“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(As we began to reread Monday’s session this morning, Jane said something that triggered a reaction on my part that I felt was based on material Seth gave in that session: “I tell my body every day that I trust it, that it can bear my weight when I go to the john, for example,” or words closely to that effect. Suddenly it came to me that she had it backwards—that her body didn’t need any additional trust, that it was perfectly willing to do her bidding at any time, including healing itself. What she should be stressing, I said, was that she trusted her spontaneous self—then the body would automatically react to the release of tension, to her trust in that spontaneous self. Put another way, the intellect then must learn to cooperate in that trusting by relaxing its near-paranoid protective cover.

(All of this is a simplification, of course, for we had a rather lengthy discussion about it. Yet I could see that I confused Jane somewhat: for she’d used that typical suggestion about trusting her body for years, and I had agreed with it, at least tacitly, besides using similar suggestions myself at times.

(But with a new insight growing out of this month’s series of private sessions, I explained, I now felt that one could more directly get at the heart of one’s challenges, instead of trying to cajole the body into behaving differently—after all, the body’s condition was the result of certain ways of thinking, not the cause of the trouble. In addition, it was obvious that the body hadn’t responded to those habitual suggestions over the years, so something else was needed. The cause of Jane’s symptoms is her fear of the spontaneous self—that is the area that needs treatment. One might better address the fears of being the public person, for example, rather than trying to futilely patch up a body that was only faithfully following mirroring habits of deep and long standing.

(At lunchtime Frank Longwell dropped off a medical device that’s used to transfer moist heat to the body. After lunch I fussed with transplanting a cutting of Swedish ivy while Jane slept. I also wanted to try to make up some of the painting time I’d lost this morning. As I finished cleaning up the planter I came up with another of the “insights” I’ve been getting since we started this series of private sessions on February 4, 1981; see my notes at the end of the session for February 11.

The body is softening. The affair frightens him nevertheless because, as mentioned earlier, he identifies strongly with his own bodily tensions. Letting them go brings him into a more or less constant encounter with many of the fears that helped generate them. Some of these have to do with an erroneous idea of relaxation in general, of course, with his father, and with spontaneity.

It often seems to him that to relax is to be lax, to let down, do nothing, achieve nothing, as if spontaneously left alone he would be lazy, unambitious, and again lax. He has those feelings and fears. (Pause.) At the same time there are feelings that to relax would be to let go too much (louder)—slide into overly spontaneous behavior, to lack control over one’s life, to lose the observer’s fine focus. As his body begins to relax—as indeed it has—those feelings become more prominent than before. Under the circumstances he is handling them rather well.

They do present difficulties, however, and are the cause of the panicky emotions he feels at times. The body’s relaxation is as of now uneven. Certain muscles relax for the first time in recent times, while others might momentarily contract so that balance is maintained—so the body is in a state of constant change.

As far as physical therapy is concerned, if you gave hot water packs—plain towels, or Frank’s gadget—either one—the same or even half the attention you gave the cold water baths, this would now be of excellent immediate benefit. There are reasons why the body might at one time respond to the cold, then the hot water.

The idea that it is indeed safe to relax is important, coupled with the realization that all creativity is basically now—basically—effortless, and that this applies to the body’s motion also. When he is effortlessly creating a poem he is not worried that he is relaxing too much, or going too far, or giving up control. Instead, he is letting go by going with himself (all intently)—and that attitude makes all the difference.

(Pause.) The rigidity that was a general characteristic is breaking up, you see, so that by contrast portions of his body do feel vulnerable to him—soft, unprotected—but those feelings were to a large degree covered over before. Now he is physically aware of them, and mentally also. They can be encountered far more directly then, and as they are the body will feel more and more able to respond more, and let go the other stops that still do operate.