“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The Creative Aspects of Illness
The steps involved as symptoms replace the problem.

[...] But indeed we have here quite a practical application, and I intend to go into other earlier symptoms that should have, and did not, give you warning.

Note: The attitude was partially justified, but the portion that was not justified was a symptom of a new appearance of negative thought on your part. [...]

The morning symptoms are clearly related to the fact that you work mornings. The exaggerated weekend symptoms are related to two factors: One, the chores that he feels you thoroughly resent, and two, the Sunday situation when your mother is home. [...]

[...] Seth insisted that the answers re Jane’s symptoms, and my own contributing attitudes, had already been given in past sessions, but were not being followed.

He adopted the symptoms partially out of example, both from his mother and from your own illness. [...]

This does not mean that people pick up the symptoms of another willy-nilly, without their permission. [...]

[...] Perhaps, before, we’ve been assigning Jane’s symptoms too much to her wanting to restrict herself to make herself work, because she feared that being left alone, she wouldn’t work. [...]

[...] During those times, however, I was extremely sorry to note that Jane’s physical symptoms—her difficulties “walking” and performing other routine tasks—were obviously becoming much worse.

[...] Yet as the years passed I still had to learn the obvious—that Jane’s creative powers are inextricably a part of her whole approach to life, including her symptoms. [...]

[...] And in larger terms, if Jane is at all correct in her expression of the Seth material, then each action we’ve taken in connection with her symptoms has been valid and creative, just as each action we have yet to take will be.

“Now on the question of ‘mental disorders,’ it is highly important that individual integrity be stressed, rather than the blanket definitions that are usually accorded to any group of symptoms.”

Ruburt’s condition will improve because of other developments, success in his work and other areas that will automatically bring about a concentration away from symptoms. [...]

[...] In a chaotic world of twisted reasoning he thinks his symptoms will take your mind off your own problems, and relieve you to some extent. [...]

(Long pause.) It may be far more pleasant to be good-humored all of the time — but in Ruburt’s situation the fairly infrequent periods of blueness do indeed operate therapeutically, so that he is able to express those feelings through tears, and therefore relieve the body of expressing the same feelings through additional symptoms.

(Pause.) Ruburt’s depression-part of today represented, again, his recognition and expression of feelings that before were to a large degree buried in the symptoms, or translated into them. [...]

[...] For too long it has represented the place where he faced the results of conflict—his symptoms.

[...] You have both made some rather important connections lately (long pause), that can only serve to remind you of an important point: Ruburt’s “symptoms” should not be regarded as one black blot of a certainly reprehensible quality, sometimes seen in a quite hopeless light, but as a combination or result of quite changeable, quite moveable, quite separate characteristics that can also be dealt with separately, moved around and so forth, relieved or dissolved. [...]

For one thing, dependable overall use of the pendulum would ideally entail some moments each day, so that rapport could be established under even circumstances, without the pressure, say, of wanting to know about a problem or a symptom. [...]

(And here we have an excellent capsule answer as to why Jane has grown progressively worse since beginning Mass Events—see her paper of last December about her unease over that book and God of Jane—and why her symptoms have become even worse as the publication date of Mass Events draws near. [...]

[...] This has a drawback, of course, in that we have no official evidence of her “symptoms” on the medical record. [...]

[...] Looking it over, I saw at once that it contained the key to Jane’s solving her challenges with the symptoms. [...]

[...] As a result Ruburt very seldom relaxed physically, and this has been largely the cause of his symptoms. [...]

[...] Was it secure enough to keep you from accepting invitations, to allow you to avoid distractions, or emotional complications that might arise from any considerable contact with others in, say, “professional terms?” Ruburt built the edifice, but you looked on, for though you disliked the building blocks, say, the symptoms—you thought until very lately that it did serve its purpose very well.

(“Is that what this has been all about?” I asked, meaning the years of the symptoms. [...]