The Fundamental Guilt For Not Loving -- Obligations

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless every one of you. Blessed is this lecture. May this lecture give you renewed strength, renewed insight into your lives, renewed insight into your problems, and may it show you the road. May it give you a glimmer of light if you are hopeless and a new influx of strength if you feel weak.

The universe is forever expanding. All the cosmic forces strain toward expansion, strain toward growth, strain toward union, strain toward integration. Since each individual entity is a universe unto itself, then he follows this movement toward growth and toward outgoingness. If these forces are disturbed, or are thrown out of their natural channels, then love cannot prevail. All religions have always taught that love is the key to life. Without love nothing counts.

On our path together we have done more than merely teach this truth. Together we have tried to understand what misconceptions and what deviations prevent you from being in harmony with the universal forces. Your world on earth is a troubled one. Life is difficult, not only because of the struggle for physical survival, but even more so in these times because of the struggle for the soul's survival. This world is full of human beings whose soul forces are more or less disturbed. If the degree of disturbance is great, then one refers to these people as mentally ill. If the degree is less, then one calls these disturbed souls neurotic. The words do not matter, for the terminology changes with the times, but the underlying cause is always the same: the cosmic inner forces cannot flow organically because people do not dare to love -- that is, to let these inner forces free to grow in their natural, organic way.

For humanity as a whole the result is strife, uncertainty, unrest and the absence of peace. For the individual the same holds true. Often people become physically ill. They have trouble in their relationships and in their work. They cannot cope with life and they seek all sorts of solutions, but they rarely discover the real cause, and therefore the real cure. A deeply permeating guilt gnaws at their soul. This is a different kind of guilt from the more specific -- and often unjustified -- guilts that smolder more on the surface of the psyche.

These little unjustified guilts substitute for the real guilt, the guilt of withdrawal, the guilt of unlovingness, the guilt of isolation. In other words, these little guilts are supposed to atone for violating the great cosmic inner forces -- for breaking the flow, as it were. This very deeply rooted guilt prevents you from claiming your freedom, it prevents you from asserting yourself, and it prevents you from feeling that you deserve to be happy. When you feel undeserving of happiness, then you need to discover specifically where and how you do not love. In other words, where your pride, your selfwill, your fear, your separateness, your petty self-pampering, and your cowardice surround you with a wall of isolation, when you could be floating freely with the universal love current. The ensuing misery is due not only to the outer emptiness of your life in the areas where no love prevails, but even more to the deeply hidden guilt about it. It is not easy to unearth this particular guilt. But if you truly want to find it, then you will. As long as this guilt is not found, verified, acknowledged and experienced, then the other work on images and misconceptions will not really help you.

We have often talked about the harm of your defenses, the harm of a self-righteous or moralizing attitude with yourself and with others, the harm of your perfectionism -- the rigid standards that you comply with, often to the letter but seldom in the spirit. These lead to a harsh, ascetic life that is joy-negating. Why do you believe that such defenses exist? They exist because the troubled psyche seeks a solution, but the message of the psyche is misunderstood by the conscious mind. The psyche says to you: "Give up your defenses against loving. Do not hold yourself apart. Do not be miserly with your feelings. You are wrong. You sin against the vital law of life. Make up for it! Change! Become a loving person!" But the conscious mind does not translate this message properly and struggles to be correct, to be good, to be right. But what is being right without love? Nothing. Perfectionism -- as a substitute and as an atonement -- has the opposite effect because it is unloving and isolated. It emphasizes the self and how it appears in the eyes of others, rather than emphasizing the other person. Therefore the soul gets more deeply ensnared in confusion, in unrest, in anxiety, and in guilt. Its messages become harder to decipher, because these pseudo solutions only abet your self-alienation.

Now it is necessary that you gain an overview of how this process connects with your deeply rooted guilt for not loving. In other words, for disturbing your outgoing cosmic flow. The work that we are doing together must finally lead you to this. For then the road or the curve upward can begin. Until you find this particular prohibition toward loving, as it exists specifically within yourself, then your seeking and finding within your soul will often seem hopeless, in spite of occasional victories. You will ask yourself: "Where does all this lead me? What good is it? How can I change?" Only when you finally see -- not theoretically and intellectually but actually -- your selfish withdrawal from loving, regardless of how well you keep it concealed, often by your superperfectionism and by your right actions, can you come to terms with yourself. Only then can you make restitution. Only then you can atone in a truthful and constructive way and begin to change in this respect. How? If you truly want to know, then you will know. You must expiate this inner guilt, which is much deeper than all the little ones which often are unjustified and which function only to conceal the real ones. You need to atone in order for your soul to become healthy and peaceful so that you can finally like yourself, respect yourself, and be comfortable with yourself. Theoretical knowledge will not help you, except to inspire you to set out to uncover your hidden guilt for not loving.

