“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After last night’s session I was so upset I couldn’t talk about it, nor did Jane ask me anything about the contents of the session. I was upset because I felt it was all true, and because I’d felt like interrupting constantly as Seth was giving his material. I wanted to protest, to agree, and to disagree most vehemently. I also couldn’t see how we were going to get through these difficult moments.

(So this morning, Tuesday, I also carried her to the toilet seat, and once more she was quite relieved. She’d also slept well. We spent most of the morning working with the pendulum, and this seemed to help, and brought us some fresh information. A few of the answers were surprising. We have started a notebook for the pendulum material. I should add that Monday night’s session had actually begun to give us glimmers of hope, and that this buoyed-up feeling had begun to manifest itself this morning, whereas yesterday we’d felt pretty hopeless about the situation. This morning Jane also mentioned that she had the idea of trying to walk with the typing table —something she hasn’t done since last November 16, 1980, by the way—so I got it out. She tried several times to get to her feet; she almost made it, but couldn’t quite. She wants me to get the table for her each day now until she is able to walk with it in the old way. An excellent idea.

Your love is large enough for each other to withstand any natural expression of aggression or resentment on either of your parts, as mentioned earlier. Because of Ruburt’s background (long pause), he feared abandonment often. It seemed to him that he did not offer what most men expected of women, so that if he wanted a good lifelong companion he had to tread lightly. He felt that many of his own characteristics were considered disadvantageous in a man-woman relationship.

(I should take a moment here to note that Seth has said this before, and that Jane has referred to it also. I for one haven’t had any such feelings, since from the very beginning of our relationship I’ve always felt certain that in Jane I’d found the ideal mate—an achievement I’ve considered most fortunate, one I’d hardly dared dream I’d manage to do. Looking back, our meeting and getting together seemed the most natural and inevitable things in the world; how could I improve upon that? I’ve always been intensely proud of Jane’s achievements and abilities, and glad to be able to participate in them to whatever degree. The thing that has left me distraught, nearly broken-hearted, is to see her in such a progressively poor physical situation as the years have passed. Especially devastating is this when the material explains very clearly that things don’t have to be that way. No wonder I say to her that we’ve paid too high a price for our achievements. I want to see her able to manipulate like other people, of course, and to have her achievements also; that things haven’t worked out that way so far can’t but help have a profound effect upon my feelings, hers, and our relationship, which I’ve always taken absolutely as being as solid and enduring as the elements.)

In your cases, you both began to concentrate upon the negative elements. It is not merely that you brought some elements, say, to consciousness, but that they led the field of your attention. This applies to you, Joseph, as well as Ruburt: what would happen if Ruburt got worse? How would you protect yourself, or your time? Any anger that you felt toward Ruburt in the present was then exaggerated by this negatively imagined future, so that you became angrier.

The strain is a result of your own attitudes, of course—of a burden being applied that should or need not be. It seems there is nothing wrong with your back. It is your attitude that hurts. And that also speaks to Ruburt to express your own feelings: you cannot depend on me to do this all the time. The same statement was made when you carried Ruburt to the car. In exaggerated form, Ruburt makes the same statement of his own with his own symptoms—that is, they also express attitudes. Theoretically, your love alone could sweep the discomfort away, so that Ruburt felt as light as a feather. They express your reluctance, of course, and outrage against the situation.