“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

Your whole civilization is immersed with the idea that the way to solve a problem–any problem, private or worldwide–is to exaggerate it, see its worst projection; and this, then, is supposed to make you take proper action. The approach unfortunately solves no problems, and only compounds them, whether the nation is trying to solve problems of energy, or social problems, or whether an individual is trying to overcome a dilemma.

The fact is, neither of you wanted to appear on the street. You did not particularly want to be seen with Ruburt in his condition. You felt too sorry for him, and yet angry and embarrassed, and all of that was caused by concentrating upon the problem, projecting it in the future, in the definite belief, for all I have said, that that method of problem-solving works.

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 best way to protect yourselves from an enemy, for example, is to exaggerate your enemy’s power and evil qualities, and this is somehow supposed to bring about peace. The way to solve a health problem, whether private or national, is to emphasize its existence, exaggerate its characteristics, and project into the future, and this is supposed to bring health.

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.