“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

What our friend here told you (Rob) is indeed true. You must realize that you are a unique and a blessed individual, and you must be as kind to yourself, and kinder, even, than you try to be to others. For they also bathe in the joy that you feel. It is most important that you understand this.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Now. There is nothing degrading in tears. Think of them, again, now, as being as natural as rain that falls out of the sky when the clouds are full. The rain refreshes the ground and tears can refresh the soul when depressions are freed to follow their natural course. Then, indeed, they flow away in tears and the soul is refreshed. It does not “hold onto its grudges”. When you hold a grudge, you are like some angry, little black cloud that says: I will hold onto this moisture, and I will never let it go!” But clouds have better sense, and so easily they empty their contents and the rain refreshes the land. So can tears refresh the land of your psyche. And used in such a manner depressions fall away naturally and allow, if you will forgive me for a trite phrase, “the sun of joy to shine.” Otherwise, the cloud becomes blacker, and blacker and blacker until the sun cannot be seen, and until the sun, when glimpsed, seems wrong, out of context, and does not appear in such a dark landscape. And so you try to hide it.

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.