Livre pour faire du Shadow working
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fear of not deserving happiness creates a further and more complicated reaction. The unconscious mind thinks, “I am afraid to be punished by others, although I know I deserve it. It is much worse to be punished by others, for then I am really at the mercy of others, be it people, be it the fates, be it God, be it life itself. But perhaps if I punished myself I could at least avoid the humiliation, the helplessness, and the degradation of being punished by forces outside myself.” These basic conflicts of love and hatred, of guilt and fear of punish- ment exist in every human personality. The compulsive desire for self-punishment due to wrong and ignorant conclusions exists in every human being to some degree.
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The Necessity of Emotional Growth The pain that was always in you but was hidden, against which you “protected” yourself by unloading it on others, on life, and on fate, will become a conscious experience which you absolutely need. At first sight this will appear as a relapse. You will believe you are even worse off than before you started with this work. But this is not so. It is your very progress that made it possible for all these hitherto hid- den emotions to become conscious, so that you can really use them for analysis. Otherwise you could not possibly dissolve the super- structure of your tyrant, your idealized self- image with all the unnecessary harm it does you. You are so conditioned by the emotional reactions you have become accustomed to, you are so involved in them, that you cannot see what is right before your eyes. While you watch for new and hidden recognitions, you look past the seemingly unimportant emotional reactions to certain situations simply because they have become a part of you. But it is these actual emotional reactions that will furnish the clue, once your attention is focused on them. This would be impossible if you were not dis- turbed. Therefore, the disturbance is bound to come into the open and this is the moment when you can come to terms with it. So, my friends, begin to see your emotions in this light. You will then find what impossible demands your idealized self-image makes on you. You will see that it is your idealized self- image, and not God, not life, not other people, who demand all that. You will also begin to see that, because of these demands of the self, you need other people to help you to cope with them. This makes you unconsciously demand of others what they are incapable of giving. You are then much more dependent than you need be, in spite of all your striving toward a dis- torted independence of either the aggressive or the withdrawn type. You also have to find the cause and effect of these conditions. You will see your life, and your past and present difficulties, with a new outlook. You will understand that you have cre- ated many, if not all, of these difficulties, just because of your “solution.” It does not suffice to comprehend intellec- tually that the more you are involved in your pseudo-solutions, the less of your real self can manifest. You also need to experience this. Such experience must happen if you allow your emotions to come to the fore and work with them. Then, and then only, will you begin to sense the intrinsic value of your real self. Only then will it become possible to let go of the false values of your idealized self. It is a mutual process: by allowing yourself to see the false values, however painful this process may be, your real values will gradually emerge so that you no longer need the false ones. Since the idealized self alienates you from your real self, you are utterly unaware of your real values. Throughout your life you concen- trate unconsciously on the false values: either on values you lack, but think you should have while you pretend to yourself and others that you do have them, or you concentrate on val- ues which are potentially there, but have not yet been developed to the extent that they can be rightfully called yours. Since your idealized self does not admit that these values still need development, you do not develop them and yet you claim them as though they were already fully ripe. Because you use all your efforts in concentrating on these false or unripe values, you do not see the real values. Because you cannot see them, you are frightened to let go of the false ones fearing that then you will have nothing. Thus your real values do not count. You do not feel they exist, either because they contradict the demands of your idealized self, or because everything that comes naturally and without effort does not appear real. You are so conditioned to strain for the impossible that it does not occur to you that there is nothing to strain for, because what is actually valuable is already there. But when you do not utilize these values, they often lie fallow. This is a great pity, my friends, because after all, you established the idealized self-image because you did not believe in your real worth. Because you build the idealized self and try to be it, you cannot see what in you is actually worth accepting and appreciating. To unroll this entire process is painful at first, because the emotions of anxiety, frus- tration, guilt, shame, and so on, have to be acutely experienced. But as you courageously proceed, you will gain a very different outlook on everything. Last, you will begin to see your real self for the very first time. You will see its limitations. At the beginning it will be a shock to have to accept these limitations which are such a far cry from the idealized self. But as you learn to do so, you will begin to see values you have never truly seen or been aware of. Then a feeling of strength and self-confidence in a very different way will make you see both life and yourself. Gradually the process of growing into the real self will take place in you. It will strengthen your true independence, not the false kind, so that being appreciated by oth- ers will no longer be the yardstick for your own sense of value. Validation by others assumes such great importance only because you do not evaluate yourself honestly. Thus validation by others becomes a substitute. As you begin to trust and like your own self, what other people think about you will not matter half as much. You will rest secure within, and you will no longer need to build false values with pride and pretense. You will no longer rely on an ideal- ized self, which cannot really be trusted and therefore weakens you. The freedom of shed- ding this burden cannot be described in words. But, my friends, this is a slow process. It does not come overnight. It comes from steady self-search and analysis of your problems, your attitudes, and your emotions. As you proceed in this way, the real you with its real values and capacities will evolve through a process of inner and natural growth. Your individuality will then become stronger and stronger. Your intu- itive nature will manifest without inhibition, with a natural and reliable spontaneity. This is how you will make the best of your life. Not faultlessly, not by being free of all failure, not excluding the possibility of making mistakes. Yet failures and mistakes will be made in a very different way than before. More and more you will combine the divine attitudes of love, power, and serenity in a healthy way, as op- posed to a distorted way. Love will not be a means to an end. It will not be a need that saves you from annihilation. It will, therefore, cease being self- centered. Your own capacity to love will combine power and serenity. Or, to put it differently, you will communicate in love and understanding while being truly independent. Love, power, and serenity will not be used to furnish you with your missing self- respect. Genuine, not self- centered, love will then no longer interfere with healthy power, which is not the power of pride and defiance, neither power to triumph over others, but the power to master yourself and your difficulties without proving anything to anyone. When you seek mastery by distorting the attribute of power, you do so for the sake of proving your superiority. When you gain mas- tery by healthy power you do so for the sake of growing. Not to have the mastery occasionally will not present a threat as it did while you were in distortion. It will not diminish your worth in your own eyes. Thus you will truly grow with each life experience. You will learn, and accom- plish, and gain real power, not the false kind. There will not be any distorted ambitiousness, compulsion, and haste. Serenity in the healthy way will not cause you to hide from emotions, experience, life, and your own conflicts; love and power in their original divine forms will give you a healthy de- tachment when looking at yourself so that you will truly become more objective. True serenity is not avoiding experience and emotions which may be painful at the moment but might yield an important key when the courage is there to go through them and find what is behind them. Love, power, and serenity can go hand in hand. In fact, when each is healthy, they com- plement one another. But they can cause the greatest war within yourself if distorted.
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You can only forgive and let go if you recognize your deeply hidden hurt and resentment
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First, let us recapitulate. The child suffers from certain imperfections of the parents’ love and affection. It also suffers from not being fully accepted in its own individuality. By this I mean the common practice of treating a child as a child, rather than as a particular individual. You suffer from this, although you may never be aware of it in these terms or in exact thoughts. This may leave as much of a scar as the lack of love or attention. It causes as much frustration as does the lack of love, or even cruelty. The general climate in which you grow up affects you like a constant minor shock that often leaves more of a mark than one traumatic shocking experience. That is why the latter is so often easier to cure than the former. The constant climate of non- acceptance of your individuality, as well as the lack of love and understanding, cause what is called a neurosis. You accept this climate as a matter of course. You take it for granted. You believe that it has to be so. Nevertheless, you suffer from it. The combination of suffering it and believing it to be unalterable fact, conditions you to de- velop destructive defenses. The original pain and frustration the child could not deal with is repressed. It is put out of awareness, but it smolders in the unconscious mind. It is then that the destructive images and defense mechanisms begin to form. The im- ages that you create are defense mechanisms. Through their wrong conclusions you seek a way of fighting against the unwelcome influ- ences that have created the original pain. The pseudo- solutions are a way of battling the world, the pain, and all that you wish to avoid.
All pseudo-solutions are incorporated into your idealized self-image. Since the nature of the idealized self-image is self- aggran- dizement, it separates you from others. Since its nature is separateness, it isolates you and makes you, and those you deal with, lonely. Since its nature is falsity and pretense, it alien- ates you from yourself, from life, and from oth- ers. All of that is bound to bring you pain, hurt, frustration, unfulfillment. You chose a way out of pain and frustration, but this way has proven not only inadequate, it actually brings you much more of that which you wished to avoid. However, to clearly recognize this fact and to put the links together requires the active work of sincere self-search. The perfectionism that is so deeply in- grained in you and in your idealized self-image makes it impossible for you to accept yourself and others, to accept life in its reality
The mere exercise of constantly observing your unrealistic and immature emotions and reactions weakens their impact and begins a process of dissolving them, so to say, automat- ically. When a certain dissolution has taken place, the psyche is ready to cross the thresh- old. But the act of crossing it is a painful one
The Painfulness of Change You would expect, when crossing this important threshold, that the new, constructive patterns can immediately replace the old de- structive ones. Such an expectation is unreal- istic and not according to truth. Constructive patterns cannot have a solid foundation before you experience and go through the original pain and frustration, and all that which you ran away from. That which you turned away from has to be faced, felt, experienced, understood, coped with, come to terms with, and assim- ilated before what is unhealthy and unrealistic is dissolved, the immature matured, and the healthy but repressed forces brought into their proper channels so as to work constructively for you. The longer you delay this painful process, the more difficult and lasting is it bound to be when you are finally ready to pass from childhood into adulthood. The pain is a healthy growing pain, and the light is in sight if and when you overcome your resistance to the process.
many areas of your soul have to be experienced until your psyche is truly equipped to make the best of life. Even after the acute pain has been properly dealt with and is no longer present, the unrealistic, although often unconscious expectation exists that now life will always grant you what you wish. No, my friends. However, the reality is much better. In reality you will learn to cope with the mishaps and difficulties, rather than becoming broken by them. You will not fortify your destructive defenses. This, in turn, will equip you with the tools to make the best out of each opportunity, and to derive the max- imum benefit and happiness out of every expe- rience of life. Needless to say, this is never accom- plished with your destructive defense mecha- nisms and various images.
By now you must understand how in many respects you have caused your own unhap- piness through your own destructive and un- realistic evasions and defenses. You will now realize, with a new sense of strength, that you can bring about your own fulfillment and happiness. Again, this cannot be done by intel- lectual understanding. It is an inner process that grows organically. As you now deeply understand that no unkind fate or cruel god has punished or neglected you, so you will deeply understand and know that it is you who can create all the fulfillment your soul craves for with a craving you were not even conscious of when you first began this path. This consciousness may emerge only after a fuller understanding of all your pseudo- solutions and misconceptions, whose depths will make you aware of your needs. The primary result on this path is the understanding of your own causes and effects and of the sense of strength, independence, self-reliance, and jus- tice that this understanding gives to an indi- vidual. How much time it takes to reach the first tentative beginnings of this new strength and later to increase it, depends on your ef- forts, your inner will, and your overcoming the ever-present resistance which wears off only after you gain sufficient recognition of its devi- ous ways.
In a previous lecture we discussed the human needs. Before you uncover your various “protective layers,” you cannot even be fully aware of your real needs. You may know some of your unreal, superimposed needs, but only after a fuller understanding of yourself do you gradually become aware of the basic, naked needs that you have held in check. When you experience the pain, before crossing the thresh- old into emotional maturity and productive pat- terns, you have the possibility, if you so choose, to become precisely aware of these needs. This is inevitable if you wish to come out of your present state of unproductive liv- ing.
