“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

(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.

In one way or another the material has indeed been given in our deleted books—but the organization of that material has often followed instead the situation that was at hand at any given time. (Long pause.) The panic Ruburt senses is of course the feeling that is behind all of his symptoms—and you must remember as we continue that such situations are not unusual in your world. Ruburt is not dumber than most people, for example.

(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 term itself is probably not a good one, though it is of course highly descriptive. The panic has to do with many issues involving Ruburt’s earlier experience, particularly with his mother and the church when he was a very young person, very determined to survive in life, and trying to learn what kinds of behavior added to or threatened that survival.

(Very long pause at 8:13, one of many.) I have most of the material we need now, but must also organize it so that it has the most therapeutic effect possible, and so that it clears Ruburt’s understanding in emotional, intuitive as well as intellectual ways. No one is at the mercy of past negative events. Ruburt, being an excellent writer, certainly does not feel at the mercy of all of those unknown, uncounted hours spent in childhood writing poetry—so it is only your frame of reference that makes the former statement appear to be true. While this material is being delivered, and while you and Ruburt are dealing with it (long pause), certain emotional aspects should come to the fore to make the affair more beneficial.

(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.

(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.)