Harm Of Too Much Love Giving -- Constructive And Destructive Will Force

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless each one of you. Blessed is this lecture.

I wish to discuss another facet of love, of the will, and of human relationship. As you know from your own life experience as well as from all previous lectures, these three aspects are interdependent. Each is of the utmost importance both for your life and for your fulfillment. All of them together form one whole. If one functions independently in a healthy and productive way, then the other two are bound to function just as healthily, almost automatically. Yet at times it is important to consider each one separately. There can be no fulfillment of any sort without good human relationships. And good human relationships are impossible without love and without all the various aspects that are part of love. Nor can you live productively without the will functioning properly. Both love and the will harbor many negative aspects. As a result, they are often distorted in many different ways. We have discussed some of them in the past. Let us consider these two forces again, but this time from a new approach.

When you do not feel love, then it is very harmful to force yourself to experience it. In such a case, the wrong kind of will and the wrong kind of love are being used, and therefore a negative result is produced. Yet you also know that if you do not give love, then you cannot receive it. Therefore, you try to force it, either consciously or unconsciously. In other words, you use your will in order to produce a feeling that does not exist in you as yet. In the course of our work together you have learned that the proper growing process is to admit to yourself that you are as yet incapable of feeling love. First you have to acknowledge and then you have to face this condition, which for now is that which truly is. In other words, it is your present reality. If you can accept this without guilt and without judgment, then you will eventually understand why it is so. Some of my friends have begun to experience this process as a result of their work. They have become aware of their forcing current both towards others and towards themselves. Since you want to receive love, often desperately, you feel that you cannot afford to acknowledge the fact that you do not love. Once you face what is true in you, then this truth begins to change.

If you look at yourself, then you can experience that you never have any genuine warm, constructive feeling that is forced on you, either by others or by yourself. Genuine feelings are always spontaneous. Therefore, they come by themselves. They are an indirect byproduct of self-awareness. They are like a secondary reaction, not determined by your outer will. That is, the will that is accessible to your determination. Hence, the primary step is always self-understanding. Then your love capacity grows indirectly. Although this is not new, it needs to be repeated, for this knowledge is not yet an integral part of most of you.

Regarding love, thus far your emphasis was geared mostly to your ability to love, since you want to be loved. In other words, your main concern was your lack of loving, because this is often responsible for the failure of your relationships. It takes considerable insight to find out that what you thought was love is no such thing. Many of you have gotten that far, at least to some degree and to some level of awareness.

Now let us consider relationships from a different point of view. What if you have really loved and yet you were rebuffed, you were rejected? Many of you have many puzzling questions in this respect. You do not understand why rejection has taken place when you were certain that you had such a genuine and strong love force. If this love force was not entirely free of childish currents, then at least it was mingled with real love. This confuses you since you know that love is the key both to life and to human relationships. Why then, you ask yourself, does it not work? Is it because there are always selfish, greedy, immature currents existing in the human soul? But then no one could ever receive love, since no human being is perfect. At the same time, you observe that some people who have a less genuine love capacity seem to receive a great deal more love than you do. This not only confuses you, but it also increases your sense of insecurity, of self-doubt, of injustice, and of feeling victimized. It is necessary to look into this subject once more in order to gain a clearer view.

It is just as harmful and just as destructive to love too much, and thus unwisely, as it is to love too little. Here we are speaking of personal love. It is a love which demands love in return. It is a detached kind of love that senses when to let go, when to have human feelings of sympathy and understanding. It is a kind of love where there is no demand. But the type of love -- be it in partnership relations, be it in personal friendships -- that needs, and therefore that wants, to possess is the type of love that can be as destructive in giving more than is wanted as it would be destructive in giving too little. To love too much when it is not wanted is just as insentitive, as egocentric, and as greedy as to love too little. You do not understand that as yet. If a person is incapable of receiving your love, if he is frightened by it, then your frustrated wish to love comes out in a stronger force than the other person is capable of meeting and taking in. Such a current makes the other person withdraw in fear. When you are unaware of your own inner processes, then you are not sensitive to this phenomenon. You merely feel rejected and are busy with this insult. Just as you may be insensitive to the need of others to receive your love because you are too frightened to come out of your shell, so you may be just as insensitive to the need of others not to receive more than they can bear at a given time. Thus you do not respect the other's integral right not to receive what you wish to give. For you it is a question of all or nothing. If all your love is not received, then you withdraw and it becomes nothing. But if you realize this inner struggle of the other person -- in other words, if you grow sufficiently to know not to give more than what can be received -- then another kind of relationship could come into being that may be very rewarding. But you miss out on it through your inner ignorance.

