“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

([Mary:] “And an hour of painting every day?”)

If you do that, it is fine. But it is not as important as the painting. Doing things for other people is important, but doing things, as our friend (Rob) said, for yourself is imperative.

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.