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One of the reasons that I was tempted to remain in blindness is that I was seeking to avoid pain, emotional as well as physical, as we all do. How distressing then to discover that I had to be willing, if I truly sought the truth, to feel pains that I had successfully repressed for years! And the reward for this work? First, discov- ering the joy that comes from living in truth, without a mask, without pretense. Second, dis- covering that through the gateway of feeling my pain comes a life of true pleasure, and of no longer holding back from life due to fear of feeling pain. And there are many further re- wards beyond these; here is a description from one of the Pathwork lectures: “There is a state in which you can live without painful, tortured confusions, where you can function on a level of inner resilience, contentment and security; where you are capable of deep feelings and of blissful pleasure; where you are capable of meeting life as it is, without fear, and therefore capable of finding life, even its problems, to be a joyful challenge.”
Many spiritual paths teach that the way to deal with the large and small negativities that we all have is to rise above them, to transcend them. The idea seems to be that if we turn our attention always to the true, the good, and the beautiful, the lower self will wither away. The Pathwork states that the “rising above” method does not work; that it represents wishful think- ing and denial, and leads to repression and subsequent unacknowledged acting-out. The Pathwork teaches that the lower self must be transformed, rather than transcended.
The universe, up to a certain degree of development or awareness, consists of two pri- mary currents: a yes-current and a no-current. The yes-current includes every constructive en- ergy because it accords with truthful insight, which cannot help but breed love and unity. The no-current is destructive because it inad- vertently deviates from truthfulness, thereby breeding hate and disunity. This general expla- nation applies to your individual daily life as well as to great concepts in the history of cre- ation. It is easy and absolutely feasible to detect the yes- and no- currents within yourself, in your daily lives, if you learn to understand and to interpret the language of your personal unconscious.,
To observe productively what the uncon- scious expresses, it is important to separate the healthy part of yourself from the unhealthy, confused, involved part. This detached obser- vation of something obscure and strange is the most healing procedure on the path of liber- ation. When your yes-current observes the no- current without frantic self-accusations, it be- comes possible to translate the latter into con- cise human language. This concise formulation of previously vague feelings is invaluable, and I have often emphasized it in the early stages of this path. Observing the Half-Conscious Thoughts You are erroneously convinced that to understand what occurs in your unconscious means merely finding hitherto unknown ele- ments. You do not have to wait for something faraway and completely hidden. First, observe those layers that are easily accessible when you focus your attention on them. These are the half-conscious thoughts, the vague and diffuse attitudes and expressions that are almost sec- ond nature and so easily overlooked because they have become a part of you. But none of the half-conscious feelings, reactions, and con- cepts are clearly formulated into concise thoughts. If you watch these half- conscious reactions in the problem areas of your life, you will learn all you need to know about yourself.
This is a vital part of learning the language of your unconscious. The half-conscious material comprises your immediate emotional reactions as well as your fantasy life. Comparison of both often demonstrates your discrepancies and contra- dictions, as well as your immature expec- tations. The more clearly you see how you push away, or withdraw from, the very fulfillment you crave—as you see it again and again in ac- tion—the closer you come to eliminating the no-current. You weaken it merely by observing it. It is essential that you pay more attention to the no-current in its exact form. A certain type of meditation can help. Become very quiet and relaxed and begin by observing your think- ing process, and even your initial inability to do so. This eventually leads to keeping thoughts out for a short while and making yourself ut- terly empty. In the emptiness it is possible for hitherto checked and repressed material to sur- face, if you express this purpose and desire it strongly enough without shying away from the effort to reach the goal.
(1) Ask yourself: What is my goal now? Where am dissatisfied? What would I want to be different? (2) How much do I want it? (3) To what extent is there something in me that does not want it? Or fears it? Or, for one reason or another, says no to it? (4) How can I detect the various forms and manifestations of the no-current in my daily life? If you clearly formulate these four ques- tions and begin truthfully to answer them, your work on the path will be most dynamic and your progress will astound and delight you. Be blessed, all of you, in body, in soul, and in spirit. Be in peace, my dearest friends. Be in God.
Human consciousness is the sculptor, the soul substance the material which it molds. It is the entire personality, including all levels, which determines the fate. If a person has a healthy, constructive, realistic, truthful concept in some levels of the personality while other levels express the opposite, such a contra- diction affects the soul substance negatively, even if the positive attitude is stronger and conscious, while the negative one remains hid- den. It is therefore essential that the hidden areas of the soul substance be uncovered in order to understand, from seeing the imprints, why the desired fulfillment is still missing in life.,
Relaxed meditation, concentration, and a minimum of daily self- observation cannot possibly be dispensed with. They are the tools; learning to use them in the appropriate way is part of your growing process.
I have often mentioned that contact with the divine spark, or your real self, is an out- come of this pathwork. Some of my friends are beginning to experience this indescribable event. The safety, security, conviction of truth, the harmony and rightness of it are worth all the effort of overcoming resis- tance. It alone can truly guide you. But the Meditation on why there is nothing to fear, why the old fear was false, and why the new accepting attitude to the life experience is entirely safe, is the final step in moving from a no-current to a yes-current. This should be done as daily meditation work, creating a new mold in the soul substance— this time a flexible, light, truthful one which fi- nally erases the old, rigid, heavy, untruthful one ego-mind so often stands in the way. It be- lieves that it alone exists and determines. But now it must decide to let the greater mind determine your life. Let the innermost self, the greater intelligence within you, answer your confusions and guide you to the truth you need to know about yourself. Let it strengthen you to change your false images, and help you to swing from the no-current into the yes-current, with its promise which will be inevitably ful- filled.
An additional source of help is the method of talking things out. This has proven to be true before in other phases of the work and it is of equal importance in this phase. Talking out what you want, what your obstruction is, the extent of it, and the reason for the no-current observed has a therapeutic value beyond your present comprehension. As you talk to another person, things will take shape and gain a clarity that you missed as long as you merely thought about them, or even wrote them down.
QUESTION: Isn’t the ego connected with self-will? ANSWER: Indeed. False ideas, as well as self-will, are naturally a result of the ego world, and not of the real self. But it is also within the power of the ego to give up both self-will and false ideas. Only the ego can do so. The ego plays a necessary part in understanding that it has a false idea; that it does have self-will. It is up to the ego to main- tain or abandon either of these two. The ego alone is capable of exchanging the false idea for a truthful one. This means letting go of tense, anxious self-will and replace it with a re- laxed, free-flowing, flexible will, based on dis- criminating reasoning power, and calling upon the intuitive levels of self for higher inner guidance from the real self.
QUESTION: I would like to understand a little more concretely about this marriage be- tween the forces of love and cruelty. For in- stance, in the case of children who feel rejected by their mother, does this marriage mean that the person cannot experience pleasure without also experiencing revenge—some kind of sadistic wish toward the mother? This happens perhaps only in fantasy, never in reality, and then the person is usually unaware that the partner represents the mother? ANSWER: Yes, it might be exactly that. Or it might also be that pleasure can be experi- enced only in connection with being rejected again, or a little rejected, or being fearful that rejection may occur. QUESTION: But they didn’t experience pleasure when they were rejected. ANSWER: Of course not. But the child uses the pleasure principle to make the nega- tive event, the suffering, more bearable. This happens unconsciously, unintentionally, and almost automatically. Inadvertently, as it were, the pleasure principle combines with the nega- tive condition. The only way this can be deter- mined is by investigation of one’s fantasy life. It is that way that the marriage is established. The automatic reflexes are then geared to a situation that combines the inherent pleasure current with the painful event. QUESTION: And the child wishes to reproduce this rejection? ANSWER: Not consciously, of course. No one really wants to be rejected. The trouble is that people consciously wish to be accepted and loved, but unconsciously, they cannot
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The physical, material world you live in manifests the positive and the negative, and presents a combination of the two. All these exist in and outside of you—in timelessness and spacelessness. You can and must reach these worlds within your psyche by becoming acutely aware of them. They are a product of your own self-expressions, of your various spheres of consciousness. You must go through them, layer by layer, within yourself. Where you are relatively free from negative desires, it will be fairly simple and easy to grasp, to feel, to experience the world of truth, where all good exists and is self- perpetuating. Therefore there is no need for struggle, for doubt, for fear, or for deprivation. In these areas you will find that you fearlessly open your heart to the positive, dynamic experience, which moves eternally to- ward further unfoldment, greater happiness, more inclusion, since you do not stop this movement with your fearful mind, holding it in check and bringing it to a standstill. These spheres are there; they not only exist deep in your psyche where you can sense the eternal life of all existence, but they manifest in your outer life too. To become aware of them is also useful, so you can compare them properly. And then, of course, there is always the main problem, the area in your psyche where the fear of the positive, hence its negation, ex- ists. Consequently, deprivation and suffering manifest in your outer life. You must fully expe- rience this sphere within your consciousness so you can transcend it by transforming your- self. You must live it through, not by denying it or struggling away from it, but by seeing and accepting it, learning to understand its nature. This is what is meant by going through it. When it is affirmed and ascertained as a temporary reality, only then can the underlying world of self- perpetuating good be reached, where you no longer have to reach and grasp and want, but know that it is already yours, even before you have attained it.
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Whenever you are separated from others, from your fellow creatures, you must be in the negative world, in a self- perpetuating nega- tivity that you sow through your destructive wishes. You must therefore suffer because you deny and ignore the full significance of the thus evolving struggle. The struggle varies from individual to individual, and with a given individual from phase to phase, and even at times from hour to hour, because at different times different wish-directions come up. They alternate in predominance at any given mo- ment. So there must always be in you an unceas- ing struggle in which one side strives toward wholeness and union with your fellow crea- tures in many different ways: toward love and understanding, toward consideration, toward giving and receiving. But always there is still this other side that negates and denies the for- mer direction, that fears and resists it. There- fore a particular pain exists, and the greater the denial, the greater the pain. The pain is aggravated by the struggle that sets in with the other person.
— the still existing, because not yet fully recognized, negative pleasure principle at- taches itself to your understanding of the other person’s negativity. You begin to talk yourself into dwelling more and more on that person’s faults and blindnesses, and you inadvertently begin to enjoy this. You do not immediately distinguish between the two different kinds of joy. The first comes when you see with detach- ment what exists in the other, and this sets you free; the second appears when you pleasurably indulge in the other’s wrongness, and this blinds you. What you first noticed in the other you build up until the old negative pleasure principle has reappeared in a new guise. This is where you lose your harmony and freedom be- cause you again indulge in the negative plea- sure. This is an example of how insidiously this can happen whenever the old roots still exist unobser ved. Here, my friends, the continuation of the path becomes clearer and more concisely de- fined. You have the immediate tools to set out and discover what I explained here.
