Three Aspects That Prevent Man From Loving

By The Pathwork Guide

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

When I offer these blessings, what does this word mean to you? Is this not often a mere word, without meaning, without reality? Yet it is a very definite reality. If only you were really free of all your barriers -- of all the layers that prevent you from feeling, from living, and from experiencing to the fullest -- then these blessings would be a reality for you. You would feel the actual stream, the current of love that flows to each and every one of you from a world of light, from a world of freedom, from a world of harmony, from a world of truth, from a world of love. But this stream is often unable to either penetrate you or to reach you, and thus to first be perceived and then experienced by you because the senses that are destined for such perception are dulled. They are dulled by your fears, by your shames, by your urgent wishes, and by your guards. All these fears, shames, unfulfilled needs, urgent wishes, and guards are based on error, on confusion, and on misconception.

How often have I discussed this in our time together! But, again, too often my words become mere words that you read but that you do not truly understand and therefore experience. They can be a reality only if and when you find their particular truth within yourself. However, this cannot be done by intellectual deductions and findings, but only when you allow yourself to feel, to live through your emotions, and thereby determine the specific misconceptions that you have harbored all your life. The awareness of your untruth brings you much nearer to the love current coming to you from without and to the love current within yourself.

Within each individual there exists a well of wisdom and of love. Deep within you there is a treasure that can come to the fore only as you become aware of all those aspects that barricade this treasure. You are accustomed to look for truth, to look for guidance, and to look for the solutions to your problems outside of yourself -- perhaps through wise teachings, by means of a helping hand, or even for guidance that comes from outside yourself. But the most reliable and the most realistic answers come from inside yourself. In order to tap that well, then outside help is necessary, but only if it finally succeeds in bringing you to this inner well.

Apart from this Path of self-confrontation, there is an additional way to help you to tap this well. You have to seek calmness both outside and inside. Everyday, enter into a meditation whereby you become very still so that the inner noise covering this well makes itself precisely known to you. After translating this noise, then such a meditation will finally bring out of that well wise guidance, warm feelings of love, of affection, and of the understanding of others, without your own urgent needs blurring the realistic perception of others.

He who wants to disregard that inner noise -- the result of your fears, of your shames, of your guards, of your defenses, and of your urgent needs -- and who wants to bypass it, and therefore come directly to the well of calmness, will not really reach the inner treasure. He may think so, but this does not make it real. In relaxed openness, the momentary existence of the barrier and of the noise first has to be acknowledged and then has to be translated into meaning. That is the way, my friends. Such daily periods of becoming calm so as to determine the meaning of the barrier to the calm will help you greatly. Therefore, this practice must not be neglected.

We have discussed at length how harmful such barriers are for you. But in the past the emphasis of our discussion was on yourself, and not so much on you in relationship with others. Yet your unhappiness and your confusion is always in connection with others. In other words, in connection with the difficulty of coping with your fellow creatures. Therefore, we will now use the knowledge you have gained about yourself through your work on this Path and apply it to your relationship with others.

When you calmly observe your reactions to others, then you are bound to first discover and then become acutely aware of an inner tension, a cramped closing up. This prevents you from meeting others freely, without restriction, and without inner tension. You cannot reach out without grabbing. You cannot expect without urgent demands. You cannot give out without fear. Only when you meet others in your willingness to love them can your life be really fulfilled, no matter how worthy your various activities may be. The fear always says: "But what about all these people who take advantage of such warm, loving feelings? If I do not guard myself and I let myself feel, then I will suffer." It is true that your inner well, with its wise guidance and its reliable intuition, cannot function when it is thickly covered. By covering it even more thickly through prohibiting your feelings, you do not free that well, which cannot lead you astray if it is unblocked. So the remedy must be sought by allowing the covering barriers to reach your conscious understanding.

In the absence of this profound communication with others, you are in isolation. Consequently, you cannot possibly be happy. We have discussed many aspects which prevent this deep communication with others. Let us now discuss three particular aspects which constitute an inner No to loving. This inner No is due not only to the fear of suffering hurt and disappointment, but there are other aspects which have not been sufficiently discussed and which therefore need a deeper understanding.

