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 I’d known she was brooding—that was obvious—and withdrawn.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

(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.

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 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.

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.

(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.)