The CIG Hosts Body Parts

The Cosmic Improv(e) Group
hosts BODY PARTS
of katharineotto.planetearth,
independent country of one

 by Katharine C. Otto
October, 2005
(Updated February, 2017)

Seth* validates my deepest beliefs.

The only reason for suffering is to learn how not to suffer, says he.  So, I flop on the couch and send healing energy to my painful, throbbing left foot, but I haven’t learned how not to suffer yet.

My foot and gut are having an argument, because the couch flop followed a gustatory fest that made my stomach hurt, too.

“I wouldn’t hurt so much if you didn’t weigh me down,” says Left Foot.

“I would eat less if we could walk,” Gut replies.

“Hey, guys,” says my Total Self, “We all have to live in this body, so can we find a way to get along?”

Then I fall asleep.

Then I wake up, limp to the kitchen, and eat some more.

The Cosmic Improv Group–that gaggle of nags inside my imagination and unheard by others–steps up to the plate.

They remind me I’ve had a busy, active week, have spread understanding far and wide, and have penetrated the local Shape Shifting Alien Reptiles’** lair at their eminent domain meeting.  Yes, I lanced that abscess, burst that bubble, and shriveled those egos.  My foot begins to hurt immediately after that.  My heel, actually.

Heels that they are.  Heal myself.  I decide the SSARs in local politics sent a thought bomb to cripple me, aiming for my Achilles heel.

“Sure, Kath,” says the CIG.  “As if they care enough to hurt you.”

“I didn’t think so, because I was okay with it.  Yes, I unsettled them, but they are used to boring each other to death.  My departure should have let them return to status quo.”

“You know it didn’t.”

“I didn’t know they could get to me this way.  Seth says trust your impulses.  I say fine with me, but not if my impulses cause me pain.”

“You underestimate your power,” they say.  “This is why you must up-level it.  Your pain shows you are not ready to release your passionate appeal.  It will assume a painful timbre, and this is not your intent.”

“You’re right.  I want to uplift and inspire.  My foot pain is associated with many (possibly imagined) lives, in which it manifested in different contexts—shackles, mine fields, frostbite, gangrene.  Bound feet as an Oriental woman.  It is symbolic of my fear of entrapment, limitation, and imprisonment.  Burned as a witch, too, feet first.  Burned again as a monk heretic in the Spanish Inquisition.”

I talk to my left foot and discover it feels “left” out, ignored, and unappreciated.  It reminds me I have lived many lifetimes (possibly) with dysfunctional or missing left feet, and lifetimes with “two left feet.”  I’ve been “left to heal or die.” An image of a wounded foot soldier in Stalin’s army during a cold Russian winter comes to mind.

“You are crazy,” says the CIG.  “Don’t tell anyone but us this, because they will lock you up.”

“Not for long, because the jails are too crowded.  They won’t put me in a psych hospital, either, because I refuse to have health care insurance. Ain’t that swell?”

“Crazy like a fox.”

“Lack of insurance keeps me safe from hospitalization.”

So I decide to make a concerted effort to bring the foot back into the fold, to appreciate that it is a perfectly good foot this lifetime, and its pain is karmic memory.  Up-level the memories, release the grudges and resentments, and the foot will heal.

Same with sacrum, which I believe is associated with my lower body stiffness and pain.  Here, the root chakra blocks qi in a defensive strike position.

The female body is a symbol for humanity’s greatest creativity, passion, and fear.  I hated that my body was female, because I believed it disappointed my parents.  Both parents misunderstood and were unreasonably afraid of feminine power, but so is the world.  We have few role models for fully creative feminine expression.

My physical body is my greatest asset, on this material plane.  It is my science lab, an instrument of pleasure and pain.

If, as Seth says, groups of people reincarnate together, everyone on the planet shares past and future memories. Puritan Salem comes to mind, and Cotton Mather, when I think about the eminent domain meeting.  I was a witch or prostitute, or perceived that way.  Perhaps I was just too independent to be tolerable.  Either way, my contempt for them made a victim of me.

I want to play it smarter, this go-round, and the foot pain reminds me not to move too quickly.  I am more out of phase with the environment than I know, and it hurts me first if I try to try to force it.  I want to be a catalyst for change, a destroyer of limiting beliefs and outdated systems.  At the same time, people have to be ready to change, or you set them up to fail, and they become more afraid than before.

On October 4, weight is up to 143.5 pounds.  Ibuprofen, 200 mg came to my foot’s rescue sometime between five and seven a.m.  I’d taken it at 3 a.m., too, in obeisance to Western medicine, which does some things right.  Just took another one.