It may be perfectly true that the other person's incapacity reflects his emotional immaturity, his inner problems, and his conflicts. You become angry at this. You refuse the other's right to have what you yourself may have in a slightly different version. Thus you fluctuate between an overpowering love force that cannot be received, and resentment and withdrawal. You are as yet incapable of preserving a feeling of human respect and liking if the strong force of your love, though largely genuine, is not welcome. In your anger, you use the weapon of turning a positive feeling into a negative one. Hence, you feel resentment, rejection and pride, and then you withdraw either from that particular person or from loving altogether. Many times you find yourself in this destructive imbalance without really being aware of it. With this attitude in you, you destroy potential relationships that could become quite meaningful.

We have often discussed your capacity to give and to receive. If you are the person incapable of loving and of receiving, then you who are on this Path know what to do about it. You look inside until you attain self-awareness and the understanding of what is going in you. But if it is the other person who has this incapacity, then you are puzzled and confused. With this new understanding, then you may learn to meet the problem properly. You will learn not only to question yourself about your capacity to give and to receive, but also to question the other's capacity in this regard. By your awareness that it is important to sense this, you will become sensitive to the signs, and therefore you will not rush ahead blindly just because you wish it. You will learn to read behind the words, to interpret the signs, to perceive what exists in the other even if he is unaware of it.

These words are addressed particularly to those friends who are not predominantly withdrawn -- in other words, who are eager to give and to relate -- and yet who constantly find themselves hindered in this area because, for one reason or another, the object of their choice is unwilling to receive this powerful demanding force that they emanate. If only you were less defensive, less selfwilled, less self-concerned with the frustration of your immediate will or of your rejection, then you would develop the nobility of spirit to respect the other's incapacity, even if it is sick. This then would establish a human relationship, whereas your greedy, egocentric giving destroys relationships.

Let the other person be. Allow him to react differently from the way you wish him to react. In this way, your life will be richer for many reasons. Not only because you will have more meaningful relationships, but also because you will be less dependent on your own will. You will be able to let go and still like and respect the other, even if you know his incapacity. Whether you call it sick or immature does not matter. For all I know, your opinion may be right, yet you refuse to grant the other the same right that you wish to have for yourself. Observe your innermost attitude and currents in this respect. View it from this angle and you will eventually grow into an awareness of the significance of your rushing forward. You will no longer consider this an asset for which you are unjustly punished by life. Instead, you will see the intrinsic selfishness and greed in it. As you calmly observe yourself in this respect, you will automatically mature. You will develop the decency to allow the other person his way and you will respect him for it. You will have both the generosity and the nobility of spirit to stand back and to let go, and thus to be more finely attuned to the other's needs -- whether he is to receive more than you give, or less than you want to give. If this happens without contempt, without resentment either of the other or of yourself, without self-doubt, and without self-belittling, then you have indeed grown up. Non-compliance to your will can perhaps be met in a mature way on a superficial level of your being. But do you also accept it when it reaches into the deeper layers of your personality? Ask yourself this question and then look closely at what is revealed to your. Do you truly you wish to accept this revelation? As you grow in this way, you will not be giving up something rich for which you are yearning. You only seem to be doing so. Actually, you give up only your immediate will. In this way you will become richer. And I do not mean only in spirit, in maturity, in self-reliance, and in self-respect, but richer in your outer life concerning your human relationships.

But again I must admonish you, if you are as yet incapable of feeling in this mature way, then do not force yourself into it. Rather see yourself in this strong demanding force that you extend, and then in your reaction after this force is repelled. See it in action and then experience it without judging yourself. This is the only way.

Neither happinesss nor love can be a volitional process, my friends. It comes as you observe yourself without judging what is good or what is bad, what is right or what is wrong.

My friends, are you one of those people who is too fearful to love? Are you too withdrawn? Do you not dare to reach out into the world and to form relationships, and you would rather hide in your own little corner when a hand is extended to you, when love is offered to you? In your fear, could it be that you fail to recognize it when it comes to you so as not to burden yourself with the guilt of rejecting what you also crave for? Or are you one of those who is constantly ready to give generously, but perhaps too generously because of your need, and perhaps also out of your childish greed you disregard the other person? Are you perhaps a little of both? Look at yourself from this point of view. As you do so, as you gradually gain awareness of yourself in this respect, then your sensitivity to the other person's needs will grow and develop. You will sense that it is not a question of the other not wanting to receive anything from you, but perhaps of not wanting to receive it at this time and in this way. It may be easier for him to come out of his own shell when he does not meet a love power from you that is so demanding and so forceful.

