“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He did not, in the past now, feel nourished. When your intimate situation improves, so will his eating habits. But oddly enough the reverse also applies—when his eating habits improve so will your intimate lives. Your tempting him to eat, for example, and underline tempting, has strong sexual connotations to which he will respond, both sexually and through eating more.

The phrase, “giving into your appetites,” is important here. It is one of the reasons for example why he does not like to eat, generally, in front of others. It is a moral principle to him, but also applies privately. It involves not being fleshy in voluptuous terms, a kind of esthetic discipline that morally disapproves of others. The sexual connotations are obvious, and added on. When he did not feel loved he would not eat—the two appetites, you see.

Eating is more a gluttonous endeavor to you in that regard. The preparation of food is a waste of time. It takes time away from more valuable things, both in its preparation and cleanup later. It is too sensuous. Those are your attitudes emotionally. Food must be kept as simple as possible, as unobtrusive.

Ruburt considers it in very poor taste (humorously) to ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ over food. Both of you enjoy a sense of moral superiority in the presence of your brothers’ families, that they eat so heartily while you refrain. Both of you now prove that you are not sunken in materialism by being thin. Ruburt simply carries this further than you do, rigidly holding his ground despite all entreaties to the contrary.

[...] You can eat a great deal for a while and only gain a few pounds, or find all kinds of excuses for not eating. [...] You are not underweight because you do not eat enough food, or utilize it properly. Instead, you do not eat enough because you believe that you are underweight.

[...] Quite simply, their policy can be read: “You are what you eat.” [...] People become afraid of the food they eat, and the field of eating then becomes the arena.

[...] You are what you think, not what you eat — and to a large extent what you think about what you eat is far more important.

[...] You begin a round of diets, all based on the idea that you are overweight because you eat too much. Instead, you eat too much because you believe that you are overweight. The physical picture always fits because your belief in being overweight conditions your body to behave in just such a manner.

[...] She still isn’t eating enough to prevent weight loss. Ergo — if the not-eating persists, it will have extremely serious repercussions. [...]

[...] But the thought came to me that the not-eating might be the body’s therapeutic fasting situation — it’s own natural version of it.”

[...] The effort to eat more will be as resisted by the chronically underweight, as the effort to refrain from eating will be by the obese. [...] The concentration upon not eating, and the resulting tension, may instead cause increased consumption. And the underweight person may actually eat less the harder he or she tries to eat more — the latter being interpreted as an impossibility by the overriding belief in the underweight condition.

[...] During it Joanie enthusiastically verified that she has the odd habit of eating lettuce, a head at a time, as another person might eat candy or pretzels. [...]

(Jane and I have met Joanie a few times before, without any knowledge of her lettuce-eating habit, and can attest that Seth’s data here was as much a surprise to us as to Joanie or Bill. [...]

[...] Joanie Gilbert reiterated that she eats a head of lettuce at a time, and has done so since she was a little girl.)

(I was eating breakfast at 7:50 when I received a call from the hospital. [...] They couldn’t get her comfortable, she wasn’t eating breakfast, and she wanted me to come down. [...]

(In fact, after a while I got my wife to resume eating breakfast. [...] My presence undoubtedly helped her resume eating.

[...] Staff had a party and lots of goodies to eat, so a nurse put together more food for Jane and me. [...]

(Jane didn’t eat much for supper, which seemed okay. [...]

(I was pretty quiet today, mostly because I felt tired and didn’t know what else to do to try to get her to eat or be more open about physical motion. [...] I decided to stop saying anything about either hydro or her eating, since it appeared to have no effect.

[...] She just will not eat. [...] She said something about she should eat something before the night passes. [...]

To what extent you can afford it, eat out fairly often on your vacation. Eating, even in a different environment, you see, helps break down old habitual eating patterns. [...]

(As we were eating lunch today Jane said she thought Seth would discuss the question of good and evil, re our conversation on those subjects the other day. [...]

[...] It is good to eat, and each creature seeks food. [...]

To eat is good. [...]

[...] The purpose to eat was good—well-intentioned. [...]

[...] Ruburt is faced with the fact that he is afraid to eat. He is ashamed because at one level he begrudges the food you eat, so he will not eat to punish himself.

[...] They also have to do with her teeth and jaw symptoms, and fear of eating recently, we’ve learned.)

The more you spoke of prices of food going up, the worse the feelings about eating became (and the tooth and jaw symptoms). [...]

(But while we were eating those portions, another new development in Jane’s progress occurred —and an important one. [...]

[...] I wasn’t too ravenous myself, so I took a nap until 5:45, and we began eating a little before 6:00. [...]

(The food tasted fine—much better than Thanksgiving dinner had, and we enjoyed it without eating a whole lot. [...]

[...] It is far better to eat moderate amounts of food in all of the food ranges, and to consume smaller portions more often. I realize that your social mores also dictate your eating habits — but four light meals a day will overall serve you very well, and give the body a more steady, regulated nourishment.

[...] Some people are so convinced, in fact, that eating is wrong that they diet until they become ravenously hungry, then overeat and force themselves to vomit up the residue.

Your food should be divided within the twenty-four hour period, and not just during the times of wakefulness — that is, if the sleep patterns were changed as I suggest, you would also be eating during some night hours. You would eat far less at any given “mealtime,” however. [...]

[...] This method of eating and sleeping would greatly help various metabolic difficulties, and also aid in the development of spiritual and psychic ability. [...]

The same applies to your eating habits. [...]

Changing the sleep patterns would automatically change the eating patterns. [...]

(Jane should not eat:

[...] [Strangely, can eat tomatoes on pizza; and chili; the only two exceptions according to my pendulum.]

[...] While Jane was eating a light lunch Lynn came in to start procedures for collecting another urine sample. [...]

(Then, while she was still eating, two lab technicians came in to take more blood from Jane — this was for a culture that would be grown for a week, they said. [...]

[...] A nurse came in to tell us the staff is having its Valentine’s Day party next Tuesday noon, and for me not to eat lunch at the house.

[...] At her suggestion, she tried eating same from a paper plate on her belly. She managed to eat some of it with a spoon, but had trouble also. [...]

[...] As Jane and I were getting ready to eat lunch several staff people, including Cathy, Jan, Mary the head nurse, Dawn, Sue, brought in a large flat-pan cake decorated for the 30th anniversary of Jane and me. [...]

(However, her new lower teeth were bothering her a great deal; her mouth was so sore she couldn’t eat part of her lunch. [...]

[...] She did much better eating supper. [...]

Have him buy what he likes to eat, particularly for a while, for he will eat better then. [...]

The order to eat, he interprets as an order, you see. The encouragement to eat is different. [...]

(“Is there anything he shouldn’t eat?”)

[...] They ate, for example, both human beings and animals, but they did not eat indiscriminately, nor did they eat without a knowledge of what they did. [...]

[...] You, however, eat indiscriminately with no thought of the living animal that you consume. [...]

There is a sacrament here that you do not understand, and when you gobble down food indiscriminately, and when you do not give silent recognition to the fact that what you eat once lived, then you lose contact with a certain sacred heritage and deny yourself a certain part of a cycle in which you rightly, as physical creatures and as spiritual creatures, have a part. [...]

([Arnold:] “Is this not true whether we eat meat or vegetable?”)

[...] Eating good food, experiencing, again, the joy of reading, the joy of creative thought, the pleasure of friends, and so forth, for those benefits will then be increased more than a hundredfold.

(While we were eating the phone rang. [...]