“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You are hypnotizing yourself. You would not think of going to a hypnotist and having him tell you that you are getting sicker by the moment or the world was getting cruddier by the moment or that your arm or foot or head or toe or ear would hurt more and more with each breath that you took. You would have the man up to be hung and think such an affair an evil thing indeed, and yet you do this to yourselves often and then you say with all blind innocence, why does this come about, why am I sick or why am I sore or why am I caught in this cruddy universe and yet you do not change your own thought. You use suggestion in the same way that you read a paragraph from a book that you think you should read perhaps for five minutes, but then you allow your (words lost)to take over completely and it seems to you that you have no control.

Now you are not using the control that you have. None of you are helpless to change events, to change your health or your reality at this moment. No one is responsible for your own conscious thought but yourself. Now, you may have built up poor habits of thought, but you can recognize this and change them. Every time you say, I am helpless, and I am slipping into chaos, whether you get laughs or not, or whether you say it humorously or not, you are indeed pushing yourself further into the chaos you are creating with every breath you take because you make no effort to change the nature of your thoughts and this is what you must do, exert your own control.

As you all know, and this is not new, your pitiful body changes with each thought that you have and with each emotion. If you luxuriate in self-pity and feelings of chaos then you have yourselves to blame. There is no other place where you can lay the blame and it is up to you, to each of you individually, to watch the nature of your thoughts for with your thoughts you created the body that you have, the individual realities that you know. You create your little toe and your elbow and the pupil of your eye and your legs. When you allow your thoughts to run riot then your life runs riot. Now, there is no contradiction here with what I have said about spontaneity. When you have allowed negative habits, however, to take over, then somewhere you must draw the line for the negative habits knock away the discipline. The negative habits knock away even spontaneity for all thoughts of good will and health and vitality disappear beneath these thoughts that you are handing yourself every day like poison upon the spoon, whether the spoon be wooden or tarnished or silver. Now, this applies to everyone in the room to some extent or another, for there is no one that cannot stand improvement and this includes our friend Ruburt, but you do not understand yourselves or know yourselves. If you do not know your own thoughts, and if you cannot change them when you want to, you are not at the mercy of your thoughts.

Now, you can change this by changing the pattern of your thoughts. Not only do you attract like patterns when you are awake, but when you are asleep, so a vicious, vicious pattern is set up when you are negative. Your negative dreams, therefore, reinforce the waking pattern. Now, you will pick up with your physical senses precisely what you are interested in. If you are interested in disasters and looking for them, then telepathically you will also pick up disasters so that your dreams always seem negative and filled with foreboding. If, however, your conscious thought patterns are positive, then your dream patterns will also be the same.

Now the change can be miraculous when you change your conscious thought patterns. You can watch the changes happen. It sounds simple and it is simple if you apply it, but it is you who has to know the nature of your own thoughts.

([Theodore:] “In the back of your mind you think a negative thought, then say, ‘Oops, this is wrong’ and try to change it. I don’t think it is so easy”).

A negative thought alone would be followed by a more positive one. Remember what you were saying earlier about cycles. Thought patterns and emotional patterns, left alone, would change one into the other as stormy weather changes into sunny. It is only when strong negative patterns are allowed to flow unrestrained and indulged in so that they become a barrier holding back positive thoughts that you run into difficulty. You get into a habit and you do not realize that you have done so, where predominately your thoughts about yourselves and others are all negative with very few positive ones in between and then the positive ones have no chance to grow. This is where the difficulty comes in. I am not telling you to be so frightened of a negative thought that you want to run into a corner or hide under the bed or say “Oh, this is a negative thought, I must change it at once” and half-terrify yourselves to death. I am telling you that when you indulge in such thoughts for a period of time so that they become habitual then you must change them and no one can do this but yourself. There is no one else that has control over your own thought patterns and you would be very upset, indeed, if anyone else did.

A problem need not be negative. A problem is a challenge. It is only negative when you look at it in that aspect. A problem is usually the opportunity for change, growth and development. Now, your chatter was much more bubbling than mine. 1 want to make sure the bubbling quality continues, however, and that is why I am speaking along these terms tonight.

There is a difference between this, you see, which is a healthy acknowledgment of feeling and an indulgence, exaggeration of feeling that dulls you to everything else. Do you see the distinction? Do not, therefore, be afraid of emotional feelings, accept them. They are healthy and spontaneous. It is only when you refuse to accept them that they build up charges so that if you have been in the habit of refusing to accept them there may be charges that have been built up. If so, in your first attempt to get along with the expression of emotion you may find some exaggeration. If so, physical activity is a good way to work this off, if only pounding the bed. Do not put your hand through walls, it is bad on the wall and bad on the hand. Even your astral knuckles may hurt.

(To Ned.) I am now speaking to someone who is directly behind me, but I have eyes in the back of Ruburt’s head. Now, an overindulgence in negative emotions is worse than an overindulgence in negative thoughts. You have a love of nature and a love of existence that you can suffocate with an overindulgence upon negative emotions.

When you love life very deeply then it is very easy to despair, and when you compare ideal human relations to the relations that exist in the world as it is, it is very easy to despair; but if you give in to despair then you cannot see the beauty that does exist for the despair will eat it through like lye; and so hold on to the beauty and guard it and the vitality of your thoughts and emotions and your natural vitality as you would your life, for it is your life. Peace—now you may all take a break.

(To Ned.) Behind me, this fellow behind the rocker, you mark my words and guard your vitality and the love you have of life and of your wife and of your child and the new life you see beginning in him and do not let the other emotions destroy your peace of mind. Now, peace is not a dull thing. Peace does not mean a sober face and dull thoughts. Peace is truly joyful and exhilarating and it can be as good and better than any trip, so if you are going to trip, then trip through the good green grasses that grow in the sod. And trip also through your own vitality and through the bright green forests that grow in your own mind and derive your strength and peace from these.

Now, I bid you all a fond good evening and I wish you a happy vacation from classes, but I will make up for lost time and I would like to see a smile on your kisser for a change. The soul that does not smile is a dreary thing indeed.

Stop indulging A) in self-pity. B) Stop indulging in bitter and negative projections into the future. Stop seeing yourself as helpless. Stop reminding yourself of how bitter your present experience is. Stop telling yourself that you are powerless and that there is nothing you can do to change your mood. Stop luxuriating in negative thoughts and emotions. You do this by stopping now. Each time you find yourself thinking, how can I bear this; instead you say, many people have many more severe problems than I.

([Brad:] “I have followed what you have said to a great extent, but right now I am letting my emotions rule me to a great extent because all the logic in the world hasn’t done me a bit of good. I want Margo back.”)

You want your obsession. Then allow her her individuality as a person and respect her feeling. You have no right to expect to change someone else’s attitudes, to treat them as an object, or to want them despite their own wishes. Your whole thoughts at this point are negative. You must allow the woman a freedom in your thoughts and allow yourself freedom in your thoughts.

Not necessarily her, and she is not the problem. Your thoughts and emotions are the problem.