“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When the inner patterns are broken the effects cease, but the inner patterns are associated by the personality with those outer habits. Indeed, the need for the habits creates the exterior habit. This is almost a mechanistic response that is confining, and indeed detrimental to expansion.

Some personalities need a habit security, and will switch from one habit to another. Ruburt is strong enough now so that this will not be the case. He should keep a close watch upon his smoking now, and immediately after his birthday he should break the habit completely. And I believe he will.

I believe that now you can trust this prediction: By summer he will have broken the habit for good, and it will no longer be a worry. The various unfortunate effects that seem to be caused by smoking are not caused by the cigarettes so much, as by those psychic habits which cause a personality to seek security within such habitual patterns that become compulsive.

(Seth’s comment above on switching habits is of interest to me personally. It reminds me that although I quit smoking in 1959, I tried for the better part of two years, first, to cut down. I then found quitting altogether relatively easy. However, I immediately switched to chewing on toothpicks, and kept this up for well over a year. This habit then gradually fell away, practically without conscious effort.)

[...] During it Joanie enthusiastically verified that she has the odd habit of eating lettuce, a head at a time, as another person might eat candy or pretzels. [...] She has had the habit since childhood, she told us.

(Jane and I have met Joanie a few times before, without any knowledge of her lettuce-eating habit, and can attest that Seth’s data here was as much a surprise to us as to Joanie or Bill. [...]

[...] With your habits the body is literally starved for long periods at night, then often overfed during the day. Important therapeutic information that is given in dreams, and meant to be recalled, is not remembered because your sleep habits plunge you into what you think of as unconsciousness far too long.

[...] But changed wake-sleep habits can, again, bring about a transformation in which it is obvious that dreams contain great wisdom and creativity, that the unconscious is indeed quite conscious, and that in fact the individual sense of identity can be retained in the dream state. [...]

[...] They are not the result of your technology or industrial habits. [...]

(Pause.) Mammals have also changed their habits to accommodate those conditions you have thrust upon them, so the behavior studied in laboratories is not necessarily that shown by the same animals in their natural state.

[...] He made an important statement this evening concerning habits. Some new habits have finally taken; consciously he has learned to leave himself alone enough so that the body can clear itself.

Now this helper, as time goes by, can be counted upon to help you in whatever ways it can, as long as Ruburt continues in his present frame of mind and habit, for this itself is bringing about improvements in all areas of your lives.

Ruburt should make a habit of addressing his helper now and then, and of building up rapport. [...]

[...] The old habits however had to be broken down in both realms.

[...] I had originally suggested the day after his birthday to end his smoking habit, simply because it would be relatively easy for him at that time. [...]

[...] There is no reason why he should not succeed, and he will succeed in letting go the smoking habit. [...]

[...] The sinus condition has always been to some extent aggravated by the smoking habit, and there are also other conditions which will largely vanish. [...]

[...] It means that you refuse to let old habits any longer rule, and each such encounter is an exercise in learning how to express and communicate your feelings each to the other.

[...] You, now, did for some time get into the habit of nonsmiling, which led Ruburt to further reinforce his own negative ideas of what you are thinking. [...]

Reasons have been given to you in the past, but you can break the habit now by expressing your emotions to each other, and so indeed you must. [...]

Your habits both became extremely sloppy in that regard, and it was easy for both of you to justify the lack of increasingly rewarding emotional interaction by saying it went into your separate work, and into our work.

It is a habit of cautiousness, that is translated of course into muscular cautiousness. [...]

Now, he realizes this much more than he did, but the mental and muscular habit of cautiousness carries over. [...]

Some of these mental habits can be cured rather easily, comparatively speaking. [...]

[...] Often, out of habit now, though not always, the muscles are restricted. [...]

(10:28.) Because of your habits of an extended sleep period, followed by an extended waking period, you do not take advantage of these rhythms of consciousness. [...]

(10:33.) The suggestions given earlier in this chapter, concerning sleeping habits, will result in a natural use of these rhythms. [...]

[...] Learning processes are definitely hampered through your present habits, for there are certain periods when consciousness is attuned to learning, and yet you try to force learning during unrecognized minimal periods. [...]

