“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When in the earlier days of our marriage I used to tell her that she had her “symptoms” regardless of what I thought or wanted, she would deny it. Yet I thought she did, and so I was driven to grope for larger understandings. I had to learn that if I shared a marriage in which my wife had developed a chronic illness, then certain portions of me had also participated in that joint creation. Eventually nothing made sense to me otherwise. I believe implicitly now that each one of us does create our own reality. “Interactions with others do occur, of course,” Seth told us long ago, “yet there are none that you do not accept or draw to you by your thoughts, attitudes, or emotions.” (In Chapter 1 of The Nature of Personal Reality, see the 613th session, for September 11, 1972.) And Jane and I are still exploring, still searching—together—for the factors within those larger frameworks of existence which make qualities like illness possible and understandable.

Even if those sessions can’t be quoted in these essays because of the obvious space limitations, I can note that Jane and Seth each continued to develop the themes already laid down in the sessions that have been presented. What they really signify for the long term is (as I wrote in the essay for April 16) a continuing program of intense study for Jane and me—and yes, for Seth, too—as we seek to better understand our chosen commitments in our present physical lives. Our questions reflect those that everyone has, whether consciously or unconsciously—and among them is that eternally human “Why?” behind each event that we know. The material in the sessions is exhilarating, painful, enlightening, perceptive, frustrating, and maddening by turn—and sometimes, it seems, all of those things at once. We’d like to publish much of it, even though it’s hardly all flattering, and even though some of it, because of our ordinary human limitations, may not be very useful in everyday life. For if the information arouses such mixed emotions in Jane and me, surely it will do so in others too, serving as an impetus or goad to learn more even while it highlights one’s strengths and weaknesses. You create your own reality. The anger I’d felt at Jane and myself when she began recording her sinful-self material (see the essay for April 16) has long since dissipated. I won’t claim that residues of it may not be buried within my psyche (and within Jane’s), but it’s very difficult to stay mad when one agrees with the simple but most basic and profound idea that you do create your own reality.

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.

Apropos of the material I’ve been covering in these pages, I want to close this essay with quotations from two sessions that I’ve always thought are among the best Seth has given. These sessions still live, and in them he reinforces the idea that each of us does create our own reality. Both can be found in Chapter 1 of Personal Reality.

And from Session 613 for September 11, 1972: “Interactions with others do occur, of course, yet there are none that you do not accept or draw to you by your thoughts, attitudes, or emotions. This applies in each area of life. In your terms, it applies both before life and after it. In the most miraculous fashion you are given the gift of creating your experience.”