“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You were a commercial artist to make your mother happy, and to take your father’s place as breadwinner.

Had you continued engrossed entirely in the commercial field your painting would not have developed. Your father would not have worked as a photographer. You could have become all but sexually your mother’s husband. This was avoided.

(Long pause, eyes closed.) This session itself should aid your understanding enough to allow some improvement almost immediately in the condition itself. Two issues are involved. The painting was an act of defiance against your mother, an act of independence. She approved of the commercial art because it made money. Therefore if you made money through your paintings, then subconsciously you thought that your mother would still be getting her way. You see?

Commercial work also still rankles. Beside other considerations you feel, subconsciously again, that you still serve your mother’s purposes: art for money, and that therefore your initial act of defiance and independence is not complete.

[...] When you think of leaving you come face to face with the same conflict, for she wanted you to succeed as a commercial artist.

You were more affected by your friend’s (Curtis Kent) departure than you realize, wondering if you yourself should find a better-paying commercial job, and yet angry that you even had such thoughts when what you really wanted was to stay home and paint.

You doubted that your own good work would bring any financial success at all, while you believed that commercial work would; but you do not like commercial work. [...]

[...] You believe you can make money—if you are a commercial artist, or if you take a job, or if you do almost anything else but your best work as an artist. [...]

[...] Unfortunately, many of your public health programs, and commercial statements through the various media, provide you with mass meditations of a most deplorable kind. [...]

Your “medical commercials” are equally disease-promoting. [...]

[...] Nowhere do any medically-oriented commercial or public service announcements mention the body’s natural defenses, its integrity, vitality, or strength. [...]

[...] I’d given up my commercial art job before we went on vacation, and didn’t know what I’d end up doing, besides helping Jane as much as I could.

[...] He also helped spur your own sense of direction in your early days together, when you turned from commercial art.

The commercial art served your emotions quite simply. [...]

[...] You are not afraid to entrust lesser work to it in terms of commercial art. [...]

[...] You put in time and effort in the past to sell your commercial work, but have refused to do the same to sell your paintings. [...]

[...] I did commercial work for many years. [...]

In his own way your father was saying “Since you do not trust my creativity I will deny you its benefits, even if I deny myself its benefits”—this to your mother; and you picked up a taboo: you could make money on art as long as you felt it was not really (underlined) creative—that is, commercial. [...]

The type (underlined) of commercial art you did as a young man was not the answer, but served many purposes. [...] The prestige and money, tied to your mother’s hopes, could have led you into other channels of commercial art that would have led you completely astray as far as fine art is concerned.

[...] Commercial art is beautiful there, for at one time it allowed you to paint because (underlined) you were immediately repaid, and that made art legitimate. [...]

[...] You felt differently about commercial work. [...]

[...] I also described to her another dream I’d had in which I did commercial artwork. [...]

[...] You believed that commercial art could give financial results, but not necessarily good writing, or good art.

[...] A brief point (with some humor): When you moved here you wanted to make “a fashion statement” as per your television commercials, where the gentlemen only cut hair. [...]

Now commercial work and the comics meant something else again. [...] When the natural freely creative energies were aroused in you, you instantly dispensed with all ideas of a commercial market, and completely divorced the idea of painting from selling for the reasons given.

[...] You were curious also as to whether or not this kind of commercial art could pay off, and yet be held in check.

All you wanted was the opportunity, once again you see, to decide whether or not you could use commercial art for your own purposes, and you created the opportunity for trial. [...]

(There is another possible green connection, one obvious to anyone familiar with printing or commercial art, although I do not think it applies here. [...]

[...] There is certain work that you could do that could be compared to Ruburt’s science fiction; that is, commercial in that it brings in money, and yet expresses an intuitive and creative part of the personality and is not, as you say, hack work.

[...] You could have made a much less painful transition between complete commercialism and painting than you did, but here at a crucial moment was starry-eyed Ruburt, with his ideas of the poverty-stricken artist; and you can carry on from there.

[...] And at the same time she was actually annoyed when she felt that you were not following your [commercial] artistic ability through, despite her surface misunderstandings of it.⁶

6. From her viewpoint my mother was, indeed, quite baffled when I turned away from a well-paying career in commercial art toward a very risky one in “fine art,” or painting. [...]

The collection will include our family trees; my father’s journals and photographs; Jane’s and my own grade-school, high-school, college, and family data; our youthful creative efforts in writing and painting; the comic books and other commercial artwork I produced; our early published and unpublished short stories; my original notes for the sessions; session transcripts, whether published or unpublished, “regular,” private, or from ESP class; tapes, including those made in class of Jane speaking for Seth and/or singing in Sumari; our notes, dream records, journals, and manuscripts; our sketches and paintings; Jane’s extensive poetry; our business correspondence; books, contracts, and files; newsletters about the Seth material, published in the United States and abroad (independently of Jane and me); the greater number of letters from readers—in short, a mass of material showing how our separate beginnings flowed together and resulted in the production of a joint lifework.

[...] (Pause.) The connection he did not get had to do with the television commercials on the Carson show; the pressure applied by the medical profession, telling you not to trust the body, and the man, Doc [Severinsen], who is the master of ceremonies in a big show—signifying nothing as per your joint overall interpretation of the show in particular. [...]

[...] With a more painful heart I yearned for my wife to walk to me, hips innocently and joyfully swaying, as she used to do years ago, when she’d meet me every day as I left the printing company where I worked as a commercial artist. [...]

[...] I will give you a commercial that is better than your Excedrin, you see. [...]

[...] (Pause, one of many through here.) You would not (underlined) be a full time commercial artist, regardless of any old demands, though you felt still somewhat guilty at your refusal.