“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Through the day Jane herself received periodic insights from Seth about the condition, mostly having to do with her fears that she wasn’t walking enough, and not trusting the body to do its own thing in the recovery process. The gist of the impressions seemed to be that she ought to ease off walking while the body recovered —a very strange state of affairs, it seems to me, and a situation that has bothered me often before: Why should the body give up certain functions if it’s in the process of recovering? I doubt if I for one will ever be able to fully comprehend that kind of reasoning—whether from Seth or anyone else—since I think that as the body —any body—recovers, its range of activities expands correspondingly instead of shrinking. Yet Jane said the material from Seth blamed her panic-stricken attempts to see if she was walking enough each day.

First of all, many of the questions reinforce the idea of fear, for example, or lack of safety, each time they are asked. Am I afraid of the world? Am I afraid of my neighbors? Am I afraid of inspiration, or whatever? Do I trust the world or inspiration or whatever?—but your questions themselves are now loaded with built-in negative suggestions. Besides this, in an odd fashion, they lack a certain specific nature, as I will shortly explain, and there are too many of them by far to be handled at one session. That is, their number precludes any one single clear path, specifically noted. I want to stress the purposes they have served, and their general nature and so forth did help to bring up a variety of important issues. You now have too jumbled a variety of material to effectively handle.

The body is full of sensation. The most pleasurable of bodily sensations prolonged overmuch, or concentrated upon unduly, can appear quite painful. In your latest attempts to remedy the situation, and in your determination to do so, you have ended up concentrating upon the problem, putting it foremost in your minds, searching for the reasons, and giving yourselves no rest.

Now walking is obviously good for him, and I have encouraged it. I realize now that I simply cannot expect either of you at this point to trust Ruburt’s body to know what it is doing. There are times, according to the changes occurring, when naturally it would not walk, say, for a good part of the day, and often left alone, it might suddenly want to exercise new positions. But you both become frightened, adding to the body’s stress further.

You do not trust that beneficial changes are occurring in the body until you see what you consider are the proper results, particularly in better performance.

The fact is, of course, quite unapparent to you both, that there is better performance, in that the legs are lengthening, the ankles are loosening. They are not becoming tighter. The main fact is, however, that you still do not trust the process, and that you concentrate upon the poorest aspects of physical evidence and therefore continue to perceive it.

(10:25.) I cannot change my stand on that issue, regardless of your opinions of it, the two of you. Everything that I am saying tonight is an effort to minimize Ruburt’s discomfort, and to quicken the healing. I am going to suggest a program, and regardless of what you think of it, the two of you, I would like you to try it, and urge you to do so. I do not expect that you will approve of it entirely, but I can assure you that it will be beneficial if you try to place trust in what I am saying.

After breakfast, use the pendulum to insert positive suggestions of a specific nature—not about the world, but psychological supports and directions for the specific day. Such suggestions do direct your focus psychologically.

Do this together. The suggestions should be clear and to the point. Ruburt has two old lists of such suggestions that can be used as a model—and those lists worked well, incidentally, at the time.

I do not know how you want to handle this, but the two of you should go over that page of feelings together. According to the day, the situation, you may then want to work with the pendulum, considering some specific event or issue from that day—but this need not be a lengthy session at all. With your discussion, perhaps 10 minutes with the pendulum would be sufficient, The pendulum also can be used when any event occurs—again, when specifics apply.

Give us a moment.... I am aware of the fact, of course, that you both want Ruburt to walk more and better—but you must also not judge his body’s walking by usual standards. Allow it a sense of accomplishment as it progresses. It does know when it is ready to try out new positions, when it needs rest—and while I see your concern, do allow it to express some variety there.

The program I have outlined should allow you to take more advantage of Framework 2, but you must both remind yourselves of the good intent of the body, and the power of your own intent. Do not anticipate impediments. I said this before, and you have never really followed through, but if Ruburt would note down whatever feelings of release he has, or whatever improvements he senses, and if you would both recognize those as accomplishments, they would greatly improve in number and quality. You believe that or you don’t, but the fact remains.

Again—Cézanne did not show in any way on the outside, yet the “work” was largely prepared before the first line was written. You trust the creative process in art. Only in dealing with Ruburt’s body do you both become so literal, so determined. It seems you cannot trust the creative abilities’ biological translations—but the body is certainly as creative as the mind, in those terms. Whenever the two of you manage to free your creative abilities, and set them to work on the physical situation, you do see some results.