The Nature of Destructiveness It is not easy to reach an awareness where you can see yourself think, feel, and act de- structively; where you are furthermore aware that this causes you miser y, but are still totally unable and unwilling to give up this way of being. I might say that it is a great measure of success, if this word can be used, to be aware of being in this state. But to accomplish the second part of this phase of your evolution, namely the letting go of destructiveness, the nature of destructiveness must be better understood. The whole human problem of a dualistic concept of life has a great deal to do with humanity’s lack of comprehension of its own destructiveness. Human beings are geared to think of a destructive force as something op- posed to a constructive force. Even those of you who theoretically know quite well that there is no such division tend to think, “Here are my negative feelings. I wish I could have positive feelings instead.” Or you think that after the negative emotions are dissipated, a new set of feelings will follow, as though this new set of feelings consisted of an entirely different en- ergy or psychic material. When you speak of the two forces, the two sets of feelings, it is merely a figure of speech, a way of expressing two different kinds of experiences. However, this figure of speech is an expression of the dualistic misconception operative within all human consciousness. Actually, there is only one power. This is very important to understand, my friends, par- ticularly when you come to deal with your own destructiveness and negativity. There is one life force which energizes every expression of life. The same life force can flow in a constructive, positive, affirming way, or it can turn into a destructive, negating current. In order to understand this process in a specific and per- sonal way, I will discuss it from the point of view of an individual looking at his or her life. I will not give a discourse on general spiritual principles here, but only touch upon them when it is necessar y to the understanding of the whole topic.First I will repeat that the life force as such, when untampered with, is totally constructive, totally positive and af firming. Therefore it produces total pleasure for any living, feeling, or perceiving conscious- ness. The more fully this consciousness is developed, the fuller the pleasure it can expe- rience from and through the pure life force, in whatever way this may find expression. Every life organism—a newborn baby, a plant, a cell—tends to realize this potentiality in nature. When this natural flow is interfered with, the energy current seeking expression is blocked and prohibited from flowing to its des- tiny; the natural flow is stopped by conditions. These may be either outer or inner condi- tions—or both. When young children en- counter conditions in the outer environment that prohibit the natural flow of the life force, the extent of the damage depends upon how free they are from inner blockages. If inner blockages exist and lie dormant because they have not been eliminated in previous exis- tences, the outer negative conditions will create a severe blockage, freezing the floating energy current and petrifying it into a hardened psy- chic mass. When no previous blockages exist, the outer negative conditions will create only a temporar y disturbance in the flow of the life force. People’s persistent problems in life re- sult from such blocked energy. Unblocking can occur only when the relationship between the inner and the outer negative conditions re- sponsible for the blockage are thoroughly understood. The child’s immature ego faculties make adequate dealing with the negative condi- tion impossible. An outer negative condition can therefore never be totally responsible for the condensation of energy and for the paral- ysis of the life stream. It can only be the final activating factor, bringing the dormant negative inner condition to the fore. The place in the soul where outer negative conditions activate the dormant inner negative condition is the very point at which the positive life force turns into a destructive non-life force. Feelings turn from love to fear and hostility, from trust to distrust, and so on. Finally, the negative power becomes so unbearable that the feelings connected with it are numbed alto- gether. When human beings find themselves on a path of self- recognition, it is very important for them to understand specifically that a negative emotion cannot be replaced by a different posi- tive emotion. It must be reconverted to its orig- inal state. How do we go about this, my friends? Each individual must find the way to reconvert this energy flow into its original state. Each life manifestation you experience that is unpleasant, problematic, or anxiety-producing is the result of a repetition of the original event in this life, when the positive pleasure force was blocked, hindered, or prohibited and has therefore turned into unpleasure.
The Pleasure of Negativity
Now, it cannot be stated accurately that in this unpleasure, pleasure is totally absent. When you find yourself stymied in your at- tempt to overcome negativity, it is extremely important to sense deep within yourself the pleasurable aspect of this negativity, regardless of how much pain you feel in your surface con- sciousness. The difficulty of ridding yourself of destructiveness is, of course, also due to other reasons which you have already verified: the desire to punish or to use the forcing current that says, “If I am sufficiently unhappy, that will show the world how wrong it is not to give me what I want.” But these reasons do not consti- tute the deepest difficulty in dissolving nega- tivity. It is necessary to sense intuitively, and then to feel very specifically, that in your nega- tivity, paradoxically, both pleasure and unplea- sure are simultaneously present. This is very understandable when you look at the process in terms of the explanation I have given. The pleasure principle cannot pos- sibly be completely absent even though it ap- pears in its distorted form. Its basic ingredients must always remain, no matter how distorted the manifestation is and consequently how difficult it is to detect the original nature of the life current. This is precisely why negativity seems so difficult to transform. The plea- surable aspect of it always exists. When it is understood that only the form of expression must be changed, so that the identical life cur- rent can reconvert itself, negativity can be left behind. When you have understood that the painful aspects of the negative expression can be abandoned, while the pleasurable aspects grow stronger, negativity can transform itself. When you have understood that a new set of emotions will not come from out of nowhere, but that the same current will manifest differ- ently, then what seems hard will happen by it- self. When you meditate on this, it will become possible for you to be aware of the pleasure at- tached to your destructiveness. Instead of feel- ing guilty about this pleasure and consequently repressing it, you will be in a position to allow the destructive current to unfold, express itself and reconvert itself. The attachment of or con- nection between pleasure and destructiveness has been instrumental in the widespread guilt human beings feel about all experiences of pleasure. This in turn is responsible for numb- ing all feelings. For how can pleasure be liber- ated from destructiveness if both are consid- ered equally wrong? And yet, human beings cannot live without pleasure even if they have to have it in secret, for life and pleasure are one and the same. When pleasure is linked to de- structiveness, destructiveness cannot be given up. It feels as if life were given up. This brings about a situation where, on one level of your inner life, you hold on equally to pleasure and destructiveness, feeling guilty and at the same time afraid of both. On a more superficial con- scious level, you are numbed and feel little or nothing. It is not sufficient to know this generally; the knowledge must be brought back to your specific circumstances. What is the outer man- ifestation at this moment that causes you con- tinuous anguish? It is not a momentar y expe- rience caused by a one-time condition that then dissolves when new conditions arise. No, these are the problems in your life you cannot come to terms with. To truly resolve these conditions which we call images and which forever recreate similar conditions and new situations, the blocked and paralyzed energy must be made fluid again. And this can only happen when you begin, as the first step in this particular phase of your development, to ascer- tain the pleasurable aspect in your destruc- tiveness. You must feel the pleasure attached to the unpleasure of the problem.
— Every problem must have such a nucleus, where the original current has been blocked and is therefore distorted, and where the plea- sure/un-pleasure dichotomy produces an unconscious fixation of the pleasure expe- rience on a negative situation. You then fight against this for any number of reasons, with the further consequence that outer problems begin to form and then repeat and repeat. They cannot be overcome until this nucleus is ex- perienced. This applies to all stubborn prob- lems, whether or not they seem to have any- thing to do with sexuality.
Total pleasure is feared for a very impor- tant reason: the pleasure supreme of the cos- mic energy current must seem unbearable, frightening, over whelming, and almost annihi- lating when the personality is still geared to negativity and destructiveness. To put it differ- ently, to the degree that the personality has im- paired its integrity, and impurity, dishonesty, cheating, and malice still exist in the psyche, pure pleasure must be rejected. Hence the negative pleasure is the only way the entity can experience a modicum of pleasure at all. When you who are on your path find that deep within yourself you fear pleasure as a danger, you must ask yourself, “Where am I not honest with life or with myself? Where do I cheat? Where do I impair my integrity?” These areas show precisely where, why, and to what degree pure pleasure must be rejected. When you ascertain in yourself that you fear and reject pleasure, and it is not that life deprives you of it, you can do something by asking yourself the pertinent questions and subsequently finding the elements of impairment in you.
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Three Steps for Working Your Way Out I would like to discuss the various steps of working your way out of the maze of your own illusion and negative creation in which you seem to be so inextricably and inexorably caught. Evidently, the first step must be for you to find, determine, acknowledge, accept, and observe your own negative attitudes. The second step is that, deep inside, you question your particular feelings and reactions to this negative production, and your own deliberate and chosen intent. You will then see that you like it, find some sort of pleasure in it, and do not wish to give it up. The third step is to painstakingly work through the exact consequences and ramifi- cations of your negative production, without glossing over any detail, any effect, or side-effect. The realization and precise under- standing of the harmful effects on you and on others must become very clear. It will not do if you assuage your guilt for your negative cre- ation by telling yourself you only harm yourself. It must be seen that you cannot harm yourself without also harming others, no more than you can harm others without also harming you. It is unthinkable that anything that adversely affects you does not affect oth- ers as well. Self-hate, for example, always mani- fests also as the inability to love, or even the compulsion to hate others. The third step also consists of seeing that the pleasure you derive from your negative pro- duction is never worth the exorbitant price you pay for it, because all you deplore most in yourself and in your life experience is a direct result of it. You sacrifice joy, peace, self- esteem, inner security, expansion and growth, pleasure on all levels of your being, and a meaningful and fearless existence. Still another aspect of step three is to reach for the understanding that the pleasure you derive from being destructive in your feelings and attitudes is not what has to be given up. In fact, the same pleasure will be transferred to positive creation, where you can expand joyfully and guiltlessly without paying the heavy price you now pay for negative cre- ation. Exact working through of cause and ef- fect, and seeing results and connections, is what makes wanting to give up negativity pos- sible. It is not sufficient to be aware of being deliberately destructive. It must be admitted that you do not want to give this up. At step two you are still separated from the effects. You may see that the cause is your de- structiveness and admit it, but you do not yet see the connection with all you deplore in your life. The connecting link between cause and ef- fect is still absent. As long as this connecting link is not established, you cannot really want to give up the negativity. You must see the heavy price you pay to be truly motivated to want to give it up. Step two may be the most difficult to reach; it certainly constitutes the most drastic change in self-perception and the perception of life processes. But working through step three is equally important : without it the motivation to change is lacking. However, step three is not half as difficult, and never meets with as much resistance as step two. When you begin to discover the same fascination with creating in a positive way as in the negative, but this time unmarred by suf- fering, guilt, fear, and self-blame, the world opens up before you with such beauty and light that there are no words to describe it. You will taste the freedom of being creator of your cho- sen life.
Many people enter a path such as the Pathwork for the same reason that others go into some from of psychotherapy—due to unhappiness and dissatisfaction with their life. Others begin the path because they are seeking answers to ultimate questions. All who walk such a path must deal with both sides, the psy- chological/emo-tion- and the spiritual. Psycho- logical work, pushed far enough, must become spiritual work. Spiritual work, to be truly effec- tive, must also deal with the psyche of the seeker. This truth is not a new one; here is an expression of it by the fourteenth-century the- ologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart: To get to the core of God at his greatest, one must first get into the core of himself at the least, for no one can know God who has not first known him- self.
