“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane didn’t feel particularly like having a session last night, and the time just passed without our holding one.

(See the attached notes of Jane’s, concerning her experiences of April 30 and May 2. Actually, much else has taken place also, but I didn’t keep daily records and feel somewhat lost in trying to reconstruct events. This morning, for example, Jane slept until noon, and after I got up at 6:30 she had a number of recurrences of her “panic attacks.” Last night she’d slept fairly well, although at one time she sat up and wrote some notes on the Speakers’ manuscripts. The night before, she’d come up with good material about how to conclude her third Seven novel. I should add that she stayed up all day yesterday, for the first time in many days. She did take a nap late in the afternoon at the same time I lay down.

(Frank Longwell visited yesterday noon. During one of our discussions yesterday, also, I mentioned to Jane some of my own ideas about the power of the Sinful Self, according to Seth’s material. For even though it was seemingly somewhat isolated or cut off from the personality’s creative processes, as well as from many current events and ideas, still it had that power to so drastically influence the physical body. This of course implied strong connections with the body as it operated in daily physical reality. The two states almost seemed contradictory, I said to Jane, and hoped that Seth would go into that matter eventually.

Everything I have said about the Sinful Self applies. The Sinful Self is not the “villain”. It is not a case of one portion of the personality inflicting difficulties on other portions so much as you have a pattern of reactions to various forces in the personality—which to some extent end up serving certain purposes. There may be very unpleasant side effects.

Illnesses are in their way inadequate methods of solving problems. Ruburt had strong elements of personality still caught up in the beliefs of what I have called the Sinful Self. At the same time, for many reasons, he had the idea that he was expected to be not merely a well-adapted natural person, but a kind of superself, solving other people’s problems, being a public personality, a psychic performer, and so forth. There was a vast gulf between those two extremes—one that was bound to cause strain and effort and misunderstandings.

(Long pause at 9:48, one of many.) It almost dissolves in the imagined light of super-expected performance. This generates a sense of disapproval, of course. It also tends to being about a bigger division between those two images of the self. (A one-minute pause.) We want to speak more of reactions between elements of the personality, so I do not want you to settle upon one portion as the villain. At the same time, I do not want to play down the unfortunate aspects of the beliefs connected with the Sinful Self. Those aspects are at the psychological core of your civilization, and at the very heart of your organizations, whatever they are.

To some extent Ruburt’s panic is also the result of trying to live up to an impossible image, while forgetting his own personal background, and by expecting himself to behave as if that background was unimportant. (Long pause.) He was a person taught to believe that expression was somehow wrong. Despite that he became an excellent writer. He uses expression constantly. He expected himself to be a public personality—that is, he felt the responsibility to be one, as if that had always been a goal, when of course it had not been.

(A one-minute pause at 10:11.) You have always been do-it-yourselfers, so your strengths and weaknesses become quite noticeable. (Long pause.) Who can say when determination ends up in stubbornness? (Something I’ve wondered about at times.) Ruburt has been facing the feelings of panic, however, that he had buried. They may not be pleasant, but they are expressions, often enough of valid-enough questions and fears that were overlooked or pooh-poohed as insignificant or foolish in the light of this superself image, who was expected to have no doubts, no fears, only flawless performance.

That is enough for this evening. Generally speaking, however, both the physical discomfort and the panic have passed their intense periods. The idea of responsibility has hampered him. The panic-in-the-morning episodes will also begin to pass, but—they are also caused by the feeling of not being able to measure up, no matter what one does.