“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I told Jane today that when a fear is expressed, it takes its natural place in the scheme of things and no longer grows unseen. Jane at first said during our talk that she must hate many things—but it seems that hate would only be a mask for fear— hence the suggestion that instead of asking herself what she hates, a more basic question is “What do I fear?”

[...] I am far more resilient, pliable, flexible and daring then other elements of his personality, which are fear-ridden. Some of his attitudes have to do with his parents, in that he fears he could become like his father—undisciplined and slack, loose and amoral.

[...] There will be no fears of unrestrained sexuality, or not working creatively, of overidealization of me, or my work, etc. All of these ideas, I feel, evidently grow out of repressed, unexpressed fears that have built up over the years, and have been taken over, or dumped upon, the conscientious and/or creative self. [...]

[...] I learned the trouble was based on my fear that Jane wouldn’t accept, or believe in, the statement. [...]

[...] He fears for the gullibility of people, and is rightly appalled at their superstitions, as indeed you are, Joseph. [...] When your enthusiasm grew, and your trust in his abilities, then he felt that to voice any fears at all in your eyes meant that he did not trust his abilities himself.

[...] He feels that he is supposed to be an authority, telling people to go ahead, and so fear should be beneath him. They are beneath him, such fears, but unvoiced they become impediments. [...]

[...] Earlier Ruburt was afraid to say “My energy can flow freely,” for fear that would mean he would also have children. [...]

[...] Whenever a fear spontaneously comes into his mind about his work, he should voice it to you. [...]

Beside this, as you felt, there was a fear of Ruburt’s abilities. [...] She does not like to speak to Ruburt on the phone, fearing the direct contact. [...]

[...] The energy behind the thing was the energy of hidden fears, but such a thing could be formed by anyone, for there are fears in every man. [...]

[...] Any “thing” in quotes so created entirely of fears, would be frightened, and particularly angry at its creator, and it could do nothing else but attack; in one way to protect what reality it had, for it knew Ruburt created it only to slay it if possible.

[...] Now evil does not exist in those terms, and even illness or fear is not necessarily an enemy, as much as an aid to understanding and the means to a greater end.

(4:44.) Ruburt’s unfortunate evening was the result of his own fears about the body — related to the fact that he then picked up Joe’s own dire fears, and these fueled his own.

It will be a good idea, even if it is not pleasant, for Ruburt to do some more free association in relationship to his fears about his body’s performance — and those fears should not then be treated impatiently. [...]

(4:49 p.m. Joe discussed his fears with me last night when I visited him, but I didn’t get a chance to tell Jane about them until I saw her in 330 this afternoon. In other words, she picked up Joe’s fears herself, unless Margaret might have referred to them when she visited Jane last night after I’d left.

You felt hardly strong enough to handle your own fears, and could not bear the thought that she might need your help also. Now even in her position, she made efforts to get across to you, and bridges that could cross her own fear to you, but you were not able to meet her because you feared the chasm of despair within yourself.

(To Sue:) Now you have been projecting your fears about yourself outward, so that all of your husband’s remarks were interpreted in that light. [...]

You were aggressively aware of the difference between your own attitude and some of society’s in that regard, but for the first time in your life you were closely involved with another person, day by day—who to some extent (underlined) then served as a moving picture onto which you projected these fears as to your own worth.

[...] You wanted confirmation of your hopes and of your faith in yourself, but because of your fears these clouded the reality that you perceived.

The fears have been there, of course, and your latest efforts simply brought them into prominence, or cast a spotlight upon them. [...] That idea of safety and reassurance counters the fear, and opens the passageways again for free association.

Ruburt’s recent discomfort is partially caused by the fear that his body will not be able to completely heal itself, even if he does uncover all of the reasons for his predicament.

[...] Of course, we noticed that Seth had said that Jane’s discomfort was only partially caused by her fears that she cannot heal herself. [...]

[...] Such fears show that the distrust of the body is still to some extent present, so he should refresh his memory on the connections between femininity, his physical body, and health.

[...] The situation triggered many fears, about you and Ruburt being alone, your age, the age of your brothers, who would come to your aid, or Ruburt’s. If necessary, Leonard at least had a knowledge of the medical world, while you and Ruburt do not. [...] This noon, for example, after going downtown, leaving your painting, you found that Ruburt wanted a few more windows done, and the innocent window became a symbol, combining the idea of chores with your fear: if anything happened to you, who would do the chores for Ruburt? [...]

