Conflict Of Positive vs. Negative Oriented Pleasure Principle As The Origin of Pain

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest, dearest friends. Blessings for each and every one of you, for every step, for every effort you undertake on the road to your liberation.

As a preface to this lecture, I should like to discuss the meaning of pain, or the real cause of pain. Pain is the result of conflict. Pain comes into being when two opposite currents exist in the personality. The universal forces strive towards light, towards life, towards growth, towards unfoldment, towards affirmation, towards beauty, towards love, towards inclusion, and towards pleasure supreme. When this direction is counteracted by another current, then a disturbance is created. It is not the disturbance itself that creates the pain, but it is the introduction of the opposite direction which brings imbalance and a special sort of tension. It is this conflict which causes the suffering, the pain. This is very important to understand, my friends, because without this basic knowledge, then it will be difficult to follow the rest of this lecture.

The principle which I explain here holds true on all levels. On the physical level it is easy to discern. The physical system, just as all other systems or planes, also strives towards wholeness and toward health. When another force pulls into the opposite direction, then it is the existence of the two directions that creates the pain. It is possible to see that this is what actually causes the pain through the fact that when the struggle is given up, and the individual lets go and gives in to the pain, then the pain stops. Many people have verified the truth of this principle. The moment that the struggle, the two opposite pulls, is relinquished and the negative direction (the pain) is accepted, then the pain must cease.

When the conflict is fought against in an ineffective manner, then what is taking place is that although the personality wants health, it negates the fact that it also wants non-health. Since the aspect that wants non-health is repressed, and therefore ignored, then the struggle towards health becomes all the more tense. That is the pain. If the personality were conscious of wanting non-health as well as health, then the struggle would cease instantly, for the wish for health could not be maintained. It would be neutralized by the wish for non-health. It is the unconscious aspect which creates a gap between cause and effect, the cause being the negative wish and the effect being the disturbance in the system. The two pulls continue and pain comes into being.

But when what goes on inside is fully understood and the temporary, though still unavoidable, consequences of the negative wish are accepted, and when one lets oneself go into this now existing pain, then the pain must cease. This should not be seen as a destructive way of embracing pain, or a masochistic, self-punishing element that in itself harbors and perpetuates a negative wish. Through the full acceptance of what is, pain ceases. It is the principle of painless birth: of accepting the pain and going with it. It is the principle of non-struggle. It is the principle that Jesus Christ explained when He said, "resist not evil," accept the existence of evil.

When the struggle becomes too fierce, involving all levels of the personality, then the only outcome is death. Death may also be the result of having given up the struggle. This applies to the physical plane, where pain ceases when tension ceases; and this happens in death.

On the mental plane and on the emotional plane something similar happens. When the struggle is fully understood as a temporary manifestation -- in other words, as an effect of the unconscious wish -- and is accepted as such without finality and yet in full awareness of the rightfulness of these consequences, then the mental pain or the emotional pain ceases. This does not happen when the negative is wanted, for, as we have seen, this merely creates the new direction, which is contrary to the original positive one. Nor does this happen by forfeiting the affirmative principle as such, but in the understanding of the Now. In other words, in accepting the existence of the negative current. Mental pain, emotional pain, and physical pain cease when the opposite pull is abandoned. All of you who are on such a path of self-realization have experienced this, at least occasionally.

On the spiritual plane it is different. For the spiritual plane is the cause, while all the other planes or spheres of consciousness are effects. The spiritual plane is the origin of the positive direction. It could not contain a negative direction. The negative direction is created by -- and it itself creates -- different attitudes which are incompatible with the origin of all life. The spiritual plane is unity itself. Therefore conflict -- opposing directions -- and, consequently, pain is unthinkable and illogical.

If a person is free from conflict, and therefore free from pain, then he must be in a state of unity. He can be in total unity only when he follows the unbroken line of the positive direction of his life forces. If it were possible for an individual entity to fully want the negative, then pain would cease. But this is not possible, for the real self is attuned to the real world of absolute constructiveness. This is the final reality, so that it is virtually senseless to even imagine that anyone could be in unity about any negative aim. Life, in its essential and profound character, cannot ever be negatively oriented. Negative orientation cannot be anything but a distortion. Since underneath the distortion the real continues to exist, then it sends forth its effects, regardless of the overlayers of distortion and the strength of the momentarily existing negative orientation. Since man and life are one, then man cannot ever be fully negative. When there is some negation in his make-up, then tension and conflict must exist, so that he must be in pain. The negating direction is opposed to life, and non-life cannot ever be wholly and totally desired, or even envisaged, without conflict, for it makes no sense.

