“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We haven’t had a session for three weeks now. To my mind, our situation has steadily deteriorated. I think it came to a head yesterday, when I finally realized that for the last few days Jane had cut down her visits to the bathroom to just two times a day—upon arising, and before going to bed. Her reason for this, when I questioned her, was that “it hurts to move. But I’m working on it.”

(We’ve had several of our famous discussions since the last session on March 25. I feel caught in contradictions—for if Jane’s new feelings in her hips and legs are signs of new muscular activity, as she thinks, and as Frank Longwell agrees, that’s good news; yet those same feelings, her acute and prolonged bodily discomfort, her aches and pains, have caused her to become almost totally inactive. As I wrote in question 13 some weeks ago now, she has surrendered just about all activity except that involved with getting up and lying down, eating, going to the bathroom on a very limited basis, and puttering about in her breezeway writing room for an hour or so on occasion. She’s managed to get her poetry book out to Prentice, and now is not at work on any writing. She’s even let go writing up her recent dream material, some of which has been excellent, with apparent precognitive information of a positive nature.

Now—

Your feelings presently that Ruburt is on the brink of being bedridden are —mainly now—the results of negative conditioning—they seem very realistic. Certainly the evidence seems (underlined) to give those feelings at least some support. They are the end result of a recent concentration upon the problem. And in this case you both fell into their sway at the same time.

(“Why has he responded to his feeling—how did you put it?” I asked as I rummaged through the session’s earlier pages, which I’d thrown on the floor beside the chair—“stalled, by giving up his physical mobility even more so now? I’m terribly concerned about all of this. I don’t understand why he can’t walk inside his own house, at least, where it’s safe. The whole thing has become very threatening.”

(Jane remembered my talking to Seth—the longest exchange I’d had with him for years. She explained that in trance she was aware of my questions “in the back of her mind,” and of Seth answering them, and that in a way the questions would get in the way of what Seth was trying to say; they could interrupt too deeply; I’d known this from a few infrequent, much earlier, experiences in the sessions, and had often thought that if too persistent the questions could bring her out of trance. But now I felt that we had to do something drastic to make a start, and that we had achieved something.

(“Well, I know I’m right.” I said. “I’ve seen the same situation come up many times in the past, and let it go, but we can’t do that now....” And I didn’t even get to mention the doctor-hospital option to Seth. I did tell Jane I understood what Frank Longwell was doing, and appreciated his efforts to help, so generously given. But I added that FL could massage her legs “till doomsday,” and it would do little good until we came to terms with the basic causes behind the symptoms.