“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane still nods off as she sits in her chair, especially after supper, which we take to be an indication that her thyroid is still below par, although she’s much improved in that regard over her condition before she entered the hospital. The drifting off worries her, however. Even as I sat beside her at the round card table in the living room, writing these notes, she kept nodding off into sleep. I’d spent some little time trying to talk her into a short session to begin with, and she’d finally agreed to try for one. It was 8:52 when she really fell asleep in her chair, for perhaps the tenth time. I could see that we’d get no session tonight. Yet she woke up. “I’m just waiting—I feel so funny....”

(The contradictory thing was, as I’d told her the other day, that I didn’t think we were going to get anywhere in solving our dilemmas until we tapped into the session routine again. Otherwise, we’d be left to struggle within the establishment just as everyone else did. Yet each time I wanted to try something, Jane was having difficulty focusing. Just as I was about to give up for this evening, Jane came awake again and said rather firmly, “I’ve passed a certain point, Bob, and now I can do it....” meaning that she’d have a session after all. “But it’ll be a real short one.” And I knew it would be good.

(Pause at 9:10.) To such a degree, of course, the affair was, then, therapeutic. (Pause.) Ruburt is now far more willing to make certain changes in his life than he was earlier, and he sees himself more as one of a living congregation of creatures—less isolated than before, stripped down from the superperfect model, and therefore no more under the compulsion to live up to such a psychological bondage (all with some emphasis). He need not try to be the perfect self, then, the super-image—and in fact to some extent found himself the supplicative (self?), knocking upon creaturehood’s earthly door, as any creature might ask aid from another who found himself wounded through misadventure. He found a mixed world—one hardly black or white, one with some considerable give-and-take, in which under even the most regrettable of circumstances there was (underlined) room for some action, for some improvement, for some decision, for some creative response. The rules of the game have therefore been automatically altered. The issues are clearer, dramatically etched.

(We were both very pleased with the session: It contains many important clues. The arthritis diagnosis, Jane said, would be the only one the medical profession could offer, with its very limited insights and viewpoint—whereas Seth has insisted all along that she didn’t have arthritis per se. I’d wanted him to at least refer to the arthritis subject tonight, hoping that the reinforced suggestions would help Jane mobilize her own strong creative powers. Equally important, too was Seth’s idea that Jane no longer needed to try to be “the perfect self.” Very important.

(Seth’s reference, above, to Jane’s fear of going too fast is a reference to an excerpt from the deleted session for January 28, 1981. I keep this excellent excerpt in the current notebook where I see it each time I open the book. It seems to me that it very neatly sums up the core of Jane’s difficulties—that one, along with a longer excerpt from the deleted session for January 26, 1981 just previous. That one concerns Jane’s fear of the spontaneous self, and how she regarded her immobility as a form of protection.

(Sue Watkins has offered to help with the mail, but I don’t know what to do —guess I’m afraid that once it’s out of our house and hands the situation would turn into a mess. I also don’t want to give up physical possession of the letters, I notice. One option we’ve considered is having a temporary postcard printed up referring to our hassles with Jane’s illness, that we can’t answer mail at this time except to say thanks, and that later we may be able to. I think that at the moment that’s our best way to go, even if it means broadcasting the fact of Jane’s troubles. At least the replies would be from us....)