Fences That Man Puts Up Through Limited Illusory Alternatives

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless all of you. Blessed be this lecture. Blessed be your understanding, so as to properly assimilate the contents.

I should like to begin this lecture with a short description of spiritual reality, and, as opposed to it the picture that mankind represents from its vantage point. This connects with the topic we shall discuss.

In reality the universe is wide open. Therefore, man could move freely in it. This means that the universe is truly at man's disposal, with all its infinite and rich variety of fulfillments, of forces, of energy, of experience, of supply -- in any possibly way man that can think of -- and much more than he can fathom at this point of his evolution. He could make use of all of this. He could explore all the blissful possibilities that are open to him. He could be master of this wonderful world in which he can expand forever into more blissful experience, into greater wisdom, into more power, into a wider scope, and into greater depths of being. However, due to a number of circumstances -- many of which we have discussed in the course of these lectures -- man simply does not realize this fact. He assumes that he is bound and imprisoned in a limited world, one in which he is fenced in by boundaries that he cannot penetrate or control. He assumes that he is a helpless victim of circumstances beyond his control. In this assumption of a limited universe -- at least as far as he is concerned -- he makes no use of the powers within himself, which are universal powers, and which are destined for his pleasure, for his expansion, for his growth, and for his experience. By not making use of these forces, he inactivates himself. Thus he creates imaginary fences that need not exist at all.

Imagine wide open spaces, containing all the beauty of the world, all that an individual could possibly require for his enjoyment. But the people do not see these wide open spaces. They do not see the powers, the forces, the assets, the beauty surrounding them. They close their eyes in fear and they actually believe themselves to exist behind fenced walls. Although there is no prison and there are no fences in reality, if man believes that he cannot move from the spot he is in, then he will act as though he cannot. The effect will be the same. He may wait for a long time to be delivered from this helpless, passive position, but as long as he does not discover for himself that all he has to do is to recognize his own freedom, his own forces, and his own powers, then he will remain fenced in, just as though these fences were real. In other words, the effect on him will be the same. This is the relationship between reality and illusion: Illusion takes for granted aspects whose effects appear real, but only as long as the illusion is taken for granted as being real. In other words, as long as it believed to be real.

The fences could be instantly removed with one gesture. But since man ignores the gesture, then he must find his own way to discover the unreality of the fences. Others can tell him that this is so. Often man believes what he hears, namely that there really are no fences if only he opens his eyes and starts moving about by using his inborn faculties. Yet he is afraid to try. He may listen but he does not dare to do what is necessary in order to move out into the great and safe freedom. He fears this freedom. Therefore, he chooses unnecessary suffering instead. But one day, to his astonishment, he discovers the ease of reality, its generosity, its abundance, its stimulating peace. Then he wonders why he feared it, why he opted for self-inflicted prohibitions.

These fences are rarely just simple walls. They are mazes and complicated labyrinths. They are the product of man's elaborate false assumptions and of the contradictory attitudes that he collects as a result of them. It is his job on earth to find his way out of these labyrinthian byways. This is the freedom, the liberation which this path promises and of which some of my friends have occasionally gained some glimpses.

How does this description of spiritual forms have personal meaning for your problems, for your current attitudes or for your blocks? The most immediate freedom that man is to discover on a path such as this is the realization of his far-reaching sphere of influence. When a person recognizes the significance of cause and effect in his own life, then the result is a tremendously changed attitude toward all of life. Usually much preliminary work has to be undertaken before the pathwork brings man to this understanding. He may often have discovered many an image, understood a number of inner problems and conflicts, and yet he has no inkling of the immediate cause and effect. Hence, of the independent role that he plays in his own fate. In other words, of what seem like circumstances that he cannot alter. For the moment I am not discussing mystical connections of a more far reaching nature, karmic conditions, causes and effects that are once, twice, or ten times removed, but direct, visible links of cause and effect. That is, visible if one chooses to see and to understand. How many times do all of you feel and think and fear and wish as though the desired outcome had no bearing on your own attitude and on your own behavior? For example, you fear that you may not be liked and you helplessly hope that you may be. Meanwhile, it escapes you that you could easily determine it, if this is what you truly want and if you act accordingly. How often do you fear that you may not succeed in a venture, passively, helplessly waiting for fate to determine the desired outcome? But it does not occur to you that there are many ways in which you, and you alone, can bring about whatever it is you want. All the energies are constantly geared to appearing as though what you want exists already in your life. Deep down you are convinced that you cannot really have it. But you are ashamed to admit this. So you pretend that you already possess what you could easily possess if only you believed that you can and if you spent your energies not on make-believe but on obtaining it. This may be success in any given field, it may be a happy relationship, it may be being loved, it may be being fulfilled on all levels of your being, or it may be being a certain kind of person.

