“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane then arose abruptly and began to dictate in a voice somewhat stronger than usual, without greeting. Bill called out the time to me. Jane spoke rather loudly but paced at an average rate. Her eyes, I noticed, were exceptionally dark.)

The impediment, beginning in this life, 1507, represented a time when he did not speak out, and he should have, for a man’s life was at stake. He did not speak out because of fear, and now when he wishes most to speak out he cannot.

He has paid time and time again for this. No one asked that you pay. He was then, even then, conscientious, and therefore fourfold bothered more than most by his own betrayal. In his immediately past life he plagued himself through a useless arm; right arm, you see, so he could not point out again. This time the self-adopted defect is less, a mere annoyance.

We do not have to bear such scars forever. There is a time when we must subconsciously forget where we have trespassed.

(Break at 10:32. Jane was fully dissociated. She had been worried about giving a session before three witnesses, she said, this being the first time for that many. During the conversation at break it developed that Louie in this life does not use his right hand for all things, but is somewhat ambidextrous. Ida associated this, which neither Jane or I realized, with the fact that in the previous life a right arm had not been used by Louie.

It is indeed a basic anxiety and fear. The personality can express himself very well. In the 1500’s he was eloquent, and it is precisely because this eloquence, so persuasive, so smooth-tongued, caused his superiors at that time to believe the accusations against the innocent man, that he now fears to use an eloquence, because he once let it run away with him.

One, he attempts to convince himself of something that is indeed a fact. He has nothing else to do penance for. By enduring the literally endless small cruelties he does needless penance, but at the same time he strikes back by causing the father hours of remorse. In all relationships these intertwining effects exert, many times, most unpleasant effects.

Saturday afternoon he was five, not six, and for unforeseen reasons left alone for a mere ten minutes in a large house, circumstances being such that only for a brief time no one was present. He played with a large ball, and the actual incident was so simple and uncomplicated that under ordinary circumstances it would have resulted in no such results.

The time, 3 PM. He went out to the kitchen, where the ball after he played with it finally rolled. A portion of a stove had been left on; and though there was no danger of fire, the child was afraid of fire. But this was not the cause of his sudden terror.

The fact remains that the child did try to scream. At the same time a door close by slammed abruptly. Unused to being alone, the child reacted in the first place vehemently to the unaccustomed isolation. He ran to the stove, touched it, and as he burned but only slightly his right hand, the door slammed nearby very loudly.

This time when the child tried to scream he could not. The sound of the door was associated with the burn in his mind. When in a few moments his mother returned he tried to explain why he cried, for she had heard the first cries, and he stuttered.

He stuttered because the pain from the small burn through subconscious association became, for the first time in this existence, penance for the barely remembered past offense. Now. The stuttering did not, as is believed, begin continuously to show itself, but from then on it began to show itself more and more as the child experienced those necessary and trivial wounds that every child must indeed endure.

In many cases such symptoms show themselves immediately, even before a situation can be seized upon to justify them. In this case there was time, and the personality could have avoided them.

(The five of us were discussing the session when Jane spoke for Seth again, abruptly rising and dictating in the same strong voice. She spoke without wearing her glasses, but instead left them on the floor near where she had been sitting. Each time, pacing back and forth across the room, seldom looking down, it seemed she might step on the glasses, but she did not. Resume at 11:51.)

His actual predicament is one where what he wishes, he feels will hurt others. And yet through living at home while helping the father, on the one hand, in the establishment, at the same time on unconscious levels by his very presence he says “I am not doing what I want to do, and you are to blame.”