“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The inner self therefore uses the physical system to express its own inclinations and ideas of reality. It is the inner self that unfolds those patterns of behavior spoken about in the article you read on infant growth. (In a recent issue of Time magazine.) Such unfoldings always occur from within, responding to signals not from the exterior but from the interior environment.

These are unfoldings, as the inner self materializes what is already latent into physical actuality. Now there may be areas in which the inner self is simply not interested. There may be areas in which it is simply less proficient. The inner self is a developing entity, not a finished product. The whole idea of physical reality, individually speaking, is the emergence of experience within your particular system.

The inner self is acquainting itself with reality as it exists there. In many cases it is emerging into a new world. Since the learning process is involved, there are errors. Any faulty constructions however are used by the inner self in a feedback system and as a part of the learning process. Your system is not the most elementary, but it is one of the most elementary, and it is a way that the inner self acquaints itself with certain basic facts.

It knows full well its own indestructibility, and that of its fellows. What happens in the case of constructive psychic energy when it is purposely denied aggressive outlets? It finds out. What does it feel like to be the brunt of aggression? It forms another life situation and discovers the answer. How strong and potent is the energy that is at its command? How can it best be used? It is quite necessary that all of these questions be answered, for the inner self is composed of energy, and in other fields of activity thoughts and emotions are instantaneously translated, their results instantly seen. There is no saving time lag, as within your own system, and there is no physical body such as you know it.

There is form. The very mechanism of the body however is so constructed that it can bear the brunt of many errors, and free itself from them, though this may not seem to be the case at times. Nevertheless yours is a slow-motion world in many ways as far as your perceptions are concerned, while you are within it. Your body is much like a sculptor or a sculpt, never really completed, the inner self trying out various techniques of creativity on its first test piece. The results are not always of the best, but the sculptor is independent of his product and knows there will others.

The inner self then has an entirely different perspective upon your reality than you do, and it sees purposes which are not apparent to you.

Do not forget however that you are a portion of the inner self. It is not using you. You are the portion of it that experiences physical reality. Now physical illnesses that are not critical but observable, that do not involve the loss of say of a limb or of an organ, generally (underlined) represent problems that are in the process of being solved, problems that are in quotes “out in the open.”

Now these particular kinds of illnesses are the end product of a process of discovery. Inner problems are literally brought out into the open when they can be faced, recognized, dealt with and conquered, using the symptoms as measuring points of progress. A trial-and-error system is (underlined) involved; but inner processes are reflected rather quickly in these cases upon the physical condition.

In other cases where the symptom is interior itself, as in ulcers, this is a sign that the inner self has not yet come to such a point. The personality is not yet willing to face the problems even to that extent and the symptom itself is shielded from physical sight, quite rightly symbolically speaking. The relative observability of a symptom is a clue therefore as to the personality’s attitude toward its problem.