No wonder man is helpless. The first fence, then, is his belief that he cannot have what in reality he might easily have. The second maze, resulting from the first, is his shame about a non-existent and unnecessary deprivation. The third twisted corridor in the labyrinth of the mind is the pretense that he already has what he wants, or that he could have it if only he wanted to, while he actually believes the opposite to be true. In spite of believing that he cannot really have what he wants, he nevertheless hopes for fate to deliver him from his deprivation. So man has fears and hopes, all based on false premises.

Man even fears himself. He is terrified of his own unconscious, as though it contained a monster he has no control over, a monster separated from his volitional processes. Moreover, he foolishly assumes that by pretending it does not exist then it will remain tame, but that when he looks at it, then it will act up, thereby forcing him into actions that he has no way of stopping. He completely forgets that his unconscious mind is he. In other words, that once it is conscious, then he is not a slave to it, but rather its master. For then it is no longer unconscious. He stubbornly insists in believing that he is helplessly exposed to the workings of his secret mind. He is plagued with superfluous fears about whether or not he will succeed to grow, whether or not he will succeed to shed an unwelcome trait, whether or not he will succeed to act constructively -- as though all this had nothing to do with his choices, but were the fateful result of a power over which he has no influence.

Even my friends who have already experienced considerable insight on this path still do not recognize how often they feel this way. It passes them by unnoticed. If only you would check such reactions and immediately correct this faulty thinking -- which has such far-reaching effects on your entire evolution and on your very existence. After such a detection, all you need to do is to make the forceful assertion that you, and you alone, determine the choice of your actions, that you alone determine the choice your behavior, that you alone determine the choice of your decisions. The moment you forcefully assert this, then something begins to happen within you. As a result, heretofore unused faculties begin to manifest. First by giving you a deeper understanding and then by strenghtening you, these inner forces will help you to begin to act differently. To act in a new and more productive way, one that is geared to accomplish the goal you wish. In other words, you set new causes in motion by refusing to be a prey to your destructive aspects. This requires a simple decision, with a clear declaration in this respect.

It is a major transition when you finally come into your own and you discover that the solution to living and the solution to happiness is so simple. This simplicity rests on your willingness to dispense with the most subtle pretense to cover up an unnecessary limitation. When you dispense with the limitation, then you can go out and obtain what you wish. Instead of withdrawing and pulling back, you will reach out for them. Hence, you will never worry about not being liked. Instead of continuing to cause a paralysis of your best faculties, now you will discover them and you will use them. Instead of continuing to say No to life, to say No to people, to say No to success, to say No to fulfillment, to say No to varied experience, now you will say Yes to all of them. Instead of helplessly waiting for others, for fate, or for life to make you into an acceptable person -- meanwhile hiding from yourself in fear -- you will determine what you wish, how to obtain it, and what to do about trends in you which you do not like. The change lies in doing your best (in whatever area of living), rather than giving the best impression. If you look at all your past findings in that light, then you can determine the vast difference between giving the best impression -- so that the best will be thought of you -- and actually doing your best in order to obtain a particular desired result. This is the key that determines the real success you want in a vocation, in a rewarding relationship, in growth, in self-unfoldment.

Regardless of how much some of my friends have progressed, there still exists this imagined helplessness toward living and toward growing in respect to yourself and to what life is supposed to give you. Observe it and then pinpoint it. Finding it is always half the battle. You cannot make this decisive switch unless you first see the state that you must leave behind. If you do not see that you live with a fence around you, then you cannot discover that this fence is imaginary, and therefore unnecessary. You can go fearlessly into the great freedom only when you discover that you have not dared to do so.

