More commentary from Seth; this time on what it means to be an individual human being and experiencing physical pain. My comments are below.
A Seth Book by: Jane Roberts
Page 110
When you ask: "Who am I?" you are trying to read yourself as if you were a simple sentence already written. Instead, you write yourself as you go along. The sentence that you recognize is the only one of many probable variations. You and no other choose which experiences you want to actualize. You do this as spontaneously as you speak words. You take it for granted that a sentence begun will be finished. You are in the midst of speaking yourself. The speaking, which is your life, seems to happen by itself, since you are not aware of keeping yourself alive. Your heart beats whether or not you understand anatomy.
You read yourself in too-narrow terms. Much of the pain connected with serious illness and death results because you have no faith in your own continuing reality. You fight pain because you have not learned to transcend it, or rather to use it. You do not trust the natural consciousness of the body, so that when its end nears- and such an end is inevitable- you do not trust the signals that the body gives, that are meant to free you.
Certain kinds of pain automatically eject consciousness from the body. Such pain cannot be verbalized, for it is a mixture of pain and pleasure, a tearing free, and it automatically brings about an almost exhilarating release of consciousness. Such pain is also very brief. Under your present system, however, drugs are usually administered, in which case pain is somewhat minimized but prolonged- not triggering the natural release mechanisms.
If you read your selves adjacently, you would build up confidence in the body, and in those cooperative consciousnesses that form it. You would have an intimate awareness of the body's healing processes also. You would not fear death as annihilation, and would feel your own consciousness gently disentangle itself from those others that so graciously couched it.
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I think there is an alternate side to this which Seth does not speak about: voluntary pain for certain gain. Why do we sometimes feel the urge to fast or curb ourselves from doing certain activities? Or why do we put ourselves in situations or do things which cause us so much physical pain? What do we learn from the experience?
Could it be that just as pain we did not intend to feel causes us to feel(or not) distance from the divine, we also consciously move toward physical pain to release ourselves from the stupor of everyday life so that we CAN feel closer to the divine? "Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive," writes the Goo Goo Dolls. Appropriate don't you think, that in this day and age we are more likely to willingly cause ourselves pain than we are to experience the occasional accidental agony?
