“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

An illness can be rejected by the personality. The habit of illness can be rejected. Illness is sometimes in the overall, however, beneficial. A given illness, that is, may be beneficial. When action is allowed to flow freely, then neurotic rejections of action will not occur; and it is neurotic rejections of action that often cause unnecessary illnesses.

The peculiar nature of the impeding action or illness has much to do with its persistence. The whole focus of the personality can shift from constructive areas to a concentration of main energies in the area of the impeding action or illness. In such a case the illness actually represents a new unifying system. Now, if the old unifying system of the personality has broken down, the illness, serving as a makeshift, temporary emergency measure, may hold the integrity of the personality intact until a new constructive unifying principle replaces the original.

We will, then, later discuss the manner in which the difference can be seen between a beneficial illness, and a severely detrimental one. We will see how a temporarily necessary illness can be greatly lessened, and the symptoms minimized, while the illness is still retained as a temporary emergency measure, and then gradually allowed to disappear when its presence becomes unnecessary.

In this case the illness could not be called an impeding action, unless it persisted long after its purpose was served. Even then, without knowing all the facts surrounding the personality, you could make no judgment, for the illness could still serve by giving the personality a sense of security, being kept on hand, so to speak, as an ever-present emergency device in case the new unifying principle should fail.

I do not mean that ill children should not be treated with kindness, and perhaps a bit of special attention — but the reward should be given for the child’s recovery, and efforts should be made to keep the youngster’s routine as normal as possible. Children often know quite well the reasons for some of their illnesses, for often they learn from their parents that illness can be used as a means to achieve a desired result.

Parents who are aware of these facts can start helping their children at an early age by asking them simply the reasons for their illness. [...] And if there is a problem at school, we can work it out together, so you don’t have to make yourself ill.” [...] So if the parents begin such questioning and reassurance when the child is young, then the youngster will learn that while illness may be used to attain a desired result, there are far better, healthier ways of achieving an end result.

[...] This is particularly true when parents actually reward a child for being ill. In such cases, the ailing child is pampered far more than usual, given extra special attention, offered delicacies such as ice cream, let off some ordinary chores, and in other ways encouraged to think of bouts of illness as times of special attention and reward.

(Long pause.) For adults, ideas of health and illness are intimately connected with philosophical, religious, and social beliefs. [...]

[...] Read something in the paper about concentration on illness causing pain, and that reminded me of some ideas I had last night. [...]

Illness and Neurological Prejudice
Thoughts and beliefs as stimulating and directing probable cell reactions.

Medicine and Therapy as Used to Perpetuate Illness

The Community Recognition of Illness. [...]

The illness did represent, however, a needed warning, materialized into physical reality as illness. [...] The illness was meant to bring you up short, to make you think.

In regard to your illness, no healing of any sort can ever take place without inner understanding and psychic comprehension. [...] Any healing brought about from the outside may be advantageous in the short run, and I would be only too willing to help in a situation involving illness, particularly of a serious variety, even though the advantages of my help would be surface ones.

(Jane had told me that during my illness she hadn’t felt Seth around. There were times during my illness when I had an actual feeling of disbelief at the steady parade of visitors. [...]

(Because of illness on my part this is our first session since March 22; thus we missed the regularly scheduled sessions of March 24, March 29 and March 31. [...]

[...] The entire scientific view of illness, however, is quite as distorted (with amused emphasis). It is as laboriously conceived and interwound with “nonsense.” It is about as factual as the “fact” that God sends illness as punishment, or that illness is the unwanted gift of mischievous demons.

[...] Illness is often another mode of expression, but nowhere does science mention that illness might have its purpose, or its groups of purposes, and I do not mean that the purposes themselves are necessarily derogatory. Illnesses are often misguided attempts to attain something the person thinks important. [...]

Did those “genetically inferior,” for example, have the right to reproduce?¹ Illness was thought to come like a storm, the result of physical forces against which the individual had little recourse. The “new” Freudian ideas of the unsavory unconscious led further to a new dilemma, for it was then—as it is now—widely believed that as the result of experiences in infancy the subconscious, or unconscious, might very well sabotage the best interests of the conscious personality, and trick it into illness and disaster.

Illness is used as a part of man’s motivations. What I mean is that there is no human motivation that may not at some time be involved with illness, for often it is a means to a desired end—a method of achieving something a person thinks may not be achieved otherwise.

[...] Your ideas of good and evil as applied to health and illness are highly important, for instance. [...] If you consider illness as a kind of moral stigma, then you will simply add an unneeded quality to any condition of ill health.

[...] If you are bound and determined that “GOD” (in capitals and quotes) creates only “good,” then any physical deficiency, illness or deformity becomes an affront to your belief, threatens it, and makes you angry and resentful. If you become ill you can hate yourself for not being what you think you should be — a perfect physical image made in the likeness of a perfect God.

