“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This session came about quite unexpectedly just before midnight, after we’d had company—the Leahys from the end of Pinnacle Road; Jane had called them at supper time this evening and asked them to visit us. They left at about 11:30 PM. I then told Jane that I’d been feeling poorly all week—to such an extent, even, that I’d wondered if I was developing an ulcer. But my distress was also more general than that, so I felt other things were involved. I’m including a few notes here to remind myself of this session’s context when I reread it in later times.

(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.

(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.

(When the session began I began to feel almost nauseous—which is a feeling Jane has had when she deals with personal material. I’d begun to drink a glass of milk, but couldn’t continue. During the first couple of pages of material I was rather close to being physically ill there on the couch. At the same time I knew what was happening, and as the session continued the feeling subsided. When the session was over I was able to eat. Then Jane felt “sick,” as she put it. But this too passed, although she couldn’t eat before we went to bed even though she was hungry.

(12:15.) Give us a moment. It is significant, for example, that you stop your joint pendulum suggestions at such times, for it means you feel the need of a breathing spell, so to speak, to assimilate the changes of behavior. You are each rather surprised at the comparatively fast results.

You stop, each of you, and think “Actually, how safe is this universe in which we dwell?” The money, or the need of it, in your particular situation, becomes merely a symbol for an inner sense that the universe is not safe, and so money becomes a needed security. If Ruburt becomes so spontaneous, then you must be able to make money from your painting, for he might not spend sufficient time at his work.

You are in a position that you may have never really understood. You do not particularly need more money, but it is coming to you, and naturally as rain out of the sky. Now for once you should rationally feel free in your painting time to paint, released from all requirements of buying or selling. Yet perversely now, of all times, you feel as if your painting must bring money. Why?

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.

(12:40.) Give us a moment.... Rest your hand. Your ideas of time, jointly and individually, have hampered your creativity. There seems to be a dilemma in terms of time. You can give only so many hours to my book, and so many hours to your painting. As long as you insist upon identifying creative time with physical time, the dilemma will be real. Your work on the book will be slow, for you will be sure that it “must take so much time.” Your entire physical hours must then be divided. Your painting “must take so much time.” And because you still seem to believe that your universe is unsafe, all of your creativity must give you the weapon—money—to protect you against the inequities and uncertainties of “fate.”

In actuality your creativity escapes all such bonds, and definitions. Your notes for the book can come easily, literally in half the time they do now take because of your beliefs. (Although I’m not aware of having any complaints here.) Your painting in physical terms can take half the physical time that it now takes because of your beliefs. You can no longer equivocate, either of you. Your creativity seems to have burst the practical elements of time. That is, your painting, Ruburt’s work, and my books seems to be “too much” in terms of time only because you have not let your intuitive understanding of creativity grow with your experience. You are between gears, so to speak. It is a creative period, far more significant than you realize, and you have set a challenge for yourselves because you know that you can break through the barriers of old beliefs.

There is nothing wrong with the kidneys, but with the suppression of impulse. He has conditioned himself not to feel the impulse, so that when he is aware of it, in your terms, it is too late. This frightens him because consciously he has not been aware. When he is, then of course the slow motions add to the problem. He put off bodily functions as long as he could, for what he thought of as mental creativity—and all of this is highly related to the ideas of time as I explained them.