“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] Today Jane had worked a little on page 6 of her “Manifesto from the Sinful Self”—a long dissertation from that entity that she’d started to get yesterday afternoon. [...]

[...] The Sinful Self’s material is too long and complicated to describe here, except to say that it contains the Sinful Self’s own view of reality and its relationship to Jane’s background and work, it’s regrets, its defensive attitudes, its questions, and its genuine puzzlement that man has for so long —perhaps for most of history, indeed—persisted in the creation of and reliance upon such entities as the Sinful Self. [...]

[...] [He’s out of town.] They seem to work well for her. [...]

[...] In answer to my question about material in the last session, she said that yes, she still felt to some degree that she had to protect her work from me and my feelings about Prentice-Hall. [...]

[...] In the dream state you work intimately with the “inner grammar” of events. [...] The skeletons of the inner workings of events are there more obvious. [...]

[...] The “future” history of the world, for example, is worked out now, as in the dream state each individual works with the probable events of private life. [...]

[...] As you might change your sentence in the middle from one version to another without even being consciously aware of it, so as you live your life you also work with probabilities. [...]

The material he received from me (Monday evening) was from me, and his suggestion that you work late that evening was the result of a creative impulse on his part. The material on variety is rather important, and also is connected with the fact that I suggested he forget the work sessions for a while. [...]

(No session was held Monday evening; we worked late instead, and did so on Tuesday night also. [...]

[...] Western religion and science promote the ideas of competition, effort, the emphasis upon the will, divorced from the imagination, so that to “give up all effort” can be read as an abdication of responsibility, an indication of laziness and sloth; or in fundamental Christian terms, the devil finds work for idle hands.

The session should be read carefully, and the sessions given to trust of the body emphasized, now, instead of, say, the work sessions—again for now.

[...] At psychic levels, the qualities you need for sessions and your own work do not mesh with the overriding need to help others. [...] Then, helping others follows naturally as your work helps others help themselves. [...]

Ruburt received certain kinds of knowledge by taking various jobs throughout his early adulthood, including factory work or whatever. [...] On a certain level he took those jobs because he needed money, not because he needed experience in other lines of work or with other kinds of people. When he sold Avon he was hearing the questions that his own work would later try to answer. He could not have faked pretending to need the jobs, or it would not have worked, so neither of you could pretend to have physical difficulties so that you could, for example, put yourselves in other peoples’ shoes. [...]

[...] Strange, I thought, if it turned out that personal work would be one of the most creative of all the uses to which the Seth material could be put, rather than grandiose pronouncements coming down from on high, dispensed by one who was in a position of superiority.

[...] If you wanted deeply wrought psychological statements, the symptoms also provided a framework around which they could occur—an inner framework of personal sessions devoted to the workings of personality, an inner library beside the books themselves, that perhaps you would not otherwise think of without such an impetus. [...]

[...] You used this period, however, yourselves, as a time to critically aggravate the symptoms (long pause), almost as if you were looking over a body of work to see what you thought of it, and what you wanted to do next. [...]

[...] Jane has been working hard on her God of Jane. [...] [Some of them are on reincarnation, and I plan to present them when Seth gets into that subject in Dreams.] On October 7, a Sunday, Jane saw for the first time the work Sue Watkins has done on Conversations With Seth, the book she’s writing about the ESP classes Jane used to hold. [...]

[...] When Ruburt forgot to worry because “he wasn’t working,” his natural playful creativity bubbled to the surface, and today he wrote poetry. Poetry, however, did not fit into his current ideas about work, and so that excellent creativity was hardly counted at all.

As for Ruburt, he became overconcerned about work because of the contracts (for Mass Events and God of Jane, which we have yet to sign with Prentice-Hall), and the foreign hassles. It would be nice if you took it for granted that all of those issues were also being creatively worked out to your advantage. [...]

Today, Jane wrote three more excellent little poems, all of which I hope to eventually see published.² I think she grumbled the whole time she was doing them, though, since she kept at herself because she wasn’t working on God of Jane.

[...] It was on normal typing paper and requested, first, some further work on the book — either an outline of a projected book to include portions of the dream manuscript, but stressing Seth, or some sample chapters — before a contract would be signed. One sentence read, “Or better, send on some notes from the original Seth material, and maybe we can consider that as advance work for a contract.”

[...] This involved work that I really didn’t want to do, until the proposed book was begun. The next day, though, I started to work on it.

[...] On February 17, I dreamed that it was returned and that the person to whom I had addressed it no longer worked there. [...]

[...] Tam said he had great faith in the book and would continue to work on my behalf. [...]

(I’ve received various answers from the pendulum on the background causes for my upset; not really contradictory, by and large, but signifying to me that in spite of my concern I hadn’t been willing to buckle down and really work at uncovering the beliefs causing the unrest. [...]

[...] You are not sure whether your creative work will “pay off”—that is, whether you will be adding to the financial kitty. [...]

5. My side bothers me because I’m not working on Mass Reality. [...]

[...] Jane had been working in the kitchen all day in preparation for the holidays. I had been working overtime also and was very tired. [...]

(I’m getting used to thinking about Mass Events now, and am organized to start producing the notes for it—something like making myself a new nest within which I can feel comfortable for working on the new job.