Often both distortions exist in you simultaneously. On the one hand, you yourself may be frightened if you encounter a strong demand. Yet, when this demand is absent, then you extend it without actually seeing what is being offered to you.

Now let us turn to the subject of the will. We have discussed it in the past from many different points of view. Selfwill, the outer will, the inner will, various manifestations of healthy and unhealthy will power. In order to recapitulate and give you a little more clarity on the subject, let us see some of the negative manifestations and of the reasons why the will does not function properly.

1) When you are unaware of what you want, even if what you want is healthy and productive, then this unawareness of what you want must produce a negative result. Why? Not because of the wish itself, but because for some reason you found it necessary to hide this wish. This is what causes a negative condition. Such unawareness -- which at one time was deliberate -- really amounts to self-deception. You want something, yet you feel that what you want is wrong, so you try to convince yourself that you do not want what inwardly you actually do want. This is pretense, it is self-deception. And it is this that causes the destructive result, not the quality of the wish itself, whether or not the wish is morally acceptable or not. It is the broken awareness, with all of its connotations, that is responsible. Thus you do not want what you want. Such are the disclosures that many of you have found. You are so unsure of yourself and of your own rights that you suppress -- and ultimately you repress -- your wish capacity, your will power. You may transform it so that it reappears in the form of a compromise solution. But this unclarity causes a thick haze in your psyche that is an unhealthy climate, and it hinders your life expression. If it is an unhealthy wish, then you cannot cope with it because you wish to comply with standards superimposed by your society, by public opinion, or whatever. Thus you may force yourself into something that is inferior to your own will -- to the will of your real self. The reason for doing so is purely negative. It is the lack of courage to be yourself; it is the exaggerated need to please, or any other reason that you know from past lectures and from your work. Therefore, if you are unaware of it, then a productive wish proves to be unproductive, or at times even becomes destructive.

2) Another reason why the will power or the wish capacity becomes unproductive is that you are split in your direction. In other words, if your will moves partly into one direction and partly into another direction, then you will experience a negative result. You will be stymied in your efforts, and therefore you will experience failure and frustration. You may erroneously believe that this is due to moralistic reasons. But it is not true. Both directions may be morally adequate, but the fact that you are not at one with yourself produces what unconsciously you may consider as punishment.

3) As I have already said in this lecture, your will is also neutralized if it is too strong; if it does not consider the obstacles; if it does not respect other people's inclinations; if it does not take into account the reality of the other person, whether or not this is welcomed and desired by you; and if the strength of the wish is stronger than reality warrants, then in all of these cases you defeat your own purpose.

4) If you are resigned, if you are withdrawn, if you become apathetic, if you are too fearful to want to lead a meaningful life, if you do not dare to do what is necessary to produce such a meaningful and productive life for yourself but you wait for some authority to give it to you, then you cripple your will power, your wish capacity.

All these four aspects prohibit a healthy, relaxed, steady flow of your will, and therefore hinder or block your wish capacity. This is a topic that brings confusion because you always tend to regard something as being either right or wrong, as being either good or bad. So many theories have come into existence, spiritual, religious, philosophical, or psychological theories. There is the school of thought that says that you must go for results in order to have peace. In other words, that you must have plenty of will power. You must not let go. Then there is the other school of thought which says that without the will there can be no life and no fulfillment. Do you realize, my friends, that both of these apparently opposite views are correct and that both can be wrong? I have often shown you such confusions, where opposite points of view are both right and wrong, and how both can be destructive and unproductive if your will falls under any of the categories I mentioned: if it is strained; if it is governed by immature motives; if you are unaware of it; if it is split; if it is compulsive and too eager. In all of these cases it is correct to say: let go. In other words, relax your selfwill. Find out the unifying forces that lie underneath the split of your will so that gradually it may grow together into one stream. But on the other hand, if your will does not function at all, or if it functions insufficiently, then how can you grow? You do need your will in order to grow, in order to live, and in order to love. And yet you do not on another level. As I have said earlier, you cannot use your direct will power to make yourself feel what as yet you do not feel, even though you may want to feel it. But you do need your will in order to observe yourself in candor and without self-deception, whereupon your capacity for loving and for living grows automatically.

