“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You felt you must make money, and so a conflict developed. Ruburt’s beliefs on his own, concerning his writing and money, carried the ball despite his worrying tendencies. You believed that his best work would bring money too, and so you had no conflicting beliefs about money in that regard.

You believe you can make money. A simple declarative belief, but it is qualified. 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. You believe you are a good artist—a simple declarative belief. Between the two beliefs however there is some conflict, since you believe you also need money for your self-respect, but that you cannot get it by being an artist, which you feel is your focus of identity, and highly concerned with self-respect.

All of this was based upon your much earlier beliefs that life was short and that all of your energies must be put into your work. This was literally interpreted, and all other impulses systematically denied until, say, a shopping endeavor like today’s must be first thought out as good or bad. Earlier, spending money on anything not strictly necessary was bad, because it might detract from money needed to allow you to work. Money used meant that you might have to look for work again and not be able to develop your abilities.

Now, give us a moment.... Ruburt basically believed that if he did his own thing—writing—money would come to him. For a while, as given much earlier, he was worried about money, believing poverty the mark of the artist. The latter belief fell, however, and in three years the financial picture has changed vastly for the better.

(I also think Prentice-Hall will go through the formality of protesting the cuts to the foreign publishers, without exacting much of any retribution, especially with all that money invested in plates. [...] There doesn’t appear to be any money worth mentioning involved, at least for us. [...]

(The little I’ve worked with the pendulum tells me my troubles are rooted in money attitudes, as well as the production time I’ve lost on Mass Events for the last two weeks and more. [...] I would go back to painting, try to sell some, and possibly end up with a part-time job for ready money—anything to break the vicious mental pattern of distrust I seem to keep creating. [...]

Your mother looked up to him because he made money. She held his money up to your father, and in many ways let your father know that she did not think much of him. [...]

[...] Ruburt does not feel that you are amiss because you are not “making money on your own,” but he feels deeply your own discontent in that area, and he feels bewildered—for years ago you said so often that it would be great if you could just paint or write without worrying about money. [...]

[...] The money did not come by computing the number of hours worked on a project, for example, or the number of hours worked at a job, but instead accumulated because of the quality of creative work and the inquisitiveness of the creative mind. To some extent that money came because you trusted that it would. [...]

Now: You still have some money in a regular savings account, and that is handy for simple day-to-day expenses, so of course you always have some effort to expend in Framework 1, and some experience with its normal trial-and-error tactics. You would think that it was rather fruitless, now that you have changed over your accounts, to spend any time worrying about all the money in the past still in the old savings account that did not get the superlative interest that these new accounts will enjoy. [...]

Today you changed a bank account over from an ordinary savings account to what you might call a super-account, where the very same amount of money will give you approximately twice as much interest. [...]

All that was involved, as you told Ruburt, was a shuffling of paper from here to there, and a promise to keep the money in the account and not withdraw it for a specific amount of time. [...]

You stop, each of you, and think “Actually, how safe is this universe in which we dwell?” The money, or the need of it, in your particular situation, becomes merely a symbol for an inner sense that the universe is not safe, and so money becomes a needed security. If Ruburt becomes so spontaneous, then you must be able to make money from your painting, for he might not spend sufficient time at his work.

[...] In your society money is like a weapon that you need to protect yourself. [...] You must completely accept the fact that you do indeed dwell in a safe universe—one in which you are free to develop, say, your painting abilities to the fullest, without fearing that that development will dull the weapon that brings you money.

[...] You do not particularly need more money, but it is coming to you, and naturally as rain out of the sky. [...] Yet perversely now, of all times, you feel as if your painting must bring money. [...]

[...] You think “Time is money” —and I tell you now that time and money have nothing in common at all, and they have less in common with the nature of creativity.

He realizes well now that money is not all that important, yet the old beliefs were so entangled that he had to prove to himself that it was not so important after he achieved it. Otherwise he would always tell himself that he believed money basically unimportant because he was not able to achieve it.

I want it understood that money was not the primary goal, that his early drive to escape his environment was based on the false idea that worth was dependent upon your status. Being a writer would give him status even if he did not make money, though he hoped to.

