“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Illnesses can be seen as impeding actions representing actual blockages of energy, action turned into channels that are not to the best interests of the personality. The energies appear concentrated and turned inward, affecting the whole system. They represent offshoots; not necessarily detrimental in themselves, except when viewed from the standpoint of other actions that form the personality framework. …

A certain portion of the energy practically available to the personality is spent in the maintenance of this impeding action or illness. It is obvious, then, that less energy is available for actions more beneficial to the personality system as a whole.

The situation can be serious in varying degrees, according to the impetus and intensity of the original cause behind the illness. If the impetus is powerful, then the impeding action will be of more serious nature, blocking huge reserves of energy for its own purposes. It obviously becomes part of the personality’s psychological structure, the physical, electrical and chemical structures, invading to some extent even the dream system.

At times, illness is momentarily accepted by the personality as a part of the self, and here lies its danger. It is not just symbolically accepted, and I am not speaking in symbolic terms. The illness is often quite literally accepted by the personality structure as a portion of the self. Once this occurs, a conflict instantly develops. The self does not want to give up a portion of itself, even if that part may be painful or disadvantageous. …

These differentiations come later, on another level of development. But because personality is composed of action, it contains within it all action’s characteristics.

The complicated organism of human personality with its physical structure has evolved a highly differentiated ‘I’ consciousness, whose very nature is such that it attempts to preserve the apparent boundaries of identity. To do so it must choose between actions.

Now you should understand why even an impeding action can be literally accepted by the personality as a part of itself and why efforts must be made to coax the personality to give up a portion of itself, if progress is to be made.

We are also helped, however, by several characteristics of the personality, in that it is ever-changing, and its flexibility will be of benefit. We merely want to change the direction in which some of its energy moves. It must be seen by the personality that an impeding action is a hardship on the whole structure and that this particular part of the self is not basic to the original personality. The longer the impeding action is accepted, the more serious the problem.

The whole focus of a personality can change from constructive areas to a concentration of main energies in the area of the illness. Now in such a case, often the illness represents a new unifying system. If the old unifying system of personality has broken down, the illness, serving as a makeshift, temporary emergency measure may hold the integrity of the personality intact until a new constructive, unifying principle replaces the original.

In this case, the illness could not be called an impeding action unless it persisted long after its purpose was served. … Even then, without knowing all the facts you could not make a judgment, for the illness could still serve by giving the personality a sense of security, being kept on hand as an ever-present emergency device in case the new unifying principle should fail.

Unifying principles are groups of actions about which the whole personality forms itself at any given time. These may change and do change in a relatively smooth fashion when action is allowed to flow unimpeded. When action is not allowed to follow the patterns or channels for its expression that have been evolved by the personality, then blockages of energy occur.

These must be understood not as something apart from the personality, but as a part of the changing personality. Often, they point out the existence of inner problems. Often, they serve temporary functions, leading the personality from other more severe areas of difficulty. I am not saying here that illness is good. I am saying that it is a part of the action of which any personality is composed, and, therefore, it is purposeful and cannot be considered as an alien force that attacks the individual from without.

The personality is simultaneous action; it is composed of actions within actions. Portions of it are conscious of its awareness as a part of action, and portions try to stand aside from action. This attempt forms the ego, which is itself action.

If illness were thrust upon action or upon the personality from the outside, then the individual would be at the mercy of outside agencies, but it is not. Personality is affected by outside agencies, but in a most basic manner, it chooses those actions which it will accept.

In most cases the stimuli [toward healing] come from deeper levels of the self, where they may be translated into terms that the personal subconscious can use. In such cases, these perceptions may find their way to the ego, appearing as inspirations or intuitive thought.

Many such intuitions appear when the personality is dissociated or in a dream state. … The effect of any thought is quite precise and definite and set into motion because of the nature of its own electromagnetic identity. The physical body operates within certain electromagnetic patterns and is adversely affected by others. These effects change the actual molecular structure of the cells, for better or worse, and because of the laws of attraction, habitual patterns will operate. A destructive thought, then, is dangerous not only to the present state of the organism but is also dangerous in terms of the ‘future.’