If on the other hand you carry the idea too far — that illness can also be a learning process — then you can fall into the other extreme, glorifying sickness or disease as a necessary ennobling experience in which the body is purged so that the soul can be saved.

[...] Under such conditions you can even seek out illness to prove to yourself the strength of your own spirituality — and to impress it upon others. [...]

An illness is a failure to solve a mental or psychological problem in the correct manner. As long as the illness continues the problem remains unsolved, and a vicious circle is maintained because of this unwholesome balance. The sufferer focuses upon the illness, therefore avoiding his task of functioning upon the problem.

I am going to take this instance of your friend’s illness however to make a few points of my own, some that may not be too well received. [...] It will depend upon the strength of the purpose that an illness serves. [...]

[...] A sufferer has adopted an illness into his own self-image, through suggestion, which to a large degree he himself has given. He has caused the illness, whether it be organic or otherwise, and only suggestion will rid him of it.

[...] We have indeed spoken much concerning the focus of energy, and a sufferer is truly entranced with the idea of his illness, and it is only this which basically allows the illness to continue. [...]

“The whole focus of the personality can shift from constructive areas to a concentration of main energies in the area of the impeding action, or illness. In such a case, the illness actually represents a new unifying system. Now, if the old unifying system of the personality is broken down, the illness serving as a makeshift temporary emergency measure may hold the integrity of the personality intact until a new, constructive unifying principle replaces the original.

“All illness is almost always the result of another action that cannot be followed through. When the lines to the original action are released and the channels opened, the illness will vanish. However, the thwarted action may be one with disastrous consequences which the illness may prevent. [...]

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. [...] Her diet was greatly restricted, and her illnesses began to become more and more severe.

As you read this, think back to various illnesses you have had, and see how this applies. Here Seth discusses illness in its relationship not only to the surface personality but to our deepest biological frameworks. [...]

An illness can be rejected. The habit of illness can be rejected. [...] … An illness is almost always the result of another action that cannot be carried through. When the lines to the repressed action are released and the channels to it opened, such an illness will vanish. However, the thwarted action may be one with disastrous consequences, which the illness may prevent.

The whole focus of a personality can change from constructive areas to a concentration of main energies in the area of the illness. Now in such a case, often the illness represents a new unifying system. If the old unifying system of personality has broken down, the illness, serving as a makeshift, temporary emergency measure may hold the integrity of the personality intact until a new constructive, unifying principle replaces the original.

At times, illness is momentarily accepted by the personality as a part of the self, and here lies its danger. [...] The illness is often quite literally accepted by the personality structure as a portion of the self. [...]

In this case, the illness could not be called an impeding action unless it persisted long after its purpose was served. … Even then, without knowing all the facts you could not make a judgment, for the illness could still serve by giving the personality a sense of security, being kept on hand as an ever-present emergency device in case the new unifying principle should fail.

Many proponents of reincarnation believe most firmly that an illness in one life most frequently has its roots in a past existence, and that reincarnational regression is therefore necessary to uncover the reasons for many current illnesses or dilemmas.

[...] Therefore, try to understand that the particular dilemma of illness is not an event forced upon you by some other agency. Realize that to some extent or another your dilemma or your illness has been chosen by you, and that this choosing has been done in bits and pieces of small, seemingly inconsequential choices. [...]

(Long pause.) You may have overall reasons for a particular illness, however, that have nothing to do with crime or punishment, but may instead involve an extraordinary sense of curiosity, and the desire for experience that is somewhat unconventional — usually not sought for — exotic, or in certain terms even grotesque.

You can discover what your own reasons are for choosing the dilemma or illness by being very honest with yourself. [...]

You are paying in advance for illness that you are certain will come your way. You are making all preparations in the present for a future of illness. [...] This is the worst kind of natural hypnosis, and yet within your system insurance is indeed a necessity, because the belief in illness so pervades your mental atmosphere.

Many become ill only after taking out such “insurance” — and for those, the act itself symbolically represents an acceptance of disease. [...] There is a great correlation between the kind of policies that people take out, and the illnesses that they then fall prey to.

(Pause at 9:42.) That is why belief systems are so important in dealing with health and illness. [...]

[...] If you are not so lucky and your illness happens to involve your inner organs, then you may end up sacrificing one after another.

In some cases the personality deliberately places himself in such a position that the illness itself, the bearing of it, brings about certain needed spiritual characteristics. In such cases the illness serves a purpose. Illness is not thrust upon anyone however. We have given information concerning the woman’s past lives, that have led to the adoption of this illness.

[...] If all illness has been adopted by a personality for a particular reason in this life, then it has been adopted so that the personality involved will understand the illness as a materialized symbol for a challenge or problem that the personality has set. The personality therefore, if he or she solves the problem, will conquer the illness.

