“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We haven’t held a session since last Tuesday evening. We’ve been very tired, even exhausted; I’ve been sleeping in the afternoons with Jane. She’s been doing very well with the new chair in the bathroom, and is now going to the john three times a day. [When I remarked that I’d like to see her up her trips to four times a day, she at once became defensive, so I cooled it.] I followed her advice and sprayed the linoleum-covered chair seat with furniture polish to make it more slippery, so that she can more easily slide sideways from the chair onto the couch or john. “A great idea,” I told Frank Longwell yesterday noon.

(I’ve reread the last session to Jane from my notes each morning since it was held. The question I asked at its end—about what effects my opinions of Prentice-Hall might have had on Jane over the years—has been on my mind ever since I asked it, and Seth replied that it was “too big a subject” to go into at once. Tonight I explained to Jane after supper that I now believed many of my opinions were taken by her as negative personal opinions about her work and efforts—which meant, I added, that they must have contributed at least substantially to her symptoms over the years.

(Jane tried to half-heartedly deny this, without really considering the question, I thought—not that I wanted her to to any great degree before Seth got into it. He’s mentioned the subject occasionally, of course. But I told Jane that now I’d need advice on how to handle my reactions to Prentice-Hall so as not to alarm her further.

(Speaking of Prentice-Hall, today Jane received her first copy of God of Jane—a handsome-looking volume that I hope does well as the years pass. We’d been wondering if Prentice-Hall was going to stick to its schedule in bringing the book out early in June, and lo the book arrived without any fanfare at all. I told Jane I think it’s her best book yet.

(This afternoon, when I returned from running errands—paying state and federal taxes, etc.—Jane told me that she was having all kinds of “weird things” happening in her back and legs, as though various portions of her anatomy were loosening at uneven rates. Her balance and double vision were affected too. We slept together during a nap. I woke up with my stomach bothering me, and Jane, half crying, with a continuing of the strange, intensified feelings of uncontrolled motion/extra-slow motion combined and manifested in her back and legs. She worried about not being able to get from the bed to the chair to the john, but did well nevertheless.

(Yet she found the changes frightening, although she kept in mind Seth’s material that the fright was not to be feared but understood as expressing buried fears, to put it simply. When she called me for the session at 8:30, she showed me how she has picked up unaccustomed movement in her legs: She could raise her legs several inches higher—the right one the easiest—than she’d been able to do this morning; obvious signs that the changes were beneficial. Yet she couldn’t move her right leg to the side at all—“There’s no action there at all,” she said, “as though something’s blocking it.” I said it meant other groups of big muscles were tightened in order to help support her while the first groups were rejuvenating themselves in safety. I also said that I thought the publication of God of Jane at last had served as a stimulus for the changes. I looked forward to more physical improvements for her.

(Now I explained to Jane what I considered to be “a gorgeous little illustration” of how unconscious hassles can go on in the psyche quite unsuspected by the conscious mind as the cause for physical difficulties: As stated, when I woke up this afternoon my stomach hurt. It’s been bothering me for the last few days, for no apparent reason; looking back, probably since Jack Joyce visited a few days ago about our making estimated tax payments to NY State. Interestingly enough, though, I made no such conscious connection until I began writing these notes. Then it came to consciousness: of course. Today I paid estimated federal and NYS taxes, and had planned to do so since seeing Jack. At once I checked with the pendulum—and got a great big yes —that was why my stomach had been acting up. My old bugaboo had returned, but very craftily so that I hadn’t been aware of it. I’d thought I’d managed to dismiss concerns about taxes, and actually have succeeded in doing so to a large degree—witness my physical well-being when paying taxes last April 15, for example. “Yet,” I said to Jane, “it shows how conflicts can keep going underground if you don’t watch it, and can be very damaging in the long run....”

(So as we waited for the session I told Jane that I didn’t know which to ask Seth to talk about—my question from last session, or the arrival of God of Jane and her new physical changes.)

(10:01 PM. Jane’s delivery had marched right along....)