“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“You must watch the pictures that you paint with your imagination,” he said, “for you allow your imagination too full a reign. If you read our early material, you will see that your environment and the conditions of your life at any given time are the direct result of your own inner expectations. You form physical materializations of these realities within your own mind.

“If you imagine dire circumstances, ill health, or desperate loneliness, these will be automatically materialized, for these thoughts themselves bring about the conditions that will give them reality in physical terms. If you would have good health, then you must imagine this as vividly as in fear you imagine the opposite.

“You create your own difficulties. This is true for each individual. The inner psychological state is projected outward, gaining physical reality—and this regardless of the nature of the psychological state. … The rules apply to everyone. You can use them for your own benefit and change your own conditions once you realize what they are.

“You must understand something else,” Seth said. “Telepathy operates constantly. If you continually expect an individual to behave in a particular manner, then you are constantly sending him telepathic suggestions that he will do so. Each individual reacts to suggestion. According to the specific conditions existing at the time, such an individual will to some extent or another act according to the mass suggestions he receives.

“These mass suggestions include not only those given to him by others, both verbally and telepathically, but also those he has given to himself, both in the waking and dream states. If an individual is in a state of despondency, this is because he has already become prey to negative suggestions of his own and others. Now if you see him and think that he looks miserable”—Seth looked at Joan sharply—“or that he is an incurable drunk, then these suggestions are picked up by him subconsciously, though you have not spoken a word. And in his already weakened condition they will be accepted and acted upon.

“There are obviously ways in which you mold your own conditions, protect yourself from your own negative suggestions and those of others. You must learn to erase a negative thought or picture by replacing it with its opposite.

“If you think, ‘I have a headache,’ and if you do not replace this suggestion by a positive one, then you are automatically suggesting that the body set up those conditions that will result in the continuation of the malady. I will give you a commercial that is better than your Excedrin, you see, the short headache. I will tell you how to have none at all.” This was the only touch of humor in the whole session. In a session devoted to a particular person, Seth usually goes out of his way to make a few jovial comments to set the person at his or her ease.

“You should tell yourself frequently, ‘I will only react to constructive suggestions,’ for this gives you some protection against your own negative thoughts and those of others. A negative thought if not erased will almost certainly result in a negative condition: a momentary despondency, a headache, according to the intensity of the thought.

“Now, if you find yourself with a headache, say immediately, ‘That is in the past. Now in this new moment, this new present, I am already beginning to feel better.’ Then immediately turn your attention away from the physical condition. Concentrate upon something pleasant, or begin another task.

“In this way you are no longer suggesting that the body reproduce the headache conditions. The exercise may be repeated.”

Later he made a very good point: “If desire for health leads instead to an emphasis upon symptoms to be overcome, you would be better off to avoid all thoughts of health or illness and concentrate in other directions, such as work. Such an emphasis can lead to a focus upon obstacles that stand in the way, and this reinforces the negative condition.”

“Such illnesses are the end product of a process of discovery. Inner problems are literally brought out where they can be faced, recognized, and conquered, using the symptoms as measuring points of progress. A trial-and-error system is involved, but the inner processes are reflected rather quickly by the physical condition.”

Rob’s father has developed hardening of the arteries and is in a nursing home. He doesn’t recognize any of us. When we visit him, we’re surrounded by elderly people, more or less in the same condition. Accordingly, we were concerned about the problems of advanced age.

“Once you wholeheartedly accept life on life’s terms, then you may indeed get what you are after, but not while you insist upon it as a condition for continued existence. … Your own purpose will make life a daily joy when you let your conditions go. You forget what you do have—health and vitality. You forget your intellect and intuitions. You forget what blessings are yours.

“You cannot pervert them by trying to force them to serve purposes that you have set up as a condition of existence. You must live in the faith that your purpose is, and will be fulfilled, is being fulfilled. You must live in the faith that you have such a purpose and meaning, or you would not be here.