“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(A few days ago I wrote out a “new manifesto” of beliefs for Jane and me, to replace the suggestions she’s been using in the morning after breakfast. She likes them better, she said, and so do I; at this time they seem to fit our situation. I wrote them because I’ve been becoming increasingly concerned about the slowness of her progress—or, to put it another way, because I felt that beliefs must still be operating in the background to account for the slowness of her progress. I also talked about resuming use of the pendulum to see what beliefs of a negative sort were still active there.

(Before the session I explained that I didn’t think feelings of hopelessness had much to do with it, since if the background fears were dispensed with the body would automatically right itself, and those feelings would vanish. I asked Jane if she had given up using the typing table as a help in walking, and if so, why? She too expressed concern over the points mentioned here. At the same time, she said she’d felt pretty good today. I said I needed reinforcement myself over my fears about her condition, and she answered that she might have to initiate a program of walking with the table, soon, if she didn’t spontaneously start doing more walking.

When Ruburt does not see people, his reasons are sometimes much like yours, topside. In effect, of course, he becomes afraid to see people. He sees himself at such times in an inferior physical situation, so that it seems to him that physically “he is not a good specimen,” but obviously flawed. So it seems to him that he does not see people because he is ashamed of his physical condition.

You yourselves, through following your impulses, changed your suggestions, and this was because the flow of experience directed you so that you followed the changes in Ruburt’s psyche. You are as good as anyone else (#1 of 11 suggestions): a simple enough statement, yet behind it there are other issues. Ruburt needs the free time, meaning relaxed time, in which to allow the body’s continued healing, and your new suggestions tuned into all of the reasons behind the slowness of progress, as it seems to you. The grim determination, for example, by itself tightened muscles.

Ruburt felt like neighborly contact several times earlier that day. He felt that you would go along, but on your own would prefer no company. That evening he followed his impulse. He felt proud of himself, at ease with the company, and he spoke of matters he considered important. A feeling of peace filled him as he enjoyed the evening, and he forgot his physical problems. The drinks did further aid in the relaxation—but there was a freedom of expression, a trust of the self, a concentration away from the body, and a self-acceptance.

(10:25 PM. This actually represented the end of the session. It was one of the most difficult sessions I ever recorded; I told Jane that by its end I was barely able to write Seth’s words legibly. In spite of the very reasonable tone of the material in it, to me it seemed to fly in the face of all of the accumulated fears that had been bugging me, and Jane also, I thought. As soon as Seth mentioned her feelings of inferiority at the beginning of the session, it was all downhill for me; I thought we’d done a reasonable job on encountering those with our pendulum work, but it seemed that they were still as present and active as ever. Nor could I take any comfort from Seth’s remarks about encountering strangers, or even friends, I said, since it seemed that whenever any outsider was present we were both constantly worrying about whether they would notice Jane’s condition, whether she ever got on her feet, and so forth, until it seemed that those episodes were hardly worthwhile. Jim Poett told us that the Voice will send a photographer up for pictures, so I’d figured we’d spend time worrying about that, too.