The three aspects to be considered can be found in almost all human beings to some degree. Yet, one of the three points might be predominant while the other two may be of lesser importance. No matter how little you may feel at the moment that they apply to you, it is important that you look into yourself and that you first closely watch your emotional reactions and then translate them into a concise thought. You are bound to find that the one, the other, or all of these aspects exist in you in various degrees of strength.

The first aspect is the fear that if you allow yourself to feel as you naturally tend to feel, then you may be forced to do something which you do not want to do. Either to sacrifice when you have no desire to do so, or to give in when it is either disadvantageous or inconvenient. You believe that the only way to safeguard yourself against the excessive and perhaps even childish demands of others is by curbing your natural feelings, thereby cutting off the love current from within yourself. Conversely, you believe that if you were to allow yourself these natural feelings, then you would be forced to give in to it. You do not see another alternative. Hence, as a result of the misconception of seeing only these two alternatives, you undermine the organic process of your emotional growth by manipulating your feelings in a negative and destructive way. This has the gravest repercussions both on your psychic life and upon your relationship with others. Let me name a few of the many repercussions of this deliberate prohibition to loving: one is a deep-seated guilt; another is a lack of self-confidence; a third is a lack of self-respect. The need to make up for this unloving state of mind is often assuaged by doing much more for others than one would ordinarily do, and then really being taken advantage of as a consequence. Only all that is done without love -- as a substitute for the love that is being witheld. Therefore, the deeds do not remove the guilt. This proves that you cannot help but wind up in the situation that you are striving so frantically to avoid when the means of avoidance are false or unrealistic. In other words, they are based on wrong conclusions, on images. All the emotions that stem from this misconception -- guilt, resentment for doing what now you do compulsively and as a substitute for not loving, the lack of self-respect -- create confusion and therefore make you incapable of coping with people in close relationships. This produces the additional result of your either being constantly involved with others in a negative way, or of withdrawing, and therefore living in bitter isolation which, in turn, breeds frustration. These are the barriers to your well of wisdom, of love, and of intuition, all of which give you the proper inner guidance.

How is the situation when viewed with a truthful outlook? It is possible to love without having to fulfill every demand, without having to give in. Is it not better to be selfish, if you wish to be, in deeds, while still loving and feeling? Is it not much better, and actually much less selfish, than doing everything possible but without loving? When you do not love, then this self-assertion is very hard because your gnawing guilt for not loving either paralyzes you, or, if you manage to voice your objections, then they will come out in a very hurting way. If you love, then you cannot really hurt another by refusing to fulfill her demands. Disagreements and refusal no longer represent monsters that you have to fight against. They become relaxed, easy, and unproblematic. In your ability to love, you will feel yourself to be more lovable. Therefore, you will be able to say No outwardly because your inner No to loving and to feeling has been removed.

This does not mean that you artificially try to force love where it does not exist naturally. This would be useless. But detect that fine and subtle current -- at first often covered up -- in which you withdraw from your organic, natural feelings, stunting them deliberately, as it were. Once you come across this aspect of your non-love and you become more aware of it, then you can let it go free. In this knowledge of the truth -- in your understanding of the truth that the two alternatives are not the only ones -- you will stop your prohibition and you will gain a new freedom, with the most joyful, strengthening, and liberating results.

If there are no warm, loving feelings to begin with, then just see what is there. You will find all the negative emotions under discussion here. First these have to be acknowledged and then they have to be understood. In other words, neither pushed away nor suppressed. When you understand them sufficiently, then the warm natural feelings of affection are bound to come out eventually. For they are in you. In other words, they do not have to be given to you from the outside. They are only buried under the negative emotions which are the result of not allowing the productive emotions to come to fruition because you harbor a simple misunderstanding. Since this misunderstanding is not out in the open, then it is not amenable to correction. This is why the image has to be made known first. You have to see clearly why it is a misunderstanding, an image. Then you can proceed. If you follow through the scale of your feelings, truly experiencing them as they come up, then you will probably go through the following sequences: the misunderstanding, the image, causes the deliberate cutting off of your natural productive feelings. This, in turn, results in guilt, in fear, in uncertainty, in anger, in resentment, in helpless rage, and in a confused fluctuation between giving in too much and being too severe. All these feelings and confusions have to be fully experienced before you can actually feel the reality of the love that is in you.

