“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Your body repairs itself constantly, and your mind thinks — all without your normally conscious attention. The same applies to all of those inner processes that make life possible. Your thoughts are conscious, but the process of thinking itself is not. Spontaneity is particularly important in the actions of children, and in the natural rhythmic motion of their limbs. Feelings also seem to come and go in a spontaneous fashion.

Many people, however, fear spontaneity: it evokes extravagance, excesses, and dangerous freedoms. Even people who are not so fervently opposed to spontaneity often feel that it is somehow suspect, distasteful, perhaps leading to humiliating actions. Spontaneity, however, represents the spirit of life itself, and it is the basis for the will to live, and for those impulses that stimulate action, motion, and discovery.

(3:43.) Such individuals become frightened of freedom itself, of choices and of changes. They try desperately to control themselves and their environment against what seems to be a raging, spontaneous mass of primitive impulses from within, and against a mindless, chaotic, ancient force of nature. In the physical world, such behavior often leads to compulsive action — stereotyped mental and physical motion and other situations with a strong repressive coloration. Here any expression becomes almost taboo. The conscious mind must be in control of all actions as much as possible, for such a person feels that only rigid, logical thought is strong enough to hold back such strong impulsive force.

(Long pause.) These attitudes may be reflected in rather simple compulsive actions: the woman who cleans the house endlessly, whether it needs it or not; the man who will follow certain precise, defined routes of activity — driving down certain streets only to work; washing his hands much more frequently than other people; the person who constantly buttons and unbuttons a sweater or vest. Many such simple actions show a stereotyped kind of behavior that results from a desperate need to gain control over oneself and the environment.