“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Sometime after I came home from college in 1967, I first noticed that my right shoulder hurt when I lifted it up — classic bursitus symptoms, I’ve since learned. After a while, the condition cleared up gradually. Then in April, 1968, the symptoms returned and lasted for about three months, disappeared slowly and came back for a while in December, 1968. In February, 1969, I had a real bout that lasted off and on until my son’s birth in October. Since then, the condition got worse until for the last month or so I haven’t been able to get my right hand in my jean pockets, or comb my hair, or anything without severe pain in my right shoulder blade and right hand to the fingers.

At times, illness is momentarily accepted by the personality as a part of the self, and here lies its danger. It is not just symbolically accepted, and I am not speaking in symbolic terms. The illness is often quite literally accepted by the personality structure as a portion of the self. Once this occurs, a conflict instantly develops. The self does not want to give up a portion of itself, even if that part may be painful or disadvantageous. …

For one thing, while pain is unpleasant, it is also a method of familiarizing the self against the edges of quickened consciousness. Any hightened sensation, pleasant or unpleasant, has a stimulating effect upon consciousness to some degree. It is a strong awareness of activity and life. Even when the stimulus may be extremely annoying or humiliatingly unpleasant, certain portions of the psychological framework accept it undiscriminatingly because it is a vivid sensation. This acquiescence to even painful stimuli is a basic part of the nature of consciousness and a necessary one.

Even a quick and automatic rejection or withdrawal from such a stimulus is, in itself, a way by which consciousness knows itself. The ego may attempt to escape such experiences, but the basic nature of action itself is the knowing of itself in all aspects. In a very deep manner, action does not differentiate between enjoyable and painful actions.

(Seth continues to describe the ways in which various kinds of consciousness react to painful stimuli, ending up with a statement that at deepest cellular levels, all sensations and stimuli are instantly, automatically and joyfully accepted, regardless of their nature. At this level, no knowledge of threat exists. The “I” differentiation is not definite enough to fear destruction.)

But beneath the sophisticated gestalt are the simpler foundations of its being and, indeed, the very acceptance of all stimuli without which identity would be impossible. Without this acquiescence, the physical structure would never maintain itself, for the atoms and molecules within it constantly accept painful stimuli and suffer even their own destruction. They are aware of their own separateness within action and of their reality within it.

I dozed for ten minutes. When I woke up, the pain was gone. I’ve been doing the yoga exercise and using the tea bags and the pain hasn’t returned.