“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] All such ideas are not only beside the point, but lead you to use the symptoms or the result or hide the source.

[...] You held back in your work, and in selling it, feeling that you must make up—not for Ruburt’s symptoms, but because you felt you were not relating as emotionally as you could, and realizing that this same warmth was necessary to your work.

[...] 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.

[...] You would not have a wife who had Ruburt’s particular kind of symptoms unless for your own reasons they served your ends as well—though of course to a lesser extent by far than they served Ruburt’s purposes.

[...] Ruburt’s symptoms, dismaying, nevertheless provided a certain kind of steady, reliable framework. [...]

[...] This has to do with Ruburt’s symptoms, for he felt that he must be at his desk so many hours, whatever the number, and you became so obsessed with the amount of physical hours that you had to devote to painting that you began to divide up your psyche in terms of time.

[...] He said that doctors would have trouble diagnosing her symptoms. [...] Jane is really bothered, though, and we trust that Seth was correct in the last session when he said this phase of Jane’s symptoms would soon pass. [...]

(Now here is a brief chronology pertaining to Jane’s symptoms from last Saturday, the day after the last session was held:

[...] She had a good day after I suggested she try not to concentrate upon her symptoms. [...]

When Ruburt is involved in activity and his mind directed elsewhere, away from his symptoms, then his symptoms are greatly minimized, and at times disappear. [...]

When he ceases activity however, he has a tendency to activate the symptoms rather than direct his attention elsewhere. [...]

(This afternoon and evening, and somewhat to my surprise, Jane has been talking about discussing her physical symptoms in her new book, God of Jane. I thought her changed attitude stemmed from her long phone conversation with Tristine Rainer, of Dan Curtis Associates, a television production company that wants to option her life story. [See the notes for the deleted session for August 20, 1979.] They wrote August 8. If her life story were ever to be filmed, the symptoms would have to be considered, we found ourselves thinking. [...]

[...] He had problems to face, then, that resulted in his symptoms—but (louder) they are nothing like the problems he would have had to face had he not found this greater framework for himself and others. [...]

Stating his position will clear his psychic air, and relieve him of the strain of hiding his symptoms. [...]

[...] The symptom or symptoms will follow the area in which the person most strongly disapproves of himself—will hide, distort, or exaggerate those tendencies about which the person feels such disapproval.

(Note: Strange to say, but at the same time I felt that Jane was more concerned about trying to make it into the doctor’s office—“Humiliating myself before all those people” —than she was about her symptoms themselves.

[...] Diseases are simply groups of symptoms that you have categorized in certain orders to begin with. [...]

Sometime after I came home from college in 1967, I first noticed that my right shoulder hurt when I lifted it up — classic bursitus symptoms, I’ve since learned. [...] Then in April, 1968, the symptoms returned and lasted for about three months, disappeared slowly and came back for a while in December, 1968. [...]

Yoga and psy-time helped reduce the symptoms temporarily, but by last week, the stiffness was so bad that my entire shoulder was grinding like jammed sandpaper. [...]

[...] What is important is that symptoms disappeared as a result of a dream. [...]

[...] Before we go into therapeutic dreams, however, it’s necessary to understand the reasons why we adopt symptoms. [...]

[...] In Dreams I’m presenting the account of Jane’s struggles with her “physical symptoms” in the clearest light I can manage. [...]

In her own creative way, Jane is doing just this; her physical symptoms are the signposts of her personal struggle, and of mine, and of our joint incomplete knowledge. [...]

In the past at times you did get various symptoms when Ruburt began to improve, and because of his lack of confidence and the state of his beliefs, he backtracked. On some of those occasions your symptoms were the reflection of certain unresolved fears of your own, for, as you know, along the way Ruburt’s condition spoke to some extent for both of you.

[...] The interactions continue with the patient trying to please the doctor, and at best merely changing from one group of symptoms to another. [...]

[...] If through the concentrated use of psychic energy your body is cured by such a healer, you will also simply trade those symptoms for others unless you change your initial beliefs. [...]

[...] Behind all this, of course, would be the belief that caused the difficulty; but once you have brought about a group of symptoms you must be very careful that you do not begin to view your field of reality from that position. [...]

2. Me—stop concentrating on the symptoms, particularly when I’m writing.

[...] To name and dignify a group of symptoms only brings them further into prominence, and offers them another framework for permanency.

[...] (Long pause.) The symptoms were obvious enough: stiffness, slowing down of motion, and general lack of mobility. [...]

(Long pause at 9:35.) By last year, as my symptoms worsened, I began to feel that life’s frustrations outweighed its pleasures. [...]

[...] You do both, when you are together—often now, but not always—still concentrate upon Ruburt’s symptoms, so that they seem to block out all else. When either of you forget yourselves in work, conversation, other people, then the symptoms automatically decrease to some considerable degree. [...]

[...] In addition, my pendulum told me today that my hand symptoms stemmed from my fear of failure as a fine artist—nothing else.

[...] She’s been worse as far as symptoms go since we stopped the sessions, so doing that didn’t help either. We spend more and more time on affairs connected with symptoms, it seems—and those problems, connected with the construction going on in back of the house, where Frank Longwell is building Jane’s writing room in half of the garage, have combined to cut our production a good deal.

You look at the time involved that the symptoms have continued, and you grant more power to that past than you do to the present.

4.) For three hours I want him to write whatever he wants, freeing his mind from thoughts of his symptoms, and from responsibility.

(Today I mentioned to Jane that I’d like Seth to go into some of the elements of question 17 on the list I’ve compiled so far—especially those parts of it pertaining to why didn’t the overall personality know when it had gone far enough, or even too far, concerning the symptoms. I also was curious as to what he’d say about my speculation that the symptoms themselves might actually be one of her main challenges in this life.

[...] In a fashion Ruburt’s symptoms are caused because he tries to understand his abilities and his life in a too-limited context, with definitions still too narrow. [...]

[...] I saw the birthday/Mother’s Day hassle as only the latest wrinkle in a 20-year cycle of reasons for the symptoms. The question isn’t why she’s so uncomfortable these days, but why the body, the psyche, has chosen to endure those symptoms for so long.)

4. For three hours to write whatever he wants, freeing mind from symptoms and responsibilities. [...]

[...] Tell him if possible to forget the symptoms as much as he can, and concentrate instead upon his work and our program. [...]

This reinforces older healthier beliefs in the body’s efficiency, that were discarded before any symptoms appeared. [...]

[...] In this case also healing energies are rushed to the sinus and head-neck areas, from which in Ruburt’s case, physically, the symptoms originated—through strain and tension.

Give us a moment… Symptoms in this case with the right hand or on the right side of the body, represent difficulties in the conscious realms. Symptoms of the left hand or left portions of the body represent difficulties from subconscious levels, and both represent failures between the conscious and subconscious portions of the self.

Now, Joseph, you two are on the right track as far as Ruburt’s symptoms are concerned, and your aid in the pendulum sessions is invaluable.

[...] In his case at this time symptoms on the left side of the body have reference to early associations.