“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This afternoon Jane told me that she felt “panicky.” I’d known she was brooding—that was obvious—and withdrawn. She hadn’t even gone to the john since getting up around 8 AM—another form of withdrawal, I thought, once I gave it some thought.

(She wasn’t too clear as to what she was panicky about, but as we talked I began to understand that she was re-experiencing the same round of fears that she had many times in the past, and that many of these private sessions have been devoted to over the years: her mother, her need for love, her fears of abandonment, the conflicts involving success and the psychic work, our relationship, and so forth, if anything’s left. I was certainly upset and irritated, for it seemed nothing new would come out of it all. I couldn’t help feeling that that was the way we were fated to live out our lives—that we’d picked those paths as a matter of choice years ago. We’d fallen so far away from a “normal” physical routine of living and motion that I could hardly recall what our lives had once been like. Nor, now, could I imagine Jane any other way, let alone allowing herself to recover enough to walk, say.

(Nor did I say everything I thought, although I said plenty. There wasn’t anything new in any of it. I did ask Jane if she was aware of how a person could use a chronic illness to dominate another, to forestall rejection, and so forth, and she said she did. It’s a thought I’ve had often, but haven’t voiced. Nor has Seth, as far as I can recall. But it embodies massive contradictions, of course, for the very illness sets up strains in the relationship that wouldn’t even exist were the illness not present. This is one of the facets of the whole symptom business that has always puzzled me no end.

(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.

(I made an effort to reassure Jane at the end of our talk, by telling her I loved her and that I was going to be with her no matter what happened. Throughout her voice had carried a very pronounced tremor, as it does now whenever she becomes upset. She was frightened, and to me displayed little trust in her body, and not much in anything else.

(See the attached copy of my letter to Hal Williams. Jane’s middle finger on her left hand continues to slowly mend itself, and the blueness in the little finger on the same hand has gotten no darker. It too looks a little better. I’m sure there is more of a story involving the fingers than we have yet learned. Yesterday—Sunday evening, Dr. Kardon called to ask how Jane was, and to tell us she’d be out of town for a week. I didn’t mention the little finger, in line with Seth’s and Jane’s own ideas as given recently. We asked about upping the thyroid medication, and Dr. K said it couldn’t be done without a blood test. She said she’d arrange for that here at the house when she returned to town next week. Jane has been on the 100 mcg dosage only for two weeks.

(After supper Jane said she felt “loads of material from Seth” about our discussion this afternoon, and that it would take up not one but many sessions. I said I was ready, while thinking that here we go again. We sat at the card table in the living room. “It’s weird,” Jane said, “really weird....I was aware of those lapses again as soon as I said I’d have a session, and I wasn’t before. That stops me.” She referred to her dozing after we’d eaten.

(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.

(I told Jane the session made me furious. “See, that’s what I mean,” she said, half crying. “I feel so dumb, and now you’ll yell at me—”

(“I didn’t yell at you,” I said. Jane continued to talk sporadically, and I ended up finally saying that I’d better not continue, for fear that I would go too far, so strong were my feelings at the moment. I knew that as they had in the past, the feelings would moderate, and that we’d continue to struggle along.

(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.)