At first your love will manifest only occasionally and weakly, not dramatically. But when it does, then be aware of it. Let it be, and then see what a wonderful effect it has both on you and on those about you. One of its effects on others will be that their excessive demands diminish the moment they sense a love current from you, even if you do not commit any deeds in connection with it. For their demands are often an unconscious, blind outlet for the love they seek. They are too confused to realize that affection, understanding, and love are much more important to them than what they demand. Their demands, in turn, are the substitute for what they really seek. Once this is given, then the demands are bound to diminish in the ratio of the love that you are genuinely capable of feeling.

The second aspect is this. Amost everyone has a symbolic superior world that he wants to be accepted by, that he wants to belong to. When this superior world happens to be seemingly unfeeling, undemonstrative, or even tough, then you do not dare to let yourself feel that which you naturally feel out of the fear of being despised by this superior world. This is especially strong when your natural warm feelings are directed towards someone you are convinced you should look down upon, according to the imagined or real standards of this superior world. Whether or not it is true that the people belonging to this world feel that way, the damage you do to yourself is of the gravest consequences. Chances are that these same people actually feel differently from the way you think. In other words, that they would respect you, like you, and accept you much more if you were a kind and loving person who does not deny, and therefore betray, the best in himself in order to get approval. They may not be aware of these reactions, but since the unconscious currents are a reality, then their reaction would prove this to be so. You are bound to find this out, but only when you have the courage to be yourself. For some, it takes much more courage to be themselves -- to be in their loving selves -- than it would take to be their self-assertive, strong selves.

But let us suppose that the superior world of your aspiration is actually the way you think it is. Does this not mean that their representatives are just as immature in this respect as you are? To emulate such immaturity can never produce self-respect and certainty in your personality. All it can do is to create self-contempt and guilt. It must rob you of the firm ground under your feet that only being yourself can grant you. To simulate a false strength by your denial of loving and by the betrayal of your real self at the expense of the apparent weaker ones -- whom you are supposed to reject and to despise -- produces the same self-hate that is produced when a person lacks courage and the strength of self-assertion, and when he consequently submits in evident weakness. This false strength is, in reality and in essence, just as weak and just as submissive. You who belong in this category submit for the sake of approval by denying the best in you. You deliberately set up a process of self-alienation by first discouraging your natural warm feelings and then artificially producing toughness.

All this is not consciously thought. In other words, you may not be aware of these inner processes. But if you look closely at some of your reactions, then you may discover that this holds true for you. Or perhaps you are already aware of it to some degree, but you have never thought about it in these terms. To carry the significance of these reactions further is bound to give you a more comprehensive view about it, and thus to change these childish attitudes. Thus, when you have the courage to be true to your real self -- even if your real self loves a person whom the superior world decrees you are supposed to despise -- then you will discover that the whole division of a superior world and an inferior world is an illusion. This discovery will set you free and it will give you a strength such as you cannot envision now.

For those of you who have not yet delved into your being in some depth, then what I say here might sound rather far-fetched, or even silly. But for some of my friends these words will be a reality and they will help them to dissolve some crippling misunderstandings that they harbor about life and about people.

The third aspect of the inner No against loving may at first sound paradoxical. People who predominantly have this aspect have such a great need for fulfillment and love that non-fulfillment presents a special fear and a threat. Their remedy is a strong forcing current. This remedy only prohibits a free giving of love. In its own devious way it causes an inner No to giving in a relaxed and calm way. On the one hand it grabs and on the other hand it makes demands. Yes, the person wants to give, but he does so compulsively in order to have his own demands fulfilled, not wisely and with a sensitive awareness of what the other person needs and wants. Therefore the giving is not free, it is not genuine.

This category is often on the other side of the fence, so to speak, from the first category I discussed. They often get into conflict with one another. The demands and the forcing current frighten away the other person, even if these demands parade under the guise of giving.