If you want good relationships, then you have to want them. But you must want it without strain and without the expectation of an immediate result. You must not rush for a particular result, bound in time, limited in kind to your own choosing. A relationship includes others and they, too, have to be considered, not only you. If such consideration is not given, then you nullify the relationship's existence. Whether such consideration applies to outer and therefore obvious manifestations, or whether it concerns hidden emotional tendencies and attitudes does not make the slightest difference. The latter is only much harder to determine. This points to the proper combination of wanting and willing while letting free. This means that the selfwill is going out while the good will remains. This good will has to be cultivated anew, over and over again. In it, you let go of your selfwill by giving tolerance to the how and to the when. In it, you cultivate the awareness of your own disturbing currents, and also the needs of the other and the will of the other, while remaining attuned to the fluctuations and the changes. For, nothing that is alive remains static. Only a free spirit can be alert and relaxed enough to follow, to go with the stream of eternally-changing conditions emanating from others, from himself, and from life's circumstances. In order to do so, then your healthy will has to function. You cannot be will-less, but you must be without the rigid confinements of selfwill that dictate the details. This describes the difference between the outer will and the inner will. The inner will comes from your real self, which is intrinsically free. If you allow it its freedom, then it will be without the confinement of your selfwill.

Without the will there can be no life and no growth. If you wish to fulfill yourself and your potentials, then the outer strained will is often a hindrance. But the inner free will has to be cultivated so as to bring about such fulfillment in an indirect way, as it often necessary. The direct approach is awareness, and this does not come by itself. It requires your relaxed will. If the will is coupled with a moralizing judgment, then it turns destructive because the truth then becomes inaccessible. If the will wishes to go beyond your own tendency to moralize and is focused on what is true rather than on what is right, then the will produces truth -- and thereby love.

In any area of your life where you have realized your potentials, and therefore you have experienced a measure of fulfillment, you will have had to renew your will constantly. If you look back, then you will see that this is so. Yet this will must be free enough to not be insistent upon the how and the when. In other words, upon your own particular way in every detail. In anything that you wish, your will has to be cultivated again and again. But in a relaxed, generous way, not in framing it with your own limited concepts; not in wishing for this success or that relationship. Such an attitude will enslave you, whether it is conscious or not. The cultivation of your inner will -- be it for growth, be it for self-awareness, be it for realizing a potential, be it for establishing a meaningful relationship -- must be intended and wanted as to the whole. But as to the parts, then it must be flexible, and it must adapt itself to the ever-changing circumstances, conditions, and factors that pertain to it. With this attitude, you will have the generosity of spirit to let the various life forces emanating from your real self and from the other person go to work in a harmonious way.

Now, my friends, you must study these words. When I say study, I do not mean so much for intellectual understanding. As I have said before, too much intellectual understanding often prohibits inner understanding, and therefore growth. Try to perceive these words with your innermost self. Do not try to make yourself live up to all this. In other words, do not force yourself. See rather see that you deviate, see where you do deviate, and see when and how you deviate, but without judging yourself or compelling yourself to be different immediately. Just see it. As you proceed in your private work on this Path, you will gain a still deeper understanding from this angle; you will understand yourself better, and so you will understand others and you will understand life in a more profound way.

*****
Now, are there any questions regarding this topic?
QUESTION: Can this compulsive over-giving lead to sadism? And, on the other hand, is it the typical root of the missionary?
ANSWER: As to the first question, it would be an over-simplification, and also incorrect, to say that this would lead to sadism. No. But since everything in the human psyche is interconnected, then in some instances one may find a link. By the same token, it may be connected with masochism. Both sadism and masochism, which are only two sides of the same coin as you know, are conditioned and brought forth not by one but by many facets in the human soul. But it would be misleading to say that it comes from this or from that, or that it leads to this or to any other aspect.

As to your second question, there is truth in what you say. When a person wants to force something on another, whether this be love or a belief, then it stems from selfwill. He has to give what he has to offer. I would not say that every missionary necessarily has this trend, but many may. If you have love or salvation to offer, then it takes wisdom. This wisdom comes from accepting the fact that one's own will and one's own ideas may not be welcome to the other person. It takes more maturity and more wisdom that most people have. But to let another free, even in his incompleteness, takes primarily self-awareness.

