“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(1. My stomach. Have had a lot of discomfort lately. On June 22 the pendulum told me that my stomach bothers me not because I don’t spend enough time painting, but because I feel guilty at spending the time I do, in view of all the other work with Jane that I feel I should be doing: working on sessions, “Unknown” Reality, etc.

Popular novelists and writers are above all things people of their times. They are socially oriented, dealing with lively discourse. They cannot see beyond the times. As a rule, however, they enjoy people as people are. They enjoy stupid people, wicked people, cowardly people, bigoted people, and sometimes wise people too. They do not make demands. They share the belief systems of their times, and they are richly rewarded—generally speaking, now—for there is overall no great conflict between their natural works, their writing, and the world at large.

(I should take the space here to set the scene. After supper this evening I read a news account of the riches accruing to a nationally known popular writer, his son and daughter, who shall be nameless here. Royalties, prime-time TV series, movies, TV specials—there was no area in which the family wasn’t making incredible amounts of money. All they produce is garbage. I was of course especially angry that they were world renowned while I thought Jane’s great abilities were largely unappreciated and ill paid for by Prentice, Bantam, etc. The recent sale of Oversoul Seven to an English publishing house for an unbelievable $100, and Prentice’s recent notice to us of a possible sale of Seth Speaks for translation and publishing by a German house for only $300 bothered me greatly; I just couldn’t believe that so little money was available in Europe, no matter what Prentice told us. [I still don’t.]

The society is supporting you. It is accepting your work, and in your terms—those terms that exist because of your beliefs and your attitudes. The books are being read, though you do not go on tours. You do not play any of the games, and you do not have a healthy give-and-take with that society. You are ahead of the times, and behind them—yet through the point of power you affect those times. You change them.

You have continued along these lines because of your intents. I placed no demands upon you from the beginning. You made certain decisions and you have stuck more or less with them. You want to affect your society in your time —indirectly (loudly, with amusement): you do not want to put up with the people.

Your stomach bothers you at various times for different reasons. The reasons, however, always have a particular base, so to speak. Parents sometimes express love by concern, though children seldom understand this. I have mentioned this before: the parent saying “Brush your teeth,” means “Your teeth are beautiful and healthy. I want you to keep them that way.”

Ruburt is verbal. He loves to talk. He likes to hear you talk. Oftentimes your stomach upsets you because your love for Ruburt makes you concerned, and in most instances the stimulus is money. An occasion will arise, or a period of time, in which your love for him wants to find expression. You do this by expressing your concern that his work is not being duly appreciated in monetary terms (as I did this evening).

Ruburt’s work straddles all these issues—that is, it involves all of them at different times. Your stomach problem is basically the result of your feelings about what you consider to be a lack of communication, a blocking of your natural love. From your background, regardless of your intellectual beliefs, now, you learned to mask your expressions of love or exuberance, lest they be misunderstood. You learned to express love through worry or concern.

(10:53. Jane’s pace throughout had been good, and limited only by my own writing speed. I thought the material was excellent in all respects. I didn’t see how the insights could be better, I told Jane, and will try hard to implement them. I thought part of the material was hilarious, about our attitudes toward the world. I think that Seth’s expression for me of my feelings toward Jane were most accurate and penetrating—the kind of information one could spend months acquiring with the help of others, say. My own pendulum answers had steered me in the right direction, I saw, but were far short of being complete enough. I felt better than I had in some time.

(11:30.) Give us a moment.... He, however, needs by nature more contact with other people than you do. He has learned to repress feelings, and he believed heartily that repression was necessary to his work, to maintain your privacy, to provide time, to cut out distractions, and to focus attention and expression.

He thinks he is being practical when he worries about his condition. You think jointly it is only common sense and practical, particularly after all of this time, to remember that any improvements have dead-ended. You think that in terms of his physical condition the point of power is in the past. Despite all of this, the overall processes of his body have improved. His flesh is more responsive and alive. The circulation is vastly better. His weight—for him—is almost normal.

The muscles of the neck have been lengthening, and the head area has been releasing. Generally speaking, his eyes have been restricted in the past by the head motions. As the neck muscles began to loosen, the eyes were required to move in ways they had not been for some time. The muscles were stiff in the eyes. Unequal tensions resulted—this also having to do with his beliefs as stated, and the fact that he did not want to type old material, particularly without new material coming.