“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The idea of disclosure however is more important, for you remember that your mother did not like to have her photograph taken. If you included any pictures of her, would she be annoyed? She did not like to have her picture taken on the one hand because she feared disclosure, and on the other hand, because her sense of perfection was affected—particularly in later years by an imperfect image.

Your stomach began to bother you when you considered whether or not to use photographs. (On Sunday, when I bought an album to keep them in.) You have the idea of how the book can appear, a model that exists in your mind. Use the model, but let it be a flexible one, in which your ideals work with the material at hand, molding it. Do not exaggerate, however, so that the ideal seems to be a perfection that cannot be attained given the conditions.

Self-disclosure and the desire for perfection are each involved, then. You know that no self-disclosure will lead to perfection, and yet self-disclosure and perfection can seem to be like opposites. Do not think in terms of perfection and nonperfection, but of bringing your ideas to life, and of using photographs to express those ideas.

You understand that private experience, imperfect but creative, underlies the points in “Unknown” Reality. Creatively you see the photographs’ value, but they still caused a conflict between your ideas of perfection and self-disclosure, particularly as they were related to your mother’s attitudes.

(“Well, with the pendulum I’d arrived at the idea that my stomach bothered me because of a conflict between painting and writing—the time I have for each. I want to do them both—it isn’t that I prefer one over the other. I received the answer that I felt guilty over the conflict: when I wanted to do one, I thought I should be working on the other.”)

(“I thought of the photo connection when I first bought the album, and told Jane what I had in mind. But I got off the track with the pendulum. I never got a clear idea of what bothered me. I didn’t ask the right questions; I knew this when my stomach kept bothering me. I finally got so confused I stopped trying to use it.”

(This really surprised me, since for some months I’ve had the idea that my own reluctance to use photographs was a weakness on my part, when it was obvious that they’d add considerably to the books. But my reluctance was based, I thought, on my resentment at Prentice-Hall over their handling of art work; I really didn’t want to let the photos in question out of the house, for fear they’d be lost, etc. This in spite of Tam’s assurances some months ago that they’d be handled with care, etc. I still think my reaction here is valid. But I missed out on the connections involving my mother, disclosure, etc.