“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Many people were afraid of the wealth they had amassed. Their severe religious training made them feel that any luxury was sinful —and so they set about to upset their own apple cart. They were aided by those who had not yet “so succeeded”—people driven by envy. No one should at least consider a lush field filled with all kinds of cultivated flowers sinful. Luxury is not sinful, and there is no such thing as waste. While you believe that there is, however, then you are faced with it.

When you worked in an art department, even though you knew you were doing “commercial work,” society referred to you as an artist. You had a certain prestige. When Ruburt needed jobs he worked in a factory, or he was a sales clerk or a door-to-door sales person—jobs he felt that gave him no prestige. He was afraid, however, of such jobs—prestigious ones—for fear the need for money would lead him to neglect his work. He became more economical.

If he could not go out so often, if he could not go on vacations, if he could not leave his desk, he would save not only energy but time and money as well. You would not spend so much. He would not be tempted to buy so many clothes. You cannot separate your beliefs in one area from those in another, for they are so beautifully connected. Ruburt’s talents are luxurious. They will automatically bring you luxury. Abilities must be ultimately tied in with your greatest inner aspirations—not tied down by your fears.

There is nothing strange in the fact that Ruburt begins to have sexual feelings as the muscles begin to feel toward flexibility (legs). His physical difficulty has involved then his ideas of economical action—the cutting out of waste. These ideas, again, are a part of the one line of consciousness that says “You have only so much energy and so much time. You must therefore ‘use’ time and energy well; practically you must not waste time or effort. If you have a purpose and you want to achieve it badly enough, then everything else must be sacrificed for it—because “time marches on.” “Time is money.”

(10:12.) Deep friendships are out, for they are not practical. They would take time and energy that should be devoted to work. Now no one is saying— me least of all—that you forget ideas of needed solitude. There is little worry that either of you will do that (emphatically). Yet there can be danger that you forget that creative time can produce in an hour magic creations that ten hours of frightened, enforced time can never do—and that a moment’s inspiration in a bar, or with company, or on a walk in the park can bring forth world-changing theories that no amount of fearful economy of time will ever deliver.

When a masterpiece is created everything else is forgotten, and so it is with life situations. It is silly in painting to say “Why did I at first choose that color, which did not work, instead of the final completed hue?” You have in art underpainting. In life you work with many “underpaintings” at once—and while it may seem at any given level that one underpainting lacks or is weak, later it will be seen as an important part of the whole.