As to doctrines, no matter how beautiful a doctrine sounds, nothing cripples the spirit and the soul more than adopting a superimposed doctrine, even a correct one. I have spoken about this before, yet it cannot be stressed enough that inner growth and freedom can come only by being yourself. Through a Path such as this, you will come to inwardly experience what some doctrines may teach you in words. That is the only belief that is genuine and that furthers growth.
QUESTION: When you were talking about the will behind love, you mentioned that it is nursed by desire, by a wish. Isn't a will also nursed by experience and judgment? The reason I ask this is, when talking about love, how about emotional incompatibility?
ANSWER: Of course, the will is also determined by experiences; not only by your innermost needs, but also by your experiences. Also by what you have learned. It is an important insight to determine which is which. In other words, which one is your real need. Even if this need is childish and immature as it exists now, it is better for you to own up to this childish need. That does not mean that you have to put it into action, but just to own up to it. In other words, be fully aware that it exists. Thus the need transforms into will. A genuine need transposed into will, even if imperfect and immature, is healthier than a mature and healthy will that is superimposed by outer means, determined by educational influences and by the opinions of others that you may have adopted for one reason or another. This would be the self-alienation that we have discussed so frequently. Even your own personal experiences of the past may be misleading. These experiences are conditioned by your patterns, by your images, and by your preconceived notions. And this limited scope of experiences, as well as your slanted outlook of them, will not give you the freedom of reality. All this may prohibit your meeting life anew and afresh so as to truly widen your horizon and your ability to experience life as fully as possible. However, if you do live up to yourself, imperfect as this self may still be, this spontaneity and the self-awareness of what you really are and of what you truly want at any given time will free you of the shackles of limitation, of preconception, and of a narrow and rigid outlook, all of which are the result of looking away from yourself.

To manipulate your will according to what you know or to what you think is right, or even according to your own limited past experiences, cripples the spontaneity of the real self. Even if the real you wishes something unproductive, but you face this -- without necessarily putting it into action -- then it will be healthier than willing something that is not you. If your will is determined by fear, then you do not even get to the real wish, or to the need behind it. If you determine your will by something that is superimposed -- and therefore that is not experienced by your still childish emotions -- then you are in greater trouble than if you discard the superimposition. Because only then you can get through your childishness and get to that area of your being where this childishness receives the soul forces that make it grow out of itself.

As to the question of incompatibility, I do not quite understand what it is you want to know.
QUESTION: If my childish desire, my love and my will are directed toward a human relationship with somebody with whom there is an incompatibility, then the whole thing is wrong, if such a word expresses what I mean.
ANSWER: If you really understand what I said in this lecture, then this question will be answered. Because if there is such an incompatibility, if such a problem arises, then it is because the will strains -- either from one or perhaps from both -- into a relationship that is not feasible for these particular people. Another type of relationship could exist. But the strong will force pushes reality out of the picture. That which is -- reality -- is not perceived because it does not want to be perceived. Reality should fit into what you wish it to be. Therefore such problems come into existence.
QUESTION: I would like to ask a question for my little grandson. He is living in fear most of the time. As a result of this fear, he constantly gets sick. Now this fear is that those he loves, all his loved ones, are hostile towards each other. And if he loves one, then the other withdraws. He is constantly torn. I wonder if you could show some way?
ANSWER: There is really nothing I can say that you do not know already. However, I will try to help. In the first place, all of you have to face the fact that what he fears is correct. In other words, it is not an invention, an imagination on his part. If you fully face this fact, not just acknowledge it superficially, then such awareness on the part of all of you will already have a healing effect, non only on him but upon all concerned. When you fully face this fact, then you will encounter the problem of your own guilt. You have to become fully aware of this guilt. Such awareness will bring into clear focus the question of: "Have I caused an inner problem in this child by my own imperfection? How can I live with such knowledge?" In your unconscious knowledge of this pressing question, you shy away from facing it and therefore you become more compulsive toward eliminating these destructive feelings that are evidently responsible for the child's fear, and you get to feel even more compulsively what you do not really feel. And this, in turn, aggravates the problem in him and in all of you. It increases fear and guilt all around. However, if you first face up to what you feel and then you fully understand it by going to the roots of it -- which can only be done without guilt and without judging either yourself or others -- then you begin to change the atmosphere even before you are able to feel differently. This must help him. Oh, you can tell him many things and he certainly has unusual understanding in this respect. But what you tell him will not really help unless you face what is without moralizing to anyone, but just accepting your immaturity and, by doing so, learning more about it. Such activity will relieve the strained atmosphere which produces this fear. This strain is caused more by your compulsive striving to be something that you cannot yet be because you do not fully understand the roots. Accept the slow process of your own growth. Remove the compulsion and the impatience, and then the imperfect feelings of hostility will be less harmful than the compulsion to overcome it.