[...] The body consciousness reacted with stress, for your fears tell it that there is immediate danger. It experiences your projected negative pictures as present, for your fear is immediate. [...]

Your dream also was a picture of your fears. Returning yourself to the present moment, and responding only to what is within your present environment, returns your body to a state of stability, where it is not crowded by imaginary fears of the future. [...]

[...] If there is a large body of beliefs, however, that dampen those bodily purposes, that encourage timidity rather than courage, promote fear rather than faith, then you run into difficulty—particularly if the grounds for those beliefs are not present in any given moment. [...]

[...] Especially did she comment upon the fears she encounters at bodily changes. Seth has mentioned her fears at times recently; so have we; still, I asked that if she had a session tonight Seth might give some information on the fears. [...]

[...] All else would come after this primary, basic fear—her dislike of going public, especially when she found out that Seth could easily win a large audience in the country, and perhaps the world. The opposition of science and religion would only reinforce her own personal fears, then—a very important point. She knew she had the ability but feared the consequences of its use socially and personally. [...]

(“It would be easy for her to transpose that basic fear of the psychic abilities and Seth into a fear of spontaneity going too far, and of not working at her desk. [...] But the intellect would insist upon keeping rigid control, fearing that if Jane let her spontaneous self hold sway that it would go whole hog psychically, in the worst way, and destroy all other elements and activities of the personality.”

He took it for granted that, ideally speaking, he should do such public work, that it was his responsibility, but also that it represented a natural expression of abilities that he was denying because of his fears. [...]

[...] (Pause.) The shortage of sessions is a symptom of the fear of spontaneity. The fear of the unknown, mentioned earlier, is not a fear of psychic phenomena, nor of psychic endeavor. It is a mask, for a fear of his own spontaneity.

(Pause.) Now, the fear is for safety. [...] The fear is exaggerated and needless. [...]

[...] The organized church feared it. [...]

[...] It is the fear for safety behind this. [...]

[...] Frank Longwell’s father had just died, and she feared she might take the same road. [...] Also thought women disliked her — feared that she was after their men, and all kinds of things.

(We talked about her home environment, and how in 1965 the young psychologist at Dr. Instream’s hypnosis symposium had rearoused her fears, and my own upsets. [...] Many things spoke of a great fear of spontaneity, reinforced again and again after the sessions had started, and the symptoms.

[...] I didn’t even fear fatherhood as much as she feared becoming pregnant. [...]

[...] I got mad at her and yelled, saying I’d leave her sitting there if she didn’t get up — thus displaying my own deep fears that we had reached a sad and desperate point in the course of the symptoms. [...]

Fear of any kind, including fear of fear, is destructive. A negative thought gains in power to the extent that you fear it, and you had better underline that whole sentence. [...]

[...] It was caused by a fear of fear.

He became so aware of fear’s destructive energies that he panicked, thinking there was no way to keep fear away. [...]

[...] Otherwise you concentrate upon the feared result rather than the desired one.

Outside of that context, none of those fears make any sense at all (equally important, of course). In a large regard the church through the centuries ruled through the use of fear far more than the use of love. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s fears, as expressed in that material, can be encountered, of course. [...]

[...] Many of those fears originated long before the sessions, of course, and before he realized that there was any alternative at all between, say, conventional religious beliefs and complete disbelief in any nature of divinity. [...]

In the time those fears originated, he shared the belief framework of Christianity, so that he believed that outside of that framework there could indeed be nothing but chaos, or the conventional atheism of science, in which the universe was at the mercy of meaningless mechanistic laws—laws, however, that operated without logic, but more importantly laws that operated without feeling. [...]

[...] Fear of the spontaneous self is meaningless unless the spontaneous self is set up against the idea of an authority which is not spontaneous. The spontaneous self is feared only because it might break down the authority of a rigid structure. [...]

Ruburt need not fear becoming a new authority. [...] He need not fear others as authority, for the same applies. [...]

In order to fear the opinions of others, however, particularly the opinion of those in authority, you must first to some extent respect those in authority, and hold some faith in their ideas. [...]

[...] He has done his thing, but fearfully. [...]

[...] The level you reached was one that responded to that fear, that perhaps the teeth were bad. You say that of course you wanted to know the truth—but the pendulum responded to the part of you that was afraid, by trying to soothe your fears, as for example a mother might say “No, do not worry, everything will be all right,” while on the other hand she might be making rapid calculations as to what should be done, but first she will soothe the child.

