“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now. There are two strong aspects in your personality. One having to do with the reason why you entered the service; a desire for order; a desire for excitement, but excitement within an ordered sequence. There is also, in this same respect, an organizational aspect to your personality that is not now being used to advantage, and therefore can have negative consequences. You like to organize things and people. It is in this regard that you found the presence of your husband distracting when the two of you moved. Do you follow me?

I want to tell you what I know about your days, and then I will tell you what you must do to change them, You are beginning to organize your life about your lack of hearing. You are beginning to make it a characteristic. You are beginning to force other people to relate to you in that regard. Now you are obviously doing this because you are getting something out of it, and you must discover what that something is and I will help you.

You made a remark when you came in here this evening about not being dressed at noon. Now my first piece of homely advice is you should get up at a decent time and immediately dress, and “dress.” I do not mean a robe. This immediately lifts your own self-image, and prepares you for the day. It is a mental “set.”

In periods of depression you feel that your life, the main points, have passed, and that you have lost time—important time that you feel you cannot recover. All of these fears work together to cause the present difficulty. Now. There is no one who can change your life for you. But you can change it. And in that lies your hope and your salvation. And so you must begin to do so. You are now organizing your life about your hearing defect. In the main, you are forcing others again to relate to you in that regard. You mention it often. You bring it into the conversation. When I tell you now, “often,” it would not otherwise be noticed, for you also exaggerate the extent of the hearing loss. I did not say there was not a loss. I am saying you are exaggerating the loss that there is.

There are several things that I will ask you to do. First, however, you must begin to love sound. You must not concentrate thinking: “I cannot hear.” “What is there to hear?” “What are they saying?” “How bad is my hearing today?” You must instead sensually enjoy those sounds that come to you, and even imagine sounds when you are alone. Now this will automatically set your inner self toward the anticipation of further sound. You must take at least an hour a day during which you do not think of loss of hearing, and I will give you some hints as to how to do this.

Since then, however, you began to “close down” and say: “I will listen no longer.” You must learn, therefore, to be more forgiving, both to yourself and others. There are also some conflicts of a quite natural type between you and your daughter Ruth, who also has strong organizational qualities and artistic abilities, as you have. Now, on some occasions, you resent her manner toward you. And you resent it bitterly. At the same time, you allow your own actions to bring out this manner from her. You know when you are doing it that this reaction will result, and you do it, regardless, In that particular dilemma, your husband is between.

Regardless of your farm, you, in your own mind, feel “scattered”—that you are not doing enough in other directions, and you are not sure what those directions are. You feel blocked. You are doing two things with the ears, of course. You are telling yourself that you want to hear. The other part of you is saying: “I do not want to hear!” “I do not want to hear what you have to say.” You are, therefore, sending contradictory messages. This accounts for the decrease in hearing.

Your ears, your hearing, will improve when you realize that the cause is an inner one and when you bring the problem out into the open, and when you use certain techniques that are simply aids. If you do this, you can improve without an operation.

If you do not do this, you will not improve even if you have the operation. Now, I am not saying that the operation may not temporarily help. But without changing your attitude, it will not help to any degree that will compensate you. But the decision, you see...

In this is this life material. You are in the habit of shutting out sound. Now, you can even catch yourself if you are alert enough doing this by the feeling that you have. In a conversation—now listen to me—In a conversation that you now decide sounds boring when you enter it, you can catch yourself thinking: “This is boring. I will not bother to listen. It is too much trouble.” Now you think those thoughts come to you because it is so difficult for you to hear. Instead, those thoughts were yours long before the disability showed itself. You thought that way first, before the condition, And whenever unpleasantness arose, you would make a series of decisions to shut out the sound until these decisions, one upon the other, finally “conditioned” you; you conditioned yourself not to hear. The problem is that after awhile, you see, you conditioned yourself so well that you no longer control the process that you began. And only then do you become frightened.

