Illness, negative thinking & expectations, balance, joy

[inavalan]

The Early Sessions: Book 3 of The Seth Material
SESSION 143, APRIL 5, 1965

In regard to your illness, no healing of any sort can ever take place without inner understanding and psychic comprehension. My interests are those of an educator. 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.
I realize that such surface help at times could be most desirable. Basically however in your case the illness was not serious, and the advantage that you would derive from my help in a healing capacity would have been outweighed entirely by several disadvantages that are almost always present, in the case of healing that does not originate from inner comprehension.
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I would have been removing the problem from you, and in this instance depriving you of the opportunity of solving it, and therefore of adding to your own energies and abilities
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I can indeed do more, in that my pills are pills of knowledge, which are indeed, my friends, somewhat difficult to digest
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The illness did represent, however, a needed warning, materialized into physical reality as illness. A warning that after all there had been a recent tendency on your part, though slight, to slide into negative thinking. The illness was meant to bring you up short, to make you think.
It was no coincidence, however, that you plunged into reading the New York papers during your stay in bed. Not that it is intended that you should close your eyes to world events, but that in your particular case there are times when, to you, such concentration upon world evils becomes extremely unwholesome.
Your reactions at such times are not good for yourself, and your reactions are not good at such times for the conditions which bring them about. Such reactions actually worsen the conditions that you would change. I am not suggesting that you adopt a bland, idiotic, male Pollyanna smile, nor that you shout love, prosperity and health from the rooftops while the world below is steeped in poverty and ignorance.
However it is your duty, and the duty of every individual insofar as it is within his power, to maintain his own psychic health and vitality; according to the strength of this vitality he will protect himself and others. Negative expectations, far from protecting either the individual or those with whom he comes in contact, will actually, to a greater or lesser degree, turn as destructive as any epidemic.
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But in your case, you are aware of man's inhumanity to man. It is well that you are, but you must not allow this knowledge to weigh like a mountain upon your being, so that you are pinned under and your energies sucked away. This is the danger for which you must be alerted.
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You have learned something from this illness, and you will be stronger for it, but you would not have learned it if it had not run its course, and if you had not faced the reason behind it.
You of all people should realize that when valid concern for world problems turns into an obsession with world injustices that wipes out all, or threatens to wipe out all personal enjoyment, then trouble is on the way. For enjoyment is a weapon. The man who is capable of joy is capable, to a large extent, of changing his world. Joy is not a weak spineless idiot either. Its backbone is stronger than bitterness.
Joy is the muscle of action, and without it there would be no action. If I speak strongly to you at times, it is because this tendency, while much less now than formerly, must be kept very well in control, Joseph.
Basically this concern for human welfare is indeed virtuous, but overindulged in it becomes loaded with possibilities that could be most unfortunate.
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What I want, here, is the balance. Neither plunge yourself into the ignorance, doubts and injustices, so that you can see nothing else, nor close your eyes to them. But there must be a place within you where these do not exist, or the freedom of the inner self will be hampered, as far as its connection with the ego is concerned.
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I am extremely cautious as far as giving warnings, since suggestion could play a part in bringing about the event which looms, merely as an unfortunate possibility, but not definitely as an actuality.
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The future, in your terms, is not foreordained, and is at no moment fixed.
It is true that what will occur, in your terms, has already occurred in other terms, and that it is possible to perceive beyond your now into your so-called future. But here I am very careful of tampering, for tampering with "your" present tampers with "your" future. I suggest that in the last sentence you place the word your in quotes.
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A firm but not too impatient attitude is the most beneficial on your parts
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