It is important to understand, that the negative can only be desired by a part of the personality, never by the whole of it. There will always be another part of the psyche which violently objects to the negative desire, so that pain must result. On the physical level, on the emotional level, and on the mental level it is necessary to accept the negative temporarily -- as a passing stage -- in the understanding that it is the effect of an inadvertent cause, and therefore is a momentary disturbance. In this understanding, and in the resulting acceptance, one ceases to struggle. One accepts the negative without finality and with an objective, non self-indulgent attitude. But on the spiritual plane, which comprises the total being, total life, the origin of all, this is impossible. The total being cannot ever totally want the negative. Pain and suffering are always the result of the personality being pulled in two opposite directions: into life and into anti-life, into love and into hate, into unity and into separation, into the positive and into the negative. The outer layers of the personality must suffer as long as unity is not achieved -- and unity exists exclusively in the reality of the cosmic Creative Principle. It is exceedingly important to understand what I am saying here, for this knowledge will open new doors for you.

A number of my friends have recently crossed a major threshold on their Path first in the discovery and then in the awareness of areas in which they themselves desire the negative. This is an exceedingly important new phase. It makes all the difference for an individual to be aware or not to be aware of his negative desires. Of course, there are degrees of awareness. It is possible to be aware of them casually and fleetingly. It is possible to have gained some important insight of their existence, but then this awareness might have diluted again. The greater your awareness of a deliberate desire for the negative, then the more you will be in control both of yourself and of your life. Therefore, the less you will feel weak, and thus hepless, and consequently victimized. When an entity is not aware of its deliberate desire for the negative, then the suffering must be infinitely greater than any suffering or pain that can ensue when one is aware of having wanted it oneself. The lack of such awareness must create a psychic climate in which the individual feels that he is singled out to be a victim. It is inevitable to feel helpless when one lacks awareness of the fact that the effect was self-created. The separation between the cause and the effect in one's consciousness must create confusion, doubt, and hopelessness. The moment awareness of the negative desire has been attained through the painstaking struggle of this work, then you know what causes your outer difficulties and your unwelcome situations. Even before you are capable of giving up the negative desires -- because you do not yet understand the reason for their existence -- the mere fact that you now know that you yourself have created the undesirable manifestations in your life will render you a much freer person.

If you have made these initial inroads in the awareness of your negative desires, then you must extend this awareness and you have to connect it with the unwelcome manifestations in your life. This essential step must not be overlooked. For it is possible to be aware, to some extent at least, of a negative desire and nevertheless to either ignore or overlook the fact that this negative desire is the immediate cause of any number of manifestations in your life which you strenuously oppose and struggle against. And that is exactly your pain: You struggle against something that you yourself have produced. At the same time there must always be in you the pull towards light, towards wholeness, towards loving, towards unity, towards constructiveness, towards beauty, and towards unfoldment. What confuses you and pains you is your denial of this positive direction towards wholeness, your oblivion of this denial, your not knowing that you deny it. In other words, your not knowing that you want two opposing things at the same time. Let us look into what is required for an entity to reach first this awareness and then this understanding.

Those of you who have begun to see the existence of your negative desires gain a new strength and a new hope when this awareness is alive, dynamic, and not pushed out of sight. Because then, at first as a remote possibility, you see how life could be if you no longer had the negative desires, even though you do not yet know why you hold on to the negative desires and why you harbor them in the first place. But first knowing that you have those negative desires in yourself and then connecting them to the unwelcome results must give you new hope and a new outlook.

Those friends who have not yet gained this awareness should try their best to find the existence of their negative desires. On the surface, the majority of people cannot imagine how they might harbor destructive desires. Even some friends who are on this Path for a long time may as yet be unable to feel their destructive direction. Meditate and truly want to find what is in you. This is even more difficult when a personality busily denies those aspects in his life that he dislikes, when he does not want to face the fact that he misses something, that he suffers from something. This kind of denial of what he really craves and what he really feels about his life makes it impossible to ever bring real fulfillment into his life. This denial of what is in you at the present moment still exists in a few of my friends who have been in this work for a considerable time. So ask yourself: "Do I have what I desire? Do I experience everything to the maximum of my potentials? What is it that disturbs me, possibly more than I admit?" That would be the first question. This is a pertinent question for those whose tendency is to escape from their unfulfillments, to deny them, to gloss over them, and therefore to falsify their situation. Then there are those people who are only too keenly aware of their suffering and of what they miss, but they are inwardly disconnected from the mechanism within them that wishes, and therefore creates, the negative result.

