“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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. 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 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.

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.”

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.