“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At 8:40 PM. Jane left for the corner grocery to get a pack of cigarettes. Actually she had to hurry for the store is several blocks away. It was also raining. Once again Jane had been trying to give up cigarettes; this time the struggle lasted but a day or so, and ended in tears after supper this evening. It appeared to be a panic reaction of some kind, and had happened before.

This time and particularly since adolescence ended he was able to let go the other types of greediness, letting the cigarette take place of all the rest. There is here also what I may call a sort of air panic, an insatiable taking in of air that the nervous puffing of a cigarette sometimes satisfies, even a basis in claustrophobia where the personality feels it is not getting enough air or is closed in.

Ruburt even has a latent gluttonous desire for rich foods that he has conquered. Nevertheless although the cigarette habit satisfies these basic old habits, he will be able to let it go. He is a gobbler, that is all. A gobbler of ideas, of emotions, of atmosphere, in some ways a veritable sponge soaking up whatever he can, but he has learned discipline and he is learning a certain amount of patience, which is difficult for him.

There is also here connected only with his present personality an ego image of the writer with a cigarette. In this case the cigarette represents independence and even individuality, and even female emancipation. So it is all bound up together in a rather mazelike web. I hope that when Ruburt understands this it will make the situation easier for him.