It seems that the jbpmConfiguration member variable is initalised lazily inside the org.jboss.seam.core.Jbpm class - which is good.
However the initialisation only occurs inside the installProcessDefinitions method, *if* there is a context parameter that specifies a process to deploy.
This leaves the jbpmConfiguration member unitialized in other circumstances.
My application (like the JBPM sample app) allows the user to upload process definitions at runtime and so I don't preload any particular definition.
Therefore bad things happen when I try and use the jbpmContext component with it's unitialised jbpmConfiguration member variable.
This problem could be fixed by moving the lazy intialization of the jbpmConfiguration to the getJbpmConfiguration method.
Cheers
J