“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The cold symptoms also have operated to increase his circulation. The body combating the (in quotes) “new” symptoms is also creating antibodies that affect the old symptoms. He has had a better appetite. The body has been calling for more food and nourishment, and quite unconsciously he has been consuming a larger amount of peanut butter, which is giving him several nutriments that he needs.

He quite understands how in childhood he adopted colds and discarded them, and is to see then the other symptoms in the same light. For these reasons the cold was adopted. He needed to see how he himself in a relatively harmless (underlined) incident in miniature, so to speak, could create such conditions as the cold, and in growing out of it see how he can grow out of the other symptoms.

The public, or the people, have also been involved in this test case. He needed to know that people saw and recognized the symptoms of a cold so that when he was rid of it he could see for himself that they no longer perceived those symptoms in him.

When you concentrate on a symptom you reinforce it. [...] I am not suggesting that you pretend the symptom does not exist, but that you quite deliberately give yourself constructive suggestion, and turn your attention immediately away quickly to other matters.

[...] Remaining symptoms can be broken by intense concentration in other areas.

[...] You do not want any chronic lasting symptoms, even of lesser intensity, however. [...]

Symptoms still lingering should not be ignored, of course, but attention should be paid to advancements, and symptoms should not be overemphasized. Ruburt should attempt more and more to break out of these patterns he allowed to build up about him as a result of symptoms. [...]

Now that the basic reasons for the symptoms have been conquered, the symptoms would disappear in any case, but at a rather slow rate. [...] Attention directed elsewhere is extremely important, for energy is withdrawn from the symptoms. [...]

These procedures would have been of some help in the past, but now that the basic reason for the symptoms is conquered, the effectiveness of these methods should lead to the disappearance of all symptoms. [...]

If fear or resentment stops up the flow, then their origin, untranslated, unredeemed and unsublimated, causes physical symptoms and disorders. [...] He adopted the same symptoms if not the disease itself.

[...] Again he said nothing and the symptoms grew all the stronger as his desire grew to tell them to leave. The night symptoms should vanish. [...]

(Jane felt quite restless and energetic before the session, and her symptoms had subsided to a minimum after a poor night and morning. [...]

(I felt much better while out working Wednesday morning, but the symptoms returned again Wednesday afternoon when I again tackled the project in the studio. [...] I was afraid that once the symptoms persisted for another day or so, I would have a cold or some such thing to handle, and that days could be spent clearing it up. [...] I was also struck by my reaction to the whole development, and couldn’t help comparing my reaction to Jane’s reaction to her own symptoms. I wanted out after a day of unease, but her symptoms had persisted now for several years. I felt intuitively that both sets of symptoms represented doing things that encountered resistance; my own symptoms seemed very instructive in this respect.

[...] Here are a few details of my own cold-like symptoms which began on Tuesday night, May 4, and which Seth discusses below. I had already received some insight on the problem by using the pendulum, but by tonight, Wednesday, felt exhausted by the symptoms.

[...] On Tuesday afternoon when I began the blowup of the drawing to transfer in turn to the panel for painting, the symptoms began—coughing, sneezing, etc., much like aggravated hay fever symptoms. [...]

[...] Jane:] Part of me feels that the symptoms are an acceptable even ingenious way of seeing that distractions are cut to a minimum; to focus my abilities, like a kid getting a cold to stay in, but more sophisticated, cuts through the necessity for explanations, etc. I think that the symptoms have been a means, and less drastic than some taken by others like Van Gogh for instance [though Picasso just let it all hang out]. Extraordinary talent takes extraordinary discipline, and the symptoms can be used against any distraction.

(After supper Jane and I went over a long list of reasons—beliefs—she had compiled today about the reasons for her symptoms. [...] Jane made the list because of some things I had said in recent days—that the same reasons for her symptoms were still operating, in spite of all the deleted sessions we’d had, in spite of all the suggestions, etc. [...]

(A quick, and probably partial answer: I do not know how much I may have counted upon Jane’s symptoms in the past to furnish a private world in which I could work. [...] And above all, the symptoms are not worth it to achieve isolation, for ironically the resultant time to work has lost the one ingredient that is important above all: peace of mind in which to carry out the appointed tasks.)