I repeat this because it is constantly forgotten by my friends. An action, a thought, or an attitude is seldom either good or bad in itself, either right or wrong in itself. This can be said only of the most extreme actions, and even then it is often misleading to label them as such. The value of an action, the value of a thought, or the value of an attitude can be determined only by finding out whether it is motivated by love or motivated by separateness, by selfishness, by fear, and by pride. You still evaluate yourself and others by an act -- by an outer manifestation -- and you disregard what is behind it.

The same deed or the same attitude coming from two different people, or even from the same person at different times, in one instance can be a loving act -- and therefore a liberating experience for all concerned -- while in another instance the identical action can be a petty and degrading one. The loving deed comes either from true concern for another or from a spiritual issue that is at stake. The self is not of primary importance here. Or it might be that the action that outwardly appears noble is inwardly less so than another deed that has the opposite appearance. This is very confusing for you. Evaluating someone else's actions calls for your intuitive faculties. These faculties can be developed only if you learn to be truthful with yourself and if you admit that your very proper and correct behavior is often not dictated by love at all.

Let us now consider something else from this standpoint. Often you are convinced that your actions are ethical and moral, even though you may already have discovered that your motives are selfish, and therefore not loving. Your motives may be the desire for approval or the desire for admiration or the desire for being loved, but not for loving. These are selfish motives. While you may admit to these motives, you are still convinced that your behavior leaves nothing to be desired. And yet often even this is not true. At times it may be true, but you do not see the many times when your selfish motives induce you to act selfishly. Your awareness is geared to right actions, not to selfish ones. You still ignore the latter, just as you ignored the selfish motives behind your unselfish acts. Your hidden selfish motives induce you to act them out, thereby adversely affecting your surroundings. The guilt may then make you overly submissive and it may lead you to give in to the unjustified demands of others. This will only strengthen their own selfishness. Then you become confused. As a result, you do not know when to assert yourself against their unjustified demands and when to give, and thus act unselfishly.

Truthfulness with yourself finally helps you to see where you disturb the universal forces by prohibiting yourself from loving. As you recognize this, you will let go of that prohibition for the sake of love. If you cultivate the deep desire to change, then you will find ways and means to change both inwardly and outwardly. This means that you will give up your little fears, your misgivings, your imagined shame, and your vulnerability for the sake of loving. You will be led by concern for others and for what is good and constructive in itself. This will make you free, flowing, and secure.

My friends, this is not a sermon. These words are directed to a deeply hidden layer or core of your being. Often the stronger the knowledge in your brain, the more ignorant you are in a deeper part of your being. Think carefully about all this. Try to apply it in your meditations and in your self-search, and try to find where and how it holds true for you. Do not apply it to others whom you may resent -- for that temptation is always great -- but see it in yourself. As you notice your own perfectionism and your own little guilts, then try to find another kind of guilt behind all of them.

Now I would like to cover another topic, that of obligations. Many of you in your self-search have found your rebellion against living. This rebellion may assume various forms. It may manifest -- it may take shape -- as sloth, as apathy, as stagnation, or as a sense of utter drabness, where everything becomes an effort and you would rather do nothing at all.

Why do you rebel against life? It is not only the unhappiness or the pain or the fear that you rebel against. Although that, too, is one reason, there is also another. You resent the obligations, you resent the responsibilities, and you resent the duties that life imposes upon you. Your fight for your physical survival and for your psychological survival necessitates alertness, the power to make decisions, and the willingness to make mistakes and to learn from them. You must expose yourself and act in the face of risk. When you do not say Yes to life in loving, Yes to life in relating, and Yes to life in your obligations, then you are pushed and dragged through life against your will. If you want to remain sane, then you have to go through this active part of living, but you do so against the stream, as it were. You submit to it because you have to and not because you have said Yes to it. If you do not willingly say Yes to life in all its aspects, but instead you allow yourself to be pushed by it, then you cannot experience the dignity of life, the grandeur of life, and the beauty of life.

You go to the extreme of your unwillingness when you refuse to shoulder your moral obligations toward yourself. You may acknowledge your accountability for your own misery in theory, but when it comes to practical living, then you wish to absolve yourself from it. Subsequently everything in your life becomes a tedious task. In an advanced stage even the daily routines of living -- such as eating, getting up, cleaning yourself, and doing little chores -- may become too much for you. There is neither dignity nor freedom in performing everyday chores, be they big or small.

When everything is an ordeal, then it means that something in you rebels. If you absolve yourself from your accountability for your personal unfulfillment and for your trouble, and therefore if you refuse to look for the inner connections, then such a weariness is the inevitable outcome. You want things done for you. You do not want to cope with decisions, you do not want to cope with the strain of living. Or, to put it more accurately, what ordinarily would be an exhilarating challenge now becomes a strain. How can you resolve this, my friends?

