“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now, good evening—

—and give us a moment with this, for there are several issues involved. We will save the matter of the animal until later. Let us work along with this, and then I will tell you, and you may ask questions. Now.

When you turned from the habit, and would have turned to food for comfort, you denied yourself this out of fear of gaining weight. Subconsciously you felt cheated. Now the comfort was needed to begin with so that you could make up for other things that you felt you did not have, and to help you cope with problems, as you are aware.

There are reasons why you chose the particular symptoms that you have, and reasons why they emerged at this particular time. Now. There was the feeling, the inner fear that you do not have freedom of motion in the economic or professional sphere—the fear, quite simply, that you were not going to make it. Some of this has to do with the symbolism you have attached subconsciously to the age of 40, and you see yourself coming closer to it. Some has to do with your assessment of your position within the firm, with your assessment of what you would get outside the firm should you leave it.

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.

Now. (To John:) I have told you that you formed your own physical body and your own image.

Now when anything is wrong with your body, it is trying to tell you something. And when you understand what it is trying to say, and if you make an effort to do what is needed, the symptoms are no longer needed as a method of communication.

The body is trying to tell you that you have a problem, and because you did not cope with it, and denied it mentally, it is physically materialized in symbolic body language. Now give us a moment. (Pause.)

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.

In the first place none of you would have found it comfortable in the long run, to live with an animal that you considered the symbol for failure. Now I will give you time for questions. Let us follow this through.

The failure was being rejected, you see. Now the dog was a hunting dog. Symbolically you have always equated hunting with a man’s work in modern society. That was one connection. You would not feel free to hunt successfully with the animal, for he was, you felt, the symbol of an unsuccessful hunt in the work world.

Each member of the family picked this up. The dog had to be loved. It was a face-saving gesture. No one wanted you to know, and all of this now on a subconscious basis. Under the conditions that were then in operation, and underline that, for you all to have accepted the dog for any length of time would have been an admission and acceptance of failure.

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 have been concentrating emotionally, and at a certain level, upon failure. Now you translate activity into many areas. You have been frightened of your mother’s disease, and you have also translated a fear of inactivity into other than physical realms.

Now I am speaking of failure as it would apply to you, in your estimation. All of these attitudes were reflected in the body.

In a moment I will give you a break and then continue. One point: the drug you are now taking over a period of time would not be recommended by me—

Now you may take your break. And you save your questions (smile), after I give you the prescription, when we will have our doctor-to-patient chat.

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.

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 you can reverse this process. Negative habits of thought, and withheld feelings and emotions got you into this, and the same, backwards, can get you out.

Now I can tell you what to do, and I can assure you that this works. It is up to you to follow through however. Now in your mind you now have the image of yourself with hampered motion, stiff joints. You have the fears that this image can evoke, and you must be very on guard against projecting this idea or image into the future.

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.

Now there is something else. You want comfort of a certain kind, and you will not ask it of your wife.You feel, again,that you should not need comfort, that she will interpret such a need either as weakness or that she will become frightened. You have been denying yourself comfort of this kind, and it would help prevent the periods of depression, and the mood of depression that has gradually come over you and robbed you of your resistance.

Now, I want to give you some practical suggestions before the session is through, so I will speak of the most important ones. Several things are necessary.

I suggest however that you freely express both bitterness and discontent when you feel them, whenever possible. Do not put it off in other words unless you must. If you are in a position where this is difficult now then imagine the bitterness or discontent is a football, and you are kicking it with all your might. This in itself will activate the legs and feet and prevent you from further stiffening those areas.

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.

Give us a moment. Now. (Pause.) There is no simple way to put this. On the one hand the accident was an accident. On the other hand you had an individual aggressively attuned that day with withheld violence, who was going to kill one animal or another. On the other hand you had an animal who went searching for friends, knowing quite well that in one way of speaking the friendship was over.

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.

Now you may take a break or end the session as your prefer.

Now. There will be an effect—not one I believe that you have foreseen, and not immediate. You worried them. You are a problem to them, as they are to you, even while you both receive services from the other, and your report may help take all of you off the hook. It may take all of you off the hook—they do not know what to do with you either.