“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Some of this has to do with the complicated nature of creativity itself, and with the contradictions that seem to exist at certain levels. Your kind of creativity has always been together and jointly of a private nature—so much so that you do not even like to work in rooms too close to each other. You have often thought of living under more isolated surroundings. Ruburt has been fascinated at times by the idea of working nights, his ways of assuring such isolation. You began to accumulate some ideas of a different nature, wondering more about your responsibilities to the world as adults, wondering how “useful” art should be in the world.

(3:49.) Ruburt began to wonder about television and so forth for publicity. He wondered if he did not have the responsibility, again, to spread the psychic message outward. Many different pressures operated there. In later years, as books were finished, the matter of publicity would rise anew, but his relative success meant that the issues stayed in the air, so to speak. Your discussion reminded him of how he used to be (pause), and also brought up in his mind the seeming contradictions of creativity, in that it is private, but usually ends up as some kind of public expression.

(Long pause.) You kept your own studio apart, say, from the house’s living areas. The whole nature of your independent and joint creativity involved a retreat from the world that you both enjoyed, followed by, in the case of books, an expression in the world—in which, however, the books appeared in your stead: a way of life that involved usual publicity—lectures and so forth—seemed to threaten that kind of existence to Ruburt, in which he feared expression itself would be diverted, simplified, so that the message that finally did get through would not be the same message at all as the original one. Yet still, because of misunderstandings and old beliefs, he still felt a responsibility to act otherwise, a social pressure to do so. (All intently.)

The symptoms became the sign of reluctance. They helped take the place of the isolated mountain cabin, perhaps. To a large degree they were largely the result of a lack of understanding of himself, brought on by his old religious beliefs of responsibility, then applied to his own creativity. So your dream sparked the discussion that sparked these later emotional realizations on Ruburt’s part—realizations that should go a long way toward removing such feelings of responsibility, and hence relieving the situation considerably.

(Long pause.) End of session, except to remind you that the dream message also reflects material that I have been giving you concerning creativity and the stressing of pleasure above responsibility. You paint because it gives you pleasure initially. You have the sessions together and you do the notes primarily because these endeavors bring you pleasure. They exercise your curiosity, creativity, and sense of exploration.

When you overwork the idea of responsibility—or service to the world—you erode that pleasure. All in all an excellent session, of course.

(“You don’t have to go into it now, but will you discuss the mail situation and the idea of responsibility?”)

The mail represents the voice of the world, the needs of its people. It also represents the simple thanks of readers. Ruburt has indeed felt a strong responsibility regarding the predicament of some correspondents—again, because he was not certain as to which purposes his psychic abilities should be put.

(“The same thing,” I said. “It all basically has to do with this idea of responsibility. If you can get rid of that you might be home free. If it was up to me, I’d throw the idea of responsibility down the hillside and into the river.”

(I added that I thought I was already doing, at least to some extent, what Seth advocated in the session—throwing away any sense of responsibility or financial reward in painting, at this time at least. I trusted that whatever might result from the painting would be beneficial in various ways, possibly including the financial if the need arose. I explained to Jane that I’d reached the point in the last year where I just couldn’t let anything interfere with the act of painting itself—and that I thought she needed an attitude like that in regard to her own work very badly. I could have said [in retrospect] that my attitude stemmed at least to a large degree from my watching her struggle with her own hang-ups. Not that I didn’t think I’d reach it on my own anyhow.