“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In other cases where the symptom is interior itself, as in ulcers, this is a sign that the inner self has not yet come to such a point. The personality is not yet willing to face the problems even to that extent and the symptom itself is shielded from physical sight, quite rightly symbolically speaking. The relative observability of a symptom is a clue therefore as to the personality’s attitude toward its problem.

[...] Inner problems are literally brought out into the open when they can be faced, recognized, dealt with and conquered, using the symptoms as measuring points of progress. [...]

[...] A healing process is definitely involved, even with the initial emergence of the symptoms, for the psychological system finally forces the problem out into the open. [...]

[...] Ruburt physically perceives as well as feels the symptoms. [...]

(For several days now I’d been thinking about a remark of Seth’s in one of the earliest of this group of sessions, to the effect that Jane’s symptoms would get worse before they got better as we tried to cope with them. [...] Well, now Jane’s symptoms are worse. [...]

(9:38.) In a way, Ruburt’s symptoms ended up as providing a system of controls, serving in several rather than one area, but areas that he is now exploring in rather concentrated form. The symptoms did serve partially as face-saving devices, and for both of you to some extent, to explain behavior of your own that perhaps you did not understand—though this largely involves Ruburt’s behavior, of course. [...]

[...] Prentice-Hall was bound to be confused about our motives and intents, and also there was the latest evidence that the uncertainty or resistance would lead to aggravated symptoms on Jane’s part. [...]

[...] Whatever struggles lay behind the hand and arm symptoms, for example, adopted their own protective armor, resistant to change....)

(I think my symptoms are all the worse because of what I do in contrast. [...] I’m not getting this clear but the feeling was like you’re supposed to demonstrate truth through your life and my symptoms sort of were the opposite, or indicated the opposite; not only didn’t I heal others but not even myself. [...] I mean that in my mind the symptoms were associated with my work as if they cast aspersions on it—quite apart from worrying about what they did to me. [...]

[...] [See session 472 in Volume 9 of The Early Sessions.] Material on Jane’s symptoms, interior and exterior illness, inner-self constructions and challenges, recognizing problems, etc. [...] Therapy in the symptoms, etc. [...]

There are reasons why you chose the particular symptoms that you have, and reasons why they emerged at this particular time. [...]

[...] You would like to kick out, but you feel you have lost your footing, hence the symptoms in the feet. [...]

[...] You wanted to go ahead but felt you could not, so that this was reflected in your posture long before you felt a symptom. [...]

[...] Not until this had gone on for some time did the symptoms become severe enough to get your attention. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s symptoms would therefore be called arthritic, since they fit into that category, so named. To concentrate upon the term however is dangerous, for it gives a specific identity or implies a state of permanence to a group of varying and impermanent symptoms.

[...] “Well, I don’t want to use negative suggestion, or ask this the wrong way; but I was wondering what Jane’s symptoms would be called medically.”)

[...] There are groups of symptoms which are given names. [...]

[...] By labeling a group of symptoms you add to their idea of permanence, and give a name to certain aspects of bodily activity, distinguishing them from other activities and therefore giving them rather dangerous focus. [...]

(It was, I believe, after my own recovery that Jane’s first symptoms, unrecognized by us as to their potential severity, began to show. [...] However I have two symptoms carried over from that period, that still must be dealt with, and I feel these are directly related to Jane’s symptoms. That is, I believe there is a close interaction between us that is responsible for the bulk of symptoms upon either side.

[...] By now I had begun to tentatively mention the symptoms, and to ask Jane what she could say about their origin. [...]

(The balance of the session tonight after these two important revelations, consisted of an interchange between us that stressed reassurance upon my part,; including the statement, repeated often, that Jane now understood she didn’t need her symptoms any longer, that they could begin to disappear. [...]

[...] I gave her no suggestions that her symptoms would disappear at once, for they involve some physiological changes and I didn’t know just how quickly her body could chemically return to a fully healthy state. [...]

[...] No doctor in your plane or mine, can relieve an individual of symptoms if the symptoms are serving a valid purpose to the inner self; or, in relieving particular symptoms, others will arise.

[...] I will say little of the symptoms. [...]

[...] Therefore I am concerned with, and I emphasize, the importance of inner knowledge, and see physical symptoms for what they are—a reflection of an inner reality.

[...] A doctor will try to the best of his ability to relieve the symptoms, and most of them, regardless of their plane of endeavor, are content with this. [...]

Your father used hay fever as a symptom of helplessness, and as a demand for the attention that he did not get, even then, from your mother. [...] He discarded the symptoms because they did not get him what he wanted. [...]

You are not helping your father, for the symptoms will not revert to him. [...] You also adopted the symptoms as a protective measure against her. [...]

When you realize this, again, you will find the symptoms hardly necessary. [...] For the symptoms also allowed you to stay indoors with her on many occasions.

His appearance then reminded you of his appearance in hay fever season, and reinforced your own symptoms until they became a symbol of virility, since they were your father’s, and also a symbol of how a man could cry. You do not need such symptoms now.

[...] I’m referring at the moment to his comments about her embarrassment, in the early days, at earning more money than I did [see the deleted session for April 16, 1979, page 97], and that in later years the symptoms served to provide us with a sense of separation from the world, for a number of reasons [see the deleted session for April 18]. [...]

[...] The symptoms served to slow him down psychically, while he mentally considered his position.

In this neighborhood (gesturing), Ruburt’s symptoms were a social statement also to the neighbors at large in the new environment: better than a note upon the door, that neither of you were to be bothered, but ignored. [...]

