“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You judge the world harshly also. You do not thoroughly appreciate emotionally your part in the production of our material, or realize that its direction and so forth must be, and is, colored by your own unique characteristics as well as Ruburt’s—and that at certain levels, the Seth material, as it exists, is a product of your lives together. Not as easily understood a product, perhaps, as a series of excellent paintings, not as easily categorized—and yet you are helping to paint a giant-sized picture of the psyche as it translates inner reality into the living fabric of the world.

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.

Some of your paintings will be very well-known. Do not fall for the trashy concepts concerning age—particularly in relationship to art, for there there is far less correlation than there might seem to be, for example, in conventional terms in other areas of life.

The reasons for the table of course have to do with your ideas of the world, and with your perfectionism.

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?

You are compassionate toward others, and judge yourselves harshly. Ruburt felt he could not go out again until he could do so without embarrassing himself or you, and until he walked normally. If he walked all-right-enough in the house, however, then the time would come for another dentist visit or whatever. And he would have to go—so he would not walk that well in the house either—hence the table.

Against all that conventional wisdom, what I have said sounds extremely simple, simplistic, Pollyannaish, until you try to do it. To solve a problem you begin to minimize its characteristics, diminish its importance, rob it of your attention, refuse it your energy. The method is the opposite, of course, of what you are taught. That is why it seems to be so impractical.

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.

You do not spend time worrying about what is going to happen to Ruburt’s condition—meaning, how much worse he might get, either of you. Ruburt appreciates the motion that he has, and starts from there, and that motion will be increased. He concentrates upon what he can do, and enjoys it—and that will bring about beneficial projections.