“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane surprised me at supper time by saying she felt Seth around and wanted to have a session. “Sometimes when we’re supposed to have a session I don’t feel him at all,” she said. “Other times, like now, I do, so....”

(Jane has felt fairly well today. She still sleeps pretty good most of the time. We had the Weissenbuehlers visit last night; this afternoon Eve Longwell and daughter Jeanie visited, and we played on the VTR quite a bit of footage from the tapes we’ve made. Jane still has walking difficulties getting from her chairs to the john or bed, and her arms continue to be very uncomfortable.)

Now Ruburt had only one parent available most of the time (long pause), and he did not feel secure in that relationship—a situation chosen ahead of time, now. There is greater leeway in the nature of such bondings. There are also periods in people’s lives, rhythmic times, when the self seeks to cast off certain such bindings for the pursuit and acceptance of still further data and knowledge.

In any case the “troublesome” material remained (long pause), relatively inactive more or less—unless and until certain situations arose, unless and until his curiosity and ability led him to actively challenge those ideas while also in a situation where the natural fear of abandonment might be implied or suggested. The individual’s impetus is toward growth, development and understanding. These, again, these seemed to imply a matrix for some kind of safety. At certain points, then, the assimilation of new information is so qualifiedly different from the original belief structure that in order to assimilate it the personality is left for a time between belief systems.

The point at which such a situation happens is of course internal, and it may or may not have anything to do with the quality of material, but with its nature. Each society—or each system of knowledge, for that matter—has its own taboos built in, and most of these imply abandonment by the community. A firm bonding with the parent ideally implies however that the child will not be abandoned, despite for example parental anger at any given time. Now remember that Ruburt’s mother used words like “I hereby disown you,” or “You are hereby disinherited,” or “I consider you no longer my daughter.” Such a situation increased Ruburt’s sense of not being safe, of course, and yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for he did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as he might otherwise.

The time would come, however, when the old bondings had to be encountered, for they simply could not hold the newer frameworks of understanding which were larger than they were. The ideas presented by the so-called Sinful Self represent several layers of activity, then, that should be understood as represented. Some of the most troublesome aspects of one’s belief structures are shared by millions in your society, and by certain levels of Ruburt’s own personality, where they exist with varying strengths. The personality is now trying to assimilate a greater framework to become bonded to a higher sequence of knowledge.

Now the body has suffered its difficulties, and there is no way out of it except to understand that there are difficulties of growth, regrettable at certain levels in particular—but growing pains nevertheless, extending over a period of time, tensions resulting over a person’s natural tendencies toward value fulfillment and knowledge.