But the later Pathwork lectures focus on how to deal with negative patterns that stay stuck and resistant, even though they seem to have been fully analyzed and understood, com- pletely felt, owned, and repudiated. This final stage of the work depends greatly on the prop- er use of a specific kind of meditation. In Path- work meditation, one must first have learned how to drop below the usual level of the mind’s chatter, and how then to reside in a place of deep stillness. In this place of still- ness, one can learn to hear clearly the voice of the lower-self child, and can wisdom and strength of the higher self.
in this phase of the work that one’s sense of identity begins to shift. The lectures say: “The Pathwork is not psy- chotherapy, although aspects of it must neces- sarily deal with areas psychotherapy also deals with. In the framework of the Pathwork, the psychological approach is only a side issue, a way of getting through obstructions. It is essential to deal with confusions, inner mis- conceptions, misunderstandings, destructive attitudes, alienating defenses, negative emo- tions, and paralyzed feelings, all of which psy- chotherapy also attempts to do and even posits as its ultimate goal. In contrast, the Pathwork enters its most important phase only after this first stage is over. The second and most impor- tant phase consists of learning how to activate the greater consciousness dwelling within every soul.” What is the “greater consciousness”? Or, what really is meant by the phrase “one’s sense of identity begins to shift”? There are different levels of human con- sciousness and different kinds of work are re- quired at these different levels, in the long process of waking up, of becoming more and more aware, of becoming enlightened. When we first begin to come out of our waking sleep, our consensus trance, we must penetrate our self-delusions, and reintegrate those parts of ourselves that we have pushed into the shad- ow. It could be said that this is a process of becoming “bigger,” for we are integrating and claiming more of ourselves. We have re- identified as ourselves aspects that we had unconsciously denied. As the work continues one finally arrives at the stage that Abraham Maslow termed self- actualization. Most therapies seem to believe that this level is as far as anyone can go; that fully attaining this represents the successful end of the growth process. But there are two levels beyond this: the transpersonal and the unitive.
Reeducation might very easily be misunderstood and lead toward a renewed suppression or repression of the de- structive part that is beginning to unfold. You have to take great care and deliberately aim to avoid this, without, however, allowing the de- structive part to engulf you. The best attitude toward the unfolding destructive part is one of detached observation, of un- judging, unharried acceptance. The more it un- folds, the more you must remind yourself that neither the truth of its existence, nor its de- structive attitudes, are final. They are not the only attitudes you have, nor are they absolute.
Meditation must mean, above all, that the part of you that is already conscious and moving actually intends to make blocked energy and dimmed con- sciousness moving and aware again. The best way to do this is to allow the frozen and dimmed consciousness first of all to express it- self. Here you need a receptive attitude, instead of a reaction that what comes forth is devas- tating and catastrophic. The panicky attitude toward one’s own unfolding destructive infant does more damage than the destructive infant itself. You must learn to listen to it, to take it in, to calmly receive its expressions without hating yourself, without pushing the infant away. Only with such an attitude can you come to under- stand the causes of its underlying destruc- tiveness. Only then can the process of reedu- cation begin. The denying, panicky, frightened, self- rejecting, and perfection-demanding attitude you usually have makes every part of this medi- tation impossible. It does not permit unfold- ment; it does not permit exploration of the causes of what might be unfolded; and it cer- tainly does not permit reeducation. It is the ac- cepting and understanding attitude that enables the conscious ego to assert its benign dominion over violently destructive and stag- nant psychic matter. As I have said many times, kindness, firmness, and deep determi- nation against your own destructiveness are necessary. It is a paradox: identify with the de- structiveness and yet be detached from it. Ac- cept that it is you, but also know that there is another part of you that can say the final word if you so choose. For this you need to widen the limitations of your conscious ego expres- sions to include saying at any moment: “I will be stronger than my destructiveness and will not be hampered by it. I determine that my life will be at its best and fullest and that I will and can overcome the blocks in me that make me want to remain unhappy. This determination of mine will bring in the higher powers that will make me capable of experiencing more and more bliss because I can let go of the doubtful pleasure of being negative, which I now fully recognize.” This is the task of the conscious ego.
When the conscious ego does not recognize that there is a part of the self that actually refuses every step toward health, unfoldment, and the good life, a counteractive movement may be one of hur- ried, impatient pressure. Both derive from self- hate. When you feel stymied and hopeless, take it as a sign for you to search for that part in you that says, “I do not wish to change, I do not wish to be constructive.” Set out and find this voice. Use the meditative dialogue here again, to explore and let the worst in you express it- self.
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In this lecture I will discuss consciousness from a new and different approach. It is per- haps difficult for human beings to understand that consciousness permeates the entire uni- verse. Consciousness is not simply dependent on the personality of an entity. It permeates everything that exists. The human mind is geared to think of consciousness as exclusively a byproduct of personality and even associated exclusively with the brain. This is not so. Con- sciousness does not require a fixed form. Every par ticle of matter contains consciousness, but in inanimate matter consciousness is consol- idated, just as energy is petrified in inanimate objects. Consciousness and energy are not the , same, but they are interdependent aspects of life manifesting. As evolution progresses, this static condi- tion decreases as consciousness and energy become increasingly more vibrant and mobile. Consciousness gains in awareness; energy gains greater creative power to move and to make forms. Every trait familiar to human under- standing, every attitude known in creation, every aspect of personality is just one of many manifestations of consciousness. Every manifestation that is not yet integrated into the whole needs to be unified and synthesized into one harmonious whole. It requires a leap of your imagination to comprehend the concept I am trying to convey here. Can you imagine for a moment that many familiar traits, which you have always assumed could only exist through a person, are not the person per se, but are free-floating particles of an overall consciousness? It does not matter whether these traits be good, or evil; for exam- ple, take love, perseverance, sloth, laziness, impatience, kindness, stubbornness, or malice. They all need to be incorporated into the mani- festing personality. Only then can purification, harmonizing, and enrichment of the mani- festing consciousness take place, creating the preconditions for the evolutionary process of unifying consciousness. The human being is a conglomeration of various aspects of consciousness. Some are al- ready purified. Some have always been pure and are thus part of the individual, forming an integrated whole. Other aspects of conscious- ness are negative and destructive and thus separate, like appendages. It is the task of each human being in each incarnation to synthesize, unify, and assimilate these various aspects of consciousness. If you truly tr y to comprehend what I say here, you may find that this is a novel way of explaining human existence. Naturally this not only applies to the level of human consciousness, but also to higher states of consciousness where the struggle is no longer as severe or painful. Increased awareness of higher states of consciousness facilitates the synthesizing process immea- surably. The human predicament is the general lack of understanding of what is going on, the blindness of many individuals involved in the struggle, and their deliberate attempts to per- petuate their blindness. To the degree that struggle and tension exist in a personality, the various aspects of consciousness will be at odds with one an- other. The entity is unaware of the meaning of the struggle and is trying to identify with one, or several, of these aspects, without knowing which or what is the true self. Where is it located? What is it? How can it be found in the maze of this dis- cord? Are you your best? Or are you your worst? Or are you any of the many aspects in between? Whether individuals know it or not, there is this on-going inner struggle and search. The more conscious the struggle is, the better, of course. Any path of self-development must sooner or later come to terms with these questions—with the deep problem of self- identity.
You are the Integrator
,It is a human distortion to identify with any of the above- mentioned aspects. You are neither your negative traits nor your self- punishing superimposed conscience, nor even your positive traits. Even though you have managed to integrate the latter into the fullness of your being, this is not the same as identi- fying with them. It is more accurate to say that you are that part of you which managed this integration by determining, deciding, acting, thinking, and willing, so that you could absorb into your self what was previously an ap- pendage. Each aspect of consciousness pos- sesses a will of its own, as those of you who do the pathwork know. As long as you are blindly involved in the struggle and therefore sub- merged in it, each of these various aspects will control you in turn because the real self that could determine your identification differently has not yet found its power. Your blind involve- ment enslaves you and inactivates your creative energy. This missing sense of self leads to de- spair., If the personality blindly believes it actually is nothing but its own destructive aspects, it becomes embroiled in a special kind of inner battle. On the one hand there will be, self-annihilation, self-punishment, and violent self-hate as a reaction to perceiving the self as only the negative parts. On the other hand, how can you truly want to give up these nega- tive traits or even fully face and investigate them when you believe that they are the only reality of the self? You are thrown back and forth between the attitudes of, “I must remain as I am, unchanged and unimproved, for this is my only reality and I do not want to cease to exist,” and, “I am so terrible, so bad, so despi- cable, that I have no right to exist and therefore I must punish myself out of existence.” Since this conflict is too painful to face when it is be- lieved to be real, the entire issue is put to sleep. You then lead a life of “as if,” or pretense, which then shifts your sense of identity to your mask. You struggle against exposing the pre- tense, let alone giving up the pretense, for the only other alternative is the painful struggle I have just described. No wonder human beings have so much resistance. And yet, what a waste it is. For none of it is the true reality. There is a real self that equals neither your negative aspects, nor your adamant self-annihilation, nor the pretense that covers everything up. Finding this real self is our main concern. Before the universal self can fully manifest in you, there is already one aspect of it avail- able right now which you can immediately real- ize: your conscious self at its best, as it exists right now. It is a limited present manifestation of your spiritual being, but it is truly yourself; it is the “I” you need so as to make order out of all your confusion. This already manifest con- sciousness exists in many realms of your life, but you take it for granted. You have not yet brought it to bear on this area of conflict where you continue to be blindly controlled by a false self- identity, or rather by its consequences. The “I” that is able to make a decision, for instance, to truly face this conflict and to obser ve its various expressions is the self with which you may safely identify. To the degree the per- sonality awakens and self-consciousness is gained, such decisions and choices of attitude are possible. Conversely, to the degree such decisions and choices of attitude are made, consciousness awakens and expands.,
As long as human beings are unable, or rather unwilling, to recognize their destructive aspects, they must be lost in them, and there- fore cannot attain proper self-identification. Al- though your desire to hide the destructive as- pects is more destructive than whatever it is you hide, at the same time it indicates that you wish to be free from destructiveness. Thus the desire to hide destructiveness is a misplaced, misunderstood, and misread message of the higher self. It is a wrong way of applying and interpreting the longing of the spiritual self.
Everyone on the path who has worked dili- gently and conscientiously to shed the mask, to give up defenses, and to overcome the resis- tance to exposing apparently shameful liabil- ities, has experienced how acknowledging negative traits creates a new freedom. Why is this so? The obvious answer is that the mere fact that you have the courage and honesty to do so is in itself a relieving and liberating fac- tor. But it goes beyond that, my friends. The Shift in Identification Through the very act of acknowledgement, a subtle but distinct shift in identification oc- curs. Before such acknowledgement, you were blind to some or all of your destructive aspects and were therefore helplessly controlled by them, indicating that you believed them to be you. You could not afford to even acknowledge these unacceptable aspects, because you iden- tified with them. But the moment you acknowl- edge the hitherto unacceptable, you yourself cease to be the unacceptable; instead, you be- come identified with that part of you which can and does decide to make the acknowledgement. Then some other part takes over which can do something about them, even if, to begin with, it can merely observe and grope for some deeper understanding of the underlying dynamics. It is a totally different situation when you identify yourself with the ugly traits than when you identify them. The moment you identify them, you cease being identified with them. This is why it is so liber- ating to acknowledge the worst in your person- ality after having battled the ever-present resis- tance to do so. It will become even easier once you can make this clear distinction.
