“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause.) Because of his beliefs he considered himself somewhat of a failure, and the rich, evocative nature of his own stories did not meet with the approval of his academically attuned mind. Despite himself, however, he was stretching the dimensions of his own consciousness, exercising his consciousness in different directions, expanding the scope of his abilities—and in so doing contributing a small masterpiece to the world.

(9:00.) I want here to stress the basic playful exercising aspects of creativity. When a child indulges in physical play, it exercises its muscles and its entire body. No one has to tell a child to play, for playing comes naturally. Playful games in childhood, not dictated by teachers or parents, often give clear indications of a child’s abilities and leanings. You can sense by watching a child’s play the future shape that his or her life can most productively take. The child does not consciously exercise his or her legs so that they will be strong, but simply joyfully follows the inner impulse to do so.

Now: creativity is basically a mental proposition, a mental or psychic activity. It is also, like physical exercise, an energizing phenomena, one that expands and extends the mental and psychic properties as surely as physical exercise develops the body’s being. (Pause.) What you are dealing with, then, in creativity is a continuing kind of psychic play, an activity that probes into the nature of inner reality and explores it with as much sheer vitality as that with which the child explores physical reality. The child runs, falls down, skips, spins, climbs, swings, tries out its body in as many ways as possible, and naturally explores the body’s relationship with its environment. Then the child explores the environment itself.

(Long pause.) As a child, with no preconceived ideas in normal terms, you drew and wrote stories. Ruburt wrote stories or poems, and drew. The natural impulses were allowed their free play. Later you believed that artists should be artists. The concentration in painting should be so intense—should be—that there would be no thought of any other occupation. The concerns of the world, its progress or lack of it, the nature of existence—none of those issues would interfere with such an artistic vision.

None of your abilities contradict each other, or oppose each other, or minimize each other, or in any way negate any of your probable accomplishments. They are meant to be creatively stacked, not just to be combined for example in conventional terms, but the abilities naturally are psychically merged. They mean that your own consciousness, as you think of it, has a slant, a potential, a rich combination a peculiar savored blend that is meant to be its own creative brew (very intently).

The creative products are important. They are physical landmarks of psychic and artistic inner journeys, but what you do with your consciousness, how you extend it, is even more important, for as physical play is meant to lead to a future physical body that is mature and fulfilled, so the creative nature of that kind of inner play leads to future extended consciousness, an inner being that is the mature version of an earlier self.

Sometimes the advice I give you at any given time is meant to take the place of natural creative corrective behavior that ideally you would have taken on your own, but did not.

(Long pause.) You cannot separate the elements of a psyche, approving of some abilities and not others, putting some in competition with others, without experiencing difficulties. The very nature of your painting is, and must be, determined by the quality of your mind, which is inquiring, which refuses to be cramped, which piles questions upon questions, while you think that the artist should ideally ask no questions at all.

If you would try to see your own creative unity, then both your painting and your writing would give greater satisfaction, and become richer—your prose inspired by your imagery, and your painting by your ideas, so that both are sparked, producing not only products but a creative vision that sees reality through an extension that would be the natural art of consciousness, meant to blossom from those abilities.

This session should be of excellent use, really, to both of you—and remembering the playful nature of creativity will help Ruburt get back to his book. He does that by forgetting the book, and playing with the ideas that it contains.

You “were” right, then, when you worked on the book before your bout, and during that time you trusted yourself—but then your ideas of the comparative nature of your ideas intruded, triggered at that time by (news of) Crowder’s death, and the ensuing beliefs about the male role in society, and as that applied to your own talents. Left alone, ideally, you might have taken a week of joyful painting, during which time your mind refreshed itself, and new ideas about your notes accumulated. Telling you—or rather suggesting—that you paint simply put you on that course. Do you follow me?