“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I also planned to start reviewing the first deleted sessions Seth gave on Jane’s symptoms, for I’ve never really forgotten them and always felt they were as good as any Seth has ever given on those subjects. The main one, the breakthrough session as I think of it, was the 367th for October 1, 1967. I read it over just before tonight’s session began, and was able to reaffirm my opinion that it’s still one of the best; at the same time it aroused questions, for it deals with causes in the past. According to Seth’s suggested use of the point of power, and his late deleted material, one isn’t supposed to dwell on the past, but go forward from the present—two major blocks of material, I told Jane this evening, that at first glance seem to contradict each other.

(I added that I doubt if they really do, but that the views need integration for us to understand it all clearly as a unified theory—sort of like field theory in physics, perhaps. I assume it will take lots of work to accomplish this, but am inserting these thoughts here as a remainder of one of the things I want to accomplish this year in this area. Jane and I also plan a list of questions for Seth on the whole situation, and I see these as accumulating into a notebook to accompany these sessions. I think we’ve already achieved some insights that we’ve let slide or didn’t understand.

(At this writing at least I plan to spend evenings typing new session material, and in the time left over to restudy the past material in the hopes of putting it all together with and/or without Seth’s help. But out of this work I expect our questions for Seth will come. I’m deeply troubled by Jane’s condition, and by what I regard as her strange passivity in the face of it; clues to this attitude exist in the 367th session. I’m sure my own role in the whole thing is a strong one, and that in my own way I’m as badly off as she is, although it may not show physically.

(Jane too read over the 367th session before the session this evening. It seems that essentially our situation is unchanged, 12 years later, which doesn’t say much for our learning capacities, I’m afraid. When the session began I half expected Seth to tell us to stay away from old deleted sessions, since as mentioned delving into the past can cause too intense a focus there, and reinforce problems, whatever they may be. But he didn’t. I said to Jane later that it seems Seth will tailor his material to suit our needs and/or moods of the moment, which may be one of the ways to integrate blocks of his material into a larger whole, which can display many facets or approaches.)

Your own problems can appear so large that you forget this. You are not inferior because you have problems. You are simply human, and if you need any proof that you are a part of the human species, and not so isolated from others, that is it. Again, however, creative challenges are set by each individual, challenges that involve achievements, of course, of one kind or another, simple or sublime. You are not inferior because you have problems.

Perfectionists, however, not only take a dim view of problems, but consider each one a blot, a proof of inferiority in themselves or others and they see such blots everywhere. They are in a certain fashion overly conscientious, and they fear spontaneity lest it be less than perfect. They fear flaws.

Before you moved here you imagined, both of you, what oddities you would be in the neighborhood, and exaggerated your differences from others. Ruburt did not mind spending the money for the porches. Since he would be “increasing the value of the plant”—the working establishment. He would write on the back one (humorously) to show the porch was not after all for pleasure.

No one can completely do that for anyone else, of course, so you have your own struggles with spontaneity. Ruburt’s spontaneous self was by far the most active, and so his defenses against it, as the overly conscientious self, were more obvious than yours.

Your struggles earlier, before you met Ruburt, involved relationships, in that you had no deep ones, allowing yourself to become close to no one. When you fell in love with Ruburt, a part of you was appalled, for it felt it must hold itself ever aloof—and in those days Ruburt’s spontaneous self often met a response from your overly conscientious self, so that you appeared cold to him, and in repelling his spontaneity you were of course frightened to reveal your own.

You set up, little by little, certain barriers against the world. As you grew older the failings of the human condition became more noticeable. Your own differences from others became more apparent. As the books became more popular, you were suddenly threatened in terms of privacy, of exposure personally—and perhaps, Ruburt felt, being forced one way or another into that other world in which, after all, the two of you did not belong.

To skip ahead: it is true that Ruburt has not asked you to take him for a ride, and it is equally true that you have not offered (although I mentioned it last week). He would have gone to the party (at Bumbalo’s on December 29) with some encouragement from you, and you gave him none—for cleverly, when one is ready to move the other is not.

You must think in terms of surprises, of spontaneity, of changed rhythms. Between now and our next session, read that group of old ones, and each of you attempt to reach your own overly conscientious self.