“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.

(Our difficulties made themselves known with a vengeance when I pushed Jane into the bathroom in her chair after 10:30 PM: because for the first time, she failed to be able to get up from her seat on the john, and back to her chair as I stood waiting. She tried twice, but her feet and legs just wouldn’t support her, much less navigate well enough for her to walk. She said several times that she was frightened. I couldn’t reach her to help from the other side of the chair, because of our bathroom’s architecture. The ultimate fear had manifested itself, then: Jane was no longer able to maneuver in the bathroom. What now?

(I stood waiting many minutes while Jane struggled to get up. I was speechless once again, hardly able to sort out the thoughts and feelings churning in my head. When Jane finally admitted she couldn’t make it, I went back out to the kitchen to do the dishes and close up the house for the night. The wait hadn’t helped; she still sat waiting on the toilet. I lost my patience and my temper as I stood beside her, threatening to leave her sitting there all night while I went to bed. My own fears left me seeing visions of a drastically changed relationship between us, and a different life-style, one probably considerably less private if she needed nursing care, say, “What are you trying to do to me?” I demanded, and so forth. “Please don’t holler at me now,” Jane said. “Do it later....”

(Eventually, and very reluctantly, since I considered it a sign of a major failure, I ended up carrying her physically from the john to her chair—rather awkwardly but not with as much trouble as I’d anticipated, yet also feeling a bit of a strain in my lower back. I am still aware of a muscular sensation there, although I slept well. Jane was much relieved that I could move her, and surprised, but I had my doubts about being able to do that on a longer-term basis: I dared not endanger my own physical condition lest I be unable to take care of her otherwise, regardless of how poorly or with what ill grace I might do that.

(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.

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.

(9:06 PM. Jane had done well. The family of raccoons in the fireplace behind me had been quite active and sometimes noisy during the session. I told Jane the session was very good, and she sighed with relief. I said it gave me a surge of hope, and that I hoped it would affect her the same way when I read it to her this evening, which I now proceeded to do. She agreed when she’d heard it, though it was more difficult to listen to the session than to read it at leisure.