In this connection it is important that you discover the following: a) the feeling of helplessness, of vague hope and fear that something either should happen or should not happen, while not seeing how you can influence it; b) the exact cause of your unfulfillment. How you act as a consequence of your misconceptions and images; how your negative emotions make you react: what they make you emanate and how this affects others; c) how you pretend to have or to be what you secretly think that you could not genuinely get or the kind of person that you secretly think you could not develop into. Concise realizations that apply to specific areas of your inner life and of your outer life will enable you to issue forth both the thought and the intention into a constructive, healthy direction. This is the transition in which you remove the first, the immediate fences. This is the direct cause and effect, observable without mystical faith in occult matters.

Often my friends assume the attitude of, "I have a resistance." Then they let it go at that, as though they had no recourse and as though they had to wait passively until this resistance vanished by itself. It seldom occurs to them to say, "Here is my resistance. Now that I see it and I know that I have it, I reject it. I refuse to give in to it. Regardless of what I ignorantly and erroneously fear, I wish to penetrate behind my resistance. I am in power, not my resistance. My will for truth and my desire for growth are in power, the real me, who wishes all that, and not the childish fears that cause my resistance." Or their entire attitude expresses: "I am afraid of being rejected. I just hope for the best, but I fear rejection, for I feel powerless to influence others as to whether or not they are going to like me." If you ascertain such an attitude in you, then it will be comparatively simple to declare to yourself: "Why should I not be liked? It is important to me. My inner resources will furnish me with all the qualities necessary for me to be liked. I will go out and I will be genuinely concerned for the other person, rather than merely pretending. When I am willing to like others as much as I wish to be liked, then I shall like myself better, because there will be no unfair exchange or one-sided demand on my part, and therefore no pretense. Hence I will believe in the possibility of being loved. Whatever is lacking in me, I sincerely wish to become acutely aware of it and I truly want to change it. Since I am the determining factor, then this wish must come true to the extent of the fullness of this desire."

Such an approach means that you take the reins of your life into your hands once again. All of you are, at least in some respects, still within this primary fence in which you do not see the immediate cause and effect, therefore being helpless -- or believing yourself to be, while not being aware of the fact that this is the way you experience yourself. If first you are able to see all this and then you consciously and deliberately express your intent to change this destructive process -- by formulating clear, strong thoughts and assertive will currents -- then you must pass through this decisive threshold.

Formulating clear-cut thoughts and expressing the intent of the specific change that you wish to perform both within and without does not mean the suppression or the repression of the existing negative, destructive helplessness -- with its resulting hopelessness. Repression is merely another word for deception. But when you clearly see that you believe yourself to be helpless, when you believe that your desire is hopeless -- and therefore you pretend and you live in make-believe -- then you start to live in earnest. That means that you strive for the real goal and you dispense with your need to be concerned about what others think.

Often it is believed that asserting a negative finding means either remaining in it, or waiting until a miracle happens before you can grow out of your negative inner situation. On the other hand, it is assumed that to express the intent to no longer react according to this destructive trend means to repress it and to superimpose over it a constructiveness that as yet is not natural. This may often be so. But it need not be. Express the desire to grow out of your destructive patterns and therefore take active leadership into your hands concerning your life and your development. Realize that you have the last word. In other words, that the last word has to come from you as to whether or not and when you are going to change. This has nothing to do with superimposing or with wishful thinking. For example, declare that you wish this kind of a relationship instead of that kind of a relationship. Declare that you wish a specific kind of self-expression, a specific kind of vocation, or a specific kind of profession, with the degree of success which you really desire. Then you may ask yourself what you intend to do for it. You may also question yourself as to whether you believe in the possibility of your attaining these goals at all. If not, then why do you doubt? This is the direct link of cause and effect that must be clearly established, realized, and changed before the more remote links can be established.

When the cause and the effect cannot be linked immediately -- in other words, where they are once or several times removed -- then the result must be temporarily accepted, but only as long as the link is not established. In other words, as long as cause and effect remain obscure. The instant they are on the surface, then the direct links of cause and effect become obvious. The negative result dissolves instantly and new effects are created. But how can you come to this further removed stage -- karmic results -- when you do not see the obvious, immediate connections, accessible to any common sense viewer once the resistance is being relinquished? If you do not see what you can do right now to change what it is in you that constantly creates undesirable results for you, then how can you come to a wider view of cause and effect, one that is often ascribed to an unfathomable fate? The first phase in this respect -- the phase where cause and effect are obvious if one chooses to see them -- has nothing to do with spiritual faith or with metaphysical factors. All that is necessary is seeing what is there for you to see, that which even those nearest and dearest to you know but do not dare to tell you because they rightly feel that you may be hurt, and therefore that you do not wish to accept what they observe. Due to this self-inflicted, fearful blindness, you are paralyzed. As a result, you do not move where you should move. As a compensating factor, you struggle and therefore move too much where you should be serenely quiet. I am speaking of inner soul movements. In the proper balance there is calmness, in which you let the results of your efforts come to you without strain on your part.

