“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

([Mary:] “Good.”)

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 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.

You have been afraid of displaying emotions. You think that tears are cowardly. You have not wanted to face your own emotions, therefore you are frightened of the emotions of others. You did not, habitually, display your emotions to your husband. Now he could more easily express some of his to you. He got out of the habit, however, You did not want to hear them. You consider tears “degrading.” You considered, in the past, joy “evil.” This did not leave you too many acceptable emotions.

It did originate in a past life, as mentioned, but it did not have to reassert itself, now. It served your purposes, however. And it was also another method of retreat. You did not have to go out into a strange enviroment, away from the home and hearth. Now, it predated the hearing difficulty in its strongest form, but the “habits” were always with you. You always “favored” one foot more than the other, and you built up muscular reaction. When you began to “clear” your foot—when you got the new shoes—your hearing gave you more difficulty. You needed more of a crutch, to make up for the symptom you had lost, simply because you did not understand the reasons behind the difficulties. And without understanding, you can medically rid yourself of one condition, only to make ready certain that you have another one planned to take over! You were finally driven to some kind of desperation, so you accepted the new shoes. You used the symbol. You could have been quite as comfortable without the new shoe, but the symbol was a good one, and you used it and took advantage of it.

Ruburt’s class is good for you. It is good for you both, not only because of the particular group here, and the subject matter, but also because it gives you contact with other people under a different context. It gets you out of your environment. It also brings the two of you together in a common experience.

Now I bid you a fond good evening. And you see, it was not so bad after all!

Then, I bid you a fond good evening. And my heartiest regards to my friend over there (Rob), who did not have to take any notes this evening.