The one who is so starved -- and who therefore is terrified of refusal -- must be blind to others. All he feels is his own need. He has no room for the other person. Therefore, he lacks the calmness to look at the other person and to sense the other's needs. Refusal is so devastating to him that he courts it by his urgency. When it comes, then all he experiences is the confirmation of his worthlessness. This distorted view prohibits a true evaluation of the situation in question. His worthlessness has nothing to do with his defeat. The other person's fears and the other person's problems may be just as responsible for it as is his own blindness in seeing the world and others only in terms of his own worth or the lack of it, and the subsequent powerful forcing current employed to dispel the dreaded worthlessness.

The realistic remedy for the person who belongs predominantly in this category is, broadly speaking, the following. First, he has to face his lack of belief in himself and then to find out the real reasons -- such as his lack of loving, which is often disguised by an over-eagerness to give for the purpose of receiving love, just as a child wants to be loved. Secondly, he has to find all the distorted concepts, then to understand why they are distorted, and finally to allow himself to experience all the feelings that come up in the process of this self-search. Chances are that underneath the conscious urgent need he will find some reason for prohibiting his real feelings, which he confuses with genuine feelings of affection for others. The latter is a much less urgent, a much calmer emotion. It is not self-centered, as the need is. These mature feelings do exist, but they have been prohibited from developing, and this point has to be made conscious. Repeated unfulfillment hurts much more than it need hurt because of a childish inability to stand frustration. Before fulfillment can come, the various points outlined earlier have to be followed through.

This takes time. In the course of this, more disappointments may come. But now they can be utilized for the work and can serve as wonderful means for discovering more about the self. In the meantime, what one can simultaneously learn in full awareness is to swing with the tide. In other words, not to resist it by a wild struggling of soul forces. Thus the maturity will come in teaching the soul to be able to stand frustration without either repression or anger. This has the healing effect of bringing the pendulum into a more balanced position. From an over-activity -- the forcing current, the wild struggling -- a serenity is generated, which then brings the person closer to the state of being.

It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that all the frustrated emotions -- causing the urgency and therefore the starvation -- have to be allowed to simmer onto the surface, and have to be translated into meaning and thereby into understanding. In this person another reaction exists that also has to be brought to awareness and faced. Sometimes when the needs are fulfilled, then the so-called love suddenly wears off. This should furnish proof of the fact that what he thought was love is not really love but is actually starving need -- certainly a great difference. In this connection is the fact that this person is just as incapable of fulfilling other people's needs as those belonging to the former category are. He backs away from them, just as the others do. The recognition of this fact is of primary importance. In this hidden counter-current he is just as afraid to let down his guards as are the others, only this fear is covered up by the manifest need and the fear of the non-fufillment.

All that he can see is either what he wants, or what he fears will come into being. He can see nothing else. He is torn between these two alternatives, interpreting every outer happening into either the one alternative or the other alternative. In neither alternative does he see reality.

This is food for thought and material for your further work for each and every one of you. I venture to say that with most people a combination of all these three aspects exists in some way. But with many people one aspect is obvious, and therefore is not difficult to verify. There is no one for whom one of these aspects is not immediately applicable. If you work with it, then you cannot help but register further results. These lectures are destined for the levels of your being where such irrational attitudes exist. They are not addressed to your rational thinking.

And now, my friends, let us turn to your questions.

QUESTION: Can you elaborate on the difference between pity and compassion? As one gets older and sees so many of one's friends suffering, what is the proper attitude?

ANSWER: I will be glad to give additional help in this question if I can, although this topic was discussed in the past. However, if I were to say what the right feeling should be in theory, then it would not help you at all. All you would tend to do would be to further manipulate your feelings and to superimpose attitudes that are not genuinely yours. You know that this cannot be a healthy procedure. Rather, it is important for you to acknowledge what you really feel, whether right or wrong. In addition to what I said generally about the difference between pity and compassion, I now want to present an explanation indicating why one feels pity instead of the much more productive feeling of compassion. When you are crushed by this devastating emotion of pity -- which prohibits your strength and therefore the help that you can give -- then you can be sure that you are somewhere involved. For instance, a projection of your fear that the same fate which the other suffers may come to you. Or you feel guilty about something that you may not be aware of. A universal facet in this respect is that the person feels a certain satisfaction at the other's mishap, a satisfaction not only that he himself does not have to bear that fate, but also that the other is being punished and has difficulties. This is entirely irrational. This attitude consists of considerations such as this: "If others have hardships too, then I am not so bad. I don't want to be the only one who suffers. Therefore I am glad that others suffer too." This reaction produces such a shock and such guilt that it is entirely repressed and then over-compensated for by a weakening, unproductive pity. Then in this pity the person feels absolved because he suffers with the other person, but in a destructive way.

