do with inspiration, though a painting, once inspired, may then take so many hours to execute. But your idea of specific work time automatically divides that time according to your beliefs from other times when you may be shopping, or doing something else far divorced from work.

The yard at 2 or 3 in the morning might amaze you, and ideas of paintings leap up. Your whole concept of work time brings about limitations also. You personally do not think of the dream state as work time, and therefore inhibit very definite inspirations. I want you then to also examine your ideas about work and creative activity.

I am pulling an Oversoul Seven on you, but I am gong to give you an idea for a painting, in the next three days, waking or sleeping—I will not tell you which—but I want you to be playfully alert to it. When you were doing commercial art you were utilizing some important aspects of creativity, though you were not matured enough to use them except in limited form.

(“I do, Seth. Thank you again, and good night.” 11:55 PM.)