Perception/Determination/Love As Aspects Of Consciousness

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings my dearest friends. Blessings for each one of you. Blessed be this lecture. May all my friends continue to grow and to develop, for this is the essence of life itself. Where there is no growth, there is no life. This does not apply merely to the physical manifestation of life, but to the source itself. There are different stages and different manners in the growing process. In some instances it is so indirect and gradual, with the person being unaware even of the concept or possibility of inner growth, that it can be perceived only at a much later state of increased consciousness. If growing stops on any level of life, then the respective manifestation of life ceases. But since the spirit is eternal, then it must potentially be growth. Therefore the spirit cannot die. Its growth and its unfoldment can be arrested only if its manifest forms are not in the process of growth, and therefore not alive.

Life, just as growth, exists in degrees. It cannot be said that something or someone is either alive or not alive, either in growth or not. There are many grades in between. Non-life is non-growth.

We have discussed life -- its meaning, its significance, its definition, and its manifestation -- from many points of view. Each time I choose an angle of life to discuss -- or of any other topic, for that matter -- it is adjusted to the level that you have reached in the course of your development. It is fitted to penetrate a deeper root of understanding in your soul due to your progress. Through your work of self-search, deeper levels of understanding are opened up, so that words of truth will directly reach those inner levels -- or at least have a chance of doing so. It is therefore important to discuss the same subjects from different vantage points at specific phases of your pathwork. What heretofore you have understood in a more shallow way will then be more profoundly comprehended as a result of your pathwork and in conjunction with the proper meditation. These lectures can be regarded as such.

Sometimes man believes himself to be in a growing process, while he is merely going around in circles. Undirected, or misdirected methods of self-confrontation often bring this about. In such a case, the person may be outwardly convinced that he is growing simply because of his activities in this respect, but inwardly he lacks the feeling and the conviction of his actual development. On the other hand, he who is truly in the process of growth may often be temporarily discouraged and may believe that he is going around in circles, while he is actually in the process of growth. In this case, this belief is superficial, while inwardly he experiences certain phases in which he literally sees his own inner growth. In other words, he feels it. But at the beginning this happens only after periods of apparent setbacks and relapses; after having found the same aspects, the same attitudes and the same distortions over and over again -- forever finding them in new connections, forever shedding new light on the same disturbances, forever deliberating on them in different expressions of thought. This fortifies and consolidates the recognitions. It widens and deepens their perception. It links them with other aspects of the personality. All my friends who are truly on the Path have observed the spiral movement it pursues of coming around in a full circle and finding the same thing all over again. Yet the second time the finding and the comprehension of the content occurs on a deeper level than the first. And the tenth time on a still deeper level than the ninth. These circles get narrower and narrower, until they meet at one basic "point of disturbance" that can then, and only then, be fully tackled, faced, understood, and come to terms with. In principle, the process is the same as my taking an important concept and deliberating about it from different angles. This, too, follows the spiral movement according to the capacity and the level that you have reached. One might say that they are two parallel spiral movements: one following through the disturbance; the other, the complementing true picture of the distortion. To the degree that you are aware of and properly evaluate the distortion, to that degree the true picture can be assimilated into the deeper regions of your personality.

Growth and stagnation often seem similar when considered superficially, because both follow circular movements. Only a closer perception and a deep penetration into your self will show you the difference. Sometimes it happens that the same circle is followed through all over again before one can proceed from it into the next one, which is narrower. But when the transition from one circle to the next circle has been made, then the reality of the forward movement will fill you to the depth of your being. Then you will know that you are not moving in a stationary circle.

We discussed various aspects and meanings of life. Let us again approach this topic this time from still another viewpoint. Life exists if a number of factors prevail. As I said previously, life is movement, life is growth, life is consciousness -- and several more factors, all of which end up at one and the same point. But each one of these points is still a separate and distinctive factor. The conglomeration of all of them together forms one whole, one organization. An organization is a conglomerate of several particles. The absence of any of these particles destroys, or at least seriously impedes, the organization as a whole. Think, for example, of a business firm, an organization in this respect. There are different officers, each fulfilling a certain task, each taking on certain responsibilities. If one drops out, then he has to be replaced, for otherwise the organization could not function.

