“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The role-playing in the dream drama would be one in which you creatively worked out the problems that caused the imbalances to begin with. Dreams of a strongly aggressive nature in this context may be very beneficial to a given individual, allowing the release of usually inhibited feelings and freeing the body from tension. By such constant dream therapy, both body and mind regulate themselves to a large degree. So your flesh is affected by your dreams.

In them of course one object may be a symbol, but there is no such thing as an overall statement of dream symbolism, in which a given symbol will have a general meaning. There are too many variations in personal experience. It is true that in dreams you do reach some of the deepest sources of your being at times, but even there, the expression of that being is far too individualistic to assign the same kind of “unconscious” meaning to overall symbols.

With dreams the same is true. No one really knows their meaning but yourself. If you read books in which you are told that a certain object always represents such and such, then you are like the artist who accepts the critic’s idea of the symbols in his own work. You will feel alienated from your dreams since you are trying to make them follow a pattern that is not yours.

In any case, interpretation involves but one part of the task as you try to consciously assess a dream’s meaning. The real work of the dream is done during the event itself, on deep psychic and biological levels.

As you come to understand the nature of your own beliefs, you can learn to use the dream state more effectively for your conscious purposes. It is one of the most efficient natural therapies, and the inner framework in which much of your physical body building actually takes place.

(10:14. Jane’s pace had been steady. The reference to probabilities in the material reminded me of Chapter Sixteen in Seth Speaks. In that chapter Seth voices one of my favorite quotes: “Each mental act opens up a new dimension of actuality. In a manner of speaking, your slightest thought gives birth to worlds.” Resume at 10:33.)

Now: There is one point here that I would like to make. Some of the drugs given to “mental” patients impede the natural flow of dream therapy to varying degrees.

The whole organism is not at one with itself under such conditions. The problem manifested itself in a given way, and the drugs then block that normal expression of the psychic disorder. Other pathways of demonstration will be sought.

(10:49.) The same applies to mental conditions, which have a way, sometimes, of working themselves out better without your professional therapies than with them — often cures happen in spite of your best-intentioned treatment. One of the latest ideas is that certain mental conditions are caused by chemical imbalances. Supplying these does result in some improvement, but such inequalities do not cause any disease. Your beliefs about the nature of your own reality do. If medication of that sort improves the immediate situation, the inner problem of beliefs must still be worked out. Otherwise other illnesses will be substituted.

(11:02. During break there was an outburst of heavy noise from one of the other apartments. Several people seemed to be dragging furniture back and forth. The racket was so loud and prolonged that I was surprised when Jane went back into trance. Resume at a slower pace at 11:14.)

It reflects the seasons of the earth and of the flesh. In what you think of as you, it mirrors one condition with great faithfulness and abandon. In old age it does the same thing. It shows you in flesh, both as you come into it and leave it, and here you see great variation. Many cease creating their bodies and die at a young age for a great variety of reasons, of course, but some die because they believe that old age is shameful and that only a young body can be beautiful.

Elements, chemicals, cells, atoms and molecules — these partially compose your living sculpture, but you are the one who directs their activity through your conscious beliefs, which then initiate all of those great creative powers that give your body its life, and insure its constant reflection of the self that you believe you are.