A major distinguishing point of man in evolution is his attitude toward effort. Free, voluntary and joyful effort is the result of a spiritual awakening. Effort against one's will, because life requires it, seeming to be forced on the individual, is the result of their still being enfenced, enmeshed in their limited understanding of spiritual reality. Yes, they require effort, too, for he who ceases to make an effort ceases to live. But their effort is always labored, it is always against the stream. Inwardly they would rather not make the effort at all. Their idea of bliss -- in other words, the concept they have of the final goal of fulfillment -- is non-effort, but in a stagnating sense. Their outlook amounts to a belief that there is a finished state in which one does absolutely nothing. They dread to even read such words because they imagine the truth to be laborious and fraught with the forced, laborious effort they use -- the only kind they know about. They hanker after a state of complete stagnation, of non-movement, as it were. This would indeed be death. This is why the people who are in this stage are particularly afraid of death. He who has already attained the realization of the truth about effort, namely that effort is bliss and that movement is happiness itself -- as opposed to being a chore, as he unconsciously believes -- does not fear death because he does not wish it. In this stage effort becomes effortless. It is joyful movement, in a beautiful rhythm. It spreads more joy, more fulfillment, more peace, more accomplishment, and more rest. At the beginning, it may mean overcoming a certain resistance to it, but one does so voluntarily, in free choice, because he knows that the desired result is well worth the effort. Hence, the overcoming itself quickly leads to a state where the energy becomes self-generating. A momentum is created in which the effort becomes free-flowing. Soon it ceases to feel like effort. It becomes perfect movement, swinging on and on, into further constructive unfoldment and self-expression.

Forced effort, effort made against one's will -- in order to conform, in order to get approval, in order to ward off disapproval, or simply because it is necessary in order to survive, while one actually resents this necessity -- creates fatigue. Hence, it makes every further step of effort even more laborious. Therefore, it cause even greater resentment. Voluntary effort -- effort that is due to a free choice and to the recognition of its fairness -- never makes one tired.

If you look at your individual path from this point of view and you question your soul movements, then you will derive some important answers. Therefore, ask yourself the following questions. How do you feel about the effort required for your daily chores? How do you feel about the effort of this pathwork? How do you feel about the effort of living as such? Do you have to be constantly pushed, perhaps by yourself as well as by life, while another part of you still resists? If this is so, then it means that your resentment against life itself must be much stronger than you think. It is important to ascertain it. Or have you arrived, at least in certain areas, at the point where your effort is free-flowing, where you have already brought yourself into the momentum, where the self-generating effort carries you, and therefore you no longer have to exert discipline? In this case, you no longer feel effort, but you feel movement -- and you enjoy this movement. Then you are truly over a major threshold. But the voluntary effort has to be exterted first by the self -- and without resentment -- in order to generate sufficient momentum so that then the effort becomes free-flowing. When this happens, then all your blocks, all your problems, and all your fences can be removed with the greatest of ease. To express that you want sufficient effort -- without resentment and without labor -- is possible only when it is deeply understood that this effort does not lead to hardship, does not lead to slavery, and does not lead to suffering, but rather leads to a happy experience, to freedom, and to pleasure.

In the course of these years we have amply discussed the fact that misconception is responsible for all suffering. This includes the illusory fences and the labored, resented, tiring effort. Man puts himself in the paradoxical position of wearing himself out in a non-existing prison. He labors, he slaves, and he chafes under the effort of rattling at prison bars that have no reality, while he refuses to step outside and to freely move toward further expansion, toward joyful mastery of the self, toward universal bliss.