The same applies to the anatomy of the physical body. It, too, is an organization. The well-functioning body requires many working parts. If one is out of commission, depending on whether or not this part is a vital one, then physical life ceases. In the case where it is not essential, then the efficacy of the physical body will be impaired.

Exactly the same law holds true for the inner organization of life. The average human being does not have all his inner faculties in good working order. As a result, his degree of awareness is below par. Therefore, he is, as the saying goes, only half alive -- and often even less than that.

The integration between consciousness and aliveness, or movement, is easy to observe in certain manifestations of nature. A mineral has a very small degree of consciousness, therefore its movement is almost imperceptible. A plant's degree of consciousness is higher than the mineral's. This is noticeable by its responses to light, to water, and to darkness or to dryness. And so its movement (of growth) is also more perceptible. And so it proceeds on the scale: From animal to human being. Now, you may say that man's movement does not exceed the animal's. This is true on the physical level, but certainly when it comes to the movement of the mind -- to thinking -- or of the spirit, then you will have to admit that man is more alive in that respect than the animal. The possibility for the extension of the range of consciousness -- for the movement of the spirit -- exceeds by far that of the body. Once this thought is understood in its full implication, any doubt about the continuation of life must cease. This will no longer be a pleasant or unpleasant assumption and a theory, but a logical sequence of an unbroken chain. There is no reason to assume that the chain should suddenly terminate.

Man's possibility to extend the range of his consciousness is limited because of the confinement of his spirit. Only after he has fully utilized the range of the extension of the consciousness available to him will such confinement no longer be a necessity. And only when man fully utilizes his possibilities in this regard will he be in harmony with himself and in harmony with his life. If you view the Pathwork from this angle, then it may give you a renewed incentive and greater strength through this more profound understanding.

Let us now discuss three distinctive major facets that are part of the organization called life. These three aspects are direct manifestations of consciousness. They are determination, perception, and love. The higher the degree of consciousness, the wider is the range of life, and the freer will be the determination. In other words, it will not be hindered by the inner fetters that first we are trying to find and then we are attempting to dissolve. You know that your free will -- your determination -- is limited by your unconscious misconceptions. To the degree that you are capable of assimilating experience according to reality, according to truth, to that degree you can perceive, you can determine, and you can love.

A living creature is the product of the sum total of all his past experiences. The way in which this experience is assimilated and understood in terms of reality determines the quality of his life. The more realistically and the more truthfully experience is first interpreted and then assimilated, the more accurate will be your perception; the freer will be your determination (the greater the scope and the ease with which decisions can be made); and the greater will be your capacity to love. In other words, to relate.

It should be easy to see the interdependence of these three facets, and therefore their interaction. For example, if you are relatively free of error, of misinterpreted past experience -- in other words, free of images -- then you will have fewer destructive defenses. Therefore you can be more loving. This, in turn, will create good relationships which will afford you a wider range of experience, more possibilities, and more inner and outer resources that will give a greater scope to your determination. Even if you occasionally experience a disappointment, you will still be able to see other opportunities. The disappointment will not paralyze your faculties and freeze your feelings into fear and distrust, such as happens with incorrectly assimilated experience. To understand the effect of this triad is of great importance. It will make even clearer than before why it is so important to find your images; to understand why they represent faulty perception; and to see that this faulty perception still governs you, even though it occurred when you were a child. You will see to what extent you are governed by this faulty perception: How it continues to impede the proper interpretation and the assimilation of new experiences to which you react in the same way as you did when you were a child. You will now understand how this continued faulty perception cripples your determination and your entire world of feeling.

You are bound by these old images, by these faulty perceptions. They make you respond and react in an automatic way. In other words, as though the new experience were similar in nature to the one that originally caused you to misinterpret a painful condition or a painful occurrence. You saw it in a limited, one-sided way, and then you generalized its validity for all similar occasions. The result is that now you react in a way that is not appropriate to the occasion. You are unable to change this unless you bring this misinterpretation into your consciousness and you thoroughly understand why and in what way you have misinterpreted. Only then will your response be compatible with reality, and therefore will be more adequate. This will free you from limitation and from frozen feelings.