Had you been more relaxed when using the pendulum, “it” would not have needed to soothe your fears, and would have realized that you were quite capable of learning the answer. [...] When using the pendulum, it is a good idea to mentally place a distance between your conscious mind and the pendulum, in which fears are allowed to dissolve, so that body and mind are smooth-enough. [...]

[...] Otherwise your very concern affects the results, of course, and the pendulum will “treat” your fear first.

[...] Sometimes, however, fear is so great that the unconscious begins soothing processes, for the healing process depends upon them. [...]

The feeling of fright and danger is the odor of fears and the secrets. The feelings of fear are the symptoms of the secrets and the fears. The releasing of these will not bring neither [sic] danger, nor fear, but only release. [...]

(To Bette.) Now you do not have to fear your secrets or anyone else’s, and you do not have to fear that when you open yourselves up you are only going to find dark terrors, frightening thoughts and horrendous sins of the flesh. [...]

Then express the feelings as they come to you, and there is nothing to fear. [...] If you distrust one feeling, then feeling itself becomes fearful, and you inhibit it. [...]

[...] Only your fears are restrictive. [...]

[...] This fear itself should be faced for what it is, and dealt with like any other fear. [...] (The fear that he will not get well.)

If Ruburt shows a bad bout of symptoms then often you both become extremely fearful. [...] I am not saying that the symptoms are not fearful. [...]

You have the fear of the symptoms themselves, and this applies to both of you. [...]

[...] I was on the point of asking Seth what one should do when one confronted a fearful result even if one had constructed that result, etc.)

[...] The cause of Jane’s symptoms is her fear of the spontaneous self—that is the area that needs treatment. One might better address the fears of being the public person, for example, rather than trying to futilely patch up a body that was only faithfully following mirroring habits of deep and long standing.

[...] She fears then, Seth going too far as an expression of her creative and spontaneous self. [...] This fear of future developments ties in very well with her natural concerns about becoming a public figure, one that should be able to solve the world’s problems. [...]

(I should add, too, that this latest insight ties in well with the paragraph of Seth’s that I’ve copied from the deleted session for January 28, 1981, to add to my list of quotations from these recent private sessions: Seth discussed Jane’s fear of letting go —not because she is afraid of relaxing per se, but because she fears she will go too far. [...]

[...] Letting them go brings him into a more or less constant encounter with many of the fears that helped generate them. [...]

There is much that you can expect if you can free yourself from fear. [...] Fear speaks for security. Fear causes to expect. The physical symptoms of old age are the physical manifestations of fear in the tissues. [...]

Hate is unreasoning fear. Fear is caused by lack of understanding, by a lack of value fulfillment. [...]

[...] He sees hate in his own heart, what he calls hate, which is but fear, so he projects it into another man’s face and says the man hates him; and he may slay the man. [...]

Hate is that which fears to join, and hence is separate, and that is all.

(Pause at 8:30.) His fears have to a strong extent come out into the open: the fear that he will not be able to go ahead or of blockage, that fear being physically translated—but again, it stands for an inner fear that he has creatively blocked, or psychically blocked, that he has learned—that his own fears stand in his own way and cannot be resolved, or that he is at an impasse. [...]

[...] The fears and difficulties may be deeply ingrained, but they are largely learned. [...] An overconcern (underlined) about the mechanics of publication, or the necessity of publication, or the wheres and hows of publication, or a sense of responsibility about the work, can indeed cause difficulty, but the basic creative expression—which has been impeded in the past by fears—should still be encouraged. [...]

[...] The book will help people, and as they write about that to him some of his old fears will be allayed. [...]

The fear of relaxation is still there, so that mentally and physically it still impedes progress. [...]

[...] I’d feared it was too harsh, but as I read aloud I did see that it expressed my thinking. Jane seemed to agree with the thesis that basically a deep fear is in back of her troubles, and we went over some of the same ground we’d covered yesterday. She suggested trying dream suggestion to get clues as to the root causes of her fears, and I said that that was a good approach.

[...] This morning I took the cats to the vet, with far less trouble than I had feared. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) He has not been as successful as he would wish — but even when fears brought about complications, the body has been successful in many ways in countering these.

[...] Earlier this afternoon I’d repeated my own grim assertion that putting oneself in Jane’s condition because of a fear of others, or the world at large, was untenable, and that I’d never stand for it. [...]