“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] The dream told him that he had agreed to deaden himself to a certain extent, and that he did not think deadening yourself would be painful. [...] He discovered that trying to deaden yourself is quite painful.

[...] She couldn’t recall it clearly, but it featured her talking to a man, objecting to him that he’d told her something he’d given her would be painless—but that it was instead quite painful: a suicide pill, or something like that, she said. [...]

(9:46.) Some of the material (in this session) on pain should help clear Ruburt’s mind, but the past week’s blue periods and so forth simply represented one more example of a situation in which he tried to make himself get better by “realizing the gravity of his condition”—by contrasting his performance against “normal” performance, and by the old beliefs of not trusting the body. [...]

Had you experienced the pain of the tree as directly and as immediately as you would sense another person’s pain through the ordinary senses you could not have stood it. [...]

[...] What you actually felt when the tree fell was the pain of the tree, in much muted form. [...]

You were feeling the echo of distant pain. [...]

As the intense experience of great joy or pain often blots out everything else, so would the direct experience of reality blot out, only completely, the outer ego who experienced it directly. [...]

Most people do not seek out suffering’s extreme experience, but within those extremes there are multitudinous degrees of stimuli that could be considered painful, that are actively sought. Man’s involvement in sports is an instant example, of course, where society’s rewards and the promise of spectacular bodily achievement lead athletes into activities that would be considered most painful by the ordinary individual. [...]

[...] In a species geared above all to the survival of the fittest, and the competition among species, then any touch of suffering or pain, or thoughts of death, become dishonorable, biologically shameful, cowardly, nearly insane. [...]

“I don’t remember much of that,” Jane said, “but I’ve got the feeling that Seth meant the material to defuse some of my own thoughts lately—that there isn’t any answer for all of the pain and suffering in the world—that the whole thing is so vast that you can’t say or do anything that will be of much use to anyone….”

(9:29.) Some s-e-c-t-s (spelled) have believed that spiritual understanding came as the result of bodily agony, and their self-inflicted pain became their versions of pleasure. It is usually said that animals, and also man, avoid pain and seek pleasure—and so any courting of pain, except under certain conditions, is seen as unnatural behavior.

[...] Sportsmen, race-car drivers, mountain climbers—all seek suffering to one extent or another, and find the very intensity of certain kinds (underlined) of pain pleasurable. [...]

[...] Some of the changes have resulted in very painful moments for her, as today; at other times she does well. [...]

Now Seth comes to this point, very important in his theories: “This acquiescence to even painful stimuli is a basic part of the nature of consciousness. Action does not differentiate between pleasant, painful, or joyful stimuli. [...]

[...] In the following excerpts from a private session, he explains the biological and psychic elements of pain and consciousness and also states that illness itself is sometimes a purposeful activity.

[...] The self does not want to give up a portion of itself, even while that portion may be painful or disadvantageous. [...]

“For one thing, while pain is unpleasant, it is also a method of familiarizing the self against the edges of quickened consciousness. [...]

[...] Often, while you are in pain, for example, you concentrate upon that sensation alone, ignoring the feelings of ease that may be felt by other portions of the body, and unaware of the conglomeration of sounds, sights, and impressions that are also in the immediate environment. [...]

[...] Again, we want, say, the release of painful thoughts or emotions somehow balanced by the steps I gave today, so that they provide a kind of supporting framework.

The very nature of the ego and of the personality is formed by the ability to choose between actions or stimuli; but life as it is not connected to a highly differentiated ego, rejoices in all stimuli, as sensation, whether it is pleasurable or painful, for these distinctions do not exist in your terms. [...] The tree, therefore, is conscious of the pain connected with, say, the severing of a limb.

I spoke, for example, of the acquiescence of action at certain levels to any kind of stimuli, indiscriminately, whether painful or pleasurable. [...]

[...] They experience this oneness with their own growth, and they also experience pain. The pain however while definite, unpleasant and sometimes agonizing, is not of an emotional nature in the same way that you might experience pain.

[...] In a manner this somewhat approximates pain for a tree.

[...] Pain and pleasure, the strongest aspects of all consciousness, are experienced strongly by every fragment, according to its degree. [...]

[...] I can only say that I hope I haven’t caused you pain, since the opposite is my intention.

[...] To a large measure, the sensations of pain are also the results of your beliefs, so that even diseases that are indeed accompanied, now, by great pain, need not be. [...]

[...] In a way the very pain of cancer — of some cancers — often acts through its intensity as a reflection of the person’s belief that life is painful, tormenting. At the same time, the pain is a reminder of feeling and sensation.

[...] In a strange fashion, the pain represented heightened sensitivity – extremely unpleasant, but also represented a vital emotional bodily response of a direct nature. [...]

Unfortunately, cries of pain brought the child instant attention, and they were often exaggerated. [...]

[...] They are focused so strongly within physical reality and physical reality is far more painful than was originally intended. [...]

[...] No god created the crime of murder, and no god created sorrow and pain. [...]

John also asked Seth if he knew what the trouble had been when John had had a pain in his throat on June 17,1964; on this date John witnessed the 63rd session. [...] He said John had cut his tongue on a bone sliver while eating, but because of the human nerve structure in that part of the anatomy the pain had been felt down in his neck.

[...] The pain in your side was a reaction against the first group of symptoms—they gave you a pain in the side. [...]

(This noon, driving home from work, I pulled a muscle in my right side while wheeling the car around a corner—one of those painful things that you feel when you cough, breathe deeply, laugh, etc.)

[...] Presumably, muscles and ligaments are still stretching, but the process has been very painful for her, making many movements she used to enact very difficult. [...] I asked that Seth comment on all of these developments, and why they were so painful for Jane.

[...] A painful sensation started in the canal of her right ear, spread to her jaw, then down the side of her body in the back. [...]

[...] When you think in terms of perfection, you think in terms of purposes already achieved, none coming after; but existence makes its own new purposes that arise of the joy and exaltation, as well as pain and challenge. [...] You see, because of the creative nature of your personalities, even when you thrust a pain apart from yourselves and give it as a heritage to a fragment personality, you give it, also, your creative power and your hopes. [...]

[...] Would you, therefore, deny them reality in order to deny them pain? [...]

[...] While there is indeed pain in the world, it is the miraculous principle of pleasure that propels life itself.