A destructive attitude of mind has been changed overnight in the dream state to a constructive situation in many instances, and the whole electromagnetic balance has been changed. In such a case, negative ions form an electrical framework in which healing is possible. Such healing dreams come most often when the self feels a sense of desperation and automatically opens up channels to deeper layers of personality.

I won’t go into the out-of-body implications of that experience until later in this book; here, I’d like to emphasize, instead, the mood-changing elements of the “dream” and what it meant to me. In the next session, Seth explained it and showed how reincarnational background, present problems and personal symbolism were all used in the dream drama. Portions of the experience were dreams. Others were valid subjective events of a different kind, and the entire production was in response to my suggestions for a mood-changing dream.

I am happy to see that Ruburt tried out the material on therapeutic dreams. The basic action of the first dream involved his reception of several voices. Though he does not remember this, they spoke words of encouragement. They presented excellent evidence of his own abilities, for initially they were crystal-clear and without distortion. There were four in all — all male. They belonged to personalities no longer within the physical system, but who were closely allied with Ruburt in past lives. The fourth voice was mine. This was an attempt to build Ruburt’s confidence — to show how clear reception can be if his abilities are fully utilized.

The second dream is one of expansion. The most meaningful level was one in which the many rooms and apartments represented psychic areas of development, endless possibilities that continually open, but possibilities that were based on previous life experiences. There are many aspects of reincarnational data in the dream, all reinforcing the healthy elements of Ruburt’s personality.

Seth’s interpretation was continued in the next (200th) session. He said that the green jacket represented a new ability that had been mine in a past life but which I misused, this new ability was now waiting for me to claim. The people were all persons with who I’d had past life connections. This caused the feelings of rediscovery and joy. Seth said,

As the personality is changed by any action, so it is changed by its own dreams. As it is molded by the exterior environment, so it is molded by the dreams that it creates and which help form its interior world. To the whole self, there is little differentiation made between exterior or interior actions. The ego makes such distinctions. The core of the personality does not. … As an individual changes his physical situation through reacting to it, so he changes his interior or psychic situation in the same way. …

In dreams, you give freedom to actions that cannot adequately be expressed within the confines of normal waking reality. If the personality handles his dream activities capably, then problem actions find release in dreams. When the ego is too rigid, it will even attempt to censor dreams, however … and freedom of action is not entirely permitted, even in the dream condition.

Upon proper suggestion, the personality then will work out specific problems in the dream state, but if the solution is not clear to the [conscious] ego, this does not necessarily mean that the solution was not found. There will be cases where it is not only unnecessary but undesirable that the ego be familiar with the solution. The suggestions will be followed by the sleeping self in its own fashion. The solutions may not appear to the conscious self in the way it expects. The conscious self may not even recognize it has been given a solution, and yet it may act upon it. …

[In practice, however,] there are many considerations to be understood. If aggressiveness is the problem, for example, then the preliminary suggestion should include a statement that in the dream, the aggression will be harmlessly acted out and not directed against a particular individual. The subconscious is quite capable of handling the situation in this manner. This may seem like a double censor, but in all cases it is the aggressiveness itself that is important and not the person or persons against whom the individual may decide to vent his aggressiveness.

When the aggressiveness is released through a dream, there will be no need for a victim. We do not want an individual to suggest a dream situation in which he is attacking another person. There are several reasons for this, both telepathic realities which you do not yet understand and guilt patterns which would be unavoidable. …

We are not attempting to substitute dream action for physical action, generally speaking. Here we are speaking of potentially dangerous situations in which an individual shows signs of being unable to cope with these psychological actions through ordinary methods of adaption. No one can deny that a war fought by dreaming men at specified times would be less harmful than a physical war — to return to my flight of fancy. There would be reprecussions, however, that would be unavoidable, [for again, basically, the personality does not differentiate between sleeping and waking events].

Again, if the personality is fairly well balanced, then his existence in dream reality will reinforce his physical existence. You are involved in a juggling of realities. It is necessary to see the personality as it operates within both, if you are interested in understanding its whole experience.