“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Yesterday afternoon we were visited by my brother Bill and his wife, Ida, from Ontario, NY. We all had a most enjoyable visit—I thought. We usually see them but once a year. But it developed that Jane had one of her most uncomfortable nights in years last night; she woke up often, very stiff, particularly in the dawn hours. She realized that she was reacting to what she’d taken to be all of the negative suggestions and circumstances surrounding Bill and Ida’s lives and beliefs. Later we wished we’d had the presence of mind to get up at dawn, say, when Jane’s more acute discomfort began.

They actually represent the ways in which beliefs can dull native qualities of mind and heart alike, so that the intellect seems opaque, and emotional relationships are unduly tangled. Ruburt is working with the nature of impulses, and old ideas about impulses, spontaneity and discipline rose to mind, for the family situation of your brother and his wife almost typifies the kind of situation that Ruburt was determined to avoid. And he thought, what was the entire affair, really, for it seemed to lack any kind of discipline. It seemed to him, with the force of old beliefs, that Ida, Richard and the children were indeed driven willy-nilly by contradictory impulses, and that their lives lack any organizing inner purpose.

(Pause.) You have always been a hero, and yet a mystery to your brother Dick, a source of pride and yet of embarrassment. He considers studying dreams feminine, and to paint pictures of them presents a second mystery (intently). His own buried intuitional abilities, however, have always acted as a bridge between you, so that he feels a close affinity that he does not understand. He feels some affinity to Ruburt for the same reason, but Ruburt also upsets him, because he disapproves of women who think, and is very frightened because Ida in later years has started to criticize some of their joint beliefs.

The people at Prentice and generally speaking at any publishing house, live more or less at the level you saw yesterday. Each person senses an ideal, and has good intent, but those ideals and good intents are distorted by beliefs, and by the conditions accompanying them.

Your way is difficult, but it has unusual rewards. Those who have followed old beliefs do not have it easy either, and they do not know where to turn. Count your blessings.

(10:43 PM. Jane laughed. “I noticed that my voice cleared up as soon as I started the session.” Almost, at least, I said. Then Jane added: “I just got that he’s going to devote part of another session, a private one, to beliefs people have about old age. Because of the meeting with Dick and Ida....”