“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

One is the cancer drive literature, and television “public service” announcements, in which the seven danger signals of cancer are given. Unfortunately, again, within the framework of your beliefs this also becomes almost a necessity for many — especially for those who, because of previous experience of one kind or another with the disease, are almost irrational in their fear of it. The literature and announcements act as strong negative suggestions, following the nature of natural hypnosis — as a conditioning process, you see, where you are looking for specific symptoms, and examining your body under the impetus of fear.

They believe that diseases are the result of exterior conditions. Quite simply, their policy can be read: “You are what you eat.” Some in this group also subscribe to philosophical ideas that somewhat moderate those concepts, recognizing the importance of the mind. Often though, some strong suggestions of a very negative character are given, so that all foods except certain accepted ones are seen as bad for the body, and the cause of diseases. People become afraid of the food they eat, and the field of eating then becomes the arena.

(11:39.) You must, therefore, willingly suspend that belief. Using the exercises given in this chapter, you must make a conscious effort to insert a different belief; employ natural hypnosis in this new way. If you realize your own worth after reading this book, then that realization in the present can negate any past ideas of unworthiness that may have attracted you to the condition.

(“Yet each individual must eventually realize that you can’t give up power in one area without … ultimately threatening the inner core or psychic territory of power to some extent…. A belief in powerlessness in any area sets up its possibility in others — it operates as negative suggestion.”

(“Diets do serve momentarily as outer signs that you are in control, and can seize the initiative; and as such they can be important. Usually, however, a pattern of unsuccessful diets occurs, operating then as a series of negative suggestions. The resistance is the result of conflicts in beliefs. You think you are overweight and accept this as reality. Steps to lose weight do not make sense in the face of that belief. They are ‘unrealistic’ or even impossible.

(“The same applies to underweight conditions. In each case frequent attention to the scales serves as another negative stimulus, reinforcing the condition. The effort to eat more will be as resisted by the chronically underweight, as the effort to refrain from eating will be by the obese. Not only will these reactions occur, but opposing tendencies will be brought to bear. The concentration upon not eating, and the resulting tension, may instead cause increased consumption. And the underweight person may actually eat less the harder he or she tries to eat more — the latter being interpreted as an impossibility by the overriding belief in the underweight condition.

(“The reason why some lose-weight groups succeed in their therapy, at least momentarily, is that belief in the worth of the self is stressed. Unfortunately, weight is attacked as ‘bad’ or ‘evil’; symbolic moral judgments enter the act. The therapy seldom has long-reaching effects because from then on any gained weight is even more negatively charged.