“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 expected too much when you moved here. You expected many things —a complete renewal, a reversal of certain circumstances in your life—a new relationship with your husband. You overidealized the situation ahead of time. You thought there was going to be a second honeymoon. You also thought that you would enjoy having your husband around all of the time. Because of previous conflicts, that can be resolved, you did not enjoy having him around all of the time as you supposed that you did. There were also conflicts of direction, as to who would “rule the roost”, and you resented his “taking over”, or what it seemed to you to be. You were used to managing the home alone. You thought that you would welcome his cooperation and aid, and because, now, of other conflicts with him, in the east, in this life, instead, you resented his help. You wanted to rule as you had in the past. You wanted the home to yourself.

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?

Now. You were disappointed, then, shortly after you made your move, and you began to retreat. Whether or not you are consciously aware of this, in your earlier life, when you became extremely nervous or upset or had a bad problem, you began to “shut down” stimuli. You did not hear as well. When you wanted to retreat from the world, you shut down on your hearing so that you were not distracted. The habit simply persisted, and you grasped upon it as the situation continued. Now. Because of some circumstances and conflicts with your husband in this life in the past, you did not want to hear what he had to say. You were finished listening to him, and therefore with him, particularly, you began to have trouble hearing.

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.”

Now. As far as your fears are concerned, in your periods of depression, you feel that you have not used your abilities in a “responsible” way. You feel that therefore, you cannot “pat yourself on the back.” You feel to some extent like a hypocrite because in, I believe, New Jersey, at least before you moved here, you spoke of your writing but you did not work with it in an organized fashion. You did not direct it.

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.

The other girl (Mary—age 15) I see figuratively, now “figuratively” standing by your husband’s side; not as much like you as Ruth.

Now, before your husband became more willing to communicate, before he made an effort, you had fallen into your own rut. You did not try to relate to him in any strong manner. You let the relationship stand at a surface level. For a long time this served you both. Then, however, when you moved a critical situation was set up, where you were thrown together. This immediately brought forth the conflicts that had been latent and largely left alone. He then tried to relate to you. He did try to make up for lost time,and he began to grow and to understand.

Now. As a result, you began this retreat. The inner problems can be faced and solved. Now, no problem is solved “forevermore”. Situations are resolved, however, and grow and develop and change, if you allow them to.

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...

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.

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.

Now. You had a question.

Now, listen. You are not “hearing me out”. As you behave with me, you behave with your husband and. others. You are not listening to me so much as thinking of your next question and what you want to say.

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 I will let you take a break.

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.

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.

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.”

Now, this is you interpretation, at a deep level, of such a remark. This confirms your feeling that you dare not display strong emotions with him, and you feel all the more rejected. When you light the candle, you are testing him to see how far he will go with you, and when he makes the fire remark, you take it as a rejection of the entire romantic self, and the romantic situation. At the same time, this denial wounds you, because you also suffer from it.

He is much more open in that regard now than he was, and he understands his own emotional behavior better, as well as yours.

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.

I want you to listen to this session well. I suggest, if you can, that you type it up, and also read it. And once a day, for some time. Now I will let you take a break.

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.

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?

Now you can indeed progress, and you have progressed in many ways since you began Ruburt’s class. And so has your husband. It has taken you some time to develop these habits with such persistence. And so you can change them, using that same persistence and determination.

Now you used the energy that your classmate (Eleanor) was sending you for other overall purposes. While you did not want to hear, her energy could not force you to hear. Indeed, you would automatically put up a defense, because you considered not hearing to be important to your survival. The exercise that I just suggested to you will, if followed, now, help you open up sufficiently so that energy sent to you can be utilized for that specific difficulty. But while you refused to hear, you would consider energy sent to you particularly to make you hear also a threat to your survival, and would be determined to block it. You must realize that your survival depends upon enjoying all of your senses fully. Reading the session alone should help you realize that.

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.

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.

Now. The difficulty with the foot...did have a reincarnational setting, originally, as I mentioned. But there was no reason why that had to appear in this life, particularly.

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.

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

For now, I would forget the deadline. It will only make you nervous.

Now. Wait for a moment. Wait for a moment. We will have a very brief Sumari healing song.