In the search for your images -- in other words, in the course of your process of self-discovery -- you have found, and you are continuing to find, a number of general misconceptions and of personal misconceptions. If you take all these misconceptions, you put them together, and you search for a common denominator, then you must inevitably find that any wrong conclusion amounts to a limited concept of life, to a limited concep of creation, to a limited concept of the universe, to a limited concept of the self. You suffer because you believe that suffering is necessary, and is therefore inevitable. If man believes that he must bleed, then he will cut himself in order to fulfill this imaginary law. Then he must find it confirmed. This is the nature of all images. The limitation that man ascribes to life and the limitation that he ascribes to his relationship to life always amounts to an arbitrary either/or attitude. We have discussed this at various times. This either/or attitude, gravely and falsely limiting spiritual reality -- and hence the cosmic forces at man's disposal -- amounts to the following. Apart from the general misconception that suffering is a necessity, thereby courting suffering, the either/or attitude has three important subdivisions which are contained in all personal images and in all mass images: 1) This is either good or it is bad; it is either black or it is white; it is either right or it is wrong. 2) There are only two equally undesirable alternatives. No other way seems open. 3) The false idea that only one desirable form of fulfillment, or that only a limited amount of self-expression can be chosen, while all the others have to be given up. In other words, it is either this fulfillment or that fulfillment, not both. In short, there seem to be only two ways of life that are mutually exclusive.

Although we have discussed all these either/or attitudes, it is important to understand them in this context. Let us now see why these limitations are false, and therefore so damaging.

When you seek clarity in an issue but you consider it merely from the point of view of either right or wrong, of either good or bad, then this is a shallow and insufficient evaluation. It leaves out many aspects of importance, many considerations of reality that cannot be found on the narrow level of either/or. The scope and the depth of reality is much wider. This happens only because you do not question the issue in a spirit of really wanting to see whether or not it is constructive, productive, life-asserting, and life-affirming, versus the opposite; whether it is growth-producing for all concerned -- and this, after all, is the central question of all the important issues of life -- or limiting and destructive, and what is constructive and what is not constructive about the good and the bad, the right and the wrong. What you are used to doing in this either/or is to quickly assume a ready-made rule without questioning it. You echo something blindly, but without knowing why. And if you are challenged, then you feel cornered, and you lean on authority and on conformism. You never use your own resources and your own mind to find out why you adopt a particular view, why you reject a view, why you condone a view, or why you condemn a view. It does not occur to you that considerations other than right or wrong may exist in an issue. Your failure to question the real issue makes you overlook the real scope, which would carry you beyond the fence. The fence of unquestioned standards of right versus wrong seems a protection against disapproval or against rejection. Thus you fence yourself in. The result is that you have to deal constantly with wrong choices. These are choices that do not exist in reality. They exist only because you adopted views other than your own. Taking on such views and such standards without questioning them, without probing them, without arriving at the real issue -- in other words, without the will to see what is really important and what is really true -- stems from your concern to conform to public opinion and to gain approval, as well as to ward off disapproval, rather than from a sincere concern for the issue itself. Here we find again what I mentioned before: living in earnest versus living for the sake of pretense. Assuming ready-made opinions is always connected with pretense and with the need to be concerned with what others think.

The next is the choice between two equally undesirable alternatives. Such a limited and negative choice must be the result of an equally limited and negative wrong conclusion. Untruth can only breed further error. It cannot breed truth. Wrong conclusions are always the result of stale, stagnant, unfresh, obsolete ideas which remain unquestioned. If you do not dare to question your own taboos, then you cannot widen the horizon of your life and therefore find so many beautiful possibilities. You are doomed to constantly making choices between equally painful -- and therefore undesirable -- alternatives.

The third either/or is the assumption, the erroneous belief that only a limited degree of fulfillment, of happiness exists. You have to choose between this goal or that goal, between this desire or that desire, between this wish or that wish. Connected with this there exists the false idea that your happiness or your fulfillment takes away from someone else's happiness or fulfillment. So you do not dare to wish for your own fulfillment in the fear of being "selfish." Within that particular fence the universe is so limited that there is not enough room for a full life for each created being, and even one area of fulfillment seems to deprive another area of this particular fulfillment. But beyond the fence there is no limitation. Hence, no envy and no jealousy exist. There the universe is seen for what it really is -- unlimited. Within the fence, you think that you have to make choices. These choices no longer need to be made beyond the fence.