When religious teachers preach about the importance of love, they are right. But love cannot fill your being if you do not perceive your wrong perceptions. No amount of knowledge that you take in from the outside can be properly assimilated if you do not first empty yourself of your misconceptions, of your images. Therefore, self-knowledge is the prerequisite to love and to spirituality. There is no way around that. No matter how much truth you try to imbibe, no matter how hard you try to feel what inwardly you are as yet incapable of feeling, the fact is that your inner mechanism is still geared to faulty reflexes. These are so automatic and so limited that you cannot perceive in reality. Therefore you cannot determine as fully and as widely as it would otherwise be possible for you. Therefore, you cannot feel all the productive, warm feelings which go under the heading of love and create a benign circle of these three aspects of life.

My friends, try to see how your images limit your perception, limit your determination, and limit your capacity to love. Try to see how your faulty perception -- which is responsible for your images -- squeezed you into a very limited mold, no matter what you consciously think and consciously strive for. If you ponder over your images from this angle, then you will see how both your consciousness and your feeling of being alive are diminished. The vibrancy of true aliveness is so rare among human beings because most do not search in the right direction.

The significance of misinterpreted material from the past cannot be stressed enough. The majority of human beings go through life never knowing to what an extent they are influenced by their past in all their present day dealings. Even among my friends here there are only a few who begin to fully realize the extent of past misinterpretation. They may be aware to some degree that such misinterpretation has taken place, but they cannot as yet fully grasp the impact of it.

Parents are the most important people in a child's life. The relationship to them is of primary importance. Others who also played an important role in a child's life -- such as teachers, siblings, or anyone closely related -- take a hand in forming the original impressions in the malleable soul substance. But all other people are important only in relation to and as determined by the original relationship to the parents. Most of you still need to realize to what a strong degree you carry this original relationship to both your parents into all your current life situations. Once you perceive this in all its significance, then you will be liberated. But it requires a great deal of work, of patience, of perseverance, of courage and of humility to follow through so as to arrive at this point.

The best way to experience the truth of these words is to take any of your findings, to consider your feelings as a child toward your parents, and then to see how your responses still react now according to the same feelings that you once harbored toward your parents -- for each parent in a different way. Only by working through this lecture on a personal and practical basis will you experience the truth. The new friends here, who are not involved with this systematic work of self-finding, cannot possibly understand in full measure at this time.

The realization of your bondage to your early reactions will free you of this bondage. Nothing else will, no matter how much knowledge -- even spiritual knowledge -- you try to collect from the outside. This awareness alone will raise your degree of consciousness and it will fill you with the vibrant feeling of being truly alive. The only way your awareness, and therefore your life, can grow is through these insights into your self. By becoming aware of your limitations, you eliminate the limitations. By becoming aware of your unreality, you live in greater reality. By becoming aware of your lack of love -- clothed perhaps in what appears to be love but is not -- you will have more love. The feeling of strength, of well-being, of fulfillment, of trust in yourself, and of security can grow only by facing that in you which you want to look away from. You are always tempted to look away from yourself.

Ever since mankind exists man has searched for security. The lack of security is perhaps the greatest factor responsible for all the misery that man has managed to inflict upon himself. This is so because he looks for security in the wrong way. The result of this false search is that he is then disappointed. Consequently, he is even more insecure, and therefore is more hopeless of ever finding it. In other words, man wishes to have his fears, his anxieties and his uncertainties assuaged from the outside. But if this ever works, then it only does so for a limited time, with the subsequent feeling of having been let down.

When material security has finally been attained, then man discover that there is another type of insecurity within himself that he has not been able to recognize as long as he was preoccupied with the material side of life. For a while he may succeed in looking away from the gnawing feeling of insecurity that is clamoring for some alleviation. He may drown out this voice by all sorts of evasions, either pleasurable or painful, either constructive or destructive. But at one time a reckoning must come that he can no longer avoid in order to confront his inner uncertainty. He must raise certain questions that he has never dared to face. He must bring out exactly what it is that he is so insecure about. But until such time, he often finds many ways of trying to still the clamoring voice by outer, and therefore inadequate, illusory means. The only realistic way of meeting his insecurity is by facing it. In other words, first by admitting it and then by accepting it. Only then will he be able to find the inner answer through his understanding of his inner errors, of his misconceptions, and of his faulty perceptions. Only this will bring you true security, resting on a firm ground that cannot be taken away by the storms of life.

