“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(John Bradley was a witness to the session. John had two questions for Seth—one concerning himself, and one about a pet dog that had recently been killed. Seth deals with the questions in the session.)

(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.

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.

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.

You had not wanted such a dog until you had room and a larger place, and in the past you had not gotten the dog because subconsciously you hoped you would have more land within a brief, foreseeable future. When you bought the dog, and particularly since your wife was so for the idea, you feared that she also took this as a sign that you had made your mind up to the fact, or faced the fact, that you would be where you are for some time.

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.

([John:] “For what purpose? What was accomplished?” )

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.

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.

To protect yourself from her disease you had to move quickly physically. You also had to move quickly in the area of work. You were sensitized because of your mother’s problem to fear inactivity. Any threat to your motion or advance, even in the business area, becomes highly charged for this reason. Earlier you felt that you could strike out. There was plenty of time. Then you became frightened after the age of 35, and you began to soften up your blows. (Jane gestured widely, with a fist.) You began to hold back, become more cautious, and then slowly began to entertain thoughts of the possibility of failure.

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.

(This was, abruptly, the end of the session. Jane’s trances had been good. John said the data tonight made good intuitive sense to him, and that he couldn’t disagree with it.)