In such a frame of mind, all of you will understand that he, too, brought his unresolved problems into this life, just as you brought your own. The environment only brings out what exists already. It cannot bring out what is not there to begin with. He has to live out his problems, just as you are required to live out yours. Your imperfect parents and your imperfect environmental conditions simply brought your problem to the fore. But this truth will be a personal experience only when you remove your hurry, your lack of acceptance of yourself, your dependence on pleasing the moral standards of others so as to be approved of, your guilt, and your fear. Until such time, you can help him by quietly pursuing this work of self-awareness and of self-acceptance. You know all this, but often it is not applied to the everyday little feelings and emotions which you let go by without first becoming aware of their existence and then eventually of their deeper significance. This will enable you to perceive the effect that you have upon each other -- and in this all of you still have a limited view. That is something that you have not yet taken into consideration. Not really.
QUESTION: You mean, me personally? Or do you mean all of us?
ANSWER: At least you and your daughter who are in this work of self-finding. Both of you have found in your discoveries about yourselves that what your grandson fears is actually so. You have pursued this pattern of division of loyalty. By now, you understand not only the fact that this is so, but, to a degree, why this is so. And this is a great improvement. But you do not as yet understand -- or experience, or are sensitive to -- the effect that this has on others: that this understanding will also help the child -- but understanding without moralizing.
QUESTION: Is there such a thing as numerology, that certain numbers are favorable and others not?
ANSWER: I strongly advise against such things. Very strongly.
QUESTION: Is it nature's plan that a child develops a reaction, a neurosis against a parent or parents, regardless of how good or kind these parents happen to be?
ANSWER: It certainly is not nature's plan. No. This shows a complete misconception of man and of life. It is man's doing. You can grasp and understand why it should be that certain children have the best and most favorable circumstances and nevertheless develop so-called neuroses, while in other cases the conditions may be extremely unfavorable and yet comparatively little neurosis exists. We cannot say none, of course, since no human being is free of it. The only way to understand this is to remember that you are not born once, but that you come back again and again carrying the problems that are as yet unresolved. It is not nature that gave you these problems.
QUESTION: At one time you told us that it was easier to work on this Path here on earth than in the spirit world. Yet we know that our loved ones are developing too. They, too, are working for their self-realization and are helped by our work on ourselves. Could you explain how this works?
ANSWER: Growth and self-development can, to a degree, take place in every sphere of being. But where the hindrances and the obstacles are the greatest, there growth can be most effective, provided the person in question so desires. Without hindrances or obstacles, then the deeply imbedded problems are not called forth. They cannot manifest, therefore you lack awareness of them. Without such awareness, then you cannot grow out of then. All this I have explained in the past.

In the spiritual spheres -- where you live without your physical body -- you are in a kind of life where you do not encounter the hindrances caused by matter. Without this obstacle, one can still grow and develop to a degree, but certainly not to the same degree. Matter is a constant hindrance. It is one resistance. We have talked about psychological resistance. But this is only one aspect, one small fragment of resistance as such. Each life in matter is one resistance. If you had no resistance whatsoever, then you could not live at all. Yet when you resist too much, then you cripple yourself according to the degree of your resistance. And if the degree passes a certain limit, then you cannot live either. Life on earth requires a certain equilibrium between not too much resistance and not too little resistance. Just as with the will. The will is a force that overcomes the resistance of matter, the resistance of separation. If it is too strong, then it is harmful. If it is too weak, then it will not sufficiently overcome the resistance of matter. In fact you can grow much faster because of the resistance. By learning to deal with it, you develop inwardly to just the right degree, to the proper balance. Needless to say, it cannot be learned by rules, by regulations, by laws, and by doctrines that you absorb with your brain. This is an inner feeling that develops out of such pathwork as you are doing. It is intuitive knowledge, not superimposed knowledge. You grow into the right stream of the particular degree of resistance that you need. It is not the same for everyone. Each person has a personal vibration, or frequency, which is the sum total of his entire being, both outer and inner. According to this personal vibration, the resistance has to fit, as it were, to the general resistance of matter. To the degree that you live productively and harmoniously, to that degree your vibration is in harmony with the general resistance of matter. That is why development on earth proceeds so much faster.

Be blessed, each one of you. May these words ring an echo in your innermost being. May they become fruitful for you, perhaps not immediately, perhaps only in months to come, or even in years, when, in your work of self-finding, you come to the point when you will really understand what I told you in this lecture. Be in peace, my dearest ones. Be in God.
May 11, 1962
Copyright 1962, 1979 by Center for the Living Force, Inc.