[...] Jane wrote on the check’s envelope that the money represented a “final payment” to me, etc.)

[...] In the meantime his intellect and intuitive abilities both discovered that the daily joy of living was important—as important as “work” or money.

[...] The pendulum told me yesterday that it was because I was concerned that our finishing Psyche this year would give us more money, which in turn would mean that our taxes next April would be higher —a ridiculous worry, I agree, and quite in keeping with my past attitudes about money and taxes. I did think I’d learned some things about money and taxes, but this latest hassle makes me wonder. [...]

[...] I know you understand this—but carried to the extreme, that resentment would allow you barely enough to live on, and you actually would refuse to make money, because you so resent the high taxes connected with a good living. [...] Yet remember that for all of its failings, your peace of mind is also the result of the American services that were available when you did not have much money, as they are now.

[...] After you and Ruburt met, you had little-enough money for some time, as you tried to find your way, and you had little taxes at all. [...]

[...] Then, when you began to make decent money, you resented giving it to the government—for the reasons just given, and because the government, it seemed, was built upon beliefs with which you could find no accord. [...]

[...] It seems not only as money taken from you, or from Ruburt, which annoys you more, since you think he worked so hard for it—but worst of all, the money is being spent to promote national stupidities of distorted beliefs, to which you are diametrically opposed.

[...] They came on while I was talking about money with Jane. [...]

[...] It is not the fact of the taxes so much that annoys you, as the uses of the taxes, for you resent “being forced” to contribute your money to what you think of as stupid national policies.

[...] And it seems to you that your money is being used to prolong those conditions.

A man showed himself a man, say, by getting paid every Friday night, coming home after a stop at the pub with coins jingling in his pocket, to give his wife the house money for the week. I do not want to hurt your feelings—but your particular beliefs about a male and money are in their way quite parochial, and you must understand that as far as money is concerned, also, those beliefs have little moral value—moral value. [...]

[...] Use your art to make money. [...] Now, she being uniquely herself, is more than pleased with your situation: a good house in a fine neighborhood, and who cares where the money comes from (with more than a little humor)? [...]

[...] Ruburt said that he used to like his class money because it was tangible, and you understood. But you also told him that the money for books, that came in a check, was just as good, and that there was more of it. [...]

You should do a book of your own if you want to, because you want to —not because of the money that might be involved. Some part of you still thinks there is something wrong with money unless you can show precisely where it came from—or people might think you a crook, or a gigolo living off your wife. [...]

[...] Nothing would please her more than money, and you fear that if you made more money than your father, he would feel that you were doing this purposely, to take her away.

This expectation of yours, this fear of making money, is a strong element in your psychological makeup, and beside the reasons already given, there is a subconscious need to punish your mother. You realize that she pushed your father to make money, and no one, including yourself, will ever be allowed to do the same to you. [...]

You are bending over backward not to make money, both of you, though this is somewhat more understandable on Ruburt’s part, at least since his training is not as specific. When either of you demand or request more money, you feel like thieves. [...]

[...] The moment that you consciously realized you were an artist, you ceased the attempt to make good money, fearing it would rob you of your ability.

The idea of money also had conflicting connotations. His father had money and was useless—according to early beliefs received from his mother. The father was also, with money now, sexually promiscuous, according to those beliefs.

To use his abilities freely and fully might therefore mean success, money, and sexual license. Your own ideas about money and success of course influenced his beliefs: your combined ideas now of virtuousness and thrift, as opposed to license. [...]

That, plus the need for money when you left Artistic, and the release from the fear, the belief, that welfare would take what he made. [...]

[...] At our first discussion, though, Peg told me that a brother-in-law had just come into a tremendous amount of money as a result of lawyers fees, he is a lawyer, and a rich account. She then tied this in with an unpleasant episode in the past where there was trouble with another sister-in-law, and this brother-in-law, and thought that the money would now make this sister-in-law sit up and wonder about her own actions in the past.)

An unpleasant episode and a matter of money.

[...] 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. [...]

Anger that your art did not bring you more money. [...]

[...] She had no use for your father’s talent of inventiveness, because he did not use it to make money.

