“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dictation: The natural therapies of the body can be called upon with great effectiveness, as you will see in the next chapter. We will discuss the ways in which this can be encouraged, as well as the role of the conscious mind as the director of “the soul in chemical clothes.”

The harder you try to be “good” in such a case the more inferior you will become in your own mind. What do you think of yourself, your daily life, your body, your relationship with others? Ask yourself these questions. Write down the answers or speak them into a recorder. But in one way or another objectify them.

Your feelings always change the chemical balance of your body and alter its hormonal output, but the danger comes only when you refuse to face the contents of your conscious mind. Even the intent to know yourself, to face the reality of your experience, can be of great benefit, generating emotions that will provide an energy, an impetus to begin.

(Pause.) No one can do this for you. You may believe that good mental health means being always cheerful, resolute and kind, and never crying or showing disappointment. That belief alone can lead you to deny quite natural dimensions of human experience, and to impede the flow of emotions that could otherwise cleanse both your body and your mind. If you are convinced that feelings are dangerous, then again that belief itself will generate a fear of all of them, and you may become almost panic-stricken if you display anything but the most “reasonable” calm behavior.

If you have been told, again, that the spirit is good, in fact perfect, and that you must then be perfect in all of your ways, while at the same time you believe in the imperfection of the body, you will always be in conflict with yourself.

Birth is an aggressive action — the thrust outward with great impetus of a self from within a body into a new environment. Any creative idea is aggressive. Violence is not aggressive. It is instead a passive surrender to emotion which is not understood or evaluated, only feared, and at the same time sought.

Simultaneously all of these inhibited reactions seek release, for the manifestation of aggressive feelings sets up natural balances within the body itself, as well as serving as a communication system with others. When his system has had enough, our friend may then indeed react with violent behavior. He might suddenly find himself in a fight — initiating one — and the smallest incident may serve as a trigger. He could seriously hurt himself or someone else.

As a rule the animals have better sense. Your mind and your body, therefore, are quite equipped to handle aggression. Violence occurs only when the natural expression of aggression has been short-circuited. The sense of power felt during such episodes is the result of repressed energy suddenly released, but the individual is always at the mercy of that energy then — submerged within it, and passively carried with it.

There are many biological signs shown by the body, all meant as communications to others on a creative basis — as warnings to whatever degree. Each is automatic in its own way, and yet ritualistic, a dance of muscle in motion with its own meaning, and biologically understood. These are all constructive. They are meant to elicit reactions from others and to arrive at new points of understanding, a balance of rights. When your conscious thoughts interfere with such processes, you are in deep trouble.

(Pause.) Sometimes you think of suicide as ignominious and passive, but of war as aggressive and powerful. Both are equally the result of passivity and distorted aggression, and of natural pathways of communication not used or understood. You think of flowers in terms of gentleness, beauty and “goodness,” and yet every time a new bud opens there is a great thrust of joyful aggression that is hardly passive, and a daring and courage that reaches actively outward. Without aggression your body would be denied its growth, the cells within it caught in inertia. Aggressiveness is at the base of the magnificent bursting of creativity.