“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At 10 PM I asked Jane if she felt like having a session. We’d been visited today by Loren, Betts and Doug, and Dick, Ida and David, and at times my left groin area had bothered me considerably. Now after everyone had gone—Dick and family stayed until about 8 PM—I felt poorly indeed. As I had last spring, I didn’t know whether my symptoms of unease were physical or mental, and was very concerned. I thought of a hernia—and Loren had been operated on for a hernia this summer—yet I suspected the unease was basically mental. This had been the case last spring. And now, those feelings had returned. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the proper adjective to describe the groin sensations; they weren’t ones of pain—but what?

(Today as the family members talked and took photographs and watched television and ate. and so forth, I felt the discomfort in the left groin sweep over me in waves. Twice I went off to use the pendulum. Each time it helped, temporarily. I thought of asking Jane for help, but disliked doing so because I could see that she was doing very well. I didn’t want to introduce negative elements into the day, especially so since her performance was much better than it had been last year when everyone had gotten together. [After that gathering she’s had strong upsets of her own.]

A man showed himself a man, say, by getting paid every Friday night, coming home after a stop at the pub with coins jingling in his pocket, to give his wife the house money for the week. I do not want to hurt your feelings—but your particular beliefs about a male and money are in their way quite parochial, and you must understand that as far as money is concerned, also, those beliefs have little moral value—moral value.

(11:34.) But you worry that you are a failure in the framework of that postcard American system, even though now you see quite clearly that the postcard system is not bright and glossy, but a facade, behind which lurks a great sadness.

Your body, on its own, is very happy to be so well provided for (more humor). Ruburt said that he used to like his class money because it was tangible, and you understood. But you also told him that the money for books, that came in a check, was just as good, and that there was more of it.

(Pause.) I do not want to give you a big head, but your wit and your abilities simply place you in another area of activity, for which you should be grateful. Do not be overly parochial or nationalistic in your views. There is a great history of masculinity that expressed itself through the development of thought, quiet meditation—and I do not necessarily mean of the mystical kind—of communion of the mind with nature.

There is nothing wrong with your body. The memories and associations bring old beliefs to mind, and you see in such family visits the culmination in your brothers of those old beliefs. You must say: “They are mine no longer. I appreciate my own unique worth.” You must liberate yourself whenever such thoughts arise to mind—not by inhibiting them but by confronting them, recognizing their origins, and realizing that you have left them intellectually behind, resolving that you will emotionally free yourself from their effects.

I made a few comments about supply and demand recently, but there are far deeper issues. Unless negative beliefs stand in your way, then creative ideas that you contribute to the work will automatically take care of your needs, and it is truly idiotic to want to substitute that good fortune for such parochial concepts like the male as breadwinner, or the male performing in a given definable fashion.

I want to rid you of any lingering misconceptions, but you still have a lingering belief that your old ideas about money and the male have some kind of high moral value. (Louder:) The Protestants have always thought that artists were decadent, that contemplation was dangerous, and that leisure was a crime. (With continuing amusement:) To enjoy your work was suspect—and if you enjoy unconventionality of mind, some leisure in which to contemplate the world about you, then it is about time that you dismissed such parochial concepts, and realized that there is no moral rectitude given them.

Then I bid you a fond good evening. I have stuck to the most important beliefs about money, and the male’s status—but also such (family) gatherings also bring into focus beliefs about age and illness, and so forth.

(12:13 AM. I felt better already. “Boy,” Jane said, “if you’d told me I could have had that session after they all left, I wouldn’t have believed it. I was exhausted. I felt selfish, too. I just wanted to watch the television program [Upstairs, Downstairs], but when that was done I felt better, and I knew you needed the help....” Her delivery had been animated and fast throughout the session, with many indications of wit and amusement.

(“The only thing I might have asked,” I said, after having had a few moments to think it over, “was why I would choose to pick on myself here.” I pointed to my left groin. “I know that in those earlier sessions Seth said I equated the left side with the unconscious portions of the personality and the masculine role in society [see the deleted sessions for April 4 and 16, 1979], but—”

Now: beliefs—that is correct. I do not want to overemphasize this point, so do not overemphasize it yourself—but the idea is that you sometimes become angry at your own “unconscious creative abilities.” I put that in quotes because you equate creative abilities as largely unconscious. You think, then, that if you were not so creative you could have a proper niche for yourself, and therefore you tense a portion of the body that seems to be connected to the unconscious side of the self, and chose the groin, which connects old beliefs about males to the beliefs about creativity.

(Jane paused, still in trance. I expected her to end the session, but as she sat there I saw that it was one of those times when she—or Seth—could say more. I was surprised, considering her feelings before the session. Then:)

(Long pause.) In the past eras of history, as you know, artists had patrons, but your society has not learned to deal with its creative people. It underpays them, ignores them, or extravagantly overpays them. They never fit that Protestant work ethic, and the very idea of a creative mind has not fit in—so far, at least—with the overall patterns of the society in terms of religion or science.

(12:31 PM. Something had really turned Jane on after all. Seth was still around, she told me. “But now what I’ll have is a little milk, a cookie, and a cigarette—and go to bed,” she laughed. Her energy was still up. Even sitting in bed, she remarked that she was picking up more of that generalized material from Seth.

(“Twenty minutes later I’m sitting at the front living room table, feeling relaxy and good about things, when I catch an odd brief but lovely experience; something happened momentarily; I felt as if I was seeing with all of me, instead of just with my eyes.... as if my molecules almost saw what I saw too in their own fashion. Physically my vision was the same, I think.... but there was a fuller visual appreciation or fullness difficult to verbalize....”

(One final note: At the beginning of this session I wrote that I had trouble describing the very uncomfortable sensation in my left groin—that it wasn’t pain. but what? I felt much better by the end of the session; remarkably so, so Seth’s material was on the mark. Then in the bathroom it came to me as we prepared to retire: the feeling in the groin was like a knot—and my realization had been triggered by Seth’s remark about tension I had created in that area. In a flash the understanding led me to a very obvious conclusion that, it seems I should have reached on my own earlier: the knotty feeling was very much like the muscle spasms I’d experienced in the back, years ago when we’d lived on West Water St. These had been so bad that I’d lost months of work; the sessions had begun as Jane tried to help me, as well as for her own needs, in 1963.