You cannot step out of the fence unless you discover that you are a free creature who has self-responsibility. Part of this is the willingness and the eagerness to question all the doctrines, all the rules, all the regulations, and all the opinions that have been handed down to you. Such questioning must be done deeply, thoroughly, and independently, deeply probing into the really important questions of living and of growing. You must refuse to accept a view without having arrived at its validity yourself. You must learn to determine for yourself what you want, to determine for yourself what to think, to determine for yourself how much you are willing to invest in order to obtain what you wish, and whether this would be a sufficient and fair exchange. You must learn to delve into yourself and to summon from within yourself the necessary resources and the necessary strength in order to obtain what you wish. If you declare that you wish it and that you want to realize the necessary prerequisite within yourself, then the answer must come from your higher self. Then you will find the capacities you need. The clear-cut and concise formulation of what you wish -- for example, in what way you need to grow and where you need help -- will bring forth answers from the deepest source of truth and wisdom within. In other words, from the cosmic forces inside yourself.

When you fully understand the immediacy of cause and effect, comprising the first fences -- the closest section of your private maze -- then you will be able to remove fences that are a result of further links. How can you understand a karmic condition -- other than in theory -- if you do not first fully experience the truth of immediate cause and effect? For example: a relationship is disharmonious, but you do not see how you constantly contribute to it by the actions, the thoughts, and the feelings which you yourself emanate. After you become aware of this, then you have immediate recourse to change the relationship. But when an individual goes on and on in blindness, then he will come to the point where he finds himself alone, where he has no relationship, where he lives in conditions in which a new relationship seems almost impossible to create. This is a cause and effect which is further removed, and therefore not easy to determine. When the more immediate phases have been worked through, then you will be able to connect with, to understand, and to experience cause and effect even when they are far apart.

In order to deal with the farther-removed cause and effect situations, it is important to understand an apparent contradiction. On the one hand you read -- and through a deeper understanding of youself you begin to convince yourself of the fact -- that suffering is unnecessary. On the other hand, both the acceptance and the relinquishing of your selfwill are necessary in order to be in inner harmony. This seems like a contradiction, which may then give rise to puzzlement and to confusion. When I speak of acceptance, do I mean the acceptance of suffering? Of course not. But, in an indirect sense, it may temporarily appear so, but the emphasis is an entirely different one. The emphasis is that you have to learn to accept both your limitations and their results. If you rebel against your past ignorance because it brings you a present hardship, then such a rebellion stands in the way of removing that which has caused the hardship in the fist place.

Accepting your limitations does not mean resignation and wanting to remain in this limited state. It means true self-responsibility. It means the awareness of the fact that you are a free creature who is not interfered with before he discovers his own strength and his own freedom. It is wonderful that it is that way. When man cannot accept his limitations, then he does not accept his self-responsibility, and therefore he cannot come out of the fence. The consequences of your past ignorance have to be accepted. But only for as long as you persist in retaining the particular ignorance or the particular misperception that has created the suffering. The moment you get up and truly decide to change -- which always requires the courage of ruthless self-honesty, which is so difficult for many -- then the past negative cause dissolves and you will feel the inner freedom to fully desire, and therefore to be able to express, happiness without tension, without urgency, without guilt, and without the fear of happiness -- which would be a negative wish for unhappiness. Calmly and with certainty you will know that you can have all the happiness you wish; you will know that your happiness does not interfere with any constructive issue in the world; and you will know that your happiness does not deprive anyone. Then nothing stands in the way. This will be the soul condition when you are truly willing to change the cause that has brought you the effect of your unhappiness. When this decision is fully made, then further-removed links of cause and effect become immediately accessible.

The more you first establish and then experience the immediate links of cause and effect, the more secure you must become, and the more trusting in the nature of the universe and its benign character. As you remove fence after fence, a trust is established, a trust which you can then send out by the currents you emanate. Then you can deal with the effects which are further removed. In other words, when you find yourself in a position that is evidently the result of a long chain reaction of negative beliefs and of misconceptions, then your feeling of hopelessness that you will never be able to change the condition will give way because as your inner consciousness changes you will first express and then trustingly send out your wish for fulfillment in full knowledge of the fact that this is in keeping with spiritual reality in the measure of your inner change. Thus you build the new condition. Such an expression of trust is possible only after you have experienced again and again your selfhood and its results, as opposed to having heretofore experienced your self-alienation and your imprisonment and their commensurate results. This knowingness of the law that must fulfill itself will bring its proof. The trust that you send out must come back to you. Then you will understand that just as your limited concept bred its own commensurate limited results, your knowing without a doubt of the infinite abundance of creation must breed its own corresponding unlimited results. This knowingness of the truth is like a ray that reaches out and that must come back in fullness.

