“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This session came about quite unexpectedly just before midnight, after we’d had company—the Leahys from the end of Pinnacle Road; Jane had called them at supper time this evening and asked them to visit us. They left at about 11:30 PM. I then told Jane that I’d been feeling poorly all week—to such an extent, even, that I’d wondered if I was developing an ulcer. But my distress was also more general than that, so I felt other things were involved. I’m including a few notes here to remind myself of this session’s context when I reread it in later times.

(We’d achieved some good success with our mutual pendulum suggestions for Jane, twice daily, over the past several weeks. Early this week, however, I began to feel very much out of sorts; I let the pendulum sessions go as far as Jane was concerned. At the same time my own distress physically led me to ask my own pendulum questions. As usual, I discovered that the pendulum is a very reliable tool for me. I also found out, though, that this time the pendulum gave me such a variety of responses —different ones each day, practically—that at first I didn’t know how much stock to put in its answers. For my ill feelings continued. The pendulum told me I was worrying about everything from taking too long in producing The “Unknown” Reality to stewing about spending too much time painting, to worrying about my own seeming lack of income. I also wondered if we were really getting anywhere using it to help Jane. In spite of what we had achieved there, she wasn’t walking better yet, etc.

(However, by late in the week I could see patterns emerging through my use of the pendulum, all concerning related feelings, doubts, etc., and was reassured that I was on the way to uncovering the source of my physical distress. My stomach felt somewhat better; Other pains in my body, while persisting, didn’t concern me so much. At the same time, through it all I could eat what I wanted, drink, etc., and the painting was going very well. I have, in regard to the latter, solved several challenges with painting—from the time we moved to Pinnacle Road—and now feel that I have a clear road there as to how I want to do things into the indefinite future, etc. This in itself has been a great boon; I have good confidence there; many problems have been resolved.

There is nothing physically wrong with you, and yet you have been feeling distress. You have been experiencing this disquiet just as Ruburt has begun to show some steady signs of improvement. To some extent Ruburt’s symptoms served to keep the unsafe world at bay; while this was his private construction, you also took advantage of it, in that at least it served certain purposes.

[...] If you firmly believe that certain items in a diet will cause you distress, then of course they will—and avoiding the same items will bring relief. [...]

[...] Or they must become more and more rigorous in following it, or they may discover that more and more foods seem to cause their distress. [...]

[...] Today when Seth mentioned it she hadn’t seem distressed, though, so perhaps that memory can be put to good constructive use by us now.)

The problem is obviously distressing, but help is not to be found by discussing its distressing aspects. [...]

[...] On my way home at 7:10 p.m., I wished I had, and realized that I hadn’t been much help to her at a time of pretty obvious distress. [...]

[...] Her voice was somewhat distressed, and with many pauses, but okay all in all. [...]

[...] This trying-too-hard has caused him some distress.

[...] Ruburt was distressed—not only by the individual’s situation, but by the philosophic implications. [...]

If your conscious beliefs are causing you great distress, countering beneficial beliefs may be received from this source. [...]

(Long pause.) While you and Ruburt embark upon a resolved path of getting to the bottom of Ruburt’s difficulties, it is highly important that Ruburt in particular increase his experience of pleasure, and his concentration upon it, so that pleasure can counter any other emotionally distressful feelings that may emerge along the way.

[...] It means that the cells send out messages of exaltation and happiness as well as distress, and that you react to these in various fashions at different times, according to the conditions. [...]

(Pause.) I understand Ruburt’s distress at times with the odd feelings of balance, but remember that these represent multitudinous changes and motions within the body, new positions requiring minute alterations of muscular tension that are actually highly beneficial. [...]

[...] I saw her remarks as correlating with my primary question for this evening, since Seth has told us that her feelings of distress at such times result from her mental attitudes as much, or more than, physical circumstances.

[...] You were too proud to show your defects, because in your eyes such defects are so horrendous, and Ruburt’s condition becomes the symbol for all of man’s physical distress, in your eyes.

Do the exercises in my book, The Nature of Personal Reality, to discover what conditions of a mental nature, or of psychological origin, are causing you distress. [...]

[...] Both religion and science, parents and schools, stress that idea, and it is one of the most important causes of mental alienation, spiritual and physical distress.

(I sought to reassure her, but later when I went into her study to ask about something else, I found her looking quite distressed as she sat at her typewriter. [...]

Instead see your body quite intelligently, and inform it that some of your attitudes have distressed it. [...]

[...] When you find yourself in a period of distress, it is because you do not trust your safety. [...]

The same applies if a friend becomes ill—the beliefs behind it say that you are vulnerable creatures, the victims of bodily distress that operates regardless of your wishes, and each instance of another’s illness can then be seen as proof of one’s own vulnerability. [...]