“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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. 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.

You mentioned some yourself. To you, noise, from your early years, was to be avoided. Sound did not convey pleasure. You were not thinking in terms of the communication of pleasure. It became, to you, a method of conveying unpleasant information, and therefore to be shut off whenever possible. You will find that if you begin to cultivate the pleasure of sound, this will help you.

Begin to play music that you like. Listen to the rain. Do not “just listen,” but allow yourself to be open to the different pattering sounds and sound patterns that the rain makes. Become fascinated with the behaviors of sound. Tell yourself that sound is like light; that it is easily available.

Learn to speak easily and gently. You communicate easily and well in your writing because sound is not involved. The ability to communicate is yours, and you are highly gifted in that regard. You are simply dropping the communication on the sound level. Once you realize this and understand it, you can begin to relax in that regard.

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?

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.

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.

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.