“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.

It is at first appalling to discover that the negative as well as the positive events are formed at automatic levels, but in response to your expectations and beliefs. World events such as those you read about in your newspaper are the result of conventional ideas and beliefs—those with which you were reared. They will always form part of the fabric of your existence in this life. There are no reasons, however, why they should predominate. They represent a species of consciousness, a classification.

(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.

Some of this involves the learning process. At the general world level there are many teachers, and the ways are known. There are periods of balance, where for example—and I am using analogies, understand me—you may find a product, a person at a certain balance point, pleased with all aspects of life, in good health, well-off financially, and meeting goals. Everything is even, and within that framework all is well.

The person as yet may have no idea that in contrast to what experience is available, his world, life, is highly limited, or flawed, for the person does not know good furniture from poor.

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.

In all of this your accomplishments seem like nothing to either of you. On the one hand you “believe” that you form your own reality, and on the other you believe that things will most likely go wrong unless you do something to stop them; and this is the most conventional world view that forms the experience of, say, the newspaper world.

In one area, that of money, Ruburt is fairly free, finally. You consider taxes as a symbol of the creator’s support of the mass world—that is, you feel forced to contribute to a world with which you do not agree. You feel that that world threatens you, and yet you must support it. But the threat—and you must try to understand me—the threat does not exist in that world, but only in your beliefs toward it. You are in that world of threat only according to the degree of power you allow it to have over you.

You keep trying to justify yourselves in the normal world, with the people that you meet. You work long hours, you both overinsist, so people will not think you lazy—or, worse, imagine that you are having fun or enjoying your situation. You are not having much fun right now, and partially for that reason. You are often working longer hours for the same reason, and enjoying it less, as the saying goes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Your joint attitudes are particularly important, for they involve your stance in the world. Your attitudes toward people are jointly vital, and the inner mobility must flow on both of your parts. The sessions began because of your private natures, yet to some extent the books make you publicly known. Your conventionalized ideas of psychics, both of you, are troublesome. I hope to clear those up.