“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Think of the slides shown today (by Loren) of postcard Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, USA, home of conventional, American, Protestant values. I am (underlined) generalizing here to make a point: a largely postcard land, in which social clichés pass for communication, in which social ceremonies take the place of private communications—a land in which beliefs must be like landmarks, unchanging, utterly dependable, always there to be used for touchstones lest the puritanical Protestant stray from worthy goals. A land in which things must be judged thus-and-so, a land in which people disappear as much as possible into established family and social roles, where the lines are clearly marked.

The few upstarts move away. The community fits together because certain beliefs are indeed shared. They are conventional and stereotyped. This does not mean they may not be of some service to those people.

(11:19.) Such communities have few poets, few artists, and fewer mediums. Tunkhannock is actually an idealized version of that kind of community. In those terms (underlined) it is for Loren a step up from, say, Sayre, whose history is richer even in “lower class” origins. Sayre, however, generally now, represented the poorer man’s version of that American ideal, and it was from there that many of your beliefs and those of your brothers had their origins.

A man showed himself a man, say, by getting paid every Friday night, coming home after a stop at the pub with coins jingling in his pocket, to give his wife the house money for the week. I do not want to hurt your feelings—but your particular beliefs about a male and money are in their way quite parochial, and you must understand that as far as money is concerned, also, those beliefs have little moral value—moral value.

(Quietly amused:) Now, with that simple explanation, when you know your brothers will visit, you instantly leap to the old beliefs of childhood, when your mother wanted you to set an example—which meant be someone in society, in normal middle-class society, now. Use your art to make money. Otherwise it was a liability in her eyes. She expected a clearly defined role. Now, she being uniquely herself, is more than pleased with your situation: a good house in a fine neighborhood, and who cares where the money comes from (with more than a little humor)?

You are afraid you will be thought of as a gentleman of leisure—at the worst a moral crime most certainly in light of the beliefs that originated at the time the Protestants first abandoned the Roman Catholic Church.

There is nothing wrong with your body. The memories and associations bring old beliefs to mind, and you see in such family visits the culmination in your brothers of those old beliefs. You must say: “They are mine no longer. I appreciate my own unique worth.” You must liberate yourself whenever such thoughts arise to mind—not by inhibiting them but by confronting them, recognizing their origins, and realizing that you have left them intellectually behind, resolving that you will emotionally free yourself from their effects.

I made a few comments about supply and demand recently, but there are far deeper issues. Unless negative beliefs stand in your way, then creative ideas that you contribute to the work will automatically take care of your needs, and it is truly idiotic to want to substitute that good fortune for such parochial concepts like the male as breadwinner, or the male performing in a given definable fashion.

(11:51.) You have had in the past to some extent a disdain, because of your beliefs about yourself, for people perhaps met on the streets during business or working hours, or for people who did not have jobs, or who did not punch a time clock or whatever, and it is by those attitudes that you judge yourself (intently), and find yourself wanting in the eyes, say, of your brothers.

(Long pause.) You are afraid you look as if the money comes to you too easily, when in the old system of beliefs everyone knew that you must work hard.

I want to rid you of any lingering misconceptions, but you still have a lingering belief that your old ideas about money and the male have some kind of high moral value. (Louder:) The Protestants have always thought that artists were decadent, that contemplation was dangerous, and that leisure was a crime. (With continuing amusement:) To enjoy your work was suspect—and if you enjoy unconventionality of mind, some leisure in which to contemplate the world about you, then it is about time that you dismissed such parochial concepts, and realized that there is no moral rectitude given them.

Then I bid you a fond good evening. I have stuck to the most important beliefs about money, and the male’s status—but also such (family) gatherings also bring into focus beliefs about age and illness, and so forth.

You can use such situations, again, as springboards. In a large measure, those beliefs represent the evidence of the old world before it is set upon by the light of new creativity. Bounce against that world, into the more creative realm that you know in your heart is a far truer representation of reality,

Now: beliefs—that is correct. I do not want to overemphasize this point, so do not overemphasize it yourself—but the idea is that you sometimes become angry at your own “unconscious creative abilities.” I put that in quotes because you equate creative abilities as largely unconscious. You think, then, that if you were not so creative you could have a proper niche for yourself, and therefore you tense a portion of the body that seems to be connected to the unconscious side of the self, and chose the groin, which connects old beliefs about males to the beliefs about creativity.

There is a long history connected with such American Puritan beliefs about morality, having to do with the fact that medieval priests were sometimes licentious, and opulent. They did not work in the field (except for the poor monks), and the Protestants determined, for example, that their ministers would have families, work with the people, and be too busy for licentious leisure activities.

Though men could compete for a livelihood, wealth itself was and still is highly suspect. Even a wealthy man, in the light of those beliefs, dabbles in art —dabbles—justifying any love of art as a good investment.