“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

You may laugh with some disdain when I mention, for example, that in some other societies, both today and in the past (pause) a gentleman proved his moral worth and value by not working. Now that idea is no more ludicrous than the idea you have, for both attempt to prove personal merit through the manipulation of money and status.

(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)?

Your body, on its own, is very happy to be so well provided for (more humor). Ruburt said that he used to like his class money because it was tangible, and you understood. But you also told him that the money for books, that came in a check, was just as good, and that there was more of it.

(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.

You should do a book of your own if you want to, because you want to —not because of the money that might be involved. Some part of you still thinks there is something wrong with money unless you can show precisely where it came from—or people might think you a crook, or a gigolo living off your wife. You must learn to dismiss such ideas as the rubbish that they are. Your body is in the right place at the right time—and (louder) I can see that I was in the right place at the right time for our chat.

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.