Here the work on this Path continues. First the finding and then the awareness of your deliberate negative desires, or the avoidance of positive results -- which amounts to the same. This is an essential milestone on the road of your evolution. This awareness is more important than anything else, for it constitutes the difference between feeling oneself to be a helpless straw in the wind, a little tool in a vast universe, forgotten and helpless, and feeling oneself to be self-governing and autonomous. This autonomy works in the positive way as well as in the negative way. The entire cosmos exists by the great principle of self-perpetuation. When we discussed the principle of cycles or circles -- whether the benign or the vicious -- it always involved the principle of self-perpetuation. Everything is self-perpetuating, set in motion by the consciousness.

This can be seen right on your Path. When you have gained a certain degree of insight into your psyche, then you see how both the positive attitudes and the negative attitudes are self-perpetuating. For example, take any healthy, positive attitude. When you are outgoing, constructive, open, and embracing, then all things go easily. You do not have to work hard at it. The flow regenerates itself. In other words, you do not even have to spend energy on any deliberate kind of meditation. By themselves your positive thoughts, your positive attitudes, and your good feelings create more positive thoughts, more positive attitudes, and more positive feelings. Hence that area of your life is full of productiveness, of peace, of dynamism, and of fulfillment. It is exactly the same with the negative situations. The self-perpetuating forces in this instance can be changed only by a deliberate process, like the work you do on your Path, which sets something new in motion, thereby interrupting the cycle.

It is also important for you first to understand and then to visualize that all the spheres of consciousness operate according to these directions that we have discussed. In other words, to simplify a bit for the sake of our discussion here, there is the positive principle and the positive direction. This is the sphere of reality, the sphere in which there is unlimited self-perpetuation, in whatever respect a consciousness is aware of its existence. Incidentally, I want to interject here that the principle of self-perpetuation that I have just explained on a spiritual level exists in identical form on the scientific plane. In chemistry, in physics, in practically every field of science, this principle can be found to exist. Therefore it should be easier to accept than if it were a phenomenon that had not already been found to exist in your human, material realm.

The level of the personality which wants the negative, and which therefore pursues its direction, creates a new world, a psychic sphere that covers the original one. Images and forms -- which are the products of attitudes, of thoughts, and of feelings -- create this negative world. There are many variations, many degrees, and many possibilities for this negative world. They depend on the strength of the negative desires, on the awareness of both the positive desires and the negative desires, and on the balance between the two. You may gain an inkling of this by looking at your own progress from the point of view of your awareness -- as compared with your previous unconscious avoidance of positive experience, or even a direct desire for the negative experience. If you compare this with your present awareness, then you will see that this difference constitutes a different sphere of consciousness, a different world -- each distinct with its own flavor with and its own atmosphere. The physical world that you live in is the expression of a certain mixture which manifests the positive, the negative, and a combination of the two. All of these worlds exist both in you and outside of you, in timelessness and in spacelessness. You can reach these worlds within your psyche, indeed you must reach these worlds, in the sense of becoming acutely aware of them. They are a product of the expression of your various spheres of consciousness. You must go through them within yourself, layer by layer. Where you are relatively free from negative desires, then it will be relatively simple and relatively easy to grasp, to feel, and to experience the world of truth, where all good exists and where it is self-perpetuating. Therefore there is no need for struggle, for doubt, for fear, or for deprivation. In these areas you will find that you fearlessly open your heart to the positive, dynamic experience, which moves eternally towards further unfoldment, towards greater happiness, and towards more unity. You do not stop this movement with your fearful mind, holding it in check and therefore bringing it to a standstill. These spheres are all there. They exist not only deep in your psyche, where you can sense the eternal life of all existence, but they also manifest in your outer life. To become aware of them is also useful, so that then you can compare them properly.

