“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Then listen well. I will start out with a compliment. That is to set you at ease. You are warm-hearted. You try to help other people. You mean well, and you have many abilities. You also have all the energy that you need, when you learn how to release it. Now, give us a moment, and listen. (Pause.)

You need, first of all, to develop some of your abilities in a purposeful manner. You are not using them. You are playing with them, but not using them as you want to. The organizational part of yourself wants you to organize yourself, and so far you have not done this.

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.”

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.

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.

But then you became frightened, and that is when the hearing difficulty, then, bothered you so deeply. You will not need to substitute symptoms in such a fashion, as you learn to look into yourself.

I am not telling you not to get treated medically when you believe that you need it. I am telling you that often you use medical treatment as a further punishment of the body. Often you use medical treatment as a reassurance. You are not quite certain, yet, that you form your own reality, and you want to make certain, in the meantime, that the medical profession can help you out!