I would like to point out that deep within there is something in you that has not said Yes to the fight, to the challenge that life puts to us. Find this little voice, bring it out into the open, and then accept its meaning. You will find that this voice belongs to a greedy child that wants to receive everything but that wants to give nothing. Ascertain the selfishness and the laziness in this voice once you bring it out of hiding. When you understand its nature, and you see it without false moralizing and without justification, then you will want to change. Mature responsibility also requires love and unselfishness. Find where, why, and how these are lacking when you put up a lazy resistance against assuming responsibility in your life, or you do so only because you have to. You will eventually change your inner attitude and then you will go with life rather than go against life. When you are constantly tired, when you are apathetic, when you find yourself constantly in the throes of depression, when you are in a state of rebellion, then investigate whether this basic rejection of life holds true or whether it does not.

When you discover this rejection, then allow it to come out just as irrationally and just as unreasonably as it exists. Do not be ashamed of it. Pronounce it to yourself, write it down, open up unrestrainedly to your helper and reveal all the comfortable illusory ideals that you harbor. Maybe this voice will state that it just likes to vegetate and do nothing, that it does not wish to overcome, that it does not wish to make any effort, that it does not wish to cope with people and with their demands. For example, to make the effort to decide whether these demands are justified or not. It does not want to deal with obstructions, it does not want to deal with frustrations, it does not want to deal with criticisms. It will tell you that you just wish to float.

In everything there is a healthy side and a destructive aspect as well. So it is with the desire to float. There is the healthy floating, that comes from following the universal powers of love and from being active in life -- from saying Yes to it. Then there is the unhealthy version, the distortion, in which one wishes merely to vegetate and not to shoulder life at all. Only when you determine this unhealthy desire concisely, and you acknowledge it without self-deception, can you begin to find out why this seems so tempting.

I venture to say that there are as many reasons as there are individuals, but there are always certain common denominators. There is the fear of exposure to failure and to inadequacy -- in other words, pride. There is the desire for greater perfection than you have; it is a substitute for the love that you do not allow yourself to feel. And there is the link. If you love, then you you do not need not be so perfect. Therefore, you need not fear failure. If you did not fear failure so much, then life would not become so difficult. Often, it is the unconscious terror of failure that makes life so arduous. So here we have the pride and the fear. Or, you may say No to life because you cannot stand anything going against your will. You fear frustration, so you do not willingly go along with life. Here we are back to pride, to selfwill, and to fear -- the fundamental faults that prohibit love and that disturb the soul.

In each case you will have to start from your own consciousness of feelings and of reactions. At first they may appear to have no similarity with pride, with selfwill, or with fear. But when you look closely and you analyze their significance, then you will always come back to this triad. And when you go a step further, then you will see that these three attitudes directly prohibit love and are contrary to it. Because of them you harbor a deep-seated guilt, whether or not you are aware of it. Hence you burden yourself with attitudes and with behaviors that are infinitely more difficult to live with than the love that you originally wished to grow into.

I recommend that you set out to find how much rebellion you have against life and how it takes shape in your life. Find where, deep inside, you equate having no obligations with freedom. Then seek to understand that this image is wrong. Ponder this lecture and see how both parts of it -- the guilt for not loving and the problem of obligations -- have one common denominator.

And now, to your questions.

QUESTION: You mean to say that when a person's attitude toward life is correct and positive, then his feelings will be right also, and consequently his actions will benefit him and others? In other words, that it all depends on this fundamental attitude?

ANSWER: Yes, that is precisely what I am saying. This may sound very simple, but it is a laborious path to establish this fundamental attitude, so that it accords with the universal forces.

QUESTION: We are planning to make some changes and improvements in the discussion sessions. Would you have any suggestions?

ANSWER: Yes. I will not go into technical details, for this is something that my friends can work out among themselves. The laborious road of trial and error is a test from which each individual can learn. When you build something together in this way, then you will gain a sense of accomplishment that has much more value than simply following advice. For then your spirit will be in it. After all, this is the only thing that matters. Therefore the question is: How to go about it so that your spirit is in it together, with as many participants as possible?

To help in that direction, I will remind you of the purpose of these sessions. The idea of these discussion groups is to help you to put into practice -- so as to assimilate it -- a theoretical knowledge and to apply it to your private lives. If you approach the discussion with this outlook and you constantly remind each other of that, then it will keep you from abstract theorizing. You would not really need meetings to just theorize, which comes easily for most of you anyway. Let your aim be to voice where you do not understand something emotionally. Through your private work and through your group work you will verify that such emotional understanding is still lacking. The first step toward understanding is always the acknowledgment and the concise verbalization of what one does not understand. This is always half the battle. Let each person pronounce what may have been understood intellectually but not yet emotionally. In other words, what is not yet a living experience. Then the others may help with clarification, perhaps by way of examples. Personal exposure is not necessary. In other words, the discussion can be kept general. This should not be confused with the group work. The important thing is to help you toward an emotional assimilation. Others who have had the experience, perhaps through having worked out a particular point under discussion, may show you how to arrive at this inner assimilation.

