“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I will not answer your questions in the way that you asked them. First of all, let us deal with some causes.

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?

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.

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.

I have told you what I think. The hearing, you see; the state of the hearing, is among other things a symbolic, physical statement of the lack of communication that has existed between you and your husband. Only now it is you who will not hear. That is not the only cause for the condition, however. The “habit” was set in the past when you “shut out” noise that you did not want to hear. You are in the habit of shutting out sound.

The episode that you mentioned, for example, regarding the candle. In your mind, that is a romantic gesture, and when he makes a comment about fire, there are several unconscious implications that you make, and that in the past have been understood by both of you at an unconscious level. Now. You interpret his remark about the candle to mean that he is rejecting deep, romantic feelings of yours, and needs; and also that the fire means that these needs are dangerous—his fear of fire being a symbol for “Danger!”. You think, unconsciously, he is saying to you: “These romantic needs are dangerous. They can cause a fire that we cannot control, fires being obviously destructive.”

One small point. You have been punishing yourself quite often in the way in which you approach the medical experience. The idea of an operation, on the one hand, frightens you. On the other hand, you feel it is “just punishment for these ears of mine that will not work.” The same applied to the mouth. In that case, again, the attitudes cause your reaction.

([Mary:] “Yeah. I just didn’t know what to tell the doctor. ‘Cause he might want a statement of when I would get an operation, and I don’t—I haven’t made up my mind if I want one or not, yet.”)