([Mary:] “Do you think that the condition has changed for the better in say, the last couple of weeks, when my husband and I agreed, for instance, on the check-writing thing; not to write checks for cash and then... so that we could control the money.... I think this will help me to....)

([Mary:] “...Do you think....”)

([Mary:] “Uh-huh. [Pause.] Do you think... I have a feeling; that things have started to change for the better in the last couple of weeks—in that regard—communication.”)

I mention it only to show you how you operate. It is obvious in this situation. It is a characteristic. You are sometimes so impatient to express your own ideas that you do not listen to others. Also, often, you do not care, quite frankly, what they think.

Now this does not necessarily refer to me, here. But if you do not care what they think, then, again, you will not listen. Observe yourself—in conversation. I do not mean to watch yourself so closely that you cannot think, but observe your own reactions and your thoughts. Honestly ask yourself in situations: “Do I want to hear? And if I do not, why don’t I?”

Now. Often, you use sound as a barrier. Also, you use monologs, and set up a barrier of sound to protect yourself from other people. And you do not realize that you do this. You erect barriers like walls—so that someone wanting to communicate with you cannot get through, cannot find a “hole” in your conversation to reach you. And the more nervous you are, the more frantically you erect this barrier of sound. You use sound as a barrier, therefore, and when you become doubly threatened, then you do not hear the sounds that come from without, but retreat from them. The entire “gestalt of sound” is therefore highly important to you in your “mechanism of survival”. You have used it to protect yourself, either erecting sound yourself to protect you from communications coming from without, or, when this fails, by refusing—refusing to hear. You must, therefore, ask yourself where this charged attitude toward sound originated, and why you use it in such a way. And I will give you some clues.

Begin to play music that you like. Listen to the rain. Do not “just listen,” but allow yourself to be open to the different pattering sounds and sound patterns that the rain makes. Become fascinated with the behaviors of sound. Tell yourself that sound is like light; that it is easily available.

Now some people do not like to look at unpleasant objects or sights, but very few of them would stop using their vision and give up the good sights so that they would not see bad ones. Yet this is what you are doing in your present course. Give us a moment.

You are denying yourself a certain joy in your own present femininity, and for several reasons. With some purpose, you see to it that you are not as attractive physically as you know you are. You play down your attributes, rather than dress them up. You have been worried about and afraid of the feminine aspects of your personality. Now some of this has to do with the situation that did exist between you and your husband, and to some extent with the situation as it now exists. There is a free and easy flow of communication that is wordless, that you block.

Now. To some extent you punish him for his past attitudes by not appearing as attractively as you could. You think: “It serves him right! What does he expect?” At the same time, you are afraid that if you do appear as attractively as you can, that you will be hurt again by him, and you are unwilling to take the chance.

Now. You can be a very attractive woman, and you can fix your hair; you can play up your attributes, and you know it. This will automatically, you see, change the situation, for you will not change the physical aspects unless an inner recognition has first led you to do so. You will feel the richer for it, emotionally richer for it, regardless of your husband’s reaction.

You overeat, to compensate for the other joys that you do not allow yourself. If you began to paint for an hour a day, you would not need to eat so much. When you bring food and drink with you, you do two things. You bring along your own “security blanket”, for one thing. You also show that you are insecure and frightened outside of the home environment, and must bring nourishment from there along with you. Now the joy that you experience when you are painting will be yours, and not desert you whether you stay in your house or go to someone else’s. You will not have to worry about “carting it along” with you. As you probably suspect, the overeating is the one great indulgence that you allow yourself, and even then you surround it with all kinds of taboos. It is not the fact that you overeat, and that you are desperately frightened because you overeat—because of your sister’s history. You do not overeat simply any food, but you surround eating itself with taboos, so that it must be “pure food,” “good food,” to your way of thinking. And there are foods that you will eat and foods that you will not eat, and you project moral implications upon the foods. Some foods are “good,” to your way of thinking, and some foods are “bad.” To you this does not necessarily or alone mean they are good for the body or bad for the body, but in themselves you give them moral characteristics as you would people. So that beneath the whole attitude is the idea: “This is an evil food,” and be shunned as you would shun an evil person, within that framework of thought.

