“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“By our projecting our thoughts to this finished product, we can influence our health, our future, our position, etc. We should picture ourselves as being in a state of good health. Now I would assume that this same thing applies to a station or vocation...”)

But never as a finished product. For a state of health is not an end product.... or an unchanging station in those terms. It is the ability to effectively handle energy in a constructive way for your own benefit and the benefit of others. The state of health is a poor term. You should indeed imagine yourself, therefore, able to handle your energy effectively for your own good and the good of others; to imagine yourself as a channel through which the creativity of the universe can express itself. For when you harbor negative ideas and resentments, then indeed you set up a block and the block causes distortions. Now you call them illnesses in many instances. They are distortions. The energy is being distorted and misused and misshapen.

([Tom:] “But to want good health or position just for the sake of that is not the end of the line. That, you are saying, is just the beginning of...”)

It is a beginning, and health is not a static state in any case...

([Tom:] “We should desire good health because it makes it possible for us to do something else... to serve or perform some other role...

You should desire good health because it is a natural state of your being. You should trust in the innate intelligence of your own being... which produces good health. Health is a natural state of your being. Through your physical image the energy of the universe expresses itself. You as an individualized consciousness are a part of this, and you cannot express yourself fully nor fulfill your purpose as an identity, as an individual, if you are not in good health... for the effects of the body are felt in the mind... and the effects of the mind are felt in the body. You distort the picture. Now I did not intend a question and answer service this evening, but I seem to be involved in one. And some evening I will turn the tables. And when I ask you questions, I will expect some answers. And they will not be easy questions... and they will not be general questions. And I will make you search for the answers... and the answers will form steps upon which you can walk and will serve as foundations within which you can travel within yourselves. But they will be your answers and not my answers.

([Tom:] “But the point is... I guess the question I’m asking is: am I really more interested in the certain possibilities of status, and that would not be the positive way of looking at things... or should I be seeing that man within a framework of, just as we were talking about health as just being a stepping stone, should I be seeing this man with a viewpoint towards what this can mean for helping other people be part of a constructive arrangement?”)

(Pause. [Tom:] “My interpretation of what he said is that (1) good health is a natural part of ourselves, and so we should naturally desire it, and (2) good health in itself is not the objective at all. It is what you can do when you are in a state of good health. We carried it into another dimension besides health... vocational aspects. We project ourselves ahead mentally to vocational status we are interested in, and by doing that, accomplish it. It is not the status itself that is the end. It is what we are able to do through it, that we should really be aiming at.

([Dave:] “Tom made the analogy of health vs. occupation. His implication was that the product of good health was the ability to do good more efficiently. Taking it over into occupations, then, I don’t know how it would be ... advances an occupation, I guess is the closest.

Now I am going to leave you. However, I want to clear up an issue. If you are in poor health, this does not mean that you are an evil person. It means that you have a block in that particular area... in which you are unable to utilize energy constructively. And if you are not at the top of your profession, the same thing applies. It does not follow that those in excellent health are more blessed than others. It does mean that in that particular area they are able to utilize energy more effectively.

And theoretically, theoretically, if you are using energy the way you should, you would indeed be at the top of your profession and in excellent health and filled with abundance. Now various kinds of lacks can show up in many ways... in mental deficiencies... A man or a woman who has strong and definite mental deficiencies... who has strong negative habits... such a person has blocks in those areas. You may not attain perfection... I have not attained it. But it is the ideal toward which we work.

I do not want you to have the attitude, however, or make the implication, that your health or status in any way automatically, and alone, is an indication of your spiritual wealth... or lack of it.