“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“October 1/80. There are certain sessions I’ve labelled ‘fill-in’ sessions in my mind for some time now, or thought of them as covering ‘floating material.’ They aren’t book sessions or specifically personal ones. They keep the sessions going over periods of time. Like maintenance sessions, but usually by discussing past material — connecting it with the present [‘connective sessions’ is more like it] — while not necessarily adding new thrust. And not specifically given to one subject.

(Jane has grown increasingly restless over the breaks in her activities that are caused by the rest periods she’s taking several times daily. At the same time her back, for example, has improved considerably. She was angry as we sat for the session. “I’m so mad I can’t talk about it,” she said — while talking about it for some 20 minutes. I told her I knew she didn’t want to take the rest periods, and that I had little to offer as an alternative, beyond her simply cutting down on them. I figured she’d be altering her schedule. “Boy, Seth, you’d better bail me out,” she said vehemently. “I can’t have a session on it because I’m too involved — you have to calm down before you can do that. …”

(I did say that her walking was the key to recovery: The more she walked, the less the pressure in any consistent way on other parts of her anatomy. Yet I couldn’t equate the few moments she spent walking with the half-hour rest periods, either.

The fact that he is now thinking of walking after dinner is an obvious advance. His irritability is somewhat natural — but also based on the idea, still, that when he is laying down that is dead time (with amusement), or useless time, enforced inactivity. It would help, of course, if he reminded himself that his creative mind is at work whether or not he is aware of it, and regardless of what he is doing, and that such periods have the potential, at least, of accelerating creativity, if he allows his intellect to go into a kind of free drive at such times. You might have him become more aware of when he actually becomes tired, or uncomfortable, so that he does lay down then.

One important point, again, is to remember that in any given day his mood is often excellent for many periods of time. He should concentrate his attention upon those periods, rather than concentrating upon the periods when he is blue or upset, and berating himself for those reactions.

End of session — but those rhythms are also more natural to you than you have suspected. You often have freedoms, then, that you do not use — a 24-hour period that you use quite arbitrarily, one that is already sectioned for you by society — but only if you allow it to be. It can be used in any fashion that you wish.