However, if something is not yet understood intellectually, then these study groups are the place to air it. If your pride prevents you from doing so, then it is not only to your detriment, but also to the detriment of the entire venture. The right spirit, humility, and honesty will make your discussions a living, dynamic experience. Otherwise, they will become dull, and therefore will drag on and on.

The speed with which these study groups can grow into a meaningful venture depends, first, on the pride of the timid ones, who do not wish to expose their ignorance, and, second, on the pride of the boisterous ones, who want to show off their knowledge in order to impress others. Both have burning questions. Some of these are conscious, others are unformulated, vague, out of laziness and pride. Such inner non-participation is a passive pretense that hinders the quality of the discussions. If every participant prepared the questions by first voicing to himself or herself what he or she does not understand not only emotionally but also intellectually, then I can promise you that these discussion groups will turn out to be profitable for all concerned.

Let these discussions also serve as opportunities to probe yourselves. What is the motive for sharing? What is the motive for not sharing? To the degree that you voice your confusions, to that degree these discussions will prove of immeasurable value. Then help will be given just as much to those who pronounce their confusions as to the others, especially by the example that is being set. Then your group will truly become a school, where each person is both pupil and teacher at the same time. If you keep this in mind and you try to love it, then all the outer details will easily fall into place. They are unimportant. Trial and error and the improvements that you will make along the way will come easily and without friction. If this basic spirit prevails, then it will draw others along, because it is the strength of the spirit that matters. And even those who are too timid, too blind, and too lazy will be swept along by the truthfulness, the self-honesty, and the humility of those who participate actively. This will make the venture blossom.

QUESTION: I have a personal question. It refers to this lecture. Many years ago, following a dream interpretation you gave me, I found out that I was hiding my guilt about my mother behind something else. Then I found out that I don't love myself, so how can I possibly love others? All of a sudden I felt that this might be the real guilt. But when you came to the second part of this lecture, about the unwillingness to go through the day's little chores, I realized that this also holds true for me, and the idea came to me that perhaps I am hiding my real guilt because I am egocentric. Am I right?

ANSWER: You are quite right. But you will have to find particularly how this holds true, how your egocentricity manifests. By this I mean that it has to become more than mere general knowledge. Your momentary awakening is the first step in the right direction. It is truly a new awareness of self. I have often said that too much perfectionism is a substitute for the withdrawal from loving in one form or another. The greater your soul's readiness for loving -- in other words, the greater your potential for spiritual development -- the more does your soul protest when your love is obstructed. Therefore, the protest itself, unpleasant as it may feel, is the medicine.

I have said this often, but it is not yet fully understood. Nor do psychologists sufficiently understand that the neurosis itself is, in a sense, the first step to the cure of the soul. The sickness is not caused by outer events, but by a violation of the soul that prevents it from developing its potential. This is always a personal matter, and, in the last analysis, a spiritual or moral one. It is a question of integrity. Without such a painful manifestation, then the person would be unaware that something was amiss. In truth, what is considered an illness is, at the same time, a medicine. In that lies one of the benign qualities of spiritual and universal law.

On the one hand, you feel a great love force. It is part of your nature. But it is counteracted by a prohibition, by an inner No to loving. It is this prohibition that causes all your problems. You have to find it specifically. You are almost there. You actually find yourself on the threshold of the full realization of this core problem in you. Not daring to love may apply to certain areas of your life only, and not to all your relationships. When you verify this point, then you will ascertain the source of your real guilt that produces both your unjustified guilt and your perfectionism.

My dearest, dearest friends, the love force -- the life force -- is flowing abundantly toward each one of you. I hope you can feel it. You feel the light and the strength. Rejoice on this path. There is nothing more meaningful. There is nothing that makes more sense, no matter how painful your life may be at times, no matter how many times you may feel a relapse or a stagnation. If you persevere, then the light will become steadier and stronger. If you are more outspoken and more direct, then this entire group will grow more and more. Those who find themselves in a hopeless depression will be less inclined to hide. Instead, they will go to those who find themselves strong at the moment -- who may have successfully passed through such a stage and have come out of it through this work. They will communicate with them and thus will be helped. This is true love, this is true relating. All of you still have much to learn about this. You are at the beginning of a very concise stage of your development. You have learned a great deal and thus have come nearer to the point where this group as a whole will become a functional love group.

And now, be blessed, all of you. Be in peace. Be in God.

November 9, 1962