The moment you identify, observe, and clearly articulate your destructive aspects, you have found your real self with which you can safely identify. This real self can do many things—the first being what you are doing now: identifying, observing, and articulating. Now you no longer need to persecute yourself so mercilessly with your self-hate. There seems to be no way to avoid hating yourself as long as you have neglected this all-important process of identifying yourself with the real self, which also has the power to recognize and adopt new attitudes, without devastating self-judgment. It is also possible to judge negatively in a truthful spirit, but there is all the difference in the world between believing that what you judge is the only truth of your being, and realizing that the part of you which can acknowledge the pres- ence of destructiveness has other options and is closer to your ultimate reality. How different your attitude to yourself must be when you realize that it is the task of human beings to carry negative aspects with them for the purpose of integrating and synthe- sizing them. This allows for truthfulness with- out hopelessness. What a dignity it lends you when you consider that you undertake this important task for the sake of evolution. When you come into this life, you bring negative aspects with you for the purpose just mentioned. There exist certain meaningful laws which determine what aspects you bring with you. Every human being fulfills some immense task in the universal scale of evolution. This task gives you great dignity, which is so much more important than the momentary suffering that accrues from not knowing who you are.
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The Four Stages of Awareness Let me recapitulate the four stages of awareness mentioned thus far: (1) the half-asleep climate where you do not know who you are and blindly battle against what you hate in yourself—either con- sciously, semiconsciously, or unconsciously; (2) the first state of awakening, when you can acknowledge, observe, and articulate what you do not like; when you can feel that this is just an aspect of you, rather than the secret ultimate truth about you; (3) the awareness that the “I” or real self which obser ves, articulates, can also make new decisions and choices, and can look for hitherto undreamed-of options and possi- bilities—not by magic, but by tr ying out atti- tudes that were totally negated and ignored be- fore. Some examples of new attitudes are: setting a positive goal of self-acceptance with- out losing a sense of proportion; groping for new ways; learning from mistakes and failures; refusing to give up when immediate success fails to arrive; putting faith into unknown potentials which can manifest only as these new modes are adopted by the consciousness. The attitude of adopting the new modes of perception which your consciousness is capa- ble of right now leads directly to (4) the eventual comprehension of those previously negated and hated aspects, which means their dissolution and integration. Si- multaneously, the ever-expanding conscious- ness merges with more of the spiritual reality which can now unfold to ever greater degrees. This is what is meant by purification. To the ex- tent you lead your life in such a way, the overall consciousness permeating the universe be- comes less split off into separate particles and more unified. When you assimilate what I have said here, you will understand several all-important facts. First of all you will see the tremendous overall importance of recognizing the distorted demonic traits. You will take full responsibility for them which will paradoxically liberate you from being identified with them. You will know your real self and recognize that these negative aspects are just appendages, which you can incorporate into yourself as you dissolve them. Their basic energy and undistorted nature can become part of the consciousness that you manifest. Thus, no matter how undesirable the real- ity may be, you can deal with it, accept it, ex- plore it, and no longer be frightened by it. This capacity to observe, articulate, evaluate, and choose the best possible attitudes for dealing with what is observed—that is the true power of your real self as it already exists right now. Freedom, discovery, and knowledge of self are the first steps toward realizing the greater uni- versal, divine consciousness in you. As long as this is not done, your innermost spiritual con- sciousness remains a principle, a theory, and a potential to be realized only in the future. You may believe in it with your intellect, but you cannot truly ascertain it within you until you use the consciousness already available to you now, but which you leave unused wherever your so-called problems exist. As these four stages are recognized and worked through in the way I outlined in this lecture, your con- scious mind can expand sufficiently to let in the as yet unmanifest wisdom, truth, love, en- ergy, strength of feeling, capacity to transcend painful opposites that will enrich and reorient your life toward creating more joy and plea- sure.
To remove self-illusions seems at first insurmountably difficult, since all human be- ings vaguely believe that the underlying truth is unacceptable and that therefore they them- selves are unacceptable. Thus a double illusion must be removed: the underlying belief in question, as well as the cover you put over it. And this is always the most arduous part
10
The true, serene state of being which every soul unconsciously longs for is not cautious passivity which must avoid movement and makes movement appear undesirable. The true spiritual state of being is a very active state, al- though it is a calm and relaxed state at the same time. It is joyous movement and action. It is only the passivity of the fearful self that creates frenzy as a counter-action against the stagnation. It is as though the personality fought hard against the stagnation by superim- posing compulsive action, and then became more alienated from the truth of its stagnation, and from the reason for the stagnation, which is the fear of feel- ing all feelings including fear. Only when this truth is fully felt and understood, when you stop fighting against it and dissolve what causes it by feeling your feelings, can you come out of both the frenzy of over activity and the paralysis. In other words, you must come to feel the fear that lies in laziness and in all types of stagnation.
This fear sits in everyone, even in those of you who are not overtly lazy, or who are not aware of other symptoms which this denied fear creates. This basic human condition of fear must be allowed to express itself out- wardly. You must allow it to take over, in the right setting of course. And when you expe- rience this fear, you will find two basic ele- ments within it. The first is the childhood conditions which were so painful that you thought you could not let yourself feel them, so you cut yourself off from them. And the second even more important and significant element is the fear of the fear; the fear of experiencing the fear. This is where the real harm lies. A number of years ago I spoke to you in a lecture on the phenomenon of self- perpetuation,1 and I illustrated how a denied feeling compounds itself so that it multiplies. For example: denied fear creates fear of fear, and then the fear of feeling the fear of the fear, and so on. The same is true about other feel- ings. Denied anger creates anger at being angr y. Then when this is denied, one becomes even angrier for being unable to accept the anger, and on and on. Frustration itself is bearable when you fully go into it. But when you are frustrated because you “ought” not to be frus- trated, and then are even more frustrated be- cause you deny it, the pain extends. This process is so significant because it points clearly to the necessity of feeling directly, no matter how undesirable feelings may be.
The proper direction is twofold. First you need a commitment to go in and not around yourself. This voluntary commitment to going in and through your feelings should be the driving force in this specific meditation.
The second important aspect of medi- tation is to summon your faith that “going in” will not annihilate you. Without this act of faith you will not have the courage to do it. To put it differently, if the safety and validity of this course is not clearly conceived at the outset, your disinclination to experience painful feel- ings will inadvertently lead you to manufacture an artificial doubt about the safety of the process. Together with this comes an artificial illusion that “going in” can be avoided and still permit you to achieve integration, health, and a full life. Avoidance of feelings always creates such dualistic paradoxes of false doubt and false hope.
The same applies to letting yourself fall into the apparent abyss of your blocked feel- ings—painful, frightening feelings. Unless you do so, you will remain in the crouched, uncom- fortable position in which it is really quite impossible to live and enjoy yourself. The necessary faith to take the jump can be acti- vated by confronting the issue squarely and examining what is at stake. You have to give consideration to the fundamental question which can be summed up as follows: “Is there really a bottomless pit of negativity, destruc- tion, and evil at the foundation of the human condition? Or are these aspects of a distortion that need not exist?”
By freely admitting your fear, you are more in touch with yourself than when you deny the fear. By con- fronting the validity of the fear, you may often find that the real reason behind the fear is shame and its partner, pride. Denied pride and shame often create fear. The idea that it is humiliating to have certain feelings or be in certain vulnerable states, along with the idea that you ought not to be where you are, and the feeling that your past suffering as a child is due to your being unacceptable and unlovable, all create the tendency to deny the state you are in. The pressure of this denial then creates fear, and the fear in turn requires the person to con- coct theories to justify the fear.
Negative Intentionality Now I should like to speak about the need to be aware of your previously concealed but now conscious negative intentionality. In the past you may have accepted the theory that you, too, have a lower self, that you have faults and character defects. You may have even faced many of them and dealt with them hon- estly and constructively. But this is not the same as finding your negative intentionality. It is an important fact of human psy- chology that whatever people fear, they uncon- sciously want; that whatever they experience, they also unconsciously want. The entire Path- work is based on this true fact of life. Now many of you are truly face to face with a basic negating attitude toward life: an attitude that expresses no desire to give, to love, to tribute, to reach out, to receive, or to live well and fruitfully. This may sound preposterous to the con- scious mind that wishes for nothing more than any and all fulfillments imaginable. But there is this other part of the soul, in a hid- den corner of the psyche, which says just the opposite. It wants to hate, to be spiteful, to withhold—even if this causes suffering and deprivation.
There are a number of “reasons” for nega- tivity, if we may call them that, of which you are already quite conscious. Nevertheless, you may find that you still cannot move from this point. Yet the mere fact that you know that you are the one who wants isolation, loneliness, love- lessness, hate, and spite, instead of blaming some fate that befalls the innocent you, is a key to finding the next link in the chain of your evolution. At this point, it would be useful to make a clear distinction between negativity and nega- tive intentionality. Negativity comprises a wide range of feelings including hostility, envy, hate, fear, pride, and anger, to name a few. But when we speak of negative intentionality, we mean expressly the intention to hold on to the state of negating life and the self. The mere word intention con- notes that the self is in charge, and makes a deliberate choice, intending to do, act, and to be in a certain way. Now even when you own up to the most destructive, cruel, and brutal attitudes, you always give an impression that you cannot help being the way you are. However when you ferret out your negative intentional- ity, you can no longer deceive your- self that negativity just “hap- pens” to you. You must sooner or later come to terms with the fact that your life is the result of your choices.
Negative intentionality is also a means to pun- ish life in general. Some of you may have amply explored, verified and worked through these feelings, reactions and attitudes, yet you still insist on holding on to them. Why? We have also worked on the origin of this negation. It is often the only way a child has to preserve its selfhood. If the inner resistance is not maintained, the personality feels threatened: the child equates giving up the resistance with capitulation, with giv- ing up his individuality. Many of you are aware of this and know the inappropriateness of carrying a once valid position into the present where it is no longer valid and downright destructive.
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For example, if you exclusively identify with the ego—that conscious, willing, acting part of you—it is automatically impossible to bring a change that lies beyond the province of the ego. Inner change of the deepest attitudes and feelings of an individual cannot be brought about by the very limited functions of the ego. One must be identified with a deeper, broader, and more effective aspect of the self in order to even believe in the possibility of such a change. Any profound change comes about by the ego committing itself to wanting the change, and trusting in the processes of the involuntary spiritual self to bring it about. If there is no identification with the spiritual self, such trust and the necessary climate of unpres- sured positive expectation cannot exist. And if it does not exist, the person cannot even want it, for the conviction of failure would drive home the powerlessness of the ego in too un- pleasant a way.
Any profound change comes about by the ego committing itself to wanting the change, and trusting in the processes of the involuntary spiritual self to bring it about. If there is no identification with the spiritual self, such trust and the necessary climate of unpres- sured positive expectation cannot exist. And if it does not exist, the person cannot even want it, for the conviction of failure would drive home the powerlessness of the ego in too un- pleasant a way. Thus it is preferable for the, limited ego to say, “I do not want” than to say, “I cannot.” Identification can exist in a most positive and constructive way or in a most negative, obstructive and de- structive way. The difference is not determined by your identification with one or the other of the various personality aspects—as if one would be good, the other bad. Identification with any aspect of yourself can be either desir- able, healthy and fruitful, or the opposite. For example, you might think, “How can it be de- structive to identify with the higher self?” If you identify with the higher self without truly being aware of your lower self, mask self, your defenses, your dishonest devices, and your negative intentionality, then your identi- fication with the higher self becomes an escape and an illusion. Under these circumstances it is not at all a truthful or a real experience. It is much more like paying lip service to a philos- ophy you believe in on the purely intellectual level. It is all very well to know that you are a di- vine manifestation with potentially limitless power to change yourself and your life, that you are the very spirit of the universe in manifest form. This is true. And yet it is a half-truth when this kind of identification overlooks the part of you which needs your scrutiny and can- did attention.