And then there is always your main problem. This is the area in your psyche where your fear of the positive, hence its negation, exists. Consequently, deprivation and suffering manifest in your outer life. It is this sphere within your consciousness that you must fully experience so that you can transcend it. You must live it through. But not by denying it or by struggling away from it, but first by seeing it, then by accepting it, and third by learning to understand its nature. This is what is meant by going through it. When it is first ascertained and then affirmed as a temporary reality, then the underlying world of self-perpetuating good can be reached. It is a world where you no longer have to reach for what you want, to grasp for what you want, and to desperately want what you want, but a world where you know that what you want is already yours, even before you have attained it.

When man is separated from others, from his fellow creatures, then he must be in the negative world, trapped in a self-perpetuating negativity that he sows through his destructive wishes. Therefore, he must be in suffering because he ignores, and therefore denies, the full significance of the struggle that he has engaged himself into. Man finds himself in this constant struggle. The struggle varies from individual to individual. And for each individual it may vary even from phase to phase and from hour to hour, because at different times he is enticed by different directions -- which alternate in predominance at any given moment. So there must always be in you the unceasing struggle in which one side of you strives towards wholeness, strives towards union with your fellow creatures, strives towards love, strives towards understanding, strives towards consideration, strives towards giving and receiving. But there always exists this other side in you which negates and denies the former direction, which fears it, and therefore resists it. Therefore, where a particular pain exists because of the struggle, the greater is the denial, and therefore the greater is the pain. For, do not forget, it is impossible to completely want isolation, to completely want withdrawal, to completely want separation. If it were possible to completely want this, and to be wholly reconciled to its results, then there would be no pain. But it is not possible to ever want this completely. You can only want it to a large degree. Therefore, the larger the positive percentage, the stronger is the pull into the opposite direction from health and from union -- hence, the fiercer is the pain.

The pain is aggravated by the struggle that sets in with the other person. For, do not forget, my friends, that it is painful enough that on the one hand you want to relate to the other and to love the other, and that on the other hand you want to hate the other, you want to reject the other, and you want to withdraw from the other. It becomes infinitely more complicated and conflicting when this is multiplied by a second individual into whose circumference you enter and who is waging a similar fight within.

Both the positive direction and the negative direction are attached to the pleasure principle, as I outlined in a previous lecture. It is this attachment that makes it so difficult to give up and change. The pleasure principle that is positively-oriented and negatively oriented at the same time tears you apart. It inflicts pain on you by itself, but it does not exist in you alone. Those whom you are involved with in this conflict -- and about whom you cannot decide whether to love or to reject -- would not be affected by you struggle if they were perfectly in balance and free from such an inner division. Their harmony with the universal forces and their high degree of awareness would protect them from your negativity and from the tension resulting between your positive pull and your negative pull. For the sake of argument, if it were possible that such an evolved being could enter into a relationship with an ordinary person who is wracked by this fight, then the latter would still be in pain by his own division. But it becomes much more complicated when both persons are in a similar position, for then the struggle is not only doubled, it is quadrupled. Imagine the many mathematical possibilities that arise from such a situation, with all their psychological consequences of misunderstanding, of misjudgment, and of hurts, which in turn create further negativity. Let us imagine two people, A and B. A momentarily expresses the positive direction towards union. B is frightened of it and therefore withdraws and rejects A. Consequently A convinces himself that the healthy soul movement towards union was risky and painful, so he reverts to the negative and the denial. Since this is painful, the negative pleasure principle attaches itself to it, so as to make the pain more bearable. He will then revel in the negative situation. In the meantime, the pain of isolation in B becomes unbearable and therefore he ventures out, while at that time A is in his dark hole. This goes on and on, sometimes the opposition is complete, sometimes there is a fleeting meeting. At times A's positive direction meets B's negative one; at other times it is reversed; at still other times both negative currents are out and both either withdraw or antagonize one another. At still other times, both venture out temporarily into the positive. But since the negative principle still exists in them, then the positive position is tentative at best. It is so uncertain, so fearful, so divided, so defensive, and so apprehensive that all these negative emotions about the positive direction sooner or later must produce negative results. These negative results are then attributed to the positive opening, rather than to the problematic emotions about it. So it is inevitable that the negative direction must take over once again after such periods of mutual positiveness. This will continue to happen until the negative, destructive, and denying side is fully understood and is eliminated in both personalities.