Any work blockages are also symptoms. Seldom therefore do physical symptoms appear alone. [...] It is only when these less visible, less apparent symptoms are ignored, when the causes for them are not sought or found, that physical symptoms show themselves.

The nonphysical symptoms will also appear in various guises, often symbolically within the dream state long before any physical symptoms appear. Behind any kind of symptom, regardless of its nature, or the specific problem, there is usually a blocking off of spontaneity that is caused by fear. [...]

You know that physical symptoms are the materialization in the body of inner dis-ease. [...] Now, not writing poetry was also a symptom of inner disease, not so readily recognized as such. [...]

[...] The symptoms themselves cause certain chemical changes that have an effect, then, on the personality itself. If the self accepts the symptoms, and in all cases of illness to some extent or another this is true, then paradoxically a portion of the self identifies with the symptoms.

This necessitates finding the causes for the symptoms, backtracking, really, to the point before the symptoms’ appearance, and facing problems now that would not be faced then. The symptoms represent in all cases one attempt, one method, of solving the existing problems. [...]

[...] The symptoms have been a defense against the sort of self-enlightenment that I am now giving in the sessions. There is then a natural reaction at times, as those tendencies in the personality that adopted the symptoms actually struggle to retain them.

[...] I wondered, with some apparent irritation, why Jane’s inner self would permit such a detriment as the symptoms to continue for so long. [...] I thought there were many more valuable kinds of experiences to be had in many kinds of healthier, more creative endeavors, instead of letting the symptoms interfere with Jane’s attempts to perform such creative endeavors.

[...] You are both concentrating on the remaining symptoms, and the improvements escape you. [...] You look for the remaining symptoms. [...]

(Jane said the sensations were “like a loss of tension,” and I thought it was a general release from her symptoms, at least temporarily, plus a dissociated state. [...]

You have the fear of the symptoms themselves, and this applies to both of you. The symptoms are still being projected into the future, and often (underlined) by you both. Consciously and unconsciously signs are passed and given to the effect that symptoms are persisting now and will continue to do so.

If Ruburt shows a bad bout of symptoms then often you both become extremely fearful. Very aware of those symptoms, concentrating upon them, and this worsens the condition. I am not saying that the symptoms are not fearful. [...]

Not upon reversing symptoms but upon the desired results. [...]

Therefore the symptoms were adopted, mimicking the mother’s symptoms was the next best thing to having the presence of the mother as a control against the spontaneity.

The symptoms had begun however before that time, but lightly. He also felt that you had adopted symptoms earlier, somewhat that as a system of controls—that you were so emotionally upset you didn’t know what to do, and therefore put yourself in a position where you could do little of importance: you could not make errors.

The symptoms initially were clamped on in panic. [...] The purpose however was two-fold again, the development of an environment in which controls would be there: the symptoms taking the place in this case of the mother’s restrictive presence, and the comparative isolation in the house, the comparative solitude that he felt was necessary then for the emergence of the creative abilities—both of these you see existing in the child environment.

[...] This of course presupposes the fact that the symptoms are present to alarm him. If the alarm is set at four-hour intervals, this can eliminate the onset of symptoms, but in each case he would then rise and move about some. This does not seem necessary since the symptoms are now minimized, but I believe the step would prevent them entirely.

[...] However the reasons I have given for evening symptoms entered in here. The night sensitivity, you see, vanished when our sessions began, and returned masked with symptoms when his difficulties began. [...]

The symptoms occurring much less frequently now in the middle of the night refer back to preadolescent fears of immobility because of the parent. [...]

Understanding of these conflicts will go a long way to ease the symptoms. [...] The symptoms therefore were therapeutic in nature, in that their purpose was the solving of the dilemma.

[...] There is at present no outstanding clairvoyant data that is affecting his symptoms or causing any new symptoms, outside of those given.