By the same token, it is one thing to iden- tify with your lower self or your mask self, but to observe and identify it is another. When you are identified with the lower self, you believe that this is all there is to you. When you iden- tify it, observe, admit, and tackle it, you do not believe that this is all there is to you. If it were, you could not identify, observe, evaluate, ana- lyze and change it. For that part of you which is doing all this watching is certainly more in charge, has more power, and is more active and real than the part that is being observed, evaluated, or changed. The moment you iden- tify something, good, bad or indifferent, the identifying part is more you than whatever is being identified. In other words the observer is more real and in charge than the observed.,
The lower self should be identified; the spiritual self identified with. The ego makes the identification, but gives itself up volun- tarily so that it is integrated into the spiritual self.
When a secret, albeit partial, identification with the lower self exists, giving it up is like self-annihilation. To that part of the self that is destructive, cruel, hateful, and spiteful, this seems the real self. Anything else seems un- real, perhaps even phony, especially when an actual phony veneer is used to cover up the reality of the lower self. Giving up hate, spite, negative intentions seems like giving up one’s very being. Such apparent self-annihilation can- not be risked, even if the promise beckons you that joy and fulfillment accrue from this sacri- fice. At best, this joy appears to exist for some- one other than the familiar you.,
it is the second most difficult part. The first is to make the initial commitment to find out the truth about yourself. This includes the mental observation and admission of your real thoughts, the experiencing of all feelings, and owning up to them on all levels. The second is to extricate yourself from your identification with your lower self. When you experience yourself as real only in the lower self, to whatever degree this may hold true, you cannot give up the lower self. The refusal to do so is the misplaced will to live. You live in the illusion that beyond your most negative aspects nothing of you exists. You feel real and energized only when nega- tivity and destructiveness manifest
let this sink in: your resistance to giving up what you hate most in yourself is due to a false identification. The Way Out How are you going to find your way out? The first thing to do would be to question your- self, “Is this really all I am? Is it true that my reality ceases to exist when I give up my nega- tive intention and will? Is this all there is to me?” The mere fact that you raise these ques- tions honestly will already open a door. Even before the answers come—and they will even- tually pour forth— the fact that these questions are raised will permit you to come to the sec- ond stage in this progression where you realize that the part which asks the question is already beyond your assumed identity. Thus you al- ready establish a new bridge. From there on it will not be quite so difficult to find a voice in you that answers in a new way, beyond the limited scope of the lower self which you used to protect so jealously.,
You will experience your real feelings, some of them quite painful. But the pain will be so much easier to bear than the position you now maintain. In its flowing na- ture it will carry you into new and better states, like the river of life itself. The commitment must always be to the truth of the self— what it really feels and thinks and is. If commitment to the self is the aim, then you cannot fail to realize yourself. You will experience new depths of feelings. You will even welcome the pain for it is real, it is mov- ing and is totally you. The first answers you will receive to your questions may not even come from your deep- er, spiritual self as yet. The first answers may come from your conscious mind. Your ability to formulate new possibilities and answers and to use the knowledge of truth that is already integrated into your consciousness will feel safe and very real. At the same time, it will give you a new key to use the equipment at your dis- posal in ways other than your habitual old groove.
Let us assume, for example, that you have grown accustomed to experience yourself as haughty, cold, and contemptuous. Giving up this attitude seems like dying. But dying into what? Dying into your true self where your real feelings and your real being are. If you are will- ing to feel your feelings regardless of their na- ture, you will know who you are. If you are not willing, you must remain that hard, stiffened, limited “self.” Here lies your choice.
I have also said that a fundamental reason for the difficulty in changing negative to posi- tive intentionality is that secretly the self iden- tifies almost totally with the destructive part. Hence, giving up this part of the personality appears hazardous, dangerous, and annihi- lating. The question then is how to proceed in order to shift that subtle, inner sense of iden- tity. When negative expressions are not admit- ted to the self they congeal into a festering sore of guilt and self-doubt which, translated into concise words, would mean: “If only the truth were known about me, it would be that I am all bad. But since this is the real me, and since I do not want to cease existing, I cannot want to give up me. All I can do is pretend that I am different.” This is a devastating soul climate in which confusion grows and the genuine sense of self gets more and more lost. Theoretical correct knowledge in the intellect does little to alleviate this painful and disturbing condition. In this lecture we shall deal in more detail with the process I recommend in order to create a change. Examine All Thoughts The first step is to realize that your nega- tive intentionality is really not unconscious in the strict sense of the word. It is not at all deeply repressed material. It is really a con- scious attitude and expression, only you have chosen to ignore it, until you have final- ly “for- gotten” that it is there. Sustained, deliberate looking away from something eventually re- sults in really not seeing what has been there all along. The moment the eye begins to focus again, the material immediately becomes dis- cernible. Such material is not truly uncon- scious. This difference is quite important. By now, most of you accept, face, and admit some of this negative intentionality, but not all of it; you still choose to ignore some. In order to make the remaining aspects com- pletely conscious, and also in order to bring about the change from negative to positive intentionality, it is necessary that you peruse those “little, unimportant” everyday thought patterns which have become so much part of you that it hardly occurs to you to pay attention to them. Yet all the thought processes have tremendous power and must be checked out. So many thoughts and automatic reactions are taken for granted and glossed over. Thus you can ig- nore a reaction of ill will, envy, or blaming re- sentment in spite of being aware of your nega- tive intent in other respects. But it is those little habitual reactions and thoughts that must be explored. For example, you may admit an irrational anger or hate. You may outwardly assert that these reactions are irrational, but a part of you still feels entitled to have these feelings be- cause that part feels unjustly treated. You still react to the past and bring your reaction into the present. The past pain and anguish may re- ally be repressed in the true sense of the word. In order to make the real direct experience accessible, it is necessary to deal with the de- fense in a most thorough way. The defense is always a negative intentionality in one form or another that is not truly unconscious. Your past pain, the experience of which you deny to yourself, becomes a present distorted reaction. And these reactions must be seen for what they are.
It is not only necessary to admit the exis- tence of the mistaken, destructive, mean and unrealistic attitudes. The next step is that you must know exactly why these attitudes are negative, and in what way they distort truth. You then can intelligently consider the realistic situation instead of your childish, distorted view of it. If you can first express the totally irrational desire and intent behind the destruc- tive attitude, and then express in what way this intent opposes reality, fairness, and truth; then whatever the negativity, you will have made an- other major step toward changing it into posi- tive intentionality. You will have removed an unnecessary defense or brittle wall, which keeps you from experiencing life. Your adult thinking has to express itself alongside the childish destructive thinking about the issue in which you are so emotion- ally involved. This you can do, if you really want to. Your thinking processes usually func- tion quite well if and when you so desire. The thinking processes are usually the most highly developed and can be put into the service of the purification process. It is absolutely necessary for you to know the ramifications and the significance of your faulty attitudes; for instance, why your anger, your hostility, your jealousy, your envy, and your unfair, one- sided demands are truly un- just. Only then will you also under- stand that healthy anger can be justified. When this is understood, you can experience it cleanly, with- out guilt, self-doubt, weakness, and lingering ill-effects. Though feeling anger and hurt can be justified, as long as you do not clearly know whether your anger is justified or not, you will always be confused. You will always fluctuate between guilt and resentment, between nega- tion and rejection of self, of others and of life, and between fear and blame. You will, on the one hand, attempt to assuage your self-doubts by strenuously building cases; on the other hand, you will be paralyzed by fear and weak- ness and unable to assert yourself. You will be equally weak and confused in situations where you express your irrational, childish demands, and then your destructive intent once those de- mands are not met, or in situations where you should protect your rights for the sake of the truth. Often both these expressions exist in one and the same situation, which makes it all the more confusing. Your mind alone cannot solve such conflicts. The destructive elements must be admitted first; but then the mind must con- front and counter them, understand and cor- rect them. If the adult intelligence is used merely to rationalize the painful confusion, to build defensive cases, to justify one’s own situation, or to protect oneself from admitting the de- structive intent, then nothing is ever gained. But if the adult mind is used to shed light on the irrational demands, making it clear that they are unrealistic and unfair and showing that the resulting emotional reactions prove de- structive for all concerned, then a lot will be gained and the truth of the situation will emerge.
You have made good progress in admitting partial negative inten- tionality. But sometimes such admission becomes in itself a subtle escape. By merely admitting a destructive feeling over and over again, without going further and examining it to find out why and how it is wrong, you merely open yet another little back door. You seem to do the right thing, but you refuse to really go further, to go all the way. The temptations of evil are so very subtle. Every truth can be put into the service of a dis- tortion. This is why so much vigilance is need- ed. This is also why doing the right thing is in itself never a guarantee of being truthful and in harmony with universal law. There is no one formula that can protect you from evil; only sincerity of heart can do so. This sincerity of the heart and this good will must be cultivated again and again. It comes from the spiritual cleansing of doing daily review and meditation and from commitment to God’s world of truth, love, honesty, and integrity.