You were guiltily aware of this, and punish yourself by refusing to allow yourself to make money with good paintings now. [...]

You do not need to banish the thought of money for you have not been concerned with money, but with the lack of money. [...]

Since your mother pushed your father to make money, then to make money yourself seems an added betrayal toward your father, and seems to ally you with your mother, of whose emotionalism you were always frightened. [...]

[...] See in your mind’s eye a surplus of money in your folder when the month’s expenses are paid.

[...] An overemphasis on financial matters is indeed detrimental, but if you are worrying about money you are as overly concerned with it as any miser.

The conflict has never been that he resented having to make extra money outside of writing. The conflict—when it was touched off you see by the need to make more money again—the conflict resulted from what would appear to be two methods of making money. [...]

The need for money, and the fear of being dependent then, led him to seek money through a method which, once acceptable, was now highly and critically unacceptable for the reasons given.

[...] His own overexpectations, or rather unrealistic expectations concerning his book, and the mistakes he felt were connected with it, sensitized him, until he felt that outside money would be a permanent part of his life.

[...] His money potential will be strengthened if these matters are highly considered. [...]

Even you, however, will feel more secure with a place of your own than you would with the money drawing interest in the bank. [...] The money in the bank is helpful, but if your daily environment is not conducive to your work and peace of mind, then the money security is meaningless. [...]

Regardless of the money and your attitudes toward it, the residence would serve you as well as the other one, and money is far more than a commodity. [...]

You would end up eventually making a studio in the attic, which would cost you more money, which you would have to spend. [...] And you cannot put a money value on what you would get out of that house.

The Ambrose affair represents your ideas about money and the upper classes. [...]

Ruburt has been trying to be economical in terms of money, energy and time. [...] You made good money. [...] Ruburt did not know that his abilities could ever bring him money.

When I say economy however I am not simply speaking of economics in financial terms—rather in the larger meaning of economy in sparing down, cutting out nonessentials, fearing to waste not simply money, but energy or time. [...] You realize you have the money to run the machine, or to buy the washer. [...]

[...] He was afraid, however, of such jobs—prestigious ones—for fear the need for money would lead him to neglect his work. [...]

If he could not go out so often, if he could not go on vacations, if he could not leave his desk, he would save not only energy but time and money as well. [...]

The Seth Material hardcover did not financially change the situation that much, but his classes began to bring in money. [...] The money itself meant little difference to him. [...]

[...] Ruburt does not think of money, but he can produce it with great facility—when he wants it for something, so he has been enraged at this useless money, in those terms.

Now money for security he does want, but this he sees after the necessities are taken care of: a suitable environment. If he is not happy today, money in the bank is meaningless to him. [...]

[...] Money for example through books would allow you to move.

(1. My side/groin area bothers because I’m afraid it’ll cost money to get sick. I equate money for medical expenses with money for taxes.

(In the deleted session for April 16, 1979 Seth remarked that Jane “used to feel embarrassed because he made more money in those terms than you, and certainly this played some role initially in the symptoms.” [...]

[...] He cares not a jot for position or for money, but only for the freedom. [...]

[...] He wants to know where he stands, and he wants to fit a neat category, so that he can say to the world: “If you are a shoemaker, I am something as definite; or if you are a professor, I am a writer or an artist, or a —?” He wants his contemplation to pay off, and he is very anxious about where his money goes.

[...] Ruburt’s actions were appropriate for the horror program, and so were some of yours when you were afraid of painting because it did not bring in money. Our books bring in money, simply because money at your level of activity is a natural result of spontaneous creativity. Your paintings will bring in money when they are the result of spontaneous creativity. [...]

The money meant little if it did not bring you what you wanted or even provide an environment that was more desirable. He thought: another book, more money in the bank to pay taxes on, you still at your job, no trips, just another book for more money. [...]

[...] There would be more money in the bank and to him is was blood money, rotten or spoiled like fruit overripe and unused. [...]

[...] He was somewhat frightened over the circumstances some years ago, when you had no money behind you, but even then intuitively he felt you should do so.

Symbolically the job meant to him a great psychic rift, after, now, he felt you had enough money in the bank to hold you awhile. [...]