“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He tried desperately to schedule his highly creative productivity to fit that pattern. Whenever he had difficulty writing he would become more and more particular about his writing hours. He found that sometimes his so-called writing hours were not as productive as his after-hours writing. He loves to write at twilight, for example.

This is what he is on the road to understanding. Anything that increases that yield is beneficial to his nature. Any given day a creative urge might span the day. At another time that creative surge might reach its peak in two hours, and deliver nuggets of creativity. His three-hour production today gave him more with a free attitude than five or six hours of determined application to “work.”

He worked an hour. You had lunch, and both returned after a short trip shopping. He took a shower instead of going directly to work, put food in the oven, worked another ½ hour, and yet found himself by dinner time with nearly ten pages of new material.

Sometimes after a full writing day, without too much actual creative production, he would do his best work in his free time after supper, when he did not have to work. So then he thought “I will schedule those hours into my writing day,” and suddenly they became prosaic, and often lost their magic because then they became his working hours.

[...] Ideally, sleeping five hours at a time, you gain the maximum benefit, and anything else over this time is not nearly as helpful. Those who require more sleep would then take, say, a two-hour nap. For others a four-hour block sleep session and two naps would be highly beneficial. [...] In any case it is much more bracing and efficient to have the physical body active rather than inactive for, say, eight to ten hours.

[...] Those who work the American working hours, for example, could sleep between four to six hours an evening, according to individual variations, and nap after supper. I want to make it plain, however, that anything over a six- to eight-hour continuous sleeping period works against you, and a ten-hour period for example can be quite disadvantageous. [...]

Two periods of three hours apiece would be quite sufficient for most people, if the proper suggestions were given before sleep — suggestions that would insure the body’s complete recuperation. In many cases ten hours sleep, for example, is actually disadvantageous, resulting in a sluggishness both of mind and body. [...]

[...] It makes no difference how many hours of sleep you think you need. [...] But again, the efficiency of sleep is lessened and disadvantages set in after six to eight hours of physical inactivity.

[...] He forgets his natural contours of mind and spirit when he hassles himself about time or hours, for his particular kind of creativity works in a different fashion. I want him, again, to try and sense the natural rhythms within him, of work and play, to continue his notes, to write for now four hours a day, with one hour for poetry, to think of the ideas of his book instead of thinking about the contracts, or of a book as a book, or as work as work; and tune into the library. [...]

[...] He likes a change of pace, alterations in schedule—changing his hours, for example—two or three times a year, works well for him when he allows it.

(We usually sleep six hours at night, then supplement this with a half-hour nap late in the afternoon. Rather often, too, Jane will break up her nighttime sleep period by spontaneously waking and getting up for an hour or so.)

[...] I suggest a six-hour sleeping block of time at one session, and no more. If you still feel the need for a greater amount of rest, then a two-hour-at-the-most nap can be added.

(Pause.) Many will find that a five-hour steady sleeping period is quite sufficient, with a nap as required. A four-hour block is ideal, however, reinforced by whatever nap feels natural.

[...] Many of you will not find it practical to alter your sleeping hours because of work commitments. [...]

I am not saying that you should not have regular working hours. [...] Figuring out how he will get such-and-such done an hour or two hours from then—so he foreshortens the moment, in that it becomes far less full than it is capable of being for him.

(10:12.) What I am saying, again, is quite apart from your having regular working hours, but you would do far better to choose another word than “work.” Your intuitive hours, perhaps, or your creative hours—even better—for in that kind of atmosphere the greatest works would result.

[...] I’d had somewhat the same feelings today, having managed to “work” at painting for but a couple of hours this morning. [...]

[...] Regular working hours can give you a time framework you need, in which those ideas can appear, but the ideas themselves, and the insights, often come to you particularly when you are not thinking of work. [...]

[...] Carla took Jane’s temperature — it was up again to 101.2. Judy came in to check the flow, and said Jane was to get the Bactrim every six hours, or four times a day. With the Gentamicin every eight hours, this makes seven medications Jane gets every 24 hours. [...]

[...] It takes an hour for this second dose to flow into Jane’s body, compared to the one-half hour for the Gentamicin.

[...] To some degree, you squeezed your exuberance into a tight fit, and tried to make a creative productivity regulate itself, to fit the industrial time clock: so many hours bringing a feeling of virtue, even if the attitude itself cut down on the exuberance of inspiration.

[...] It takes time to paint or write, but the great inspirations of painting and writing transcend time, and the feeling of freedom and exuberance can give you in a few hours creative inspirations that have nothing to do with the time involved.

[...] A problem in a painting or in a book might be solved through an hour’s lovemaking, for often what might seem to be a problem of technique is, as you are beginning to understand, an emotional equation instead. [...]

[...] It will find its own schedules, but your joint ideas of work hours were meant to fit in with a time-clock puncher’s mentality, and not your own.

[...] You work long hours, you both overinsist, so people will not think you lazy—or, worse, imagine that you are having fun or enjoying your situation. [...] You are often working longer hours for the same reason, and enjoying it less, as the saying goes.

[...] I will leave your hours up to you. While you have regular daytime hours, I suggest the following pattern.

Television at your dinner hour is advantageous, as long as it is not news. Occasionally you are helped by relaxing in such a manner for several hours. [...]

The worries caused by the conventionalized beliefs cut down the quality of your time, so that while you jealously try to preserve your creative hours they become diluted. [...]

He rarely slept for more than three hours at a time for years, without interruption, and the old remembered biological pattern returns. Some guilt here, since in the past if he slept four hours he would have known that he slept through his mother’s call. Mainly however the three-hour biological pattern simply returns.

