“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?

Now—a repeat performance—an instant replay of material given in other ways before, with a new slant.

Now: generally again, such communities have teachers, judges, lawyers, dentists, some farmers on the outskirts of town, some factory workers, a sufficient number of ministers, and some car lots. Everyone knows in which social level each other person belongs. The wife’s position is usually dependent upon the husband.

(11:19.) Such communities have few poets, few artists, and fewer mediums. Tunkhannock is actually an idealized version of that kind of community. In those terms (underlined) it is for Loren a step up from, say, Sayre, whose history is richer even in “lower class” origins. Sayre, however, generally now, represented the poorer man’s version of that American ideal, and it was from there that many of your beliefs and those of your brothers had their origins.

You may laugh with some disdain when I mention, for example, that in some other societies, both today and in the past (pause) a gentleman proved his moral worth and value by not working. Now that idea is no more ludicrous than the idea you have, for both attempt to prove personal merit through the manipulation of money and status.

(Quietly amused:) Now, with that simple explanation, when you know your brothers will visit, you instantly leap to the old beliefs of childhood, when your mother wanted you to set an example—which meant be someone in society, in normal middle-class society, now. Use your art to make money. Otherwise it was a liability in her eyes. She expected a clearly defined role. Now, she being uniquely herself, is more than pleased with your situation: a good house in a fine neighborhood, and who cares where the money comes from (with more than a little humor)?

(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.

Allow your body to relax, and now I bid you a fond good evening.

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.

(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.

(“I started to get some material from Seth right after breakfast. I felt as if it were being gently inserted into my mind and that for some reason I became aware of it. It’s as if this often happens, material being inserted and then “stacked up” or stored there for, say, the next session. For a few minutes, five or more, I was aware of quite a bit of material on work, and the Protestant mainstream [as separate from, say, Emerson or James or Thoreau, even]. Thought I’d write it down and told Rob some of it. Now though, I just remember the subject matter more or less; now I’m not even sure of that [and it’s only about ten minutes after I told Rob what I’d picked up].

(“It’s vague now: Americans not trusting creative thought unless it applies specifically to practical considerations.... nothing new there; I guess I’ve just forgotten it.... There was the idea that true creative work is the springboard for the more usual kind.... and something about vocations being distrusted in this country....