“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Of course, to some degree the condition involves you both in your social dealings with the world. Ruburt believes in economy, and the condition seemed to take care of many different possible problems, for himself and for you also. You both knew you were different, and whether or not the sessions ever began, your minds were uniquely explorative. You kept the world at a good reach. Ruburt did not know, as given in the past, what the spontaneous self might lead to. The symptoms served to slow him down psychically, while he mentally considered his position.

As he became known, they served to keep the world away for both of you. They served to show why you worked at home, or did not sell your work at galleries: you had to take care of Ruburt. They saved you both from making endless decisions as to whom you would see, or whether you would go on tours. They pared life down to its necessities. They were Ruburt’s version of health foods, abstinence, and so forth, in the Nearing’s way, and to all of this both of you to some extent acquiesced.

In this neighborhood (gesturing), Ruburt’s symptoms were a social statement also to the neighbors at large in the new environment: better than a note upon the door, that neither of you were to be bothered, but ignored. And again to some extent, both of you acquiesced.

Again, to some extent now (underlined), both of you wanted a framework that would allow you what you thought of as freedom to work. Ruburt is learning that even he went too far, but I do want you still to think of the symptoms as a well-meaning but distorted structure that can dissolve—and can dissolve overnight when Ruburt understands it is no longer needed or wanted. It is a method that he tried, but it did not work because it defeated its own purposes.

(10:30 PM. I think the session could well be a very important one for both of us, and that it’s hardly a coincidence that it came along at this time. Jane continues to improve in her walking—she’s up to 12 times daily, with the aid of her typing table—so we seemed to have retreated from the prospect of her becoming so inactive that she stopped getting on her feet. That realization had to come before anything else could be done, of course—so tonight’s session and the questions we’ve been asking lately about the symptoms certainly seem to have come about at the right time.)