Now, the crucial mother identification is passed, and Ruburt is left with a system of habit, still based on some but relatively little mother identification. [...] This will generally help in the breaking up of habit patterns.

[...] He is in a habit, for example, now, of not bending down deeply and when he catches himself, he must move as he used to.

[...] Changes in the patterns and habits within the environment will do in place of the above, however.

Because of the personal material given in late sessions, Ruburt has the habit of worrying—protecting the idea of time and ability as described, so that in one day he will worry about what distractions may arise the next day, and this puts him on guard. [...]

[...] His mental habits however often prevent hint from such oneness with the moment. [...]

[...] When you have allowed negative habits, however, to take over, then somewhere you must draw the line for the negative habits knock away the discipline. The negative habits knock away even spontaneity for all thoughts of good will and health and vitality disappear beneath these thoughts that you are handing yourself every day like poison upon the spoon, whether the spoon be wooden or tarnished or silver. [...]

[...] Now, you may have built up poor habits of thought, but you can recognize this and change them. [...]

[...] You get into a habit and you do not realize that you have done so, where predominately your thoughts about yourselves and others are all negative with very few positive ones in between and then the positive ones have no chance to grow. [...]

[...] It is only when you refuse to accept them that they build up charges so that if you have been in the habit of refusing to accept them there may be charges that have been built up. [...]

[...] In his own way at that time (underlined), he picked up the habit of checking happy spontaneity, and he felt you were accusing if he displayed it, and in small ways began blocking. [...] He also interpreted a habit of “natural secrecy” (in quotes) on your part quite literally. [...]

It is his fingers that want to grasp firmly, and he out of fear, fearful habit, has blocked the impulse. [...]

The repression in one way I used in the novels, but when the habit becomes too ingrained I find it difficult to retain, to transform into art. Some of my material comes from Ruburt’s repressions, but when the habit allows for too strong a charge, constantly rebuilt, this is a hindrance.

[...] The habit of repression dropped its hold to a great degree when he met you. [...]

[...] He felt that you believed that, given a free hand, his habits would be too exuberant. [...]

[...] The habits of repression took great root. [...]

[...] Nevertheless although the cigarette habit satisfies these basic old habits, he will be able to let it go. [...]

[...] Also the slow breathing habits you began to acquire with your yoga exercises will be beneficial. Giving up the smoking habit will also help you in this respect. [...]

First, naturally, I have a few comments to make that will not only tie in Ruburt’s smoking habits with his present personality, but also to some extent tie in his present personality with past personalities.

[...] His smoking, dear Joseph, is indulged in for entirely different reasons than those reasons which impelled you to smoke, and the habit is difficult for him to break, though he is breaking it and he has made strides that are important during the past year.

You block your own energy many times because of old habits. [...]

[...] They become overlaid with cultural habits. [...]

[...] Behind the habits, however, lie beliefs concerning creativity and the world.

[...] They provide a beginning for a habit of release. [...]

Again: a change of schedules and habits. [...]

A variety of small, perhaps, but frequent alterations of schedule or habit are very helpful. [...]

[...] He lost faith in his physical performance, and got out of the habit of asserting himself physically.

There are many different reasons involved there, depending upon the circumstances, his mental activities, and the habits, mental and physical, built up with the idea of sitting or lying down.

[...] Expectation now (underlined) is important here, and the fact that he got into the habit of denying impulses toward motion—by blocking, often, not the impulse so much as the motor response.

[...] That one habit and no other was to be changed. [...]

[...] Now, though you no longer do so, the new habit has largely replaced the old, though in times of nervousness he might forget.

[...] You are tuned into earth’s orchestration [you might say], and your perception of time is simply the result of habits—habits of perception that you had to learn in the beginning of the world. And you learned those habits as your physical senses gradually became more alert and specific.

[...] Only Jane’s and my own conventions of time and habit, even concerning a phenomenon as unusual as the sessions, stopped him from doing so. [...]

It is the habit, to one extent self-examination carried too far in that respect, of too much concern with the problems of the self anyway. [...]

[...] When he counted upon you finally to help him get up in the morning, this automatically relieved him of the responsibility for enough time so that the negative charges connected could subside, and a new habit began to show itself.