“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.

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.

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.

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.

This also applies symbolically, and during your vacation, and before it, was one fear that you had not come to terms with. You would consider it beneath you, and unmanly to entertain, and consciously improbable, if you left your job and did not get another—could not get another, of comparable merit indeed.

You do have full freedom to move, both physically and in the economic world. You allowed negative patterns of thought to take an upper hand, and fears to predominate. These fears were then symbolically acted out by the body. You do have freedom in your joints, for example. I will try to put this simply.