“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

She always began with one of her fantastically funny sarcastic tales about someone she knew. She had an uncanny ability to sense people’s weak points and make fun of them. For all of that, when she was not sick she had a fine vitality, and a keen, native shrewdness. We played a sort of game: I liked her, but I wasn’t going to be besieged by a barrage of negative thoughts and pessimism for an hour, no matter how wittily presented—and she knew it. The worse part was that she really was funny and it was hard as the devil not to laugh at her, even when I knew I shouldn’t. And she knew this, too. So she would try to see how far she could go before I would call her on it and begin a “mini-lecture,” pointing out that her attitude toward other people was largely responsible for her difficulties.

Yet she had been warned. Two years before her death she asked to attend a regular Seth session. Seth was quite serious and not as jovial as usual, and at the time I thought that he was being rather hard on her. Now I see that he was trying to impress her with the necessity of changing her attitudes and reactions. He stated his ideas on health as clearly and directly as possible, dealing with their practical application. I can almost see Joan sitting there, legs crossed, before the session. If she had been able to follow his advice, I am convinced she would be alive and well today. I am also sure that readers who understand and follow Seth’s ideas on health will find their own greatly improved.

“You cannot escape your own attitudes, for they will form the nature of what you see. Quite literally you see what you want to see; and you see your own thoughts and emotional attitudes materialized in physical form. If changes are to occur, they must be mental and psychic changes. These will be reflected in your environment. Negative, distrustful, fearful, or degrading attitudes toward anyone work against the self.”

As Seth makes clear in other sessions, the symptoms in such cases are themselves part of the healing process. What we are supposed to do, then, is change our mental attitude, search ourselves for the inner problem represented by the symptoms, and measure our progress as the symptoms subside.

“In cases where the symptom itself is interior, as in ulcers, this is a sign that the personality is not yet willing to face the problem, and the symptom itself is shielded from physical sight—quite rightly, symbolically speaking. The relative observability of a symptom is, therefore, a clue to the personality’s attitude toward its problem.

“I do not want you to have the attitude that health or status, for example, is automatically an indication of spiritual wealth. … Some of you do well in certain areas and are blocked in others. The ideal is to use all of your abilities, and in doing this you will help others and the race of which you are part automatically.”