“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(As today passed Jane picked up from Seth—and herself—material on the events of yesterday afternoon, so that finally she had an idea at least of what Seth would discuss tonight. [I suggested she have this session, although the thought crossed her mind also.]

They actually represent the ways in which beliefs can dull native qualities of mind and heart alike, so that the intellect seems opaque, and emotional relationships are unduly tangled. Ruburt is working with the nature of impulses, and old ideas about impulses, spontaneity and discipline rose to mind, for the family situation of your brother and his wife almost typifies the kind of situation that Ruburt was determined to avoid. And he thought, what was the entire affair, really, for it seemed to lack any kind of discipline. It seemed to him, with the force of old beliefs, that Ida, Richard and the children were indeed driven willy-nilly by contradictory impulses, and that their lives lack any organizing inner purpose.

There are people who work in art departments as a living, gifted certainly more than most with an ability to visually portray an idea. They sense an ideal, but those ideals and abilities are everywhere distorted by millions of other considerations. What do they think of their art themselves? To what purpose do they use it? What does their wife or husband think? What does the boss think? Whose version is the final one for a cover? What does the artist think of the subject matter? What are the artist’s standards of excellence?

The artist’s standard of excellence is often the necessity of keeping his job, and he has to keep his job because he fears he is not after all a true artist, or he would be painting a great painting. And at work his art must be further distorted, it seems to him, by the ideas of salesmanship and advertising.

Your covers represent the attempt to express an ideal in the context that exists in the publishing field. The difference between your idea of an excellent cover and the actuality, and the difference between your kind of experience and your brother’s, should help you become more aware even of the need for our joint work in the world.