“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This ego in particular, and many egos, consider that the self is the ego alone. The ego considers that therefore it must maintain stability and permanence. It therefore attempts to become rigid, because it considers itself the main representative of the self. It attempts to deny the inner emotions because the changeability of these emotions would seem to threaten its own permanence. It does not want to change. Therefore any seemingly small incident will tend to bring forth the explosion of these emotions quite against the ego’s inclination, precisely because the ego denies them so vehemently.

The harder the ego attempts to hold down the emotions, the more explosively will they show themselves upon the least provocation, and the more the ego will attempt to hold them down, and the worse the ulcer becomes. This need not be.

Reactions will therefore appear to be intensified. Nevertheless this intensification is a pretense that one part of the self plays upon the other part, for the very intensity of the emotional reaction on the part of the ego to even small stimuli, allows the ego to say to itself “I feel deeply, therefore I know the depths of myself.” And this sham allows the ego to continue denying those inner emotions in an effort to maintain its permanence.

But in its overzealous behavior we find that it is instead threatening the self. Secondary personalities are caused by repressed emotions on a psychological basis that attempts to maintain an ascendancy. Your ulcer is indeed the same sort of growth, but on a physical and not on a psychological level.

(For her part, Jane said she had been quite aware of Seth’s emotions, as her very active, smiling, and at times quite loud delivery had indicated.