As I implied before, looking for security in the illusory way -- namely, from the outside -- need not necessarily be unconstructive. A person may try to escape from himself by doing good for society, by performing valuable scientific, artistic, or ethical works. Such pursuits are in themselves constructive and can certainly help others. But they go under the heading of escape because security cannot be found outside the self. While performing such tasks he may drown out the voice of his inner insecurity. But you must admit that drowning out this voice is not a real solution. It is precarious, and therefore it can crumble when something goes wrong.

To find inner security in the real way does not mean that has to cease doing good works. They can surely be continued, while at the same time doing that which will establish the center of gravity within the self.

How can you love if you are insecure? It is not possible. Of course, there are degrees. It is not a question of either/or. There are many areas in which a person is secure, and therefore is capable of love. But to the degree insecurity permeates the soul, to that degree the genuine capacity for loving is absent. Let us now connect inner insecurity with love and evaluate the various stages in the scale of the love capacity.

The basis of love is healthy self-love. We have gone into this extensively in the past and need not elaborate on it much further. But one thing you may note. If you are insecure, then you cannot trust yourself. If you do not trust yourself, then how can you love yourself? So you can you see that healthy self-love and inner security are directly linked. And since love for others is dependent on healthy self-love, then the former is equally dependent on and connected with inner security.

Let us now consider the other stages of love. Lowest on the scale is love for inanimate objects. There are many people whose sole outlet for their inherent need to display love does not dare to go any further than loving inanimate objects. Objects do not oppose. They do not require the complicated mechanism of perceiving the feelings of others. They do not disapprove nor do they criticize. They demand a minimum of personal sacrifice or consideration. Objects will make no demands.

Next on the scale is love for abstract ideas, for principles, for art, for nature. The love for one's profession also falls into this category, although not necessarily exclusively. Love for abstract ideas also prevents personal contact and involvement, with all the apparent risks and the insecurity that accompany it. But at least it moves the mind, the soul or the spirit in some measure. It may also require personal contact, confrontation with others of different opinions, involvement with other human beings, while love for objects may not necessitate this in any but the most rudimentary form. Love for ideas and principles is certainly more outgoing than the isolating pursuit of loving mere objects.

Next on the scale is love for living creatures other than man, such as plants or animals. They require a certain amount of sacrifice, of consideration, of putting one's immediate selfish comfort aside -- at least occasionally if the love is active and not merely theoretical. It does not require the risk of rejection, nor the consideration of taking the trouble of pondering what the other's needs are, the effort of mutual understanding: of trying to understand and of making oneself understood. To a minor degree this may also apply to keeping and caring for an animal, but certainly not to the degree that it prevails in a close relationship with another human being -- wherein one's senses have to be alert to the other as well as to oneself if the relationship is to be a rewarding one.

Next on the scale is love for mankind as a whole. This may still relieve a person from intimate personal involvement -- the most taxing form of love, and therefore the most fulfilling one. But it does require effort, thought, the willingness to sacrifice, activity, and many other attitudes that are highly constructive. Again, this applies only if such love takes the form of following it through in practice, rather than letting it simmer in theory only.

Highest on the human scale is the love for individuals in close, intimate relationships. I do not have to repeat why, for this was mentioned in connection with the other degres of love on the lower rungs of the scale. If you ponder over this question, then you will find many other aspects that will show why the latter is by far the most constructive and the highest form of love on the scale. The fact that you and those you are involved with may often demonstrate this love by very turbulent manifestations does not alter the basic fact one bit. The fact that many manifestations of love have really nothing to do with genuine love, but are merely manifestations of immature needs and of dependency -- and thus bring disharmony and often even rupture -- does not alter the fact that such intercommunication furthers your general development and your capacity for genuine love. Such lives may be infinitely less harmonious than the life of a hermit, of a recluse, right in the middle of your civilization. I am speaking here of the inner state. But the process of growth cannot be measured by the outer harmony.

