“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The reason for the difficulty with the muscles is so obvious that I am surprised you did not make the connections yourself. It is not the fact of the taxes so much that annoys you, as the uses of the taxes, for you resent “being forced” to contribute your money to what you think of as stupid national policies.

On the one hand, our work and yours is largely devoted to poking holes into the official one-line consciousness, and on the other you find yourself financially responsible to contribute to its policies.

The money is being achieved or accumulated as a result of your search for the ideal, so it appears twice as ironic to you that the funds for taxes be used to pursue national goals bent, it seems, upon the most gross, shortsightedly practical conditions. This is, if you will forgive the term, beautifully and cleverly connected in your mind with “Unknown” Reality—the book. Here again you find yourself often in a dilemma of your making, between the ideal and what seems to be; if not the grossly practical, something close to it.

For there, you envision on the one hand the best possible book, content, production, et cetera; and as if to purposefully torment yourself, you also envision the opposing “gross practical product” that could possibly result—a product that would only mock by contrast the ideal that is also so vividly envisioned.

When you let yourself go, your “natural” feelings lead you to fear that they will mutilate photographs, or in some way cheapen the book, dragging it down from the ideal. You have not really gotten it through your head that such thoughts do not represent practical reality, but impractical reality. But the main problem is the dilemma caused by the difference between the ideal and a feared, opposing actuality.

In a way with the book and with your art, your purpose is the expression of the ideal, and that expression must be physically materialized, obviously. If you were running a race you would focus upon your own sensations of speed and agility, trying to bring about a perfection of motion. You would consider it obviously impractical to focus instead upon any impediments that might be in the way. You would know better than to mutter over and over to yourself “I will never make it. I am going to trip here or here or there, or someone is going to trip me up, or certainly someone will throw a stone in my path.” Even though someone may have thrown a stone in your path in the past, as a runner such things would vanish from your mind as you concentrated on the feelings in your body of motion and agility.

As an artist alone your purpose is expression, which involves disclosure, the difference between the ideal and actual. Be reckless in the expression of the ideal, and it will never betray you. Treat it with kid gloves and you are in the middle of a battle. You demand the best circumstances, the proper conditions, and only then will you face yourself.

I give you then resources of energy this evening—personally directed, tailor-made. Make yourself a cloak of vitality and strength. And now, a fond good evening.