“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We’d achieved some good success with our mutual pendulum suggestions for Jane, twice daily, over the past several weeks. Early this week, however, I began to feel very much out of sorts; I let the pendulum sessions go as far as Jane was concerned. At the same time my own distress physically led me to ask my own pendulum questions. As usual, I discovered that the pendulum is a very reliable tool for me. I also found out, though, that this time the pendulum gave me such a variety of responses —different ones each day, practically—that at first I didn’t know how much stock to put in its answers. For my ill feelings continued. The pendulum told me I was worrying about everything from taking too long in producing The “Unknown” Reality to stewing about spending too much time painting, to worrying about my own seeming lack of income. I also wondered if we were really getting anywhere using it to help Jane. In spite of what we had achieved there, she wasn’t walking better yet, etc.

(However, by late in the week I could see patterns emerging through my use of the pendulum, all concerning related feelings, doubts, etc., and was reassured that I was on the way to uncovering the source of my physical distress. My stomach felt somewhat better; Other pains in my body, while persisting, didn’t concern me so much. At the same time, through it all I could eat what I wanted, drink, etc., and the painting was going very well. I have, in regard to the latter, solved several challenges with painting—from the time we moved to Pinnacle Road—and now feel that I have a clear road there as to how I want to do things into the indefinite future, etc. This in itself has been a great boon; I have good confidence there; many problems have been resolved.

(Then today, Saturday, my pendulum told me that I felt guilty about using painting time when I should be working on Seth’s “Unknown” Reality, since the painting wasn’t bringing in money, etc. This was a subtle but important change in my knowledge—for I saw that I wasn’t so much concerned about the amount of work I had to do on the books, as that I felt guilty about doing other things. When I made this connection I knew I had learned something.

(I told myself that this attitude was ridiculous; My stomach didn’t clear up immediately, but once again the pendulum informed me that I had no physical illness—ulcers, or anything else. I did believe this, as I had all week, but still the physical pressure of my discomfort made me question everything. Nothing was much fun, although I went through the motions of doing everything. I also knew that I’d refuse to continue this way.

(After the Leahys left I spontaneously told Jane what had been going on. To my surprise she offered to have a session on the spot—peculiarly, it hadn’t occurred to me ask her to have a session at any time earlier in the week. I agreed, of course. But I think this came about because I felt I’d already begun to figure things out. After the session I told her that my faith in the pendulum was reinforced; that in my own way I’d have eventually understood what I was up to, but that the session cut through many obscuring byways, etc., and went straight to the core of the problem. I also said that it was easy to see how such problems, left unfaced, could lead to things like ulcers, heart attacks, cancer, etc.—and small wonder that our hospitals were crowded with a flow of miserable humanity. It seemed like a great waste.

(I should say here that one of the things the pendulum told me early in the week was that I was concerned because Jane wasn’t having regular sessions any more —that I felt she was missing something important in her life because of this lack. After the session I told her that having a session a week didn’t really interfere with my own routine; etc. She said she understood, so we’ll see what develops here.)

When that status quo shows signs of changing, you become disturbed. You stop the suggestions. In your society money is like a weapon that you need to protect yourself. You cannot equivocate (to me, forcefully). You must completely accept the fact that you do indeed dwell in a safe universe—one in which you are free to develop, say, your painting abilities to the fullest, without fearing that that development will dull the weapon that brings you money.

You still cling, however, to ideas that I tell you now are outmoded, passé and alien to the level of consciousness that is really native to you now. Give us a moment.... Creativity exists outside of time, yet your society gives you the idea that so many hours, whatever the number, must result in so many dollars—and you (to me) still cling, underneath, to that concept. You think “Time is money” —and I tell you now that time and money have nothing in common at all, and they have less in common with the nature of creativity.

If you thoroughly understood that you dwelled in a safe universe, you would need no such concepts. Both you and Ruburt have had a hangup, so to speak. You have believed that so much time “spent” had to produce “so much” creative work, or creative product. (Loudly:)You even more than Ruburt—and that is saying something—have connected creativity and time in a way that is detrimental. That idea has impeded your creativity. Ruburt has struggled with that, but so have you. Your painting time, I tell you—listen to me—had basically nothing to do with clock time. It takes a certain amount of “time” physically to work with a brush. Beyond that, the inspiration of your soul can speak in three minutes, and give you the inspirations of a lifetime (loudly)—but not while you insist that creative time and physical time coincide. This has to do with Ruburt’s symptoms, for he felt that he must be at his desk so many hours, whatever the number, and you became so obsessed with the amount of physical hours that you had to devote to painting that you began to divide up your psyche in terms of time.

(“Yes, but that’s enough for now. Let me think this over. But how about saying something about Jane’s trouble when she goes to the john?”)