You may often find it comparatively easy to cope with the difficulty of relating with certain people, but you may dread it with others. If this is so, then question yourself as to whether you do not run from the very area in which you most need to grow, just as others do who may perhaps withdraw outwardly, even more obviously than you do. So beware of a quick, superficial evaluation of yourself and of others. Only when you question your fears, your insecurities and your reactions to those aspects of love that you wish to avoid will you begin to sense a truthful answer. This will not harm you, even if you decide to postpone exposing yourself to that which you still shrink away from. But at least you will not deceive yourself about the level you have reached.

Some of you may wonder about this scale. You might think that the love for God falls under the category of the love for abstract ideas and principles. You may also wonder that I did not mention the love for God as the highest level of the human scale. You see, my friends, the love for God can be healthy and genuine, but it can be an escape as well. If it is healthy and genuine, then it manifests through the love for others with whom one can communicate and relate to. This, in turn, cannot happen unless you overcome your fears and your vanities, unless you find and dissolve the obstructions in you that cause both your inability and your unwillingness to love. It is not necessary for man to be preoccupied with the inconceivable and incomprehensible existence of the Creator of all beings. You should have the humility to admit the limitation of such understanding and you should turn your attention to those things that human beings can learn, can give to, and can love -- namely other human beings. So it is possible that an avowed non-believer is actually closer to loving God than someone who professes to be a believer in that the former may not shy away from a taxing involvement -- with the mutual growth that results through it -- while the latter may hide his escapism by an unhealthy preoccupation with an abstract idea of God, Whom he cannot really understand through mental processes. The only way one can come closer to an experience of God is through inner growth and through the liberation of one's feelings, of one's perception, and of one's determination.

If God is not an inner experience -- which can be derived only through self-development -- but is the pursuit of an idea or of an ideal, then it falls under the category of love for abstract ideas or principles. As such, it is of lesser value than the intimate relationship of human love that requires both practical considerations and the flexibility of putting one's egocentric aims behind those of the other person at times. To love God as an idea does not require any of this, but to love Him through a fellow creature does. Through a deep understanding of the self, the understanding of others grows, and through that a perception of the Divine.

Often an intense relationship that is turbulent because of blind egocentricity, of selfishness, and of possessiveness may appear to be the product of a less evolved human being than the semblance of a person who seems very serene and who does many good works for humanity, but who lives a life that is secluded from personal involvement. It may be true that such a person actually is more developed in general. But in this area where he avoids close involvement he surely needs to learn. It may be true that the person whose immaturity shows in a stormy relationship may indeed be more immature, may indeed have a troubled soul. But at least he is truly in the midst of life. Therefore, he is not avoiding its lessons, even if he cannot -- or in reality will not -- understand these lessons yet. Nevertheless, the experience itself will be what counts in the end. For then he will have the opportunity first to evaluate it properly and then to assimilate such an experience. In other words, he will be able to sort out error from truth and proper perception from misinterpretation.

How can you perceive that there is something amiss in you if you do not expose yourself to experience that which you fear, even while you also desire it to some degree? How else can you raise your perception, how else can you free your scope of determination, how else can you purify your capacity of loving if you do not first face and then go through the impure, self-centered form of love that you are now capable of? By avoiding it, you do not grow out of it.

All of you who persevere in this Pathwork know that you are doing what is most essential. Go on searching, my beloved friends, even though at times you may feel discouraged. You will not regret it, provided you do it wholeheartedly and not because you fulfill an unpleasant duty.

Those of you who have not yet ventured into the Path, think about your anxieties and your insecurities. Then try to realize in what way you try to assuage them. See how you try to run away from yourself. This may induce you to seek a more reliable remedy for what really ails you. The most beautiful prayers and the loftiest thoughts can never replace self-facing and making conscious that which heretofore had slumbered in the hidden recesses of your soul.

And now, my friends, to your questions.

