“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(To John:) You do not feel free to move. Symbolically you do not feel that you have freedom of motion, and you are expressing this through the body mechanism. You did indeed shake yourself up when you decided to put your smoking aside, but this was simply because you felt subconsciously a loss. The smoking to some extent had been used by you as a method of giving yourself comfort, a way of giving yourself pleasure.

For some time you had consciously considered various roads that you could take, but subconsciously you became more and more alarmed, and felt severely hampered in your progress.

You have taken it, subconsciously now, as a personal failure that you are not farther ahead, not only financially but in terms of the amount of power you would like to hold. You would like to kick out, but you feel you have lost your footing, hence the symptoms in the feet.

Now what happens is this. You began by wanting to express withheld bitterness, often explosively. At the same time you did not do so. One group of muscles therefore were tensed for action, and the other group of muscles tried to stop the action. You wanted to go ahead but felt you could not, so that this was reflected in your posture long before you felt a symptom.

This was reflected in other portions of the body as well. As you noted, you felt off balance subjectively, and unsure. Now. You had grown used to smoking as a way of comforting yourself. You removed the comfort. You refused to add another, and at the same time you did not face the inner problem that was bothering you, that made the comfort so necessary to begin with. We will go into this more deeply, for you can indeed rid yourself of the symptoms, but I would like to make one point here first. When you bought the dog, subconsciously you felt that the dog was almost a symbol of your failure.

She knew subconsciously that you would consider that a failure. We will have much more to say. In the meantime take your break, but (smiling) keep yourself together.

The family all knew, subconsciously again, that the dog had to go. Everyone was overly nice to the dog, so no one would know consciously, what they knew subconsciously—that you considered the dog the symbol of failure. It was a closely guarded secret by all, hidden, but not entirely, from the conscious minds of those involved. No one wanted the dog killed, but it was not coincidence that you yourself loosened the dog’s collar, or that your wife was the one who left the dog; for symbolically the two of you were connected here. Now give us a moment. The act itself was symbolic, and the dog picked up all of your attitudes through its own sense of communication.

The dog had to go, but it had to appear accidental. And this is exactly what happened. Now we will take up the dog’s death later, but give us a moment. The threads of activity are so enmeshed, and I see them as a whole, and must unravel them for you. As Joseph said earlier this is not to say you cannot have a dog, and enjoy him, with a different attitude.

You were particularly frightened during vacation because of the inactivity. Old fears were aroused that you have never faced consciously. You never faced them honestly. You are terrified of inactivity, for many reasons: bodily inactivity, mental inactivity, some of this based upon fear of your mother’s disease. You must go, go, go, to prove that you can do so, and any threat to your mobility is not only strongly felt but negatively exaggerated.

(Our cat Willy jumped up in Jane’s lap, but she continued to speak as Seth while Willy sought to make himself comfortable.)

—and we will give you recommendations so that you can rid yourself of the symptoms. To do so will take some effort on your part, but you can remove them completely.

Now. The problem is not in the exterior circumstances but in your own mental attitude toward them, and in the habitual patterns of thought that you have subjectively accepted.

You do not want to accept the basic fear of immobility and lack of motion. You are too afraid of the fear itself. You recognize it but you do not know what to do about it, and this frightens you further. You act this out subconsciously then, hampering the free motion of the joints, which then become stiffened through the inactivity. The stiffness then convinces you that the joints are indeed at fault; this adds to the problem, which then gives more fuel to the basic fear.

Now. The cortisone can be of some intermediate value, but over an extended period of time it will only introduce another element into the system, to which the system will then have to adjust, and it can lead to an extension of the symptoms when the reasons for them are gone.

I do not suggest that this be kept up for any length of time, at a steady rate. The cortisone itself to some extent becomes habitual. Now not habit forming, but habitual. You can prevent this if you cease taking it now and then for several days. It can hold you over but at the same time the body is getting used to a more or less artificial element; element not in terms of chemical. The cortisone is somewhat, say, like a crutch. Do not become addicted to that.

Now. In your spare moments, see yourself in your mind’s eye easily performing normal physical pursuits as you did before. Remember the feelings that you had, but see this in your mind’s eye as present. Do not compare your present state with your state before you were ill. See yourself in your mind as clearly as possible square dancing, and enjoying yourself.

Now I want you to mentally talk to the portions of your body that hurt you. You do this whether you now it or not, but you have been saying the wrong things. Tell your feet that you free them. They can step forward.

Now. In the long run your present situation would deny them far more. I am speaking of the physical situation—the illness itself.You have every good chance of ridding yourself of the symptoms now, but you must immediately begin to use your imagination, so that it works for you and not against you.

Do not force this, but again, for at least five minutes in the overall during the day, imagine as vividly as possible that you are moving normally and easily anyway you choose. Do this almost as a game, not with a heavy hand.

Now you are also underestimating your own worth, and you have done so consistently for some time. You would be the last to say that that is so, and the reasons are too deep-seated to go into this evening. This underestimation of your own worth leads you to place an overemphasis upon your financial worth to your family. It is in this personal area that a basic fear exists also. This is a high simplification, but you feel that your value as a person and as a man in the family situation is determined not only by your ability to provide, but increases in proportion to your financial status.

Give us a moment. Probabilities always operate, and yet within that framework the large proportion and the points I have made will come to pass. Now you must deduct some points here and there for distortion, but the overall still applies. The time elements as you probably see are not as dependable, even when the event itself is correct. This simply has to do with translations difficult to assess from my standpoint.

He sensed the rejection sometime earlier, through various cues given, and the animal knew that the rejection would take place, if not on that occasion then another. Now the driver wanted to strike out violently but could never admit this to himself, hence an accidental affair. The dog was disconsolate, and as distracted as a human being might be. The affair involved many people, and was a reality constructed by many people.

A new position would save face both for you and for them. This will be considered. The effects would be beneficial. There are no ill effects from the event. A long time ago I mentioned that your progress might not necessarily involve the second step, the next obvious one. They might very well surprise you with such a position, a new one, but it would not be entirely what you had in mind; as comprehensive.