“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Moreover, the choice of presenting the material in essay form proved to have one virtue that was more valuable than all the others combined: It allowed us to delve into the events I describe, and “our deep-seated, sometimes wrenching feelings connected to them,” a little bit at a time. Those situations might have been too devastating for us otherwise, too emotionally threatening, too charged for us to present them with at least the minimum amount of objectivity required by the written word. Many of the events and feelings evoked such deep implications of trial and challenge for Jane and me that we were often left with strong feelings of unreality: This can’t be happening to us. At our ages (52 and 62, Jane and I, respectively), why have we created lives with such nightmarish connotations? Why do I have to leave my dear wife alone in the hospital each night, so that I feel like crying for her when I go to bed by myself in the hill house? Why can’t we be left alone to live lives of peace and creativity? And how many millions and millions of times through the ages have other human beings on this planet felt the same way—and will yet? Why are our lives ending like this, when we feel that simply getting through each day is an accomplishment?

That basic impetus toward survival came to take precedence over everything else. Indeed, for several weeks following the initiation of the challenges I relate in the essays, supposedly creative activities like writing books and painting pictures often faded into insignificance by comparison. And for me, Jane’s condition came to stand for everything we don’t know in our particular joint, chosen, probable earthly reality.

The essay form gave us chances for at least a minimal study of the various forms our creative learning experiences have taken to date. We quickly agreed that we’d been setting up the illness syndrome for years, yet the deep emotional shocks accompanying its physical developments seemed to come at us like attacking dark birds zooming in from another probable reality. We learned. We adjusted in ways that a few weeks previously would have seemed unbelievable to us—and, ironically, as must often happen in such situations, once we’d moved into our new joint reality, it appeared that those particular challenges had always been incipient for us.

[...] 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. [...]

[...] And so, of couse, the sinful self’s own overreactions, although carried out without “malice,” became themselves a portion of Jane’s long-range learning challenges this time.

[...] Perhaps if Jane and I could do that, a great metamorphosis would take place: The closer we moved through probabilities toward All That Is, the more the tensions associated with the subject in question would transform themselves into profoundly joyous answers and challenges.

But that simple statement also means that our dream work relative to Jane’s challenges has often been powerfully abetted by Seth in many of the 347 completely private and 159 partially private sessions he’s given us since November 1965. [...]

[...] And think of the added challenges of feeling and perception where sexual changes between present and past incarnations are involved! [...] (I wonder whether a long-term past-life sexual fantasy could be connected to a real sexual problem or challenge in a present—or future—life.)

[...] (Doing this always reminds us of additional points to cover, of course!) Putting it all together is an extremely challenging endeavor as I try to summarize our years of committment to the Seth material—for inevitably we end up dealing with ideas lying outside society’s generally accepted frameworks of belief. [...]

[...] Her present impaired condition is certainly generating powerful physical and psychic conflicts and challenges, and it’s my personal assessment that she’s dealing with these in her own unique way. [...]

Jane and I live our physical lives on mundane levels, though, as everyone else does, so it’s inevitable that we often find ourselves meeting our daily challenges within those frameworks. [...]

[...] He is returning to activity at his creative, naturally therapeutic pace, no longer afraid that he is going too fast—or will—but shown only too clearly that activity and motion represent the only safe, sane, and creative response [to life’s challenges].

[...] And even if all of those sessions had been born out of my own psychic and psychological challenges and dilemmas, I knew they were excellent and deserved publication.

[...] I think that in the following excerpts Seth rather neatly encapsulates her past beliefs, her present condition, and how far she has yet to go in meeting her challenges. [...]

[...] Certainly Jane chose all of her challenges in this life, just as I did, and as we believe each person does, but a major concomitant of focusing upon certain activities involves how one copes with them (often in close cooperation with others) as the years pass: What new and original depths of feeling and idea are uncovered, layer by layer, what insights, what rebellions, and, yes, what acceptances….

[...] Perhaps her challenges were too much for her. What were her limits, how much more could she take after some 17 years of ever-increasing struggle, whether or not those challenges had been chosen—some of them far in advance—for whatever reasons?

[...] Okay: I hope sometime to tell the entire story of my physical and creative challenges, which as of now of course is unfinished. [...]

[...] However, I do think I’m accurate concerning the connections between Jane’s early psychological conditioning and her present challenges.)

To return to just Jane and Marie, then, I think that their long-range cyclical behavior and interaction, no matter how painful it may seem on the surface, represented deep challenges set up by mother and daughter for certain overall purposes that they wanted to experience, separately and jointly. [...]