“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It is for a while perhaps more difficult once you understand that you do form your own psychological reality, for you feel responsible for events that earlier gave you concern, perhaps, but no feeling of inadequacy. When you believe that the world is indeed chaos, then you are thankful for any portions of order or creativity you find within yourself.

You take negative, sorrowful, or even disastrous events more or less for granted, and pride yourself on your creativity in spite of such odds.

(9:35.) The general world level of consciousness can serve as a springboard, so that you use it as a base only while the intimate webwork of your own psychological reality uses finer creative levels of consciousness. The quality of such events can be vastly superior, in your terms, yet you discover yourselves not pleased with the overall daily fabric of your days.

Now in your cases you are quite aware of the difference. There are certain considerations, quite pertinent, that occur in your physical times, so that while on the one hand you were involved in the highest adventures of creativity, pursuing the most profound questions of consciousness, you were also deeply involved in practical considerations of making a living.

Ruburt wanted to make creativity work financially so that you could both be free to pursue it. Through the years the goals of one level of consciousness— though I am putting this simply—became tied to the goals of another level of consciousness. Overall, ideally speaking, the two could be fused. Practically, however, this is like trying to build two pieces of furniture with different materials, then forming them into one cohesive whole. In both of your lives, those experiences, however valid, that did not fit both categories, gradually went to one degree or another by the way.

I am not, as you should know, saying that the goal of financial success is a low one. Unfortunately, however, the beliefs connected with that goal usually involve whole webworks of beliefs that would automatically prevent high creativity.

You are trying to live your lives, speaking simply now, at two mutually exclusive levels, combining two lines of belief that contradict each other. As a result any one action you take does not satisfy you, for you are equally drawn to the other direction. Events then are not clearcut or satisfying. You cannot thoroughly relax or thoroughly go ahead. You cannot thoroughly enjoy your solitude, or thoroughly appreciate your friends and normal social activities. You see in Ruburt’s physical condition the clearest representation, but this is simply the clearest sign of events that exist in your own private experience also. You go out into the world to do the chores, grudgingly, but you go. Ruburt goes ahead creatively, lately, grudgingly, but he goes.

Give us a moment.... The acquisition of your house is on its own a creative achievement—almost purely a side effect of your creativity. But the ideas you have projected upon it belong to that other level of consciousness that erode the joy and accomplishment that should be connected with it.

(Loud and amused:) Your ideas about houses, for example, did not bear fruit until you had one. You did not either, incidentally have to confront your negative beliefs about taxes until you were lucky enough, and creative enough, to find yourself in a position where you need pay a considerable amount. You could have chosen to remain poor, and hence avoid the difficulty.

Give us a moment.... You have made for yourselves a framework in which you can indeed be creative—a formidable accomplishment, but you have not been really able to take advantage of it.

(10:28.) Ruburt over-worries, now, with any new creative project: will it find readers? Is it important? Will it sell? And you smile. You worry about what the publisher will do with the book after it sells—what will happen to it, and imagine the ways in which it can be ruined. Two sides of the same coin.

Those worries on each of your parts tie down your highest aspirations to goals that are unbecoming to them, and impede the very creativity you hope to foster. Because you feel that the world is a threat you rouse to battle against it. Time becomes a battleground. I realize of course that you live in time, but I also know that the quality of creative work is not bound to time, but defies it. Your own feelings about publishers, for example, impedes the creative processes so that you must then labor over notes that would otherwise come clearly and quickly.

Now, in your terms you are graced to have a half acre of land upon the earth, and the hillside, with trees that change, and a house that is secure. To some small extent that environment is a part of the entire earthly structure, and its roots go deeply into the past and the future. It should be a spiritual and a creative joy to tend that land, to feel your feet upon it, and to share the seasons with the consciousness that pervades it.

In no way should that tending take away from your creative work, but add to it in ways that defy conventional ideas of time. With that understanding, such work would vastly enrich your painting, your writing, and the tenor of your life. With that understanding you can have help without conflict, or do the work yourself without conflict.

The worries caused by the conventionalized beliefs cut down the quality of your time, so that while you jealously try to preserve your creative hours they become diluted. So that you actually spend “dead” time—that is, periods that are devoid of creativity while supposedly devoted to it. The chest trouble is a result of such conflicts.

When you both had to work outside at least partially for a living, you did not have to consider your beliefs about creative time, or how to organize your day creatively. You were too busy trying to get rid of your jobs. Once that goal was reached, your beliefs about time and creativity became pertinent, as did the issues concerned with spontaneity and discipline.

When you had a job the issue was clear for each of you: in your free time you felt you had a perfect right to paint or write, do relaxation exercises or psychological time. Later, when you did not need jobs and the books began to sell, then your creative time also became productive-money time to some extent.

Ruburt began to allow only psychic experiences that could be translated also—not primarily, you see—but also into financial productivity. You also wanted to wed your abilities in the same manner. You felt you could not afford free creative work. Ruburt felt that creative work could pay. Because of your ideas about time and creative work you felt that painting could not pay. Ruburt tricked you quite cleverly into doing the sketches for Dialogues—for your own good, he felt, and you did not enjoy the experience, allowing your beliefs to contaminate your creativity. You do not feel the world deserves creative work. Yet you have a nature that demands that you produce it.

Then we will see some results. I will comment at our next session, then. I want the two of you to discuss this session, and begin each day with a sense of dedication. I want you to encourage each other’s strengths honestly, and not reinforce your weaknesses. You cannot change your lives by complaining, or by saying “Yes, I have certain beliefs,” and accepting them. You cannot preserve the status quo, and be creative.