“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.