“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Both of us wanted Seth to discuss the sudden relaxation of her upper body that Jane experienced last Friday afternoon when we made love. She’s written her own account of this. But the event provided us with an obvious clue—any body that can undergo so spontaneous a change can hardly be one that’s permanently fixed in a stiffened condition.... We’ve already obtained some interesting pendulum answers, this morning, about the event, concerning emotional factors that lead to physical restraint. We also wanted Seth to comment on Jane’s eye condition, which lately has taken a variety of states, some of them momentarily excellent.

First of all, again, the situation, the living situation you have chosen means that you both place a good many demands upon the other, that in a family situation, for example, might be dispersed. Each of you then must meet many needs of the other. You are to be mate, lover, friend, companion, working colleague, each to the other. You are with each other constantly. With that as background, what do you think about communication?

You felt that love and devotion should be understood, and that they did not need to be stated. In a way, both of you meant different things by communication, and used it to express only part of the spectrum of your feelings. It is Ruburt’s nature to yell at the cat, but he feels the noise upsets you—a small point, but important.

After Saturday both of you became frightened again, and your joint beliefs and habits of pessimism to some extent at least meant that you began to doubt the gains that had been made. This morning’s pendulum session, while helpful, for the general reasons given earlier, was also however more of an exercise in what is wrong, again, and was not followed by any constructive suggestion at all.

I would like both of you to read the chapter on affirmation (in Personal Reality), and to keep it in mind daily. You, incidentally, are afraid of expressing verbal states, et cetera, for fear of being made to feel a fool because your background with your father was so loaded with such connotations.

Now: you have begun to change that attitude. Simply keep in mind those significances. Notice how you are focusing. The bodybuilder does not think he is inhibiting his expression if he chooses to focus on his bodybuilding to the exclusion of distractions that may be quite real but detrimental to his purpose. Feelings of pessimism regarding Ruburt’s condition are detrimental. You both did very well on many occasions recently, so try to duplicate versions of the behavior I told you was helpful—and focus in those directions.