“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:37.) Such momentary lapses follow personal and cultural patterns. Some generations fall heir to certain fashionable diseases, for example. The body copes with inner and exterior reality, and performs a marvelous job of maintaining multitudinous balances.

The mind may want to react. The individual may realize that his or her pace has been too fast, and so natural feelings bring about a lethargy of body, or a slight fever, or an indisposition—all quite natural, resilient activities. I do not want this ever to be interpreted to mean, a priori, and in conventional terms, that “suffering is good for the soul.” A reliance and faith in the natural self, however, would be large enough to accept certain indispositions without fear, panic, or doubt. With the best of intent most public health announcements shout the symptoms of critical diseases to the skies, so that the smallest of indispositions becomes the trigger for personal fear on the part of millions. Such announcements actually teach people to fear what might be happening within the body. There is a stress upon disease rather than health.

(To me:)You are stubborn. Your own thoughts wore you out. You needed to let down, and you would not do it. You could not take a vacation, you felt. You worried about time and your painting and “Unknown” Reality, and you would not relax. You worried about other issues that I told you about—taxes and money. You not only worried about the present, but you dwelled upon the “past mistakes.” You remembered doing Ruburt’s Dialogues drawings, and Adventures diagrams, and those thoughts crowded your present. To some extent, it is quite valid to say—though you may not agree with me—that you might as well have had all that work to do now as well.

At the same time however other issues were served, already mentioned. You understood what Ruburt had been working through—at a much lighter level, of course, and at least to some degree Ruburt could feel that he was helping you physically. You also together solved the other problems mentioned, where he did not panic, as he might have in the past, but continued his own improvement.

In the world as you know it, it is quite natural to feel sad, or even despondent at times. These are portions of the emotional reality that are native to your kind. These are not negative states on their own, any more than twilight is less natural than dawn. They are not even unpleasant states on their own. It is natural, then, to feel depressed at times. No one constant emotional state is meant to prevail. There are gradations and nuances of feeling and sensation that sweep through your own experience, the result of quite natural variations. Your overall beliefs, however, can be so exaggerated in a negative manner that finally some people accept as valid the most negative picture of the world.

Even in your culture you are presented with multitudinous fields of interest and stimuli. Those who consistently choose negative patterns program themselves in those areas, gradually alter the chemical balances within the body. You cannot separate health from philosophy. Each individual has his or her own idea of reality.

(As Seth, Jane picked up a copy of Personal Reality from the coffee table. A reader had sent it to us, asking for Seth’s autograph. Seth had never signed a book before—but did so now with a flourish, using a red felt-tip pen.)