[...] Ruburt should definitely now concentrate on his book during the night hours, perhaps thinking of poetry toward dawn.

[...] For in those hours he saw himself crippled as she was, and a stone about your neck.

It is not advantageous for you to work with the pendulum over a half-hour per day. A daily routine involving a half-hour’s work with the pendulum will do you good.

[...] The half-hour is sufficient and beneficial. [...] The half-hour however will allow you, in a smooth manner, to communicate with this important area of the self in a way that will not block other energies, and that will be beneficial.

[...] I would indeed suggest however that this half- hour schedule not include your weekends.

[...] I have also been investigating with the pendulum to some extent, and can say that usually the periods did not last more than half an hour a day.

You could decide to see such people at lunch hour, and no other time, and put that in your note: “Come back at noon.” [...] You would not be rejecting guests at the door, per se, but telling them to return at such and such an hour, or to leave a note. [...]

It is advantageous from many standpoints to alter your hours, and some alterations do have the advantage of automatically providing solitude. You both seem to like regular hours and habits, however, so any such alterations, to be effective in a large manner, would have to be worked out so that you had a definite framework to rely upon.

[...] (A mailbox?) Or you might decide yourselves upon some hour of the day or evening when such a guest would be least bothersome. [...]

I gave the three-hour recommendation because at the time he was worried that he could not correlate the new physical impulses with his other activities. [...]

Stop, do dishes after typing an hour. [...]

Noon–12:30: 1/2 hour.

[...] Yet I couldn’t equate the few moments she spent walking with the half-hour rest periods, either.

You do not project as many negative ideas upon the evening hours, and the same applies to most people to varying degrees. [...]

That is also why it is easier, generally speaking, for Ruburt to receive such information in the evening, because you are jointly free of limitations that might hamper you at other times of the day — not simply that visitors might arrive more usually then, but because you yourselves are less visited by preconceptions of what you are supposed to do in any given hour of the day.

[...] The nightly portions of your personalities have become strangers to you — for as you identify with what you think of as your rational intellect, then you identify it further with the daytime hours, with the objective world that becomes visible in the morning, with the clearcut physical objects that are then before your view.

[...] You can give only so many hours to my book, and so many hours to your painting. [...] Your entire physical hours must then be divided. [...]

[...] This has to do with Ruburt’s symptoms, for he felt that he must be at his desk so many hours, whatever the number, and you became so obsessed with the amount of physical hours that you had to devote to painting that you began to divide up your psyche in terms of time.

[...] You should be pleased that you have, say, even three hours that need not be accounted for in any terms, financial or otherwise, but your own.

[...] Creativity exists outside of time, yet your society gives you the idea that so many hours, whatever the number, must result in so many dollars—and you (to me) still cling, underneath, to that concept. [...]

1. Jane Roberts writes in The God of Jane: “Since late 1963, I’ve clocked approximately 4,000 hours of trancetime, during which the Seth sessions have been held twice weekly. [...] In those trance hours I ‘turn into someone else.’ At least I am not myself to myself; I become Seth, or a part of what Seth is. [...]

[...] Actually, the sessions usually last anywhere from one to three hours, so I suppose that many people spend a good deal more time than that playing golf or tennis.

In our case though, Rob and I usually have no direct audience (not that we can see anyhow), and those few hours spent in trance have an impact on my husband and me — and upon the world — out of context with the actual time expended.

[...] Seth doesn’t answer mail though, or do any typing, and so as a result of those trance hours Rob and I spend a good deal of our conscious energy dealing one way or another with the effects of that trance life.

[...] I suggest only that you work from 9:30 to 12:30, from 2:00 until 4:30, and an hour or so, as is your habit, in the evening; and that those hours be maintained. [...]

[...] You should have a clear picture, taking some definite time out for friends, and it should be clearly understood that in your working hours you expect to be alone.

There may be times in working hours when someone comes, and you do feel like seeing them. [...]

[...] It does not matter whether you work all night, or so many hours a day, as long as you are satisfied.

[...] I will end our session again because I understand that your hour is late. Your hour has little to do with me however and I merely defer to your wishes. [...]

[...] The hour is late however and Ruburt would not thank me for my troubles. [...]

[...] I could indeed go on, myself, like this for hours but I shall take into consideration your human failings and I know you need such things as sleep. [...]

[...] It would make little difference, and this applies to each of you, whether you worked 12 hours for three days straight, or whether you worked more regular hours. [...]

(After Jane and I had spent an hour talking about the time spent in chores, seeing visitors, other interruptions, etc.)

[...] There at least Ruburt has been somewhat more flexible, taking advantage of the lovely dawn hours when the world is still, for quiet work.

Ruburt can begin now with his three hours, this to be a free creative time for thinking, or writing. He likes to paint, but he does not regard that in the same way, so let him allow himself an hour a day for painting, or so many hours a week—whatever he wants.

[...] I would like you to make a list of what you want to do in a day—that is, in a 24-hour period, and to think of that period, now, as a gift of time, to be used as you desire.

[...] You can quite properly decide, if you want, how many hours you want to devote to given activities, but do not think of schedules, but instead of the flow of timeless energy into time. [...]

Think of the entire 24-hour period, however. [...]

(Yesterday we received from Hal Williams of Lancaster, PA, three medications he had promised to send: a baby cream, a calindula flower extract for use on Jane’s decubiti, and a powder—also I believe based on the calindula—for her to take at 12 hour intervals for blue fingers, if any. Dissolve the powder in one-fourth of a glass of water and take a teaspoonful at 12-hour intervals. [...]

[...] I massaged her for half an hour. [...]