You see, as Ruburt allows himself spontaneity, again, the mother identification will automatically vanish, and with it the symptoms it causes. [...] The constructive suggestions before bed are particularly important, and the request for therapeutic dreams, as these automatically relieve the morning symptoms, and further dissipate the lingering mother identification.

[...] Before the session I spoke aloud to Seth, asking him for straight answers to my questions about Jane’s symptoms lately. On June 5 I held a two-hour pendulum session of my own, concerning Jane’s symptoms, and received some revealing answers about the role I have played in them. [...]

[...] The adoption of the arthritis symptoms did have some mother identification, but also they were adopted simply because they were symptoms with which Ruburt was familiar. [...]

(“We’re very concerned about when these symptoms will let up, of course.”)

(This brief session was held to help deal with Jane’s recurring tooth symptoms. [...] We learned much with the pendulum today, and kept hoping we had finally unearthed the symptoms’ cause. Each time the symptoms would return; today, after breakfast, then lunch, etc., so that we spent the whole day coping with them. [...]

[...] See the deleted session of November 13, 1972, etc.) I gave you some material on that—Ruburt taking on cold symptoms as given in that material.

[...] He was thinking of relinquishing the more general symptoms (indicating the legs. [...]

In an attempt to discover the reason for the persistence of the symptoms, he began to concentrate upon those in quotes “negative “ aspects of his personality. The overconcentration continued the symptoms, and the symptoms themselves became exaggerated in his mind. [...]

[...] Ruburt has physical symptoms. [...] They are not the worst symptoms in the world however, and while there is much room for improvement, they should not be concentrated upon. [...]

His symptoms would become then at times symbols of your joint lack of perfection, mainly in your works. His symptoms became a hanger upon which you could hang your joint dissatisfactions, his physical condition an easy mark to stand for what both of you considered inner imperfections; again, connected mainly with your creative endeavors.

The symptoms are now like guards that he sets about his behavior. The spontaneous self is being given more and more freedom, yet under a cautious eye, and with the symptoms in the background, again just in case.

[...] Tell him indeed that annoyance with his own symptoms could now prevent him from helping others as well as he might, because the energy devoted to maintaining the symptoms is not being used for such constructive purposes.

[...] Tell him that he does not need the symptoms as a set of checks and balances. [...]

The symptoms are released in blocks, as blocks of inner associations, negative associations, drop away and are cleared, you see. [...]

Symptoms, then, disappear in blocks and groups, for they represent inner groupings of negative associations. [...]

[...] The energy instead had fed the nervous symptoms, to such an extent that the body was starved, comparatively speaking. [...]

You did not rise above the fear that the symptom itself, a part from everything else, gave you. [...] You feared so strongly that the symptom could stop you, even from painting, that the fear itself became a detriment for positive suggestion. When your imagination operated freely and not directed concerning the symptom, then it ran in those directions. [...]

[...] You overaggravated the symptoms, overexaggerating their importance because of this fear. [...]

[...] You were afraid that it was, or that unwittingly the symptoms would bring this about. [...]

(Jane surprised me after I said most of what I had to say by adding that she thought our attitudes about children also had something to do with the symptoms —a connection that I could say had never occurred to me. [...] For some time now I’d thought, often, that it could be that she wanted to be sick —that that was the role she’d chosen for this life, that in many ways all of our efforts to get out from under the symptoms were really beside the point. My latest insight, that the symptoms offered legitimacy to the Seth material, was, I hoped, itself legitimate. [...]

(I began to get a fresh insight to the symptom situation as we talked, hardly realizing that I was doing so. “It’s just that the symptoms show that you’re a human being like everyone else,” I speculated. [...]

(Now that idea, I thought as I went into the kitchen to get Jane some wine for the session, made sense—it could account for the perpetuation of her symptoms on a daily, present-life basis, and made a lot more sense than thinking she was suffering now because of something that happened to her when she was perhaps eight years old or whatever. In other words, I said, we’d been approaching the problem backwards: Jane wasn’t sick so much because of her past as she was because of what we were doing every day in present reality—reinforcing and/or perpetuating the symptoms because they served a number of beliefs about present-day reality. [...]