“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A block to the west of the hill house, the main road drops straight down into the outskirts of Elmira. Opening off the road to the left like a series of steps are short, level sidestreets upon which I often run late at night. In the beginning the running helped me physically handle my grief over Jane’s passing; I cried often as I ran, and tried to comprehend where she is now. I’m a natural runner, but had been unable to do more than a little jogging in recent years because of the pressures of work and of taking care of Jane as she became more and more ill. After her death I could run nightly if I chose to. I find that activity still secret and evocative. The streets are lined with trees arching up to meet overhead; periodically those intersecting patterns of leaves and branches are punctuated by bursts of light from the streetlamps. At certain times the moon follows me along in its phases. The only sounds might be the wind in the treetops and the chug-chug of my shoes on the asphalt. A dog may bark in the distance. When I do it right I float effortlessly along. And amid my tears I finally permitted the obvious to become obvious to me. The following is revised from my entry in my grief notebook.

[...] I sat there, in the darkened room, hearing the voice as if it came from a great distance, feeling a mild astonishment.

A tree knows a human being also … by the weight of a boy upon its branches … by the vibrations in the air as adults pass, which hit the tree’s trunk at varying distances, and even by voices. [...]

The idea of dissociation could be likened to the slight distance between the bark and the inside of the tree. [...]

[...] Without moving away from the body, the eyes see something that may be far in the distance. [...]

Then Seth told Rob to imagine a man looking at a tree in the near distance on an ordinary street, with intervening houses and sidewalks.

[...] There was nothing in the far distance on the left, beyond the feet. [...]