“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now, to return to an earlier discussion. What you call suggestion is indeed expectation. You should understand by now how the physical image is constructed. This construction is from the inside out. The inner self attempts to construct a physical image in line with its own self-image. Any errors of construction have their origin not in the inner self, but in either the personal subconscious or in the ego.

The same sort of distortion occurs on another scale, in the duplication of any given illness or destructive organic or gross misfunctions. What you call suggestion should ideally come from within the self, and not from outside the self.

Your own experiments in psychological time have allowed you, to some extent, to experience within yourselves such unimpeded action. You know now that the ego, because of its nature, attempts to set itself aside from action. It obviously cannot do so. The ego, being part of action, nevertheless affects the nature of action as seen in the various manifestations of the whole self.

The personal subconscious can be thought of as a threshold between the ego and the inner self; not only can glimmerings of the inner self be glimpsed through the subconscious, but also the diverse characteristics of the ego touch this personal subconscious. When the ego, therefore, becomes too overbearing it attempts to impede the flow of action. It cannot so impede action directly, for the very act of forming such impediments involves action. Nevertheless such impediments often set up actions that block the overall movement or direction of the action that composes the whole personality.

What you call negative suggestions represent discordant actions. Unless the main reasons are discovered, the distortive actions will keep reoccurring. In many cases quite a simple exercise will almost immediately begin to make an improvement. With these exercises you are familiar, for in your psychological time the self is momentarily in connection with its more extensive portions.

Recall here also the cooperation that exists between the smallest particles and the cells and organs. Each molecule has its own self-image, without which it could not exist as a physical construction. The subconscious has its own self- image, the ego has its own self-image. When action is allowed to flow unimpeded, the cooperation that is necessary to maintain the efficiency of the gestalt is maintained. It is most frequently the error of the ego, who upon many occasions attempts to deny its dependency upon this cooperation, that sets up impediments, and sets up countersuggestions that can be somewhat considered cancerous, in that if it had its way the ego would envelop all other aspects of the whole organism, and run riot.