“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

You are faced of course with conditions built up of long-held attitudes. In general, however, you are tying the highest faculties of your consciousness to goals that are at least unbecoming to them, and because you have still accepted the tenets of conventionalized beliefs. You cannot serve two masters at any one time with hopes of doing justice to either, and you only confuse yourselves. It is the mixture of consciousness with which you form your events that causes the difficulty.

You want other people to think you are working as hard as they are, or harder. You do not want them to think that your money came easily, which in a way it did. At the same time you say how good it would be to just take a job and come home when it was finished—a self-deception. You know better.

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.

The whole issue involving shoveling snow or mowing the grass also involves your ideas of time. And conflicts of beliefs, as well as other conventionalized concepts that quite override your natural love of physical bodily activity.

Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. That means the taxes. With all of its evils and ignorances, that Caesar’s world allows a framework in which artists, writers, garbage men, physicians, wise men and fools can exist—and my dear friend, let me tell you: fools have a right to exist. It does you little harm to help uphold their world, and in your terms, time and life without their world would not exist, for there are webworks that unite fools, prophets, wise men and kings. If you understand what I have said, you should honestly be freed of the entire tax hassle.

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.

I will have more to say about that particular subject, but first I want to start you with proposals. You may wonder how they are to be carried out, though they are simple. They will come into conflict with your concepts of time, and will automatically begin to alter your subjective realities if you follow them. If you do not matters will continue as they are. I will leave your hours up to you. While you have regular daytime hours, I suggest the following pattern.

This particular pattern is a suggestion only, however, but it will be of benefit. It would apply to each of you. It would apply to you alone whenever Ruburt works at night instead. When you are on the same time schedules, then bed at midnight. Set your alarm for 7:00, and get up. Be at your respective places —Ruburt at his desk, you in your studio—by 9:30, and work clearly, without interruptions, for three hours.

Each day should include, separately, a half hour alone that includes relaxation techniques and psy-time. This should be followed to begin with for each of you, by 10 minutes of yoga exercises. Ruburt should do the most simple ones. Then you should instantly get up. You are to take a 10-minute walk daily. That is a spiritual exercise as well as physical activity. Ruburt should, as I suggested some time ago, have a private phone. Class at least once a month, later twice a month, never more for now.

The recommendations I have made even so far will alter conditions. If you relax and do psy-time for example, your reality will automatically change, for the intent that allows you to do this will automatically begin to produce results. This applies to each of you.

I have, by the way, mentioned certain self-deceptions of which you may, each of you, be half-aware. Be alert for those and others. The “dead” periods of time should also be watched for, for they are often caused precisely by your conventional concepts of time, eroding the quality of those moments.

I will eventually suggest two sessions a week again. Your joint concepts of time are the only impediments at this point.

Television at your dinner hour is advantageous, as long as it is not news. Occasionally you are helped by relaxing in such a manner for several hours. Often, however, this is dead time because your worries have so tired you. Several evenings a week, therefore, I suggest that the two of you pursue a period of psychic activity, as per Ruburt’s library, though with whatever variations suggest themselves. You need not be overly earnest at such times, however. I am not concerned about our book, the latest one. I am intent, however, about a new beginning, a new dedication, so that your own purposes become clearer, and your abilities better used. Conventional ideas of the psychic world have eroded both of your attitudes. In many cases, as with Kubler-Ross, it is again an issue of high insight occurring but put at the service of conventionalized beliefs.

Ruburt felt intensely alone in that regard. Hearing so many stories about out-of-body encounters, for example, he became frightened. You simply told him that was beneath his abilities, without understanding the sense of loneliness, or the fear generated by conventionalized beliefs, which before his own experiences he did not encounter. The relaxation and psy-time will help there, however.

That is the end of our session. I expect—since you agree to my recommendations—that they will be followed. Do not be discouraged if psy-time does not bring instant results—though it well may. These recommendations can change your lives, and set you in those directions proper for you.