I realize that this has not been an easy lecture. It will require very intensive study -- inner study. And, above all, application to yourself, so that it is not only a general, theoretical understanding. You must determine where in yourself you limit yourself in an either/or; where in yourself you limit yourself in the idea that suffering is inevitable; where in yourself you limit yourself in your ignorance of the power inherent in your knowing, and in the concise formulation of this power. Thus your universe is closed to you and it sets up your fences. Institute the momentum of your effort so that you swing into effortless effort concerning your development, concerning the removal of your fences, concerning your self-unfoldment, concerning your self-expression. Then effortless effort becomes the movement of this Path itself.

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QUESTION: My daughter needs a little guidance and further help. Last summer you helped with certain advice with some of her guilts. She has found this to be so, but she hasn't been able to connect it emotionally. She has tried, and has used a lot of effort, but it was not effortless -- I can see that. She was frantic in her trying. And whether that blocks it or not, I don't know. She cannot change it to the yes-current. What is the next step?

ANSWER: Sometimes it is impossible to indicate a specific next step, for it depends upon where she responds. It might be any number of aspects that lead to the nucleus of the same problem. It might be where an inner response occurs. So one has to keep trying until one finds an aspect where it clicks. It makes no difference from which angle she approaches it. The question is searching for the approach where she is least fearful at the moment, and therefore least resistant.

One of her great stumbling blocks is a tremendously strong either/or. It is unusually strong in her case. It is this: "either I am happy or I am unhappy. If I am happy, then there must be perfection on all counts. And then I will live. If I am unhappy, then I must die." There is nothing between perfect bliss and absolute annihilation. This is what makes her so frantic.

This advice may help her over her present muddle. My advice is that she should try to contact the unlimited Cosmic Intelligence inside her and around her to help her see that this either/or is false, that it is illusory. As long as man desires the positive experience out of a fear of the negative opposite, then he deals with confusion and with error. As a result, his thoughts and his emotions are cluttered with debris. Therefore, they are an obstruction toward attaining the goal. This is what I meant about the apparent contradiction between acceptance and the knowledge that suffering is not necessary. It seems very difficult to reach the state of expressing a yes-current for happiness without fear of its opposite.

It makes no difference by which road you arrive at the truth. The truth is that there is nothing to fear. The truth is that there is no suffering. You may arrive at this conclusion by finding it unnecessary to accept suffering, and thus you may succeed in shedding the fear. Or you may arrive at the same conclusion by having to go through the fear in order to find out that it was an illusion. Behind the wall of apparent suffering, of apparent annihilation, of apparent fear stands the spiritual reality of eternal, unchanging bliss. In her meditation she should work on this factor, expressing the wish to get into a truthful concept about her frantic fear. Then the block will disappear and therefore the way will be open. If she truly desires to remove the imaginary threat, then this is the correct approach. First, she should concisely formulate what it is that she fears. Then she should state that she desires a realization of its unreality. Then the answer must come. When one meditates in such a fashion -- in good faith, in sincerity, and in the fullness of will -- then the answers always come.

Please prepare your questions. Do not let the opportunity go by. The more personal they are, the better for all of you.

If you can even halfway utilize and apply to yourself what I have said here, then you will begin to dissolve the fences into the thin air which they actually are. They have no real substance. When you discover the freedom, and when you find out that there are no chains, no fences, no prison walls -- in other words, that you are not helpless, that you can constantly influence and mold your immediate life -- then the happiness that follows is something that you cannot imagine. The fearlessness of living, the effortlessness of growing, the beauty of experiencing the rich variety of living without harassment, and the bliss of steadily growing cannot be described. All this awaits you. It is right here, where you are now.

I bless you with all the love and all the strength that exist in the universe. Make it your own, for this strength is an effortless strength. Through knowing the truth, you must discover that you are free to use all the riches that God has given you. Be in peace, be in God.

October 30, 1964