“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In the first essay I referred to Jane’s unique combination of stubbornness, innocence, and mysticism, and in that respect nothing has changed. In spite of her horror at the medical practices and suggestions she’s encountered, and in spite of her dismay at the physical damage the arthritis has caused in her temporal body, Jane will give up nothing until she—and/or her whole self—get out of the entire illness syndrome exactly what she wants to get. She has an incredible stubborn patience with physical life. This quality has sustained her throughout all of her challenges as well as her successes, and I think it must have been particularly important during her early frightening years with her mother, Marie. Her determination even shows somehow in photographs taken when she was of preschool age. Jane learned to refuse to strike back at the invalid Marie’s rage and sarcasm, to inhibit her spontaneity and impulses, and so habits of repression entered in. Yet she was—and is—free of guile and sophistication.

Of course these essays reflect our particular chosen stances in life, both with and without the Seth material. I know that to some we’re sure to have appeared slow in putting to use much of the material, but in a most basic respect we’re way ahead in the situation: If we hadn’t almost instantaneously begun to encourage the flow of information from Seth when Jane started to express it some 18 years ago, and to write it down, then it wouldn’t even exist—at least in its present form. So we do take credit for doing some things right. Learning experiences can show themselves in a vast number of ways, then, and independently of sequential time, too; and if Jane and I don’t like certain aspects of the realities we’ve created, we can try to change them, together and separately.

I should add that I don’t think Jane has started to “set … aside” the medical interpretation regarding her “arthritis situation,” as Seth suggested she might do when he came through on April 12. (That session is presented in the essay for April 16.) Any decision Jane makes about altering the deeply set beliefs involved in her condition will require the cooperation of a number of portions of her psyche, including her sinful self, and it appears that at this time neither of us is ready to try achieving that kind of overall effect. Our fear of failure undoubtedly plays a strong part here. Ironically, Jane’s sinful self is one of the main creators of and participants in her illness syndrome, so any beneficial changes she can bring about will first call for a major shift in the attitude of that very stubborn portion of her psyche. It will be a triumph indeed if and when we can create an alteration like that. And all of this presupposes that each of us will be ready to draw “new facts” into our daily lives from Framework 2.