QUESTION: Do you consider that the introverted person is the person who withdraws from life or do you consider the introverted person as normal?

ANSWER: You see, here we are dealing with terminology. Some terms have a different meaning for different people or for different schools of thought. The word introverted to some people may mean introspection, looking within. To others it may mean withdrawn from the outer world. In the latter case, then I do not have to elaborate any further. But in case you mean the word in the former sense, then I have this to say. It depends on the how, never on the what. If we are preoccupied with the what, then we will run the risk of misunderstanding, and therefore of erroneous, confused, and unclear thinking. If we remain focused on the how, then we will gain clarity. Introversion is healthy if it leads to facing oneself and then utilizing the material to become more whole, better equipped to deal with feelings, better equipped to deal with others, and better able to expand.

In other words, if this healthy introversion leads to healthy extroversion, then it is exactly what true growth means. But if self-preoccupation is fruitless and unconstructive -- in other words, if it revolves around the same pointless thoughts, the same complaints, the same self-pity, the same self-deceptive ideas, and the same subterfuges -- then it will, of necessity, have the result of drawing a wall of isolation around the person indulging in this destructive activity of the mind. It is nothing but escapism. By the same token, the extroverted person can also escape and run from himself. His extroversion will never take the form of true relating. The extroverted person can be introspective as well. In other words, any healthy person is a balance of these two directions of being. A preponderance of one is a sign of imbalance. Introspection must spontaneously lead to outgoingness. In other words, to reaching out to others. This, in turn, must be assimilated, digested, and evaluated so as to enrich the soul and learn the lessons that life has to offer. This period will enable the person to cope even better with the outer world and to joyfully involve himself in life. This alternating rhythm is an expression of life, of harmony, of the movement of the universe that you can find throughout nature. It is in the breathing of the body, in the planets, in the waves of the ocean. It is in the physical manifestation of the cosmos, as well as in the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual waves of being.

Real self-searching will never make a person self-centered and withdrawn. If this is the effect, then it means that the work of self-confrontation is somehow off. Such a person needs guidance to set him on the right track.

QUESTION: I would like to ask if you have a special message for our friend W.?

ANSWER: I cannot add anything more than I have already told him. He is blessed and guided. I can only repeat and emphasize that he has grown more than he may realize. There is much in him that he can utilize, but in a relaxed way, with no pressure and strain on the thought process. Rather, he should release all the material of growth that has accumulated in him. It will bring him more and more joy.

Often man has a distorted view about the essential issues of life. You have such faulty perception, such wrong values! What man considers bad is often the best from a wider spectrum, from a point of view of reality. And what man considers favorable and good may, in reality, be the most unfavorable occurrence. Only gradually will your view readjust to a more appropriate perception of life.

At times you are potentially ready to gain a glimpse of reality, to experience its beauty and its wisdom. But the fetters of your habit in thinking and of your habit in feeling prevent you from shedding these shackles. You may even feel guilty in doing so because many of you are burdened with a mistaken concept that only heavy thoughts and feelings indicate a depth and a profoundness of the personality. It may seem frivolous to rejoice in the brighter aspects of reality, in which all is as it should be. If only you would allow the growth that has taken place in you -- your inner growth -- to manifest, then these perceptions would be more reliable than your often superimposed obsolete reactions and responses. Let the inner maturity that is gathered in you come out, instead of pushing it back because of the false concepts you cling to without realizing it. Part of the work on the Path is the finding of unpleasant faulty aspects of yourself that are painful, humiliating, and unflattering. By now all have learned that this unpleasant moment need not last long if you proceed. In other words, if you do not stop half way. But part of the Pathwork is also the finding of your true values, the finding of your constructive inclinations, the finding of thoughts and feelings that you have held down artificially because you erroneously believe them to be wrong. Self-acceptance for one's inherent value sometimes is even more difficult than facing one's destructiveness. This may be so for a variety of reasons which we will look into at some other time. For now, suffice it to say that you should be on the lookout for that.

You often disrupt your inner security by artificially courting wrong values and fearing the uncertainty -- the inner insecurity -- that need not be feared. Often negative feelings are artificially encouraged, while the real you is free of them. At times this real you may be far away. But at other times it may also be much nearer than you make allowance for.

