“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause.) The two of you thought of yourselves specifically as a writer—or rather a poet—and an artist before our sessions began. I would like to clear up some important issues.

Those kinds of conflicts can only exist in a society in which the entire concept of creativity is segmented, in which the creative processes are often seen as inner assembly lines leading to specific products: a society in which the very nature of creativity itself is largely ignored unless its “products” serve specific ends.

(8:53.) Early artists hoped to understand the very nature of creativity itself as they tried to mimic earth’s forms. Poetry and painting were both functional in ways that I will describe in our next book (humorously, elaborately casual), and “esthetic.” But poetry and painting have always involved primarily man’s attempt to understand himself and his world. The original functions of art—meaning poetry and painting here specifically—have been largely forgotten. The true artist in those terms was always primarily—in your terms again—a psychic or a mystic. His specific art (pause) was both his method of understanding his own creativity, and a way of exploring the vast creativity of the universe—and also served as a container or showcase that displayed his knowledge as best he could.

(To me:) I want you to specifically understand that there is and can be no conflict, for example, between your writing and painting, for in the most basic of ways they represent different methods of exploring the meaning and the source of creativity itself.

Explore, for example, your own feelings toward me; whether or not they have changed through the years. How much I seem to be myself, or part Jane; or part Ruburt, or part you, or part Joseph, or whatever. Realizing that you are in the position you wanted to be and realizing that your abilities are not in conflict with each other, nor you with them, will automatically fulfill and develop all of those abilities, in a new kind of overall creativity that is itself beyond specifics.

He believed in the specific nature of the creative self, so that it could only be trusted in certain areas. He believed he needed strong mental barriers as well as physical ones, set up against his own spontaneity. He is beginning to understand that the spontaneous and creative aspects of personality are the life-giving ones. They can and must be trusted. He knows now he does not have to slow down, and that relaxation leads to motion.