“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Self-disclosure and the desire for perfection are each involved, then. You know that no self-disclosure will lead to perfection, and yet self-disclosure and perfection can seem to be like opposites. Do not think in terms of perfection and nonperfection, but of bringing your ideas to life, and of using photographs to express those ideas.

Your private nature makes you wonder if that involves too much disclosure, particularly where family members are concerned. The connection with paintings brings about your desire that the photographs be “as perfect as possible.” You do not want anyone else to have a hand in your own work—that is in your paintings. To reproduce paintings, or in this case photographs, seems to be tampering with them in that regard. That is, if an editor changed your copy you would be annoyed, but reproduction, you fear, can change the copy of a photograph or a painting if it is not done properly. You consider photographs originals in that regard.

The idea of disclosure however is more important, for you remember that your mother did not like to have her photograph taken. If you included any pictures of her, would she be annoyed? She did not like to have her picture taken on the one hand because she feared disclosure, and on the other hand, because her sense of perfection was affected—particularly in later years by an imperfect image.

Your stomach began to bother you when you considered whether or not to use photographs. (On Sunday, when I bought an album to keep them in.) You have the idea of how the book can appear, a model that exists in your mind. Use the model, but let it be a flexible one, in which your ideals work with the material at hand, molding it. Do not exaggerate, however, so that the ideal seems to be a perfection that cannot be attained given the conditions.

[...] This infinite healing presence within me is now transforming every atom of my being, making me whole and perfect now. [...]

[...] Perfect health is mine, and the Law of Harmony operates in my mind and body. [...]

(The infinite intelligence which gave me this desire to paint leads, guides, and reveals to me the perfect plan for the unfolding of my desire. [...]

[...] I give thanks because I know the infinite intelligence of my subconscious knows all things and is revealing the perfect answer to me now. [...]

[...] Tell him he does not have to be spiritually, psychically, or creatively perfect in order to have good health, in the particular way I gave that statement; remind him, for he is equating perfect health with inner perfection, and no human being attains inner perfection. [...]

[...] The desire for perfection is meant to lead you onward, and to make you discontent enough so that you will attempt new creations. There must be a gap between the desire for perfection and the physical result. Now and then the desire for perfection gets out of hand.

[...] Discuss particularly the early portion of this session with him, and get it through his head that health is not dependent upon perfect performance, creativity, psychically or spiritually. This is extremely important, for this is a strong belief with him now; and he did not see the humor when he heard what I said—it made perfect sense to him. [...]

[...] He felt he was not worthy of the healing ability because he was not perfect. Again, do all you can to convince him that his good health is not dependent upon his performance or perfection. [...]

[...] There is no “perfect ending,” no completed perfection beyond which further experience is impossible or meaningless. [...]

(9:25.) Your idea of development and growth, again, implies a one-line march toward perfection, so it would be difficult for you to imagine the kind of order that pervades. [...] For perfection presupposes that point beyond which development is impossible, and creativity at an end.

Now in that infinite becoming, there are states that you would call perfected, but had creativity rested within them, all of experience would be destined to grind to a halt. [...]

[...] Suppose you believe that to be “good” you must try to be perfect. You may have been told, or read, that the spirit is perfect, and hence thought that your duty was to reproduce that perfect spirit in flesh as best you could. [...] Trying to be perfect all the time can be far more than a nuisance: It can be disastrous because of your misunderstanding.

[...] Ruburt said recently that if he was sure of one thing about physical reality, it was [that is was] not anywhere near perfect in these terms. But in the same meaning of the word neither is the spirit, which to fulfill the requirement of perfection would have to be set in some state of completion beyond which no fulfillment or creativity was possible.

The word “perfect” holds many pitfalls. [...]

[...] Your thoughts are perfectly themselves. [...]

Platonic thought saw this inner world as perfect.⁴ As you think of it, however, perfection always suggests something done and finished, or beyond surpassing, and this of course denies the inherent characteristics of creativity, which do indeed always seek to surpass themselves. The Platonic, idealized inner world would ultimately result in a dead one, for in it the models for all exteriorizations were seen as already completed — finished and perfect.

Many have seen that inner world as the source for the physical one, but imagined that man’s purpose was merely to construct physically these perfect images to the best of his abilities. [...] He could at best try to duplicate it physically — never able, however, to match its perfection in those terms. [...]

These are not “inner images of perfection,” and to some extent the blueprints² themselves change, for the action within any given system of probabilities automatically alters the entire picture, enlarging it. [...]

As soon as you realize however that the picture is not complete, then you must begin to ask new questions, and the old idea of the perfect organization is gone. [...] Now, without your particular physical perfection you would not perceive the couch as solid. [...]