As you can see, this brings together a number of recent lectures into one comprehensive whole. As I outlined in a recent lecture, the negative, the denial, the destructive direction would not be as fierce and as difficult to overcome if the pleasure principle were not attached to it. Man then comes into the position of not wanting to part from the precarious pleasure that he derives from indulging in destructive feelings and in negative attitudes. This may come into existence subtly, insidiously, and inadvertently, even when an individual starts out with the healthy and constructive direction in force.

Let us take the following example, which might prove useful for all of you. Suppose that on the road towards your self-realization you gain strength and self-confidence. Where previously there was uncertainty and guilt in you when you experienced friction with another person, now you experience a new inner calm, a certainty in yourself, a strength, and a resiliency that you never knew existed. In the old way, you might have responded with submissiveness in order to assuage your guilt, or with aggression and hostility in order to assuage your self-contempt for your uncertainty. Whatever you did, however you responded with the negativity and the self-doubt still in you, you were involved in the negatively-oriented pleasure principle. In other words, you enjoyed your woes. Now you have progressed. Therefore, you experience yourself in a new way. Instead of the nagging self-doubt, now you gain insight into the other person. By this insight you understand why the other person behaves as he does, what makes him tick. For the moment this objective understanding sets you free, it makes you strong, it gives you a more objective insight into yourself, and therefore into the other person. In other words, the self-perpetuating principle of insight and understanding has been put in motion.

But then the still existing -- because not yet fully recognized -- negative pleasure principle attaches itself to your understanding of the other person's negativity. So you begin to talk yourself into how awful his faults and his blindness are, and you inadvertently begin to enjoy this. You do not distinguish between the two different kinds of joy. The first joy, when you saw with detachment what exists in the other person, setting you free; the second joy, when you pleasurably indulged in the other's wrongness, binding you. What at first you had noticed merely as a detached observation, now you build up and you build up, until the old negative pleasure principle has re-appeared in a new guise. This is where you lose your harmony and your freedom, because you indulge once again in the negative pleasure principle. This is an example of how insidiously this can happen where the old roots still exist, where they are still unresolved.

Now the continuation of this Path becomes clearer and more concisely defined. You have the tools to set out and see what I explained here. Are there any questions?

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QUESTION: It seems this whole lecture was for me. When I come to see the pain and hurt in the other person, then I immediately bring out the negative, my hostility and my rage, and I am blinded by these negative feelings. I cannot see anything positive or understand the struggle in the other person. Although I pray and want to let go, I am still "sitting in the hole."

ANSWER: While you indulge in the negativity, are you aware that you enjoy doing it? (Yes, I am) Then the next step would have to be a simple one, my dearest friend. It is the expression of this thought: "I want to give up the negative in me. I want my pleasure to be attached to a positive situation. I want to be constructive. I want to give my attention to this situation. I want to be governed by the most constructive forces in me." Do this in a relaxed and light way, enlisting the subliminal forces within yourself to help you to do it. Do not try to do it by sheer outer power, for with that outer power you cannot succeed. All that the outer mind can do is to issue such a constructive intent. With that, it sets in motion a positive movement which then begets a positive self-perpetuating cycle. If you find that you are not willing to do it yet, then your work must proceed as I suggest. Where and why do you believe that wanting the negative is safer for you than wanting the positive? In other words, why do you hinder yourself from wanting the positive? If you cannot stop this process, then there must still be reasons that you have not understood, and they must be unearthed.

QUESTION: Irrationally, I fear that I may be taken advantage of and lose my integrity. I have a slight feeling that this is not true, but I can't see exactly how.

ANSWER: In the first place, you must want to see that this is possibly a wrong conclusion. The feeling of helplessness or powerlessness is the self-perpetuating principle of having given up your self-government when you allowed yourself to be taken up by the negative force. Therefore it does not occur to you that you do have the possibility of governing yourself. Therefore, say: "I decide that I do not want to be in this negativity or that I no longer want to hang on to this misconception that I have discovered." In that moment you take command. Then you can affirm: I do not have to be a slave to decisions that do not come from me. I am constructive. I know that whatever I want is up to me." Then you will experience that the more your desires are constructive, the freer you become, and therefore the easier it will be to determine independently what you will do or what you will not do. In other words, others will no longer be able to impose their will on you. Hence your integrity will be preserved, and it will increase in exact proportion to your active desire to be constructive and to your active desire to give up the negatively attached pleasure principle.

