“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Perhaps that does not seem to be what you had in mind as an artist. Perhaps it does not seem to be what you intended. You could have done conventionally well, with portraits, and with other kinds of paintings, with your technical knowledge, but as you learned more you kept trying to put more into your paintings, ever demanding more of yourself and of the art, and forcing upon yourself a kind of growth and development that in a way became larger than the art itself—so that the art, you felt, could never be adequate as an expression of the inner realities of which you became more and more certain.

Art was art, but it was also on your part a search for truth through the medium of painting. Whenever you feel that you have not used your abilities fully, you are doing two things: you are disapproving of yourself as you are, taking it for granted that you have gone astray in an important fashion, and you are also projecting that disapproval and “error” into the future.

Many of the most important art works have been done late in life, as you should know, and blossoming of the psyche cannot be given any age limit. You did not want buyers around, and you did not want the marketplace, and you wanted to progress at your own sweet rate—as you are. You did not want to settle for work of which others might approve, and get stuck at a certain level, even for money’s sake; but you wanted to pursue your art in private, and you wanted it colored by its own vaster canvas of psychic endeavor.

You are so immersed in that method of problem solving, however, that it comes back to haunt you. At least you can be aware of it and alert. I will give you the answers to your questions, but they are not the way to solve your problem—and against all conventional knowledge, reviewing the mistakes of the past does not lead to wisdom.

Now understand that I am using the term “perfectionism” in a comparative fashion—but you disapprove of defects of any kind, the both of you. (Pause.) Do you want this material?

I gave you portions of it in the past. At Ruburt’s last visit to your dentist, both of you decided that his position was embarrassing, that it put you both in a bad light, that his condition spoke of invisible defects. Ruburt was frightened of going, had a very difficult time with the stairs, but made them. You said something like “It looks like you’ve had it, hon.” He could have said, “Had it, shit,” but he did not. You were embarrassed in the street. He was in people’s way. You were impatient.

He was hurt and angry, but instead of thinking “I will walk all right, and be impatient with you sometime.” he decided he would not be humiliated again, for he could no longer “pass” as normal.

The belief is that if you frighten yourself badly enough through imagined projections and imagination, you will be frightened enough to change—but the nation or the individual following that method does not change for the better, but compounds the original condition, concentrates upon it until it looms larger than before. Such methods cause panic, national or individual.

The situation frightened him of course further, and you, so for the winter he largely sat in one chair in one room. This chair (indicated), being used to get from room to room, was at that point creative, and it got him involved in the household again, and greatly added to the exercise given the legs over the entire day, for sometimes he walked to the bathroom three times in the winter, but for the rest of the day his motion was most limited.

He does need to put his full weight on his feet more, though last week was a good compromise for now—but overall the body has been more exercised. You must both be on guard against comparing his walking with normal walking.

The leg and thigh discomforts in bed are definitely the result of concentrated periods of muscular exercise. The body wants to get up and move—either that, or a brief massage–but mainly the realization of the body’s positive activity will help bring the discomfort to a halt.

I have said this so many times —and I do realize it is difficult for you—but you cannot concentrate upon two things at once. So to the extent that you concentrate upon your pleasures, your accomplishments, and to the extent that you relate to the psychic and biological moment, you are refreshing yourselves. You are not projecting negatively, and you are allowing the problem to unwrinkle, unknot. You are denying it the energy of your attention that keeps it going. You do not spend time thinking that you have not used your abilities properly. You take it for granted that you are using them properly, and that allows them to fully develop.