“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I did dwell upon the fact that Seth—and Jane—have yet to go into the main question I’ve asked several times since she came home from the hospital: the current attitude and role of her sinful self. To me, I said, the sinful self is more active and domineering than ever before, and after all we thought we’d learned over the years. It rules her life more than ever before, since this year she became sicker than ever before. I still wanted to know why that portion of the personality was so blind to the harm it was wreaking—why it didn’t understand even in its own terms that its devastation was threatening greatly the very security and protection it has said it wanted. How could it preserve itself that way? I asked.

(Jane grew very unhappy as I talked, and I grew angry, as before—but we’d covered all the same ground often. I said I thought both she and Seth had avoided my questions about the sinful self, which I saw as part of the sinful self’s power to cover up issues it didn’t want to face, or considered threatening.

(At my suggestion she’d called Mike Appel, who wants to record Seth and Sumari. Since the implications here might involve success, I said as we talked, perhaps that too had alerted the sinful self to become more protective, although her current state had begun hours before I suggested the call. He is going to send her some suggestions for possible ways to go re recording material.

(8:02.) I am trying to give you some overall ahead-of-time suggestions as to how to deal with the material as you get it, because your approach can be quite vital. The “sinful-self syndrome” (long pause) was activated or heightened or highlighted in the last year or so in particular as you saw yourselves in a crisis situation (long pause), and to one extent or another Ruburt felt that he would be forced to ask for medical help if he did not further help himself.

The nuances of such a statement as I have just made are many. For now, however, I simply want to make the point that additional stress was added to the situation. A struggle for survival, it seemed, came more immediately closer, particularly in the light of the hospital situation. After his return home, the sinful self was threatened even further, it felt.

(Very long pause at 8:20.) I want to go back in terms of continuity, and yet also for tonight’s purposes I want to stress the power of love’s expression in automatically combating such negative situations. That is, the expression of love automatically reassures the sinful self that it is indeed not sinful (a statement that at once I found hard to believe, considering its past and recent actions).

(8:31 PM. The end was abrupt. I felt so many emotions churning within me that I wondered just how I was supposed to express all of this love amid all of them. Was I supposed to just rise above all of them and forget everything else, or what? Before the session I’d told Jane that I’d always felt that in our relationship my own contributions were doomed to fall short of what she wanted and expected from me —that I’d always felt I couldn’t give all she needed from a marriage partner. Those early feelings are still true to me, and now they’re wound up with my more recent feelings that it seems to be up to me to struggle to try to save Jane from herself. An impossible task, of course, but one I’m acutely aware of these days. One small example: As usual, if it wasn’t for my own demands and suggestions, this session wouldn’t even exist—whereas to my way of thinking Jane should have demanded to have it on her own. I’d have been amazed had she done so, but glad to comply. My feeling here has always been that it’s my doing that we have any private material at all—that she’s always avoided it. In present terms I think that situation is just another example of the workings of the sinful self —to avoid challenge, to have its own way at all costs.

(Perhaps, I thought as I wrote these notes, I’d become badly conditioned over the last 15 years, so beset by constant worry and frustration that a “simple thing” like the expression of love became lost somewhere amid all the rubble. There was no doubt the session left me as frustrated and bitter as ever, but at least I had managed to get an admission that the sinful self was still highly active. I couldn’t believe that after all this time and effort over the years, we were back to square one, trying to figure it all out. I have strong doubts that we ever will.

(I was also beset by obvious contradictions in the material. Seth had very recently said that Jane’s skin wouldn’t break down, for instance, yet here within the last week a large open raw area has appeared on her buttock, her right one—presumably because she usually leans to the right when sitting, putting additional pressure on that side and bottom. When I suggested she sit leaning more to her left, she didn’t understand what I meant. This in turn reminded me of something I’ve often noticed—that she seems to have lost that vital sense of how to manipulate her own physical body in its own best interests. I have extra athletic ability, I know, but I used to think that such self-preserving knowledge was inherent in everyone. To me, her opacity toward her fantastic abuse of her own body speaks loudly and clearly of the dominance of the sinful self—the willingness to use the body for its own ends, regardless of the consequences, even if those consequences ultimately are self-defeating.)