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Negative identification leads to the cre- ation of “images.” As we use the term “images” in this Pathwork, they are always miscon- ceptions and generalizations which form very limited and fixed, closed systems. Conscious and/or unconscious identification which forms an inner image always creates a limited vision that precludes seeing available alternatives. This false vision excludes so many important factors. The few that are seen are therefore so out of context that one’s perception of life and one’s reaction to it are unrealistic. Positive identification can never lead to an image. Instead it leads to visualization, which is a flexible, realistic, wide-open sys- tem with many alternative ways from which conscious- ness and creative action can spread. It is very important for you to think about this and to re- ally understand what I am saying here. On the spiritual path you come to a point when you must know that you need positive identi- fication, with a realistic, open, and freeing prototype. You need to recognize external exemplary models. If you cannot yet, you need to first build an inner concept, so that you can both visualize inwardly and recognize out- wardly exemplary figures. Later you will be- come such exemplary figures yourselves, to in- spire others on their path when they are ready to see truth and to conceive of themselves ac- cording to their indwelling potentials. A true exemplary figure inspires you to visualize sim- ilar traits and attitudes dormant within your deeper self which can then be brought into full expression. I mentioned before that the blocks and fogs created by illusion and distortion make you blind to true exemplary figures or at least to some of their traits. They cause you to be blind because your concept of what really ex- ists in these examples is either still absent or so misconceived that your interpretation of what you see may be completely wrong. Truth- ful perception of exemplary figures can only exist when you are already relatively free, open, and aware of yourself; then suddenly some- thing will click in you. A spontaneous, almost automatic, organic desire to develop in the same direction as your example will spring up
You will not imitate something that is foreign to your own nature. Basic universal traits exist and are expressed in different ways by each unique individual; so you do not emu- late to make an exact copy of a trait but rather adapt it to your unique individuality. Somewhere along your path you will have gained sufficient self- awareness to have a sub- liminal understanding of what is worthy of emulation. You will be alert to it and use this vision to complete yourself. As in every area of development, here, too, are certain sequences and alternations accord- ing to spiritual law. Where blocks exist and therefore exemplary figures are absent and/or unrecognizable, the psyche has to learn through the labor of the Pathwork to choose realistic, positive figures as signposts. You must pay attention to this necessity and con- ceive an inner vision of what a unified, harmo- nious, integrated person, who expresses con- tact and unification with the divine self, is like. When such a concept exists, inner visualization can begin, which will then make you capable of meeting and recognizing the outer figure
This lecture is just an outline that describes certain very basic conditions and expressions which can safely be generalized and applied to all of you who have reached the state where your divine self is being continuously ex- pressed and actualized. I will try to give you a concept and a vision so that you can begin to see with fresh eyes, and perhaps recognize in others what you have previously been blind to.,
This is a commitment to the all- consciousness indwelling in every creature. It can be called by any name you choose: God, universal consciousness, the real self, the inner self—whatever name you give to that which transcends the little ego. When this whole- hearted commitment is made totally, then cer- tain things begin to happen in one’s life. Obvi- ously, one reaches this state not by crossing a sharply defined line, but through a gradual process. Before describing this process, I wish to say that you must not be misled by the fact that you may consciously have made such a commitment, and yet find no greater inner or outer change occurring in your life. Some of you may be very committed to God on a conscious level, but you may not realize at all that there are other levels in you where this is not the case. You may find it very easy to believe on a merely conscious level that this commitment to God is what you want. Consciously you may be full of good will and really mean it. But unless you have really come to experience the contradictory levels within you where you do not wish that, or where you only wish it on your own ego terms which de- feats the very act of self-surrender, you will want to balk. Unless you acknowledge your contrariness, fear, self-will, and pride, your conscious commitment will always be blocked. Unless you own up to the contrary ego level hidden behind your good will, you may not even understand why certain results are still lacking despite your conscious commitment to truth, to God, to love. This awareness is ex- tremely important, and the Pathwork deals with it in a very intensive way in order to help you avoid one of the most insidious obstructions: self-deception. We search for and bring out that negative part of the self which says, “I will not.” You will learn the courage, humility, and honesty to ex- pose this part—the part that even says, “I want to resist. I want to be spiteful. I want to have it all my way, or else!” Only when the secret crevices of your psychic substance yield up and expose these areas can you begin—often with a lot of struggle—to change
I shall now discuss specific manifestations that take place in a person who is already deeply anchored in the process of actualizing the divine life into his or her ego conscious- ness. What are the inner and outer attitudes, manifestations, and expressions of such a per- son? All decisions, big or small, are made on the basis of self- surrender, where the little self surrenders to the godself. It steps aside and al- lows the inner wisdom to permeate it. In this process the personality realizes that there is nothing that is unimportant. Every thought, every opinion, every interpretation, every mode of reacting is given a chance to be permeated by the greater consciousness.
This self-perpetuating divine process brings a vital revolutionary change into the en- tire person. I can touch upon only a few of its manifestations. Thoughts of truth will be sent forth into your being, notwithstanding the lim- ited thoughts you still habitually follow. You will hear an inner voice instructing you with a wisdom and a unifying spirit that your outer self cannot possibly produce. According to this wisdom, there is never any need to hate, to feel self-rejection or to reject others. The answers and revelations will show the oneness and unity of all, which will completely eliminate fear, anxiety, friction, and despair. Surrendering the knowledge of the limited ego to the knowledge of the deeper self, so as to exert all energy, courage, honesty, and self discipline toward making the deeper knowl- edge self-perpetuating, leads to ultimate fulfill- ment. Without this as the essential foundation, no joy, pleasure, or fulfillment can exist for long.
So the difficulty is in initially creating full- ness. Seeking the opposite of what you fear is, an escape and leads to a split rather than to unification. Exactly the opposite road must be taken. You must die many deaths, right now, every day in your life, in order to discover the eternality of life. Only then will you live fear- lessly. How can you die all these little deaths? Follow exactly the process I described: let go of the little ego, the little opinions, the negative reactions you have such an investment in. You have to die to those. The little ego with its little investments must die. In that way you can tran- scend death and intuitively experience the real- ity of life ongoing. When you live without fear of death be- cause you experience it so many times, you will know that in principle physical death is the same. You find it to be so by temporarily letting go of the smaller self, only in order to find a larger self wakening, which then unifies with the little self. So you see, not even the little self of the ego really dies. It is enlarged and united with the larger self, not given up. But it appears to be given up and you must be ready to take the plunge.
Another outward manifestation is abun- dance. Since real spir- itual life is limitless abundance, to some degree you must begin to manifest that when you actualize your divine self. If you can make room in your conscious- ness for outer abundance as a reflection of uni- versal abundance, you will create and expe- rience it. If you want to experience it because you fear poverty, you also create a split. The abundance you create out of fear is not built on reality, and its flimsy structure must be crushed again so that you can then let yourself be poor and dissolve the illusion of poverty. Only after this can the real, unified richness grow. Only when you first can be poor can you allow yourself to be rich as an outer expression of inner content. Then you will not want to be rich for the sake of power or for outer gains
Another outer manifestation of the con- tinual process of actualizing divine life is the proper balance of everything: the balance of assertion and giving in, for instance. The spon- taneous knowing when one or the other is appropriate comes from with- in. Or consider the proper balance of right selflessness and wrong selfishness. All these balances and dual- ities will become elements in a spontaneous unification and harmony. The intuitive knowl- edge of when, what, and how will come not be- cause you decide it with your mind, but as an expression of inner truth and beauty that reach- es expression on the outer level, appropriately and beautifully.
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We have occasionally discussed this inner landscape. I have made mention of the inner space that is the real world. The term “inner space” is used quite frequently in your world these days, as opposed to outer space. Most human beings think of inner space as merely a symbolic description of a person’s state of mind. This is not so. Inner space is a vast real- ity, a real world. It is in fact the real universe, while outer space is merely a mirror image, a reflection of it. This is why outer reality can never be quite grasped. Life can never be truly understood and experientially absorbed when it is viewed only from the outside. This is why life is so frustrating, and often so frightening, for so many people. I can see that it is hard to understand how inner space can be a world in itself—the world. The reason for this difficulty lies again in the limited time/space continuum of your three- dimensional reality. Everything you see, touch, and experience is perceived from a certain very limited angle. The mind is focused, accus- tomed, conditioned to operate in a certain direction and is therefore incapable at this juncture of perceiving life in any other way. But this way of perceiving reality is by no means the only way, or the correct way, or the com- plete way. Finding the Inner Reality In every spiritual discipline the goal is to perceive life in this other way, the way that goes beyond the outer reflection, the way that fo- cuses on new dimensions to be found in inner space. In some disciplines this goal may be di- rectly mentioned, or it may never be mentioned as such. But when a certain point of devel- opment and purification is reached, the new vi- sion awakens— sometimes suddenly, some- times gradually. Even the suddenness of the vi- sion is only an illusion, because it actually is the result of many arduous steps and inner bat- tles. It has been recognized that every atom is a duplication of the outer universe, as you know it. This recognition is very meaningful. Perhaps you can imagine that just as time is a variable, dependent on the dimension from which it is experienced, so is space. Just as there is really no objective, fixed time, so there is no objec- tive, fixed space. Your real being can live, breathe and move, and cover vast distances within an atom according to your outer mea- surement. When the spirit withdraws to the inner world, the relationship of measurement changes, just as the relationship to time changes. This is why you seem to lose contact with and awareness of so-called “dead” people. They live in the inner reality which, for you, is as yet only an abstraction. Yet the actual ab- straction is the outer space. In physical death, the spirit, that which is alive, withdraws into the inner world, not as is often erroneously as- sumed, into heaven. It does not lift out of the body; it does not float into outer space. If, at times, an extrasensory perception seems to re- veal such a sight, it is again only after the mir- ror image of the inner event. In the same way, a majority of humans have, for the longest time, looked for God up in heaven. When Jesus Christ came, He taught that God lives in the inner spaces and He must be found there. This is also why all medita- tional practices and exercises focus on inner space. A long time ago I suggested a meditational exercise in which you do not think, in which you make yourself empty. Those of you who occasionally try this exercise experience how difficult it is to do so. The mind is filled with its own material and to still it is not an easy under- taking. There are several ways of doing it. East- ern religions usually approach it by long prac- tice and discipline. This, in conjunction with solitude and outer stillness, may eventually produce inner stillness.
Our approach on this path is different. These teachings do not want to take you out of your world. On the contrary, the aim is to be in your world, in the best possible way. To under- stand, to accept, and to create in it in the most productive, constructive way. This can only be done when you fully know and understand yourself and when you traverse, as I said, the difficult spaces, which must make you better equipped to function in this three- dimensional reality. Then there is no split between the inner and outer spaces. As inner truth reigns, percep- tion of outer truth increases. As understanding of self grows, so does understand- ing of the world. As you learn to re-mold that in you which is imperfect, faulty, so do you learn to restructure—transform— your outer life. As you learn of your eternal beauty as a divine manifestation, so does your vision expand to a greater apprecia- tion of the beauty of the Cre- ator’s creation. As peace within your- self comes to be, so do you become at peace with this world, even when you are surrounded by undesirable experiences. In other words, you do not require outer conditions of absolute seclusion in order to reach inner space. You take the other route in which you go right through what seems the greatest of obstruc- tions: the imperfections within and around you. You approach them, you deal with them, until they lose their fearsome aspect. This is your path. Focusing on the inner emptiness is an additional exercise that is very helpful, but it must never be the sole approach to self- realization, just as dealing with the outer ad- verse conditions in your world must never be the sole approach to your own and your world’s salvation. Focused emptiness grows, both delib- erately and spontaneously, as you remove inner obstacles. At the early stages, you expe- rience just that: emptiness, nothingness. If your mind can quiet down, you encounter the void; this is what makes the attempt so fright- ening. It seems to confirm the suspicion that there is nothing within you; that you are indeed only your outer, mortal self. This is why the mind makes itself so busy and so noisy—in order to blot out the quietness that appears to herald nothingness. Once again you need the courage to go through a tunnel of uncertainty. You need to take the risk to allow the great quietude that is, at first, empty of meaning, devoid of anything that spells life or consciousness. I believe most of you have already experi- enced how the voice of your higher self sends its inspirations through your mind not neces- sarily immediately after a meditation or a prayer, but some- time later, often when you least think of it. It is then that your mind is re- laxed enough and sufficiently free from self-will to allow the higher self to manifest. The same is true in regard to experiencing the inner uni- verse—the real world. Focused emptiness will bring you in touch with all the levels of your being. It allows the emergence of what was hidden—the distor- tions, the errors, the lower-self material, and eventually, the reality of your higher self and the vast world of eternal life in which it dwells. There are many stages and phases to go through. The latter stages can take place only when a certain purification and integration has taken place. Unfocused emptiness is a less- ening of consciousness. Focused emptiness is a heightening of consciousness. The former is a tuning out, a vague wandering of the mind that may lead to mindless emptiness. Sleep, or other states of unconsciousness are the final stages. Focused emptiness is extremely con- centrated, aware, and fully there. If you focus on the inner world to the exclusion of your outer world, you not only cre- ate a split, but also a condition in which you forfeit the purpose of your incarnation. How can you fulfill your task, whatever it may be, if you do not utilize your outer world for that pur- pose? You would not have come into this dimension if it had not been a necessity for you. So you need to make use of it and always bring outer and inner conditions into a mean- ingful relationship with each other. You are learning to do this on this path. All your outer experiences are related to your personality, your various levels of self. Your inner being al- ways creates your outer conditions, a truth you soon learn to recognize on this path. If relating the outer to the inner is not a constant way of life, the imbalance must create unfavorable conditions. You can see how sometimes in your world people who do a lot of good works outwardly lose their way just as easily as those who never give others a thought. The outer good intent and good works must have an inner focus in order to avoid a disharmonious condition and a dangerous split. The Stages of Focused Emptiness Focused emptiness brings you eventually to the light of the eternal. Maybe we can cate- gorize certain basic stages, even if somewhat oversimplified. In reality these stages often overlap and do not come neatly in the succes- sion outlined here for the purpose of clarifi- cation.
