“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Last night was the fifth night in a row that I’ve slept on the screened-in back porch in my new sleeping bag. I didn’t start doing this to avoid the bedroom that Jane and I had shared in the hill house for the last nine years, but because I’d always wanted to and now can. Jane is no longer here for me to be so close to, night and day, to leap to take care of when she needs me. She’d never been able to sleep on the porch — one of the reasons we’d had it added onto the house to begin with.

The night was so warm that I unzipped the bag all the way down to my feet. In the half-dark I spoke aloud to my wife, telling her that I wished she was with me. I fell asleep. Around 4:30 A.M. I woke to the sound of a heavy wind and the feel of much colder air creeping in around my body. The wind chimes hanging in a corner of the porch were clashing together repeatedly. I zipped up the bag as spatters of rain began to blow in on me. The woods come down over the crest of the hill in back of the house, to the north, and with a sound like an ocean tide the wind was racing through their treetops, plunging south past the house and into the valley. Jane and I had always loved that great roar. The trees thrashed in my neighbor’s yard across the road. The whole scene was one of change and energy and mystery.

‘Oh, sweetheart, if only you were here with me to see this,’ I said aloud to Jane. And as I talked to her I suddenly found myself crying for her again there in the semi-dark night while the wind seethed and roared. Deep wrenching sobs began in my legs and stomach and rose up through my chest. I tried to keep talking to her, but could not. ‘It must be better where you are,’ I finally gasped, ‘but you should see this. It’s so wonderful …’ And as I spoke I intuitively understood that the motion of the wind was an excellent creative metaphor for the motion of Jane’s soul, that its cool feel upon my face could be the physical version of her caring for me ‘from where she is.’ The storm of my grief eased after a while, but the wind and the light rain continued. I dozed. When I woke half an hour later the wind had diminished a great deal. I felt drained. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water. Was Jane’s soul resting from its earlier great commotion, or had she moved away for the moment while exploring other aspects of her new reality that were perhaps out of range to us earthbound creatures? I crawled back into my bag and slept until dawn.