“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Remarks: it has been said that when the imagination and the will are in conflict, that the imagination will (amused) always win.

It might be a good idea to examine that statement, for in the truest sense of human motivation, the fact is that despite all appearances to the contrary, the imagination and the will are never in conflict.

However scandalous or unrealistic this proposition sounds, the fact is that people do not “will” a specific outcome of events while their imaginations vividly portray the opposing outcome.

It is very important to know what you want. You may discard or dismiss “what you want” as unworthy, evil, but you must first be aware of your motives. This sounds quite simplistic, and yet it is quite practically true, but you have people professing to desire wealth while obviously doing everything possible to insure the continuance of poverty. They may state their purpose as often as they wish, and yet their imaginations carry vivid pictures of future deprivation, so it seems in such cases that the will and the imagination are in conflict.

Such individuals, however, want poverty. They use both will and imagination to seek their goal. They may think that poverty is demeaning or humiliating or threatening, yet want it despite those conditions for other reasons that may or may not have anything to do with money, per se. So the question in such a case is, of course, “Why do I want to be poor?”

The imagination usually gives you a pretty good picture of what you really want. It usually escapes all of your attempts to cow it, to reason away its pictures. It is a mirror of your wants, and it is also the mirror of your will — for in it you see what you want to see, even if afterward you say that its pictures are unbidden, or against your conscious intent.

Imagination and will, working together, are miracle-makers, because self-deception does not stand between them.

(9:53.) All of my comments for Ruburt apply to the specific situation at the time they are given—an important point. Lately Ruburt decided, using his will, to walk to whatever degree possible. That desire was clear-cut. Immediately, without trying, at different times his imagination came up with different pictures to implement the desire—the table, the cupboard.

Today he almost walked three times. Imaginatively, he did walk three times. The body immediately responded, so that he wanted to walk more. Circulation was increased. He wants to walk. Keep that desire clear in a creature fashion. Do not tack onto it issues about television or lectures or whatever.

Give us a moment.... Again, you have a joint reality, in all aspects. Apply what I said about wealth to health. The creative abilities are always released when the will and the imagination are together, in whatever area.

Your willingness to help Ruburt walk, your encouragement—these are all important, but the most important issue is the unity, in practical terms, of imagination and will, and the generation of creative ability in health terms, that can be sparked.

Ruburt does not need to feel that he would naturally, left alone, go out into the world, into the arena, and convince the world of our ideas, or think that with his energy unimpeded that would be part of his natural mission. That is not so. Nor would he be necessarily more fulfilled in that role, and it is that imagined, frightening role against which he pushes, and then retreats.

Now innovators are not conformists. Creative people do not fit into your society, so often they will indeed appear as the eccentrics, the disinherited, the mad, the obsessed, or whatever—because their desires and intents, their imaginations and their wills, are not satisfied by the tenets or organizations of the conventional world.