- You experience the noise and the busy- ness of mind.
- You succeed in quieting this noise, you encounter emptiness, nothingness.
- Recognitions about the self, connec- tions between some aspects of the self and outer experiences become clear. New under- standing and with it heretofore unrecognized levels of lower self material appear. This stage is really a ray of divine guid- ance, and not merely an experience of the lower self. Recog- nition of the lower self is always a manifestation of higher-self guidance.
- Direct manifestation of higher-self mes- sages, or what you call the opening of your channel. You receive advice, encouragement, words intended to give you courage and faith. In this phase divine guidance still operates pri- marily through your mind. It is not necessarily a total emotional and spiritual experience. The manifestation may excite and gladden you, but this reaction is a result of the knowledge your mind has absorbed and has found convincing.
- In this stage a direct, total, spiritual and emotional experience occurs. Your whole being is filled with the Holy Spirit. You know, not indirectly through your mind, but directly through all of your being. Knowing through the mind is really always an indi- rect knowledge. It is a relayed knowledge. The mind is the instru- ment necessary for human beings to function on this level of consciousness. Direct knowl- edge is different. This phase has many subdivisions, many stages within itself. There are many, no, limit- less, possibilities in which the real world can be experienced. One is simply total knowing, which affects every fiber of your being, every level of your conscious- ness. Experience of the real world can also occur through visions of other dimensions, but such visions are never merely things one sees. They are always a total experience that affects the total person. In the real world, as opposed to your frag- mented world, every sense perception is total. Seeing is never only seeing, it is simulta- neously hearing, tasting, feeling, smelling— and many other perceptions you know nothing about on your level of being. In this fifth stage, seeing, hearing, perceiving, feeling, knowing are always all inclusive. They encompass every capacity God has created. And you can hardly imagine the richness, the variety, the limitless possibilities of these capacities. Focused emptiness is the ideal state to be filled by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the whole world of God in all its splendor, in its indescribable magnificence. Its richness cannot possibly be conveyed in human lan- guage. There is no way of describ- ing what ex- ists when fear, doubt, distrust—and therefore suffering, death and evil—are overcome. Fo- cused emptiness is there- fore nothing but a threshold to a fullness that exists only in the world of spirit. The practice of focused emptiness must never be undertaken in an attitude of imme- diate expectations. In fact, it is necessary to have no expectations whatever: expectations are a tension, and tension prevents the neces- sary state of total inner and outer relax- ation. Also, expectations are unrealistic, for it may take many incarnations of development before a human being can come anywhere near these experiences. So to have any kind of expec- tations will cause disappointments which, in turn, set off a chain reaction of further negative emotions, such as doubt, fear, and discour- agement. I am talking about this topic because I want to prepare you for an important practice within meditation. I have discussed this in the past in connection with the various ways of meditation, particularly in regard to impressing and expressing. Many of your meditations have dealt with impressing, and should continue to do so. This aspect of impressing is a cleansing of the mind and serves to make the mind into a constructive tool. Then the tool becomes a cre- ative agent.
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The aspect of expressing has begun to manifest to some degree with those whose channels are open, perhaps only occasionally. But you need to know that there are further stages, further phases and possibilities, and you should approach them with patience, awe, and humility. You should understand that these experiences will open the vast inner spa- ces in which many worlds, many universes, many spheres exist, endless plains, mountains, seas of indescribable beauty. You should know that these inner spaces are not abstractions or symbolic expressions; they are much more real and accessible than your outer, objectified world that you believe to be the only reality. Inner space is based on different measure- ments, on a different relativity between time/ space/movement and measurement. Even a vague and hazy consideration of this concept on your part will change your outlook and will create a new approach to your further work on your path. You need not spend hours practicing fo- cused emptiness. Such is not the purpose. But you may attempt it to some degree every time you pray and meditate, after you use your mind to impress your soul substance and align it with divine intent. The Real You That Lives in the Real World Spirit can penetrate matter to the degree that spiritual truth, spiritual law, spiritual health are being established. And the individ- ual’s self-responsibility is indeed the key to this. When the self becomes stronger, more of life can penetrate matter; more of the spirit can be born in the flesh. So, you will see, as you grow in stature through gaining selfhood, more of your real being is born into your physical manifestation. More talents may come to the fore of which you had known nothing before. Suddenly a new wisdom manifests, a new understanding and capacity to feel and love; a hitherto unsensed strength unfolds from you. All these manifestations are the real you that lives in the inner space—the real world. As you make room for these aspects, they will push into the life of matter and you will fulfill your part in the evolutionary scheme. These atti- tudes do not grow from outside; they are not being added on to you. They are a result of your outer manifest being making room for the inner, as yet unmanifest being. This happens by the growing process, the hard work you undertake on this path. And, after a certain point in your development, it can be helped along by focusing on the inner emptiness until you discover that the emptiness is illusion. It is a fullness, a rich world of glory. You can re- ceive all you need from this inner source, and translate it into outer experience. By approaching the void without fear, you also remove an obstruction to life. Focusing on the inner space means, to begin with, ap- proaching what appears as emptiness. Through this void you reach the fullness of spirit, the totality of life in its pure, unob- structed form. This stuff of life contains all possibilities of expression, of manifestation.
The joy of experiencing this reality is greater than any other. In this joy is your oneness with the Creator, where you are indeed one. You can see, my friends, that nothing in your personality, no aspect of it, is insignificant in terms of creation and evolution. There is no such thing as a “merely psychological aspect.” Every attitude, every way of thinking, feeling, being, and reacting reflects directly on your participation in the greater scheme of things. By knowing this you will perhaps, once again, find it eas- ier to give your life, your pathwork, your endeavors, greater value. You will learn, once again, to unify an arbitrary duality— spiritual versus worldly concerns. Make room for unobstructed life, for unen- cumbered spirit! Let it fill every part of your being, so that you will finally know who you re- ally are. You are all blessed, my very dearest ones. EVIL TRANSFORMED; EVIL TRANSCENDED; THE UNITIVE STATE Know that, by nature, every creature seeks to be- come like God. Nature’s intent is neither food nor drink nor clothing, nor comfort, nor anything else in which God is left out. Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly nature seeks, hunts, tries to ferret out the track on which God may be found. Meister Eckhart It may be tempting to think that work on the lower self is only required at the earlier stages of the spiritual path, and that as one ex- plores the transpersonal realms and moves to- ward the unitive, considerations of the lower self may be left behind. But such is not the case. The lectures have explained how self-will, pride, and fear are the principal roots of per- sonal evil. Of these three, it is fear that has been the most difficult for people to connect with as a source of evil. But with only a bit of reflection one can see how fear of being hurt by others so easily leads to hurting others. For as we have learned, evil is a defense against suf- fering, whether real suffering or feared suf- fering. Beyond this, fear is a root of evil because it is so totally at variance with ultimate reality. In truth, the universe is benign, and therefore there is nothing to fear. In truth, the universe is one, and therefore there is no one outside of me who can hurt me. In the later stages of spiritual growth fear is the greatest obstacle. At this level the fear is not of being hurt by others. Rather, the fear is of surrendering one’s sense of being a separate self. As Meister Eckhart says, all of nature yearns for, strives for, the experience of becom- ing like God, of achieving a state of oneness with all that is. “Enlightenment” is the expe- rience of totally and completely realizing that God-oneness. Strange though it may sound, enlight- enment need not be sought; it is already here and so one need not travel in order to find it. Rather, we must more and more clearly see the ways in which we are constantly running away from enlightenment. No matter what may be our methods of running away, the cause of the running is fear. We fear what we desire. We fear the loss of our sense of separate identity; we fear the death of the ego, mistakenly believing that such will mean an end to existence. Most spiritual paths attempt, by way of various spiritual practices, to take the seeker to an experience of the unitive state; and they sometimes succeed in attaining this goal. But there is a danger inherent in such paths: That it is possible to achieve this goal of transcen- dence of the human state while still leaving parts of oneself mired in the lower self. There are many examples in our own century of spir- itual teachers who have attained a sub- stantial transcendence, but who turned out to have still a great deal of transformation of the lower self yet left undone. The lectures tell us that most spiritual seekers attempt a pre- mature transcendence, caused by a failure to see one’s lower self clear- ly, and a desire to be beyond where one truly now is. Therefore the Pathwork stresses the need for the horizontal movement of transfor- mation; the need for a continual examination of oneself in order to find the lower self, and on then work- ing through this material, and trans- forming it, rather than attempting to transcend it. But, as has also been pointed out in many of the lectures in this volume, after a certain point the work cannot be done unless the worker learns to shift his/her sense of identity. To shift, that is, from the personal to the transpersonal; from the small ego- conscious- ness to the greater consciousness. And once that shift has been fully made, it is correct to say that a transcendence has occurred. This is working in a vertical direction, rather than hor- izontal. Clearly, both are required; and finding the proper balance between the horizontal and the vertical, between transfor- mation and tran- scendence, is one of the subtlest and most impor- tant aspects of the work on oneself. So, to use their dictionary definitions, “to change in composition or structure, character or condition” (transformation) and “to rise above or go beyond the limits of” (transcen- dence) are both required. We need to fully ac- cept our human condition, and then bit-by-bit discover that we are more than simply human. To be human is to be flawed and imper- fect, but this is not cause for despair. We live in an intermediate realm, neither in heaven nor in hell. That is the condition of our existence. Within that condition we have a nobility and a purpose. Our purpose is precisely to learn to examine ourselves honestly, see our imper- fections clearly, resolve to change, learn how to change, and then to proceed, diligently and courageously, with the work of self- transformation. This is our nobility. This is what the human state is for. As we proceed on the path of self- transformation, we become progressively more loving and more wise. Our clarity increases, as do our courage and our joy and our compas- sion. Life opens up, becomes both wider and deeper. Pain and grief and challenge we will still have, but we learn to not be crushed by them. But, you may say, are we not all eventually crushed by death? Death is experienced as a crushing defeat only if one is still so totally identified with one’s skin-encapsulated ego.
For even death will lose its sting as we come to know that the alternation of death and life is no more fearsome than the alternation of sleep and waking. In other words, as we accept our human state with its flaws and imperfections, and we have the courage to face and trans- form our lower self, we strengthen to the point where we can real- ize that we are more than human. Birth and death are prime ingredients of the human state, but one’s true essence precedes birth and death. In other words, continued work on transformation of the lower self ulti- mately leads to an ability to transcend the lower self. And the final transcendence is into the state of God- oneness of which Meister Eckhart speaks. The path is a challenging one. As Christ said, the pearl of great price must be pur- chased at the cost of all that you have. But the journey is ultimately a totally safe one. As the lectures have told us, again and again: “You have nothing to fear.” Donovan Thesenga