“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This morning Jane slept until noon again, as she’d done last Monday. She slept well until 2:30 AM, but had a rough night from then on, often sore, and tossing and turning.

(After I got up and started painting, she began to experience another series of very uncomfortable waves of panic in her sleep, combined with her aching body. They were “somewhat less” than those of last Monday, but still powerful. I often debated about waking her when she began to cry or whimper in her sleep. These were because of her physical discomfort, she said later.

(Jane had no questions for Seth. I told her I had lots of them, but had been refraining from asking them for the most part until we see what we can learn from the material. Some are personal, some more theoretical and/or general. I haven’t written down any of them.

(Now I did mention to Jane perhaps the overriding question I have, and have often puzzled about: the intensity of her personality’s response to the idea of the Sinful Self. Though, as I said, I didn’t think of her Sinful Self as something entirely separate from other portions of her personality, but as a part of them. Why didn’t the “Sinful Self” get the message that it’s gone too far, and back off at least somewhat so that the whole personality had room to breathe—to begin physical recovery, in other words? Its actions, as they are, are clearly self-defeating. There are many fascinating but serious questions here. Jane agreed.

(I said that I was quite aware that Seth had recently said that all actions are eventually redeemed—but what about in the meantime? How does one live until that happens? As I discussed the question Jane said she began to feel Seth around. I certainly hadn’t expected him to go into the question tonight; in fact, I’d come very close to not mentioning it at all at this time.)

The child at such a time for one thing is not in the situation to do conflict with belief systems—it is too young and dependent. The belief systems can be like blocks, which are used and then later changed or replaced, but there is a kind of (underlined) bonding of the childhood self with those ideas it takes from its parents.

There were all kinds of aids available: indulgences, litanies, rosaries and so forth. When Ruburt left that system intellectually some of the old bonding power remained, the emotional glue, but he no longer believed in the indulgences, the sacraments and so forth, so the Sinful Self was left fairly isolated, still believing to some extent that to “be good” it must be bad, but without the releases of guilt once provided by churchly help and belief.

(Long pause at 8:46.) Give us a moment.... Science provided no such releases, of course, for it looked upon all such values to begin with as meaningless, including the entire concept of the soul. For some time there was no direct challenge, however, made to the Sinful Self once Ruburt left the church. His creative abilities were growing and developing, his concepts enlarging, but he was for some time so convinced of science’s viewpoint that the ideas of the Sinful Self were looked upon as unworthy and superstitious. He was allied with rationalism instead. Many issues therefore remained unresolved, lying there unchallenged. When his creative abilities found contemporary scientific thought also too narrow, however, and his natural intuitions had led him toward a new framework—one that, again, introduced values having to do with the nature of consciousness, or soul—then the new ideas began to conflict directly with the old buried ones, particularly those that had to do with the conflicts between creative expression, the church, and “forbidden knowledge.” To go ahead creatively, forming new versions of a spiritual reality, to state that man and his impulses were good, brought him finally into direct conflict with the old beliefs of the Sinful Self, whose value system was based upon the idea that the self was indeed sinful, not to be trusted.

(9:00.) His Sinful Self therefore tried to restate its position in order to right the situation, but its reasoning, again, was that a sense of grace was dependent upon the prior admission of a sinful reality. You have a divided self, of course, in that regard, operationally speaking, and this happens often in your society. The result is repression of one kind or another. The material I gave last night gives valuable information as to how to communicate with that portion of the personality, and bring it up to date, for example.

You are beginning to approach it. The Sinful Self does not identify as well with the creative abilities, for it does not trust them. In that regard a light hand is the best policy, but the changeover is approaching.

(“I do have another one, but you can discuss it later. It concerns Ruburt’s mother, and her own intensity of reaction.”)