“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.

(As today passed Jane picked up from Seth—and herself—material on the events of yesterday afternoon, so that finally she had an idea at least of what Seth would discuss tonight. [I suggested she have this session, although the thought crossed her mind also.]

(Jane also through the day received from Seth some material in answer to my remarks at breakfast this morning about the jacket colors chosen for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality. The proof arrived in the mail while Dick and Ida were here; we looked at it without much reaction, but still thought about it on other levels a good deal. It lacks what I call good taste, as I’d feared it would, and is too cold and creepy. I for one have long reached the point where I expect little else from Prentice-Hall except shoddy work, and I think that by now Jane more or less agrees. She didn’t like the jacket colors.

Along the way, they discovered those original standards were wanting (hoarsely). They did what they thought they were supposed to do, but do not feel nearly the sense of accomplishment or pleasure with their lives that they once expected. Ruburt is fond of both of them, as you are, but he saw them in their actuality, as themselves and as representative of many people in general.

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.

But Ruburt thought: “This is what most people are like, and if I give in to my impulses, will the days slide by me like that?”

Ruburt wrote a poem yesterday morning (Thursday), considering it afterward briefly, wondering whether it was really good enough to type as it was, throwing off in an odd moment a thought, a concept that would represent the highest revelation to Ida, if she could understand what it means.