[...] Out of a vast field of perception you choose to focus your attention upon certain specific areas and ignore all others, and so there is perfect agreement among you as far as this small area is concerned. [...]

[...] It appears perfect and organized. [...]

(Long pause at 4:12.) Politically as well as medically, such distortions have led to unfortunate conditions: the Aryan-supremacy biological ideas fostered in the second world war, the concentration upon “the perfect body,” and other distortions. The idea of the ideal body has often been held up to the populace at large, and this often sets forth a stylized “perfect” physique that actually could be matched by few individuals. [...]

To paint paintings for joy was an act of defiance against your mother, and so you have punished yourself in several ways; by being overly concerned with their quality, insisting upon perfection, and by not making strong efforts to sell them or to work for recognition in that field.

To search for perfection within your art is good. [...]

What you want is not a perfection which is rigid, but the ever-balancing action of spontaneous motion, a balance precariously maintained for a moment through ever-approaching and receding imbalances that result in objects.

The perfection that you seek is not ever a finished, but a becoming quality. [...]

He had to be perfect for you in order to be physically perfect, and he felt it impossible to be perfect enough, so that this could be physically materialized. [...]

[...] You would not accept him as he was unless he was perfect. [...] He felt that unless he became physically perfect again (underlined) you would not love him again in that way he wanted.

[...] To some extent he had equated his recovery as almost impossible at times, since in those terms, now, and when (underlined) they operate, it puts him in the position of trying to be perfect. [...]

[...] It dealt with the idea that imperfections in the universe gave birth to life and all we know—that if the “big bang” had expanded perfectly uniformly there would be no life in the universe, merely a perfectly uniform cloud of lifeless hydrogen gas. [...] Then I thought that in the perfectly expanding, uniform hydrogen cloud, nothing would be needed, in those terms [the author’s]—not even life itself. [...] Probably that there is no such thing in nature as perfection, and that although we think we can conceive of such a quality, we really cannot—hence the way is left open for such messy manifestations as “life,” etc.)

[...] The conscious mind could not handle all that data, but those functions perfectly mirror your consciously held ideas and beliefs.

Within the basic framework of the body chosen before physical birth (for reasons that will be discussed later), the individual has full freedom to create a perfectly healthy functioning form. [...]

It often seems, when such ideas as these are presented, that the ideal results in your terms would be perfection — “heaven on earth” — a state in which everyone would be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

[...] Such a course would not, in physical reality, present you with anything like a balanced picture of perfection.

The earlier statement makes perfect sense to me, for each self would call that portion of its greater reality within the whole unit its own soul. [...]

[...] The dictionary discussed the oversoul as the spirit infusing all living things, resulting in the perfect realization of an ideal nature. [...]

3. In Buddhism, nirvana — a state of heavenly perfection — is achieved by the extinction of individual life and the soul’s absorption into the supreme spirit.

[...] You must not expect to be “perfect.” As mentioned earlier, your ideas of perfection mean a state of fulfillment beyond which there is no future growth, and no such state exists. [...]

[...] If you do not have too-rigid ideas of perfection, then ordinary denial serves a quite practical purpose. But never negate the present reality of yourself because you compare it to some idealized perfection.

Perfection is not being, for all being is in a state of becoming. This does not mean that all being is in a state of becoming perfect, but in a state of becoming more itself. [...]

You want to create a perfect thing. If you want to create another personality then you think in terms of a perfect personality and the perfect personality does not exist, for perfection in your terms means death. When you think in terms of perfection, you think in terms of purposes already achieved, none coming after; but existence makes its own new purposes that arise of the joy and exaltation, as well as pain and challenge. [...]

[...] Nobody’s perfect, nor do we even need perfection.

[...] Out of a vast field of perception, you choose to focus your attention upon certain specific areas and to ignore all others, and so there is perfect agreement among you as far as this small area is concerned. [...]

[...] It appears perfect and organized.

[...] As soon as you realize that the picture is not complete, however, then you must begin to ask new questions, and the old idea of the perfect organization is gone.

[...] We are not speaking of perfection, yet you are each perfectly yourselves. [...]

[...] His students perfectly sensed his attitudes, and while he led them with his right hand, he cautioned them to hold back with the other. [...]

[...] Does he not look perfectly normal to our cat lover?

([Peggy:] “Perfectly.”)

It would of course involve the transposition of an old nervous system pattern upon Ruburt’s, and using this method the transformation when perfected will be quite startling. [...]

At the same time, because of Ruburt’s own purposes, they were perfectly preserved—not for instance attacked in any fashion, but in many ways isolated from the rest of bodily activity.

Certain less-than-perfect muscular habits had been set up, therefore, to maintain balance. [...]

[...] Those belonged to the unsafe universe, and made perfect sense there—and there they still do. [...]

[...] I never said that it was perfect.