What has weakened you was losing the awareness of your negative desires. You had repressed them, you had denied them, and therefore you had hidden them. Then you had superimposed false positive desires over them. Hence you lost touch with yourself. If you had been aware of your negative desires, then you could have been able to prevent them from becoming so strong. If you had done that, then you would not have become helpless, and therefore powerless. In reality, your weakness and your resulting helplessness do not exist because of the stronger will of others. They exist because you are swept up in the negative self-perpetuating force of your negative desires, which you have consciously ignored until now. This lack of control makes you unable to imagine how it is when you take command. As long as you are not conscious of your negative desires, then you cannot consciously and deliberately take command of your life. This can happen only with positive desires. When you issue such positive desires into yourself, then you will become stronger and therefore more self-governing and less helpless, and thus less vulnerable. Because your free and active decisions will be made in absolute consciousness of what you are doing and why you are doing it. Another thing is that because of your gnawing guilt -- which is inevitable when negative desires exist, regardless of whether or not one is aware of them -- you allow yourself to be taken advantage of. In other words, your guilt makes you go overboard. It is because of the negative direction in you that you allow yourself to be taken advantage of; it is because of it that you are uncertain; it is because of it that you are uneasy; and it is because of it that you are uncertain about your own rights. Only because of that! If you were to free yourself of your destructive desires, then you would not feel guilty. Hence you would not need to atone. Then you would be able to say No to others -- easily, kindly, and without defensiveness, when this is the right thing and when this is what you want. Therefore, you would not give in to the unreasonable demands being made upon you. So, you see, it is exactly the opposite of what you thought. Positiveness and constructiveness will set you free to have integrity, to defend yourself, and to assert your rights, while negation and destructiveness must weaken you and make you defenseless. When you feel that it is still impossible for you to issue the desire to be constructive and positive and productive, then assert that this is where you are. In other words, assert this fact. See yourself being IN the negation, being IN the destructiveness and then set out to find what further undetected reasons slumber behind this resistance to being productive. Arrayed behind it are more fears of a deeper nature, which we will come to and which I shall discuss in the future.

QUESTION: I usually concentrate too much on studying the negative aspects, centered on my father-image. I have asked myself lately if by doing so I have been hiding something which is deeper in me and that I don't want to look at? I concentrate on this mixture of a father-image and a concept of maleness. I think that I miss the main point by analyzing too much of this.

ANSWER: Somewhere in you there is a desire in which you do not want to assume the male role. Have you become aware of this desire? (No) Well, this is it. The awareness of it will come, at first indirectly -- by deducing certain manifestations -- and then by bringing out the emotions. Consciously there is a great desire to be a strong man. You even go overboard and exaggerate this image of masculinity as a consequence of your over-compensation. This over-compensation would not exist if you were inwardly ready to assume the male role. In other words, if you would not refuse it. There is the fear that you may be too inadequate to fulfill that role; there is also the fear that demands will be made upon you if you assume it. And there is also a sort of spitefulness towards life and towards society, wherein you say No. There is in you envy of the feminine sex, which on that level seems to have it easier. You resent the effort required of you to fulfill the requirements of this image of masculinity that you harbor. You believe that this is what you should do, and you resent it that this seems to be expected of you. Maybe you expect it of yourself, but nevertheless this is what you think you ought to do and what you think you ought to be -- and you resent it! So, it is important that you find the exact opposite of your conscious striving. In other words, where you put up a passive resistance against your male role, where you fear it, where you deny it, and where you do not want it, and therefore where you spitefully refuse it. When you become aware of all that, then you will know it when you have found the point I have discussed here. This concerns your identity as a man.

QUESTION: Yes, yes. I went over this point last year, but I have completely overlooked it lately.

ANSWER: This is what often happens. A finding is made, but then it is shelved as though this suffices. In otgher words, it is not changed or eliminated by any means. In fact, you have scratched the bare surface of this facet. Often it is necessary that one works on other aspects for a while before one can return to the fundamental problem.

Be blessed, every one of you. Receive this warm stream of love that is all around you and that transcends every one of you. Open yourself to it. For, this love is truth, and this truth is life. And this life is yours for the asking. The courageous steps that all of you undertake have great meaning. They are not senseless, they are not useless, my dearest ones. May you always know this. Every admission of something negative that exists in you contributes more towards the universal process of wholeness than any other thing you can imagine. So proceed this way. Be blessed. Be in peace. Be in God.

February 4, 1966