“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Here posthypnotic suggestion operates as well as constant daily “conditioning.” Now: For an example, take a woman who feels compelled to wash her hands twenty or thirty times a day. It is easy to recognize the fact that such repeated behavior is compulsive. But when a man’s ulcers bother him every time he eats certain foods, it is more difficult to perceive the fact that this behavior is also compulsive and repetitive.

This is an excellent example of the way in which natural hypnotism can act to affect your system adversely. In a manner of speaking, repetitious actions intimately involve beliefs at the “magical” level. The behavior usually represents efforts to ward off “evil” that the individual feels is imminent. While it is easy then to understand the nature of exterior actions of repetitive quality, it is far more difficult to see many physical symptoms in the same light — but here also whole groups of recurring reactions to certain stimuli are involved. Behind them there is often the same kind of compulsion. In their own way symptoms frequently operate, actually, as repetitive neurological ritual, meant to protect the sufferer from something else that he fears even more.

Until you change your belief, you will continue to utilize your food in the same fashion — and to overeat. Momentary gains will not last. Your entire behavior pattern operates according to the strong hypnotic suggestions given, and then of course your appearance and experience always reinforce your belief.

The same procedures as just given for those who are overweight should be used. In each case body conditioning is set up through natural hypnosis. Daily behavior and chemical functioning smoothly follow according to the belief.

Ideas of worth are involved here also, and the point of power as mentioned earlier. (See the 657th session in Chapter Fifteen.) In any area, great clues can be received simply through paying more attention to the conscious thoughts that you have during the day, for each of them serve as minute suggestions, modifying your behavioral patterns and affecting bodily mechanisms.