“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?

(In fact, I’d been bothered more and more in recent days—ever since, I thought, the family get-together had been suggested by Betts a couple of weeks ago. Yet all through the summer I didn’t think I’d fully bounced back from last spring’s rather drastic upsets. I’d taken to giving myself suggestions each morning upon arising, before calling Jane, and these had helped. Yet I knew the symptoms lingered beneath the surface, one might say.

(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.]

(When I mentioned a session to Jane finally she said she didn’t really feel like it; she was getting relaxed, “really out of it,” and I could tell she’d rather not do it. I went for a walk, which helped. When I returned home the sensations did also. Then as I sat making notes, Jane called in to me that she felt better, that she’d try a session after all. So:)

(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.

(“He’s still around,” Jane said. Then:)

(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:)

(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.

(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.