Now. So far, you are denying a good portion of your hearing because sound can be unpleasant, and carrying this a bit further now, it can also be “bad.” You know the three little monkeys who sit: “see no evil” and so forth. Now you have simply hit upon the “hear no evil.” You have added to it the fact that you will not indulge yourself in joy, or in joyful pursuits, Unless you can rationalize to yourself by saying: “I am doing this for someone else,” and that is the only reason you let yourself work with the necklaces that you made. You could say: “I am making these for class members” and therefore justify the pleasure.

The book that you bought, Psycho-Cybernetics, and the other one—both of these are good for you. But do not simply read them. Use them. Each book approaches various problems from different viewpoints. But together they will be of great help. Since you yourself began these reactions and originated them, you yourself can change them. And you can change them as of this moment.

Imagine for an experiment, now, a world in which there is no sound. Do not imagine that you are deaf. That is not what I am saying. But imagine that the world itself has no sound for anyone to hear. Do you see the difference?

You are imagining a situation in which there is no sound to be heard; whether or not you have ears, there is no sound. Then, imagine that, suddenly, a raindrop falls and makes a first sound... the first sound that can ever be heard. And imagine the impact and the beauty of that sound. Then slowly imagine other sounds appearing in the world, appearing in the same way that a flower might appear, so that sounds begin to be born in the universe. Imagine, then, the joy of hearing that sound in a world that had known none. Whatever sounds, then, that imaginatively come to you, feel the brilliance and miracle of them as they are born out of the silence. And then give thanks for a world of sound, and let yourself revel that you live in this world where sound is a part of your environment and surroundings. In all of this, do not think about your ears, but do the imaginative exercise exactly as I have suggested it. That alone, done once a day, will help arouse again within you the joy and wonder of that particular sense.

And enjoy it. And the exercise—do not strain at it. Now, you use your imagination well. So imagine these new sounds as they would appear, until you are really dazzled.

([Mary:] “Should I do anything specific to, like, go to the Old Ladies’ Home and play the piano for them?”)

If you do that, it is fine. But it is not as important as the painting. Doing things for other people is important, but doing things, as our friend (Rob) said, for yourself is imperative.

If you are joyful, you will help other people simply by being what you are. If you try to help others and you are despondent, you do not help them.

([Mary, laughing:] “All right. I’ll do that.”)

Take your paints outside sometime. Think! How precious voices are! In your terms, they speak, and the sounds are gone and never recaptured. And who are you to say: “I will not listen, for this is trivial.” These sounds are magic. Be thankful for them. You will never again be the personality that you are at this moment. Whatever self you will be, in your terms, or you were, each of those selves are unique, as you are unique. When you hear him (Rob) speak, his words are the magical signatures of the psyche, materialized in certain ways within this moment as you understand a time, and precious and a joy to hear. And so are the words of every man and woman, and the sound of every bird and every raindrop—precious beyond recall. So do not close yourselves to those sounds, and be thankful for them.

If you do not trust your emotions, then you can no longer trust your joy. And if you try to hide your fear, then, you automatically hide your joy. Once you begin to inhibit emotions, the practice spreads like a plague, until all emotion must be inhibited, lest the one thing that you fear show its face.

I am going to close our session. However, I want to tell you, again, that you have progressed. There is no reason why you cannot work things out, and why the relationship between you and your husband should not continue to improve. You are both doing well.

You simply have some work to do.

([Mary:] “Thank you very much. And I’ll try to do that work real hard.”

Do not make a decision until you are clearer in your own mind.

(Long Pause.) I think that you can. The delay, in any case, will not hurt you, in that particular area. And without changing your attitude, the operation will not help. Do you follow me?

([Mary:] “Yes, I do. That’s what I thought you meant, too, before.”)