If you can first discover and then feel through these original reactions, accepting the fact that you are a mere human being -- in other words, one who cannot help having many unpurified emotions, many childish, selfish, and shortsighted attitudes -- and you can learn to do so without condemning yourself, without condoning yourself, and without justifying yourself -- then you can learn to understand what is behind these unreasonable attitudes. Then they will gradually dissolve, in the measure that you truly understand them. Pity will transform itself into compassion. Therefore, constructive help will be possible, whether it can be given through certain actions or just by feeling.

QUESTION: In the past you discussed the close connection between cause and effect. Are we then to believe that we are living in a world of causality, where identical effects stem from identical causes?

ANSWER: Of course, this is a world of causality. As for the identical causes producing identical effects, it depends on what exactly you mean by "identical." What may appear like two identical causes may in reality not be identical at all. In other words, the act may be the same, but the two individuals are different. Let us take a crass example like murder. Let us assume that two people commit a murder, even for the same motive. Yet the background that led to this action, the feelings that led to it, as well as their overall development, their personality, and their character traits may be different from one another. Their reactions after the act may not be identical. Therefore the effect -- not necessarily the outer effect, but the effect upon the two individuals in question -- may not be identical at all.

But if you mean that this law of cause and effect is, to the finest detail, an organic, infinitely just, and harmonious process, a balancing factor in the entire universe, so exact in its workings that error and injustice are utterly impossible, then in that sense identical effects do stem from identical causes.

Why it should be so hard for man to accept the fact that he lives in a world of causality is not easy to understand. When he looks at the world and the events in it, then he is constantly confronted with the living reality of cause and effect. With the smallest daily issues cause and effect operate. But he is so used to it, it is so much part of his daily life, that he takes it for granted. He has lost the ability to see it with the newness that is necessary in order to derive a deeper understanding out of it. If man were able to see what constantly happens, then it would not be so difficult for him to realize that the same law must also exist in wider issues. He would not assume that a different law operates merely because in one instance cause and effect are close together, while in other issues they are separated by time. Time has no bearing on it. It has a bearing only in disclosing to you either the cause or the effect. Sometimes man can see both. Sometimes he can see only one or the other. If man would think logically to the very end of this phenomenon, then he would realize that his ability to see either the cause or the effect does not change the fact that they are interdependent.

When you begin to uncover cause and effect in your personal life, then what is called faith -- and what is really the personal experience of a truth -- comes into being. Then it is no longer a question of superimposing either doctrines or postulates. So far, various happenings and various results for which you saw no cause have puzzled you. By getting to know yourself better, then you discover the causes for many effects. You discover them as an indisputable fact. This gives you not only freedom and strength, but it also shows you the causality in its true light. Then you know that the same law of causality must also hold true where you cannot know the causes -- be it with your own life, be it with others, be it with the world, or be it with creation in general.

***

My dearest friends, may these words fall on fruitful soil. May you all come a step closer to seeing your own barriers, for that is the most constructive step towards removing them. The human error lies in the fact that man wants to deny the barrier's existence, thus pushing against it, and thereby only strengthening it. In other words, he wants to remove it without seeing what that barrier really is. But once he becomes aware of it and he understands its components, then he realizes that it cannot be pushed away by force. It can dissolve only gradually, in the measure that this barrier is better understood.

A warm stream, a current of love is reaching towards each one of you. Make yourself inwardly calm. Detect your fears, your guards, your shames, your embarrassment, your resistance against your natural feelings. As you do so, then this divine stream will be able to reach you much better. It will send some aspects of its force into your hearts. Then it will fill you with light, with strength, and with hope. Be in peace, be in God.

October 12, 1962