QUESTION: Would the acceptance of reality be a prerequisite for love?

ANSWER: Yes, indeed. I think this lecture dealt with this very point. I would say that it works both ways. If you can accept reality, then you are surely more capable of loving. And if through your inner growth, through facing yourself in complete candor, through dispensing with all your defenses and your resistances you reach a point of having the capacity to love, then you simultaneously become better equipped to accept reality. Your resistance to accept that which seems to you to be an unpleasant reality is the same energy current that if released is the power of love. Negative emotions are a result of closing the door to reality and to loving. Both are interdependent, for they are really the same. Faulty perception means either not being in reality or not seeing reality. Warm outgoing feelings of affection, of concern, and of understanding are the outcome of a true perception of reality factors. Simultaneously, they lead to an increase in perceiving reality in an ever widening circle in width and in depth. The more this is the case, the less can such productive feelings be replaced by a false and weakening sentimentality. When the fear of the true deep feelings vanishes, then the psyche no longer needs to produce false positive feelings. This fear is a result of self-centeredness, which is the opposite of love. And this same self-centeredness is responsible for creating false, unreal good feelings. This is another angle that shows you how the equation has to come out even, from any way you look at it.

One of the most important aspects of the faulty perception of reality is man's false belief that he may be healthy in one respect, while being in conflict or while having problems in another area of his personality. This is impossible. One affliction must, at least to some degree, affect all the other areas of the personality. For one thing is intimately connected with another. For instance, if you have a difficulty in making decisions -- in other words, if you believe yourself limited in the scope of the decisions you make, while perhaps overestimating your possibilities in other respects -- then such an impaired determination must affect all other personality traits and attitudes. Or, if you have a difficulty in relating to and coping with certain types of people, then avoiding them will not remove the problem, because this difficulty -- expressed in your discomfort -- again affects all the other manifestations and all the other expressions of your life. It is for that reason that all your discomforts should be heeded as warning signals, rather than avoided. Such reactions prove the error of your false conviction that your psyche -- your entire personality in fact -- is divided into many little compartments, and that some of them are healthy and fine, while others are distorted and conflicted. This faulty perception shows how limited man's view of reality is. The connections and the interdependence have to be established if you really want to grow out of your blindness and out of your enslavement. Of course, in some respects of life you do function relatively well, but you do not realize how the problem areas affect even the healthy areas, because the only way you can judge is by comparison with the sicker areas. You cannot imagine the feeling of joy, of peace, and of security that is the result of a full and thorough will to face yourself. Then the interconnection will gradually become clear and it will afford you a clearer view of reality where it concerns you most. This is the only way you can begin.

The foregoing should not be misinterpreted to mean that you have to reach a stage of utter health before you can function well, before you can love, before you can perceive, and before you can determine. You can reach a stage of relative advancement in this respect by the mere fact of recognizing your problems in their entire significance. But that is not easy. This realization must not be confused with a quick, glib formulation of one part of the problem you have found. It must be a deep awareness, a transcending experience of the comprehension of all your outer problems, of all your hurts, of all your unfulfillments, of all your frustrations as a result of your inner misconception -- of your main image -- and of your subsequent faulty response to life and to other people. When this goal has been achieved, then the building up process can begin. But even before you have shed all the faulty reactions that are so ingrained in you, you will be in control of your fate because now you -- really and profoundly -- perceive yourself in relationship to your life. With such understanding, you bring fresh, clean air into all the channels that have been clogged up with error and with confusion for so long. This is the real security I have discussed.

Off hand, this may seem a repetition and a consolidation of some of the material from the past. And yet, when you look deeper into this topic, then you will realize a new depth of understanding of yourself. Then you will see that this is new because you would not have been able to understand this material and to apply it to yourself a short time ago. Those who do not succeed now will certainly do so later. But some of you are ready now, if only you will take the trouble to meditate about it.

May these words take root in you. May all of you find something in these words that may eventually become a seed in your soul.

A stream of love envelopes all of you. May it revify you. Be in peace. Be in God!

May 24, 1963