“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This morning I quit painting at 11 AM to go to the bank and the stationery store. When I got home at 11:45 I washed several windows at Jane’s request; they certainly needed it. As I finished the job I felt the onset of another “attack” of chest discomfort; it lasted throughout the afternoon, and was most uncomfortable. The same old panicky feelings. I was very upset and angry with myself. The pendulum told me my situation was related to the fact that I stopped painting early, the windows, my worries about Jane, my age—the whole bit, in other words, so that I ended up thinking I’d accomplished precious little over the years. Certainly my learning was deficient, I thought. I simply wanted to help Jane, live quietly, and paint with some kind of passion I’d always envisioned but never achieved. So why all the other hash in life, I wondered? All of those other things seemed to get in the way of the few things I really wanted to do, including writing. With the writing I sought to make sense of everything at least intellectually, but for the moment at least, I thought, this left untouched what seemed to be the more powerful emotional tangle of beliefs.

(Jane said she’d have a session for me after supper. I replied that it didn’t seem to matter. I was still uncomfortable at session time, still wondering whether my feelings were physical or emotionally based, though somewhat better too. At nap time I’d had a very vivid dream in which I was driving a new blue pickup truck down a hill. I had an accident of some sort that left the truck half hanging off the road over a steep drop to the valley below; I had a view of this from below. No one else was involved in the accident, though, and the truck did stay on the road. As it happened I woke up with a start, feeling at first what I thought was a spasm in my chest, but quickly realized it was a part of my dream reaction. Mixed in here somehow were thoughts I’d been entertaining today about glazing the underpainting for a head I’d done in green a couple of weeks ago. I’d wanted to work on it this morning but had postponed doing so until tomorrow, so I could quit painting early this morning. Strangely, the spasm episode in the dream involved the color effects I knew I’d get when I glazed the painting: I was vividly aware of the texture of the underpainting as the green color was altered into flesh color by the overlay of warm flesh colors in oil.

I simply want you to understand those processes. That alone, you see, would be of great benefit. Again, remember what I have told you when people expect a hearty longevity, then that is their reality—and do not forget then that your difficulties lie also in the realm of cultural beliefs. That is, the body does know better.

There is a period of almost animal bewilderment. The body consciousness is in a state of dilemma, which it signals through the feeling of panic. That is, you interpret that feeling as panic while the body consciousness, through physical sensation, is actually asking nervously: “What is wrong? Please clarify the situation.”

Your dream also was a picture of your fears. Returning yourself to the present moment, and responding only to what is within your present environment, returns your body to a state of stability, where it is not crowded by imaginary fears of the future.