“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I worked on Dreams this morning. The day was cold — about 22 — when I left for 330 at 12:30. I’d just turned Jane when the phone rang. It was someone called Danny Olson, from a small town in Missouri. He’d sent some home-canned jars of fruits and vegetables at Christmas time; for the past year he’d also written a string of long letters signed “me,” meaning I couldn’t answer him to say thanks for the stuff. He’d done the same thing the Christmas before last, also.

(I also ended up with familiar feelings — to the effect that it’s impossible for Jane and I to ever live up to the fantasy pictures others may build up of us. I’m quite aware of the contradictions in our own behavior, too, as I told Jane after the half-hour conversation was over: We put our work out into the arena where it’s available to anyone, and hope they’ll pay attention to it. Then when they do, sometimes it turns us off.

(People’s reactions are too varied, I’ve learned, for us to expect them to behave as we want them to. We must be afraid of that. But I wasn’t pleased when Danny exclaimed, “Damn you, Rob, I want you to be as open with me as I am with you.” He quite forgot that he shouldn’t project his own feelings upon someone else who could be quite different. It made me wonder, as I drove home, what some people did before they came across the Seth material, or my own thinking. Who did they emulate then — how did they fill their lives, with what heroes and heroines? One thing is certain: They didn’t write books or develop an original philosophy of their own. They’re quite content to leap upon the work of others, and to get mad at them because they — meaning Jane and me — don’t react the way we’re supposed to. They also forget, or don’t understand, that being the way we are led to the creation of our work. If we were different people, the work would be different — or might not exist at all.