“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(A few notes: I have always felt that my early life, being so different than Jane’s, had a lot to do with my approach to painting, once I embarked upon it after meeting her when I was about 34. I didn’t grow up with the consuming urge toward fine art that she developed about writing at an early age. I did commercial work for many years. I have always taken these differences for granted, and evidently assumed too much when I thought she understood them.

(Further, my urge toward doing my best work comes at an age when I feel that I should be doing my best work. When I started painting, I was appalled to discover my ignorance. I’ve spent years trying to learn. The urge to learn, perhaps overdone, may be one of the Nebene characteristics, [and as an aside I thoroughly wish the Nebene character did not exist.] But regardless of that, I didn’t think my wish to excel in my chosen field necessarily a poor one. I was willing to spend the time necessary to master painting. Each one has been a trial. The last year has been very productive as far as learning goes, and I’m at the point where I expect it to begin paying rich dividends. It also seems that this point coincides with a time of trial for Jane and me, as witness these deleted sessions.

(Therefore I will make a harder effort to do both my art and to make it available to others and to get money with it, to broaden its communicative necessities—this I am perfectly willing to do once I understand its necessity. I do not seem to be the kind to dash off paintings to sell them and let it go at that. I want them to be transcendent. Perhaps erroneously, I didn’t think I could start out with them being that—but I did feel sure that the state would be achieved.)

(I told Jane after this session that I’d intended to leave the job in a year or so —in other words, at about this time, rather than when I did. I thought that by now we’d have a good financial backlog built up, and freedom of action. I didn’t realize last year of course that she was so dissatisfied with the psychic image and the books; I blithely assumed that she felt she was doing good work, and that she accepted it, which doesn’t mean that I had any thoughts of ever saying she shouldn’t do any other kind of writing, ever. I had no idea of the bitterness or the depths of her resistance to, or feeling against, being sidetracked, as she sees it, from her main goals in life.)