Obviously the cause behind illness is not always the same. [...]

It uses illness as a teaching method, and discards the method when the lesson is learned. In entire life situations—I am speaking in terms of a lifelong illness now—the illness is not predetermined by the personality to last the length of the life. Many severe illnesses disappear miraculously, it would seem, though an individual has been plagued since birth.

[...] The illness is not to be regarded as a natural (underlined) event, but the reason for it sought. [...] The realization of the lack and the mental, emotional and psychic acquisition of the quality, brings the illness to a close.

[...] But what about the cases where the personality does die from its illness; the illness never clearing up....”)

[...] No personality chooses a life situation of illness. [...]

[...] The persistent idea of illness will make you ill. While you believe that you become ill because of viruses, infections or accidents, then you must go to doctors who operate within that system of belief. [...]

[...] The shattered belief may leave him open to illness, which would seem like a negative experience. Yet through the illness he may be led to areas of perception he had earlier denied, and [he may] be enriched in that particular manner.

The shifting of belief may then open him to question his other beliefs, and he realizes that in the area of wealth, for example, he did very well because of his beliefs; but in those others, perhaps deeper experiences opened by his illness, he learns that human experience includes dimensions of reality that had earlier been closed to him, and that these are also easily within his reach — and without the illness that originally brought them forth. [...]

Because you do not understand that your thoughts create illness you will continue to undergo it, however, and new symptoms will appear. [...] When you are in the process of changing beliefs — when you are beginning to realize that your thoughts and feelings cause illness — then for a while you may not know what to do.

[...] The recovery seems to occur to him, as the illness seemed to happen to him. Usually the patient cannot see that he brought about his own recovery, and was responsible for it, because he cannot admit that his own intents were responsible for his own illness. He cannot learn from his own experience, then, and each bout of illness will appear largely incomprehensible.

[...] If their thoughts can cause them to become ill, then there is no real reason for them to fear illness, for it is their own creation. [...]

(10:46.) Mother’s little man or brave little girl can then stay at home, for example, courageously bearing up under an illness, with his or her behavior condoned. The child may know that the illness is the result of feelings that the parents would consider quite cowardly, or otherwise involves emotional realities that the parents simply would not understand. [...]

[...] When he gets sick he intuitively knows the reason why, and he knows quite well that he brought about the illness.

(5:09.) When people become ill, worried or fearful, one of the first symptoms of trouble is a lack of pleasure, a gradual discontinuance of playful action, and an over-concentration upon personal problems. In other words, illness is often first marked by a lack of zest or exuberance.

I do not mean to imply that it is always detrimental to make such queries as “Are you ill?” or “Are you tired?” Such questions do indeed predict their own answers. [...] But constant questions of such a nature do not help an individual who is having difficulties — and in fact too frequent expressions of compassion can also worsen a person’s state of mind, stressing the idea that he or she must be very ill indeed to attract such feelings of compassion. [...]

[...] Any conceivable illness will worsen, and any possible catastrophe be encountered.

[...] It seems that you are highly civilized people because you put your ill into hospitals where they can be cared for. What you do, of course, is to isolate a group of people who are filled with negative beliefs about illness. [...] Patients are obviously in hospitals because they are ill. [...]

The same sort of reaction occurs if you concentrate upon a personal illness, and then find any improvements insignificant because of the great focus of your attention upon the negative aspects.

You are convinced of the reality of illness. [...]

[...] Because of different personal characteristics, another individual will hold qualities of the mind, say, inviolate, and work out challenges through bodily illness. [...]

[...] The reasons for such illnesses are not deeply buried in the subconscious, as you may think. [...] Other illnesses, of course, may be caused by sudden decisions that are a response to a particular event in your life.

This means, of course, that you do not fall victim to a disease, or catch a virus, but that for one reason or another your own feelings, thoughts, and beliefs lead you to seek bouts of illness. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) You are not one thing and illness another, for your thoughts and emotions are the triggers that lead to bouts of poor health. [...]

[...] Ill or not, I do still feel full of life, and I’m still kicking — at least symbolically!

[...] There is much written about the nature of healing, and there will be material in this book dealing with it, but there is also healing-in-reverse, in which case an individual loses a belief in his or her health and accepts instead the idea of personal illness.

(Pause at 10:22.) Here the belief itself will generate the negative emotions that will, indeed, bring about a physical or emotional illness. [...]

I mention this here simply because in the overall development of an individual, an illness may also be used as a method to achieve another, constructive, end. [...]

[...] The belief in illness itself depends upon a belief in human unworthiness, guilt and imperfection, for example.

[...] Ego and health and illness. Illness not natural, etc. [...]