“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.

(Jane began crying after I called her this noon, as she felt the waves of panic sweep through her, and she continued to cry for some little while. She said the feelings didn’t seem to be related to any specific events that she could remember. They were very unpleasant—frightening—and we thought that they were supposed to be therapeutic in nature, in line with Seth’s recent material. Had she succeeded in repressing them, as she had done in the past, more trouble would have presumably erupted at a later time.

(Debbie Janney visited unannounced for an hour after supper—all the time Jane would give her—hence the later start for the session. She also missed a chance to meet the Weissenbuehlers from Big Flats, whom we saw last Friday night, since DJ was in Washington, DC over the weekend.

(Jane wanted Seth to discuss her panic feelings tonight, although she didn’t seem overly enthusiastic about a session either. When Debbie showed up and the time approached 9 PM, I thought Jane might choose to pass up the session after all. “It’s important, though,” I said to her when Debbie was out of the room for a moment. Jane agreed, saying DJ was ready to leave, and we held the session after all.)

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.

(Long pause.) He was also expected to be an excellent businesswoman, a fine artist, an extrovertish personality, to shine in any company, an introvert capable of greater spiritual exertion. He expected too much of himself. At the same time, of course, to some extent he blocked his own natural motion (underlined), which followed directly from his own motivations and abilities, his own desires and instincts.

(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.

(Long pause at 10:18.) Ruburt felt that fears were beneath him—or should be beneath him. He felt that you also expected him to cast aside such feelings, particularly if they did not correspond with your own. This is a time of clearing the board. You live physically in present time, so it is the body that takes the brunt of such difficulty. (Long pause.) It always tries to right itself, but it must also work within the effective overall pattern of beliefs and expectations.

(10:36.) A note to Frank Longwell, by the way—that all in all he is handling the events of his life well at this time. It will help if he trusts that such is the case, so that self-doubts are minimized. It will also help if he remembers what he likes to do and enjoys doing, as opposed to what he thinks he should do in the line of business.