“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.

And her difficulties were illnesses—of such variety and vigor that I think it was impossible even for her to recount what had afflicted her in any one year. Some were serious, and she had several operations. She picked up every infection in vogue, and many that weren’t. She went from doctor to doctor and always with quite definite and often appalling physical symptions. Her diet was greatly restricted, and her illnesses began to become more and more severe.

“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.

“Unifying principles are groups of actions about which the personality forms itself at any given time. These usually change in a relatively smooth fashion when action is allowed to flow unimpeded. [See how this ties in with Seth’s advice to the students on the value of spontaneity and the difficulties of repression.] These impediments [illnesses] may sometimes then preserve the integrity of the whole psychological system and point out the existence of inner psychic problems. Illness is a portion of the action of which personality is composed and therefore it is purposeful, and cannot be considered as an alien force that invades personality from without. . . .

Seth suggests that self-hypnosis and light trance states be used as ways to uncover inner problems that are causing us difficulty. He also suggests that we simply ask the inner self to make the answer available on a conscious basis. If the inner problems are not discovered, we will simply exchange one set of symptoms for another. Various sessions include specific steps to be taken in these areas and others. Dreams are very important, both in uncovering problems and in providing solutions to them. In fact, I’ll begin the next chapter with Seth’s suggestions on the use of dreams as therapy. The instructions are simple and can be used by anyone.