“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The day was very warm — over 90 degrees — when I left for 330 this noon. Jane was better today, and 330 wasn’t bad at all, with the air conditioner going, the fan on, and the windows wide open. I’d brought shorts with me and changed into them; I already had sandals there. The weather had a luxurious, lush feel, as though our globe had finally turned from an adversary into a nurturing, supportive parent. I worked on mail after helping Jane eat lunch, until she said she was ready for a session. I told my wife that I had indeed lost the tooth.)

The ideas that you have, then, play a large role in the way the body handles its nutrients, and utilizes its health and vitality. If you believe that the body is somehow evil, you may punish it by nearly starving to death, even though your diet might be considered normal by usual standards. For it is possible for your ideas to cause chemical reactions that impede your body’s ability to accept nourishment. If you believe that the body is evil, the purest health-food diet will or may do you little good at all, while if you have a healthy desire and respect for your physical body, a diet of TV dinners, and even of fast foods, may well keep you healthy and nourished.

(3:45. Leanne came in to check Jane’s vitals — they were all normal — and to give her Darvoset. A new aide asked for tomorrow’s menu, which I’d left on the medicine tray in the hall, as usual. Resume at 4:04.)

Those particular beliefs actually take hold in young adults, so that it seems that all of life is meant to come to its fullest flower in young adulthood, and then from that prestigious position fall quicker and quicker into disuse and disarray.

These ideas do not only inflict severe difficulties upon older members of the population, but they also have a vital part to play in the behavior of many young people who commit suicide directly or indirectly. It seems to such youngsters that the pinnacle of life is just at hand, to last only briefly, and then to be snatched away. Undue stress is laid upon youthful beauty and youthful achievement, so that it appears that all of the rest of life’s activities must suffer by contrast.

Again, to a certain degree, religion and science — and the medical sciences in particular — seem devoted to encouraging the most negative beliefs about human nature. It is taken for granted that all mental, physical, spiritual and emotional satisfactions become lesser with advancing age. It is taken for granted that memory fails, the body weakens, the senses stagnate, and emotional vividness dims. It is often considered scandalous to even imagine sexual activity after the age of even 40 or 50.

Faced with that kind of a projected future, no wonder many adolescents prefer to die before catching sight of the very first hint of deterioration — the first wrinkle or touch of gray in the hair. What forerunners of disaster such natural signs must seem (exclamation point)! And at the other end of the scale, older parents are treated by their grown children as if they themselves were falling into a grotesque version of a second childhood. Many people actually speak louder to older persons, whether or not they have any hearing difficulties at all.