“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At about 4 PM I quit work, and began to prepare for my nap. I wanted Jane to lie down also, since she’d sat in her chair since about 7:30 this morning. She hadn’t even gone to the john—the same behavior she showed last Saturday, when a session had been held that night. Now Jane told me however, that she was feeling “panicky.” She’d been dozing in the chair and woke up feeling that way. It got worse. I could see that she had no intention of lying down. “God, I’m scared,” she said several times, but couldn’t say why she felt that way, at first. Then she said she thought her fright was connected to her fear of abandonment as a child—and that she would finally make life so miserable for me that I’d leave her.

(I had several rather grim questions that had grown out of recent sessions—obvious ones—and could have easily come up with others. A primary one was why Jane’s personality would continue behavior that could bring on the threat of abandonment, as she saw it—the symptoms—if she had such a fear of that possibility. I saw this as very contradictory. Another question was why her overall personality would continue behavior that could conceivably bring about the eventual demise of the physical body—and thus the death of those very portions of the personality that were causing all the trouble, and had been for years. This didn’t make sense to me, in ordinary terms.

(“Is it the sinful self that’s doing this?” I asked. “Why hasn’t it learned better by now? I can’t think of anything in the world that’s worth it—literally.” I said a lot more. It all sounded good, but would have little effect, I thought, since it hadn’t in years past. The self-destructive behavior was much more advanced now, though, and I could only hope and trust that my dear wife’s feelings of panic were an attempt on her personality’s part to at least discharge some of the dangerous emotional charge that must have accumulated over the years, while being repressed. This would be much preferred instead of a projection of fear into the future, I said. If this were the case, the feelings of panic were a good sign, and could be quite helpful. But I was as baffled as ever, I said, that the personality would put the poor body in such a position that it couldn’t be at peace either sitting up or laying down. It all seemed to be so self-defeating that I had trouble visualizing what other portions of the personality might be getting out of it.

(Jane felt better after supper. During her upset she’d mentioned going back to Sayre to live several times, “where we started out.” I didn’t think she wished to be 26 years old again, but I also didn’t know what the move might do for us now—that is, as far as helping restore her health went. I agreed that it could help, though. I must admit that if I’d had to guess at any upcoming major changes in our lives, moving back to Sayre would have been the last on the list. We haven’t even been there for three years.

(By 9:15 I began wondering if we’d have a session. Jane had finished her cigarette but hadn’t taken off her glasses yet. I fed the cats and put them in the cellar. [Billy had caught a mouse in my writing room this afternoon.] “I’m just waiting,” Jane said, half-dozing. I thought she was probably tired from this afternoon’s upset, and also encountering resistance to the session. As I’ve mentioned recently before, the fear itself could have by now—must have—acquired a life of its own, after all of those years, and it would as an entity resist being dispensed with, or transformed. If only Jane could understand that she had nothing to fear by way of abandonment from me, I thought. I repeat that statement here, again.