“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Yet Jane is in the midst of great discomfort, whether this represents healing changes taking place within her body or not, as Seth tells us it does. Her arms are noticeably longer. Twice today we had rather short discussions about our ideas of why the symptoms linger after all these years: nothing new, I’m afraid, although she said she felt better afterward—before getting blue again. Personally, I think we have learned little—or have much still to learn. Our talks reminded Jane of a group of private sessions Seth gave in 1973, so she looked those over before I came out to see if she wanted a session tonight. That old material concerned the work ethic, she said, and our attitudes about it.

Though the following advice runs counter to all accepted ideas of common sense, at such times look for what is right in your lives, rather than becoming overly concerned (underlined) with what is wrong. Otherwise, the intense desire for a solution can lead you to concentrate upon what is wrong, so that it becomes the entire issue.

The material on work ideas connected with Ruburt still does have application. Many years ago his experience with different editors, in his short-story publishing days, led him to see that a story that hit one editor might not hit another, that his work would be much more easily accepted by some editors than others, and that some, it seemed, regardless of long enthusiastic letters, would not buy a thing.

(Pause.) This material should be read in conjunction with the sessions just mentioned, dealing with his ideas about work and creativity. He felt threatened over the disagreements last year about contracts, about Tam’s frequent mention that he might leave. The matter of Yale led him in his own way to think of his work as if it were to be an institution, every word recorded, so that you only wrote down what you wanted other people to know—and therefore somewhat discouraged spontaneity of expression.

I am not agreeing here, necessarily, but stating his reaction. On the other hand, such an alliance seemed to bring some kind of prestige. He felt also that my ideas in Mass Events, and his ideas in God of Jane, were almost bound to bring about some controversy from the beginning—for reasons he largely worked out for himself—and they are related in his book.

(9:55.) Overall, being is its own reward—not that there are not others, but that being obviously makes all of your experiences possible, so you cannot tie being up in a package of work only, regardless of the nature of the work. All of this goes back to ideas that existence must be justified, and Ruburt’s early ideas that writing would justify his life—but writing should express life, and is an expression of being, an expression of spontaneity, an expression of emotion, of body as well as mind (all intently).

His early writing, and his best later writing, spring alike from that realization, when he forgets ideas of our work’s responsibility, or how respectable he should appear, and simply does it because it is a natural expression of his being —one expression among others.