“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(For last night had been one of her most uncomfortable yet. She woke me up crying at 4 AM, with flashing, shooting sensations in her right leg, from the hip all the way down to the foot. “By the time it reaches the foot, it almost feels good,” she said. She’d taken Bufferin but it hadn’t seemed to help much. She has had similar sensations in recent days—see the chronology for the weekend as listed below—but last night they were steadier and more intense. Jane also had another series of dreams, but unfortunately could remember hardly anything of them. I rubbed her legs for half an hour, then she fell asleep. In fact, she was snoring before I could get back to sleep myself.

(Frank, incidentally, had brought a ladder so he could get upon the roof to look down our chimney in an effort to see what creatures were causing the rumpus in the fireplace above the damper. With my flashlight, he glimpsed a medium-sized coon, but couldn’t tell if it was male or female, or whether it had young. He returned at 5 PM to drop a heavy rope down the chimney in the hope the raccoon might climb out. But then, I thought, it must be getting in and out by itself all along, for at least three weeks now, and I was sure that late at night I could hear more than one voice chattering above the damper. It certainly seemed that parents were feeding the young.)

(Frank, also, has never come across another case like Jane’s, from the days he was a chiropractor until now. He said that doctors would have trouble diagnosing her symptoms. If memory serves, Seth said a long time ago that Jane did not have arthritis, but for her own reasons was mimicking her mother’s disease. Jane is really bothered, though, and we trust that Seth was correct in the last session when he said this phase of Jane’s symptoms would soon pass.

(Saturday morning, April 25: When we went to bed, Jane dreamed about her mother and about writing about her life with Walt. She has an unpleasant experience involving her mother as we got into bed, but I reassured her and she slept well. She had a good day after I suggested she try not to concentrate upon her symptoms.

(Then before supper on Saturday she began to feel new, very strange sensations: painful in the hip, but much more pleasant by the time they reached the foot. Sometimes she made nearly involuntary quick movements of the leg or foot. We thought this added feeling of sensation might be the result of the last couple of sessions especially. Walter Zeh was her first husband.

(Sunday, April 26: After breakfast at 11:30—for Jane—I found her sitting with her legs propped up on a chair. The same sensations were running painfully down her right leg from the hip—but again, “they feel good by the time they reach my toes.”

(“Well, I still feel far from up to doing much,” Jane said as we waited tonight at 8:15, “but there’s no doubt about it, things are still going on. That sensation is now right here”—she pointed to the top of her right knee—“and goes on down into the ankle.” She’d also noticed new sensation on the top of her right foot, an area she’d been quite unaware of for a long time.

(“I assume I can have a session, but beyond a certain point it’s too hard.” she said—and winced as another shooting sensation “got me right in the knee. But I vaguely feel him around....”

(Once again she sat on the couch, and I sat in her chair facing her across the coffee table—with behind me, the closed-off fireplace. Up beyond the damper, I could easily hear our raccoon guests busily chattering away: perhaps it was feeding time, their noise was loud, now—a sure sign of growing things, I thought. I thought the racket might disturb Jane going into trance, but such wasn’t the case.)

(Pause at 8:33.) Now give us a moment.... The sensations do portray beneficial change, and are stimulators. Now. A small segment this evening on television gave you a picture of the confused activity that can take place in exaggerated situations—the segment dealing with the abused children, for there you have parents reacting in the worst possible way to the religious dictums as interpreted by “Sinful Selves.” (I’d thought of that at the time. but didn’t mention it to Jane.)

(All of a sudden the noises from the fireplace were so loud and intimate that I thought that somehow the raccoons had managed to get past the closed damper and were behind the screen in the fireplace itself, but Jane continued as usual in trance.)

(“Nope.” I had lots of questions, but thought Jane needed rest.)

(9:00 PM. Jane’s delivery had been good. I mentioned in a fairly mild way some of the questions I had for Seth, saying I didn’t want to pass judgment too quickly on a given concept or idea like the Sinful Self. “My feelings toward the Sinful Self aren’t very friendly,” I said, “but I don’t want to be too hostile or I might create other problems....” I also wanted time to reread the most recent sessions particularly, for I think they contain the best material for us at this time. And again, I said to Jane, why had it taken us so long to get to this point? The years pass.