“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I found your discussions just now provocative and amusing. And I’m sure that you are each aware of the implications that are involved, in your saving ways —in your dislike of waste (re our new dehumidifier, some old soup I threw out, wine, etc).

In your society talent, even genius, tries to ally itself, at least for a while, with your economic needs, for if the body does not eat the abilities will not survive. Left alone, the abilities will see to it that economic survival is achieved. It will see to abundance, and not in a self-serving manner but as a leaf seeks sunlight. Am I going too fast?

Then however the abilities want to grow and thrive, and the economic factors must no longer be a prime incentive. If they are there will be difficulty. The personality will try to develop its abilities further in a freer, more mature fashion, but the old habits will hold the personality back. “Will this sell or won’t it?” That question was more or less imperative when Ruburt was learning to use his abilities. Not only that, but the economic need itself was important, helping to focus those abilities to some degree, to the needs and desires of others as well as himself.

(9:30.) Give us a moment.... It, the machine, rebukes you by its presence, because it represents a dilemma. All of this is quite aside from the exterior energy crisis. The grasping, licentious attitudes connected with world energy are the results of the same attitudes. There is not an energy crisis. While you believe, however, that energy is limited then you are gluttonous for using it at the expense of poorer nations—who will then, sharing the same belief, retaliate. Energy must be used. It creates more of itself. It cannot be hoarded.

Ruburt has been trying to be economical in terms of money, energy and time. He differed from you only in that he carried your own ideas and his further in certain respects. In others, financially for example, he broke away first and you followed. The idea of the spare, poor young artist or writer, living romantically in a garret or poor apartment, has served as a handy self-image for many in their early years, providing a sense of dignity that enabled such apprentices to make their way. You chose the circumstances. You purposely chose a time involved in which writers and artists had it “hard”—so you cannot turn around then and blame the society. You each wanted to be apart from it to some extent. You (RFB) proved to yourself that your art could support you when you were young. You made good money. Then you immediately disentangled your abilities from economics in a particular fashion. You used your dexterity in “artistic” ways in your jobs—but the bulk of your artistic yearnings were divorced completely from the world at large. Ruburt did not know that his abilities could ever bring him money.

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.

Only in creative play does great “work” emerge. Only from exuberant impracticality do any so-called practical inventions come. The creative mind and spirit transforms the “waste” that others would disdain. It rises above all practicality into those greater realms of emotional and spiritual abundance that gives birth to all worlds.

(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.

The frame connects the painting with the world, and yet divides it from it in the most beautiful of fashions. It makes little difference whether you buy a washer, or ever use your dryer or dishwasher, but it does make a difference that you understand your feelings about these items, and know how those feelings connect with your deeper activities.