“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 I’d known she was brooding—that was obvious—and withdrawn.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.

(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.

(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.

(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.

(To me this is like someone saying, “If you don’t love me I’ll get sick and stay sick.”)

(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 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—”

(She talked about how a strong part of me had served as a catalyst in her own work and love, but this only made me wonder how I was to utilize those qualities in our relationship and work while ignoring all those other factors—mostly negative ones—that seemed to operate all the time.

(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.)