Ruburt’s work, as far as his symptoms are concerned, rests primarily in his mental attitudes, and they are indeed changing for the better. [...]

[...] It all works together, you see. [...]

[...] Worrying, future projections of unpleasant conditions, concern over a public image, or whatever, even overconcern about his work itself—these cause strain and tension. [...]

(This is very important, since all of our psychic work is done at night, after we’ve already put in a full day writing and painting, and carrying out all those other actions connected with just living in an organized way. [Yet I’ve had to modify my schedule in order to find the additional time required for the preparation of this manuscript: I paint in the mornings and do this work in the afternoons.]

[...] Jane did manage to hold her ESP and writing classes part of the time; she also worked on her novel, The Education of Oversoul 7, which she discusses in her Introduction.

[...] Jane hadn’t looked at Seth Speaks for long periods during its production in order to avoid conscious involvement with it — but, she said recently, smiling, she plans to read and use this work session by session as she delivers it. [...]

[...] Since I’m more solitary by nature, however, I usually type Monday’s session then or work on filing and correspondence.

[...] It is used in your work, and in your joint work. [...]

Your individual work, and our work, are involved here also.

On the other hand your relationship teaches Ruburt to direct and mold his strong emotional feelings into meaningful, productive work. [...]

Because of your natures you will seek this, be refreshed, plunge into your work, and again seek refreshment. [...]

[...] Despite all man does, he cannot really work any destruction—but while he believes in destruction, then to that extent he minimizes what he is, and must work harder to use creativity.”

In all of this—the bombings and persecutions and killings—I thought of great, loose groups of consciousnesses swirling in angry revolt, with each consciousness “working” individually and collectively for and against others, each one seeking to know new creative aspects of itself within the framework of a chosen national structure.²

In your terms, there is a great pleasure to be found in both work and play, in excitement and calm, in exertion and rest (long pause), yet the word “pleasure” itself has often fallen into disrepute, and is frowned at by the virtuous.

[...] Dreams are mental work and play combined, psychic and emotional rich creative dramas. [...]

He did not feel they had served that particular purpose, yet he felt the sessions too legitimate to drop then, and the psychic work too fascinating to disown. [...] You had received the cover, and the writing self was facing its own conflicts also: was the psychic work its natural fulfillment, or a disastrous side trip? [...]

[...] He feared always that you would go your way in your work and life, and emotionally leave him alone. [...]

[...] This feeling however, having its roots in “lack of rights” and his alliance with you, also provides him with the unity upon which his life is based: the poetry, the psychic work, and yourself. [...]

[...] The questioning of values, of neighborhood and church, allowed the intuitions to work and gave them freedom. [...]

[...] When we are working on such a project here (in your reality), we are working on probable books also, and those are as real as your official one. [...] So we have been working on a probable “Unknown” Reality — in fact, on many probable “Unknown” Realities. Not mere versions, but variations.

(Yesterday Jane received from her publisher the galley proofs for her book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time.¹ The story of that work’s creation is interwound throughout Personal Reality.

[...] (Pause.) The artist does not usually understand, however, that those probable art productions do literally exist; he perceives only the final, physically chosen work. [...]

In one reality, of course, the work was finished at the Foster Avenue house (in Elmira, New York). In another it was finished in Sayre (Pennsylvania).

[...] “I’ve got that thing again where when I stop doing the exercises my eyes work better,” she said. [...] After getting her eye drops Jane did some more subdued exercises while I made notes and worked on mail. [...]

(At 3:19 she began a few subdued motions of her left foot as I worked with mail. [...]

[...] The body chose today to work on the upper portions, evidently. [...]

[...] Huge work is being done, involving the entire muscular system, however. [...] This time it is not a matter of doing as well as he can with bent arms and legs, but instead the work involves the correction of those difficulties to begin with. [...]

[...] The walking will be greatly improved as his inner alterations make themselves more obviously known, and as the muscles learn to work together again in their new framework. [...]

[...] He made the necessary distinctions in that paper, and he should use it as a basis for whatever work he decides to do with suggestion, whether it is alone or with you.

It is one thing to understand the imperfections of medicine, but quite another if you are not willing to take one to two hours a week to work with techniques that are highly important to improve your own health. [...]

The recorder worked because you wanted the recorder to work, and expected it to work. [...]

(Sunday night while we had company Jane and I got out the recorder on the spur of the moment; to our surprise we found that it worked perfectly. In fact, the quality of the tapes we made was superior to any made before the machine ceased working several months ago. [...]

[...] You two work very well together. [...]

To some extent tonight’s relatively brief session should remove senses of urgency on your parts, or of self-criticism, that make you question when or how can you “learn to make” the magical approach work in any specific way—that is, why can you not learn to make the approach work in, say, helping Ruburt’s condition in a faster, more effective fashion? [...]

[...] You do not need to worry or deride yourselves for stupidity if it appears (very long pause, eyes closed, at 9:04), looking over the long annals of work that we have done together, that it should have been obvious that our ideas were leading in certain directions—for not only have I been trying to divest you of official ideas, but to prepare you for the acceptance of a new version of reality: A version that could be described in many fashions. [...]

[...] That recognition takes the pressure off, so that you can to some extent relax your old attitudes enough so that you allow the magical approach (long pause) to work in those areas that have been a bone of contention. [...]