“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Give us a moment.... When you feel at the same time that you must and should plow the driveway out yourself, to prove that you are the same as your neighbor, or to prove that you are physically agile, and on the other hand if you feel that you do not want to plow out the driveway at all, then you are in a quandary—and when you shovel, you tell your body to shovel and not to shovel at the same time, setting your muscles against each other.

Simple-enough incidents, like shoveling the driveway, can bother you because they arouse old conflicts having to do with your earlier situation and the decision, say, to explore your mental and creative abilities rather than to pursue the physical ones in the excellence of sports.

The driveway involves the sports situation, and also the mainline-America theme—for shouldn’t you be shoveling the walk like your neighbor? This involves questions like “How different am I from my neighbor? What does he think of me, working at home?” et cetera.

[...] I shoveled quite a bit of snow in the driveway last night after I finished typing yesterday’s session, and for the first time in a long while felt the old panic return. [...] I shoveled the rest of the driveway this morning, and felt much better — although traces of the same feeling in the throat returned for a time.

[...] You see others shoveling their walks themselves. [...]

Physically, for example, you are in much better physical condition than Joe Bumbalo, but he is a prime example, to you, of the exteriorized consciousness—and while on the one hand you envy his shoveling the walk, you are to some degree underneath all that, somewhat contemptuous—somewhat, now; I do not want to speak too strongly, but simply help you become aware of some feelings you might have submerged because you think they are not nice. [...]

This does not mean that you should begin shoveling walks tomorrow, with your attitude. [...]

[...] I’d managed to shovel in the driveway twice, without reactions—a great relief. [...]

[...] About a foot of snow had fallen, but this rather small amount still made things difficult for automobiles, and the area involved would mean hours of shoveling by hand.

[...] It developed that he had thought we could shovel our own way out. [...]

(By the time the landlord realized we couldn’t shovel our own way out, he couldn’t get his own plow into the driveway, nor could he hire help; everyone was busy. [...]

[...] I’ll probably go shovel at least part of the driveway after I finish this.)

(Perhaps two or three inches of snow fell this afternoon; now I’ll probably shovel for a while in the driveway. [...]

[...] I glanced out the window and saw the ground bare of snow, and thought that I wouldn’t have to shovel snow. [...]

[...] I’d shoveled half of it off so I could scatter bird feed. [...]

[...] Naturally this is brought about by my own reactions to whatever the trigger happens to be, but still “Unknown,” and other creative endeavors have often been involved, when conflicts between what I think of as useful creative work run into doing things like shoveling snow, or other household items that I seem to think of as “chores.” [...]

[...] I had to shovel the driveway — about four inches of snow — since snow had fallen most of the day, and I didn’t want a mess out there today. [...]

[...] After a minor snow storm yesterday afternoon and last night, I’d shoveled the driveway late last night and early this morning. [...]

The whole issue involving shoveling snow or mowing the grass also involves your ideas of time. [...]

No chores for either of you—lawn, shoveling, dishes, laundry, whatever, unless you spontaneously feel like a break. [...]

[...] I couldn’t say too much, considering my own panicky reaction when I shoveled snow yesterday, but I did remark that we’d slipped back into the old ways of dealing with events.

[...] The first one came early this morning after I’d shoveled but a few scoops of snow in the driveway—no work involved at all, really, but I had to quit for fear of having an “attack” of some kind. [...]

[...] I still haven’t shoveled any snow, in spite of the series of massive snowstorms we’ve experienced within the last week—the worst in over a decade. [...]

He was shoveling coal up into buckets, very angry. [...]

The negative thoughts can and should be recognized and plucked up as they are encountered, but you do not need a shovel to pluck up one weed at a time, nor hit yourself over the head with a sledgehammer for finding a weed in your garden. [...]

Your own difficulties after shoveling become exaggerated because you also make a division between what you think of as your own mental life as opposed to the world’s physical orientation, as if in some way mental life makes you unfit for physical activity. [...]

[...] This is my interpretation: Don’t shovel snow? [...]