I just poured my third cup of coffee, complete this time with real half-and-half and brown sugar.   “No, no,” shouts the CIG’s Should/Shouldn’t Chorus.

“You should only have two cups of coffee in the mornings.  You shouldn’t put sugar or real half-and-half in them.  You weigh 143.5 pounds, remember, when you used to weigh 123.  Disgusting.

“And you know coffee raises your blood pressure, which is borderline high, already.  Remember your bleeding disorder?  You are setting yourself up for a stroke or a heart attack, like the one that killed your father, or pulmonary embolisms, like the ones that killed Rhea, your mother.  Dump a third cup of coffee in that mix, and we can’t be responsible for what happens to you.”

I take a sip of coffee and contemplate their suffering.  I have heard this song before and have learned my stomach will tell me when to stop.

“143.5 #,” say the devils.

“That’s only 65 kilos, another excellent reason to convert to the metric system,” I reply.

“Your stomach has its own agenda.  It wants to hoard fat fuel in the Greater Omentum.”

“Are you saying my stomach is an energy hog?”

“Just look in the mirror at the facts.”

“The coffee doesn’t taste that great, anyway, but it gives me an excuse to sit.”

“So do I,” says Left Foot.

“Indeed you do,” I reply.  “and I’m practicing taking better care of you.  I took 400 mg of ibuprofen this morning, because the pain was so bad last night that I thought something was broken.

“Drink less coffee,” it says.  “The caffeine causes vasoconstriction in your extremities and starves me of oxygen.”

“Thanks.  I suppose you’re going to tell me to lose weight, too.”

“It would sure take a load off me.”

“Fat cells have rights, too,” my Greater Omentum chimes in.  “We’re just doing our job.”

“How’s about shipping some fat to the bottom of my feet,” I say, “to add some padding on my heel and some lubrication in my leg joints?”

“We’ll vote for that,” say the feet.

“Us, too,” say all the lower joints.

“How much will you pay for my largesse?” asks the GO.

My other body parts and I consult with each other.  We don’t have a ready answer.

I speak first.  “I’m about ready to invite a stroke, heart attack, or pulmonary embolism, preferably three all together, so they take me out completely.  That would cure the foot pain.  But please, please, please don’t cast me on the health care system,” I beg.  I take a sip of coffee.

“Remember how hospital coffee tastes?” Fukyoo asks.  “It’s gotten worse.”  Everyone except me laughs.

I dump the last little bit of coffee that was doctored the way my taste buds like it.

“Thank you,” says Left Foot.

“At least you fed me some peanut butter and wheat wafers,” says the Greater Omentum.

“I want you to share that,” I tell the GO.  “And not with the Lesser Omentum, either.  Send that fat downstream to my legs and feet, where it can do some good.

“Oh, all right,” moans the GO.

“Make him dance, too, lying on the floor, so we don’t have to carry him,” say my lower body parts.

“That’s called sex,” I reply.

“Whatever,” say the feet.  “Make him have sex, then.”

“Other body parts may have something to say about that.  Vagina?”

“No way, Jose.  Don’t inflict any barbarians on me.”

“Well, I haven’t found anything else.  I respect your right to opt out, since you’re not overweight.  You don’t need to dance.”

The Should/Shouldn’t Chorus is grudgingly relieved I sacrificed the last of my coffee.  One looks at a watch.

“Well, she hasn’t gone overboard in her caffeine addiction yet, but it’s just a matter of time.”

“Sad, isn’t it?” says another.  “Tomorrow it’ll probably be five cups, then six, and the next thing you know, she’ll be in ICU with a Broca’s area stroke, unable to speak or communicate in any way, but understanding everything around her.”

“Not so different from the way things are now, if you ask me, only my living room isn’t as noisy or expensive as the hospital.”  I say.

“We didn’t ask you.”

“Nope.  Proves my point.  You just tell me, don’t you, then prophesy dire consequences if I put sugar in my coffee.”

“Want to step on the scales and say that again?”

“Nope.”

“At least you didn’t stuff yourself with peanut butter on salty wheat wafers, this time.”

“Right,” says Right Foot, which has been doing double duty since the left went out on disability.  Both benefit from the rest, I figure.

“I like walking,” says Right Foot.

“Well, you two need to get together and discuss your relationship,” I tell them.  I put my soles together so left and right feet can bond.  Toes of right touching heel of left, cold toes to hot heel.  “We can start by evening out the temperature gradient.”

Yes, my feet are connecting on a sole level.  They both feel good about it.
*Seth is the channeled entity of the Jane Roberts’ Seth series.
**The concept of Shape Shifting Alien Reptiles (SSARs) comes from David Icke’s Tales from the Time Loop, 2003.