[...] Ruburt is learning that even he went too far, but I do want you still to think of the symptoms as a well-meaning but distorted structure that can dissolve—and can dissolve overnight when Ruburt understands it is no longer needed or wanted. [...]

One point: your friend the Jesuit (Bill Gallagher)—his symptom is hidden within his tissue, and not physically observable. [...] Ruburt chose more observable symptoms. [...] The kind of symptom and its observability is often a clue as to the problem and to the individual’s attitude toward it. [...]

[...] The learning process was far more effective in this manner—the symptoms serving as immediate checkpoints. He has learned therefore to look within for the reasons as soon as symptoms appeared or reappeared.

[...] He did not know whether he dared yet trust his spontaneity, and imposed upon himself symptoms as limitations.

[...] I ended up discouraged, I’m afraid, for much in it about Jane’s symptoms, and our joint reasons for allowing them to linger, still applied. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s symptoms have always been a cautionary and protective measure. [...]

You also give him much more attention than you used to before the emergence of the symptoms—attention that he believes he deserves. [...]

[...] To some extent (underlined), and again, only as part of the picture, the symptoms have been a social device that to varying degrees, now, suited your purposes, both of you. [...]

The foot symptom is also connected here. But as it began to improve, you see, the arm symptom developed. [...]

[...] When he is working at full power he is quite beyond such physical symptoms. [...]

[...] This will effectively relieve him of all physical symptoms.

[...] When this is not done the unconverted energy is literally stopped up, and causes definite physical symptoms that represent a blockage of energy. [...]

[...] He kept trying to get your attention with the symptoms while using them to protect himself at the same time, unless he saw signs of the particular warmth and acceptance he needed. He felt he could not afford to let the symptoms go unless he was willing to give you up entirely, and he would not do that.

[...] He kept the symptoms for several reasons—and again, all given—to preserve what relationship you had, for one thing.

The symptoms were also a protection. [...]

He did not think you wanted him to be free of symptoms, because he thought that then you would be faced with problems of emotionalism that you wished to avoid at all costs.

[...] I can tell you that our work and the stability of our sessions has been of great aid in keeping the symptoms under some control. Had this happened before our sessions the difficulty would literally have been most severe, with other bad physical symptoms.

[...] The symptoms begun earlier in the afternoon, then intensified.

[...] To punish himself he attempted to give himself his mother’s symptoms, to put the shoe on the other foot, so to speak, almost in a religiouslike atonement.

[...] On the few occasions when the symptoms were mentioned and a particular time given, this was a rather pathetic attempt on the part of the ego to make use of the sessions.

[...] The symptoms, then, served to keep her at her desk over the years because she was afraid that if left alone she’d fly off somewhere and wouldn’t do anything.

(The symptoms — and now the hospital — protected her from criticism, eliminated book tours, the whole bit. [...]

(I talked about the first session for Jane’s symptoms — the private portion of Session 208, for November 15, 1965 — yet she said that for her the whole thing really started the day before we went to a party in June 1966 regarding How to Develop Your ESP Power. [...]

(At 4:40, she was near tears when I asked why her psyche hadn’t risen up to protect her when it became obvious that she was heading for deep trouble with the symptoms. [...]

[...] If he now uses psycho-cybernetics as applied to his work and to the (Seth) book, and makes a definite effort with those methods to focus all of his energy into the book, the symptoms will simply fall away, and quickly. [...]

[...] He is quite capable now of throwing himself wholeheartedly, with his full passion, into the book, and doing so will automatically release him from the remaining symptoms.

[...] When Ruburt’s symptoms are a thing of the past you will see how insignificant they were in the overall scheme of your lives. [...]

Let him remember that when he is entirely engrossed in discussing our work or explaining it, he hardly knows he has any symptoms at all—this even when his attitudes may not be of the best at any given time.

(8:32; eventually a one-minute pause.) The symptoms have served to “allow you” a certain privacy, A certain detachment from the world, while at the same time providing a way of relating to others, of sharing life’s misfortunes so that it might not be said, for example, that as artists or people you lived in an ivory tower, untouched by life’s usual dilemmas. Again, there were twists and turns through the years as the symptoms might serve one purpose more than another at any given time, but falling within the general category. [...]

[...] The framework was loosely set up back in that time, however, when for a while, again, you toyed with the idea, for such symptoms would “justify” your staying home even part- time to paint. [...]

Ruburt took on the bargain later, where the symptoms could be used as a backup system, preventing him from going out and working, so adjustments were made along the way. [...]

[...] I do want to stress the advantage of examining such events as your visit of the other evening, and the ways in which either or both of you use the framework of Ruburt’s symptoms, while urging you again not to overly concentrate upon such matters. [...]

[...] A person “cured” of bad symptoms then through conventional medicine might actually be interrupting a natural movement toward a larger overall health, by dismissing the particular annoying symptoms that serve as chosen reference points.

In a society in which individuals were encouraged to work with the psyche and with specialists who understood it, illnesses would be seen as physical symptoms of inner imbalances. The symptoms would be used as exterior reference points while the other conditions at which they hinted were studied. [...]

[...] While symptoms of any kind serve a purpose they are considered legitimate. [...]

[...] I kept trying to go back to what had happened before Jane got her symptoms, before she became well-known, and so forth. I told her I remembered Seth saying once that her symptoms “were amazingly stubborn.” Many things spoke of a great fear of spontaneity, reinforced again and again after the sessions had started, and the symptoms.

[...] 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. [...]

[...] I asked her to have a session on Seth’s remark about her symptoms being “amazingly stubborn.” [...]

[...] Those feelings gradually dissipated over the years, yet they must have had a part to play in the onset of symptoms.)