“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After supper I asked Jane if she’d hold a private session for me, since I felt so bad. On Saturday, October 27, I’d evidently come down with a “bug” of some kind —whether physical or psychological, and haven’t felt good at all since. At first I’d thought I was going into a beneficial relaxation episode like that I’d experienced on April 23, 1979. We’d been working hard, and when I lay down for a nap Saturday afternoon I felt relaxation effects. “Thank God for relaxation,” I told myself again and again as I fell asleep, hoping the effects would rejuvenate me. But I ended up with the cold chills, and for the next week was in often severe pain in the joints and muscles. We’d seen recent notices on TV of a local bug going around, but I didn’t know if that was involved or not. The worst part of the whole thing was that I developed urinary difficulties during the malaise: urination became very painful indeed, and I had a strong sense of blockage and impairment at times. I always managed to “go,” but it often took a while, and was very uncomfortable.

(All during this time, October–November, we’ve also been involved in a series of hassles with the foreign publishers Ankh-Hermes and Ariston. We’ve learned to our sorrow and rage that both entities have cut their versions of Seth Speaks, without our permission or knowledge, and have struggled to exert what force we could in order to rectify the situation. I thought it much more likely that these sorts of challenges were much more likely to be behind my problems. We do feel let down on the issue of foreign rights by Prentice-Hall, and the overseas publishers as well. As I’ve said to Jane more than once, “I wonder what we ought to know that Tam hasn’t told us”—meaning of course that every time a hassle develops with Prentice-Hall we find out a new batch of information that Tam has known all along but never relayed to us. This makes for a series of ugly surprises along the way of our travels with Prentice-Hall, since they always seem to involve money in a negative way, or royalties being withheld, etc.

(The little I’ve worked with the pendulum tells me my troubles are rooted in money attitudes, as well as the production time I’ve lost on Mass Events for the last two weeks and more. I thought I was doing something by working hard on that book, to get it underway in an organized fashion, I told Jane as we sat for the session—so what happened? I added that I wouldn’t put up with the kind of hassles involving Prentice-Hall beyond a certain point—that I’d take some kind of drastic action in order to rid myself of the problems connected with dealing with someone I no longer respect. This would involve holding the sessions, but letting Jane herself do any work about producing books for the market. I would go back to painting, try to sell some, and possibly end up with a part-time job for ready money—anything to break the vicious mental pattern of distrust I seem to keep creating. I believe that Jane at last understands that I’m quite capable of reacting that way, that I would refuse to indefinitely put up with our present kind of hassles with Prentice-Hall, or any other entity. I explained that I had such thoughts when we moved to Pinnacle Road, and could easily revive them and try a different kind of life.

Crowder, you think, left a large moneyed estate—far more than either you or Ruburt possess. At the same time, you are more than a little contemptuous of what we may gently call the mental culture of Bill Crowder’s life and mind. A part of you even thinks “Ma is that what you wanted me to be?”

Whenever you cut off your painting, you have difficulties—and that also involves this internal provincial concept of the male image, for you get upset about your painting because it does not bring in money, when a male’s pursuit should. At the same time, because of matters discussed before, you will not deal with the galleries. You go back to writing notes for my book because you do think you make some contribution despite yourself, and because you then feel you are financially contributing.

(Long pause at 9:55.) I do not want to define for you an ideal picture to which you can never live up. That is, I do not want your practical experience of life to seem inferior as you are in the process of learning how to live in a new fashion. The patterns of give-and-take between you and others are actually very simple to describe and delicate at a certain level of activity. There is some material of course that I have not given, though I will, because it would seem to you initially that in the light of what is possible, you were doing poorly—where instead in the light of your reality at this time, you are doing well. You must realize that you are judging your behavior by standards that are very high indeed, and that you are in a situation in which, say, all of the facts are not yet in. You have been geared to disapprove of yourselves, you have been taught to judge your performance in a very shallow fashion, according to social mores and sexual affiliation, and when you are breaking out of those patterns, you may indeed feel betwixt and between.

Divide your time between Mass Reality if you want to and your painting. It does not matter which of you handles the business end, as long as you have as much peace of mind as possible, and as long as you judge events as clearly as possible, according to their actual proportion as apart from their emotionally charged symbolic content.

I would actually of course never tell you to get a job or not—nor would I be perturbed at any decisions you might make. Personally, however, if I might be so bold, I would think that any such time might better be put to use in painting, if I were a painter.