“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.

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.”