The Self-Regulating Nature Of The Involuntary Processes

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. May you find blessings through the help, the strength, and the enlightenment that these lectures can give you. This last lecture of the season will be a summary and, at the same time, it will shed light on the next step you need to take -- if not in deed and in action, then at least in the outlook and in helping you to understand where you are going and why you are stuck in certain ways. This lecture rounds up the season behind us and, at the same time, brings a vague foreknowledge of the steps to be taken in the next season of our work together. A few of you have some more steps to take before you can derive the real meaning of this. Nevertheless, an attempt to understand it, not only with your mind but with your heart, will make a great deal of what is to come on the way of your self-discovery a lot easier for you.

The meaning of self-realization is to bring out into reality all the dormant potentials. It also means to integrate the ego with the as yet involuntary processes. The ego consists of the outer reasoning faculty and the outer will faculty. The involuntary processes comprise feelings, intuition, and, what is more, certain manifestations which operate according to the most meaningful and lawful foundations of life. No one who has not already approached the threshold of self-realization can possibly grasp the wonder and the beauty of this part of creation.

Man's battle lies in holding on to his ego faculties. This is because he desperately fears the involuntary processes. He fears everything about them, either consciously or unconsciously. He fears the spontaneity of his feelings. He may ignore this fact because he believes that something is a feeling when he merely registers a sensation or a reaction to his surroundings. Something that is not spontaneous and involuntary, something that is directly, rather than indirectly, governable by the ego processes cannot be called a feeling.

Why does man fear the involuntary processes? Why does he often fear them more than practically anything else in life, when the best in life is a result of the involuntary creative processes? Nothing that is really worthwhile, that is really meaningful, that is really fulfilling, that is of lasting value can ever be the product of ego function, of direct ego control. Why is man so bent to destroy, to dominate, to deny, to manipulate creative life -- the involuntary processes -- and to substitute them with the much less adequate, much less wise, much less resourceful, much less creative ego faculties, which are but separated particles of the Greater Consciousness, operative through the involuntary functions? Before answering this question, let me point out that this over-exertion of ego control and the denial of the involuntary processes creates a tremendous imbalance in the personality. It creates a sickness, or, if one prefers the expression, a neurosis, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on how much the ego controls the creative life within. Man starts from the premise that the healthier he is to be, then the more control he ought to exert over his involuntary processes. This misconception makes him go off in a direction that is opposed to inner balance, that is opposed to the realization of his best potentials, that is opposed to the rich fulfillment of life on all levels of his being, that is opposed to healthy well-being. If he is to attain all that, then he must reverse the direction. The more he is bent to over-control and to dominate the inner, involuntary processes -- and the more he fears them -- then the more conflicted and the more unhappy he becomes. Therefore, the emptier his life must be. In fact, he becomes nothing but a shallow, lifeless shell held together by rigid guards which he never dares to relinquish. He gets into a vicious circle. The more he presses into the wrong direction, the more he loses himself and his life, the more problematic his life becomes, and the less capable he becomes of coping. Since he believes that this is a result of insufficient ego control, he tries to increase it rather than decrease it, thereby getting more deeply involved in this vicious circle. The only way to reverse it is to let go of the rigid vigilance which rules out all inner creative life and to use the ego faculties in another way, which I will explain shortly.

The involuntary functions -- which must be called into play -- are operative at all times. Returning to the question of why man fears the involuntary processes, we have to consider it on two fundamental levels. When he is involved in the vicious circle that I mentioned, then it is because man bases certain assumptions about life and about his relationship to life on false ideas. These false ideas, which are often unconscious, form the images that we talk about. These images are deeply lodged in the soul substance and they compel man to act upon these premises. Since the premises are false, then the ensuing actions and the emotions are bound to be destructive, and are geared to defend against something that does not exist. Hence, the results must be the opposite of what he really wants. In short, he acts against his own interests. The soul substance is a powerhouse of energy. It is of infinitely greater power than man is even remotely aware of. When an individual is driven to act according to these images, then this power is used negatively. When man is free from illusion and from misconception, and is therefore in contact with his real self -- with a level of cosmic reality -- then the power that is operative is positive, and is therefore constructive. This power is so highly charged that anything can be molded with it. It is the creative power per se. But it is neutral. That means that it can be used and that it can flow only in the direction which the mind sets with the concepts that it harbors. Thus the power operates automatically. It seems that it happens by itself. The ingrained ideas which are no longer actively thought about work as the motor force of this power. These ideas become self-perpetuating. They find their outer manifestation in the events which these ideas create.

A person who is unaware of what he really believes and unaware of life's laws ignores these connections. Therefore, he thinks that the events in his life have nothing to do with his own ideas. He ignores the creative power in himself and the fact that it is set up in such a way that it actually works negatively in him. Our Path is aimed at bringing out these unconscious ideas, these images. At the beginning they are unconscious. But once you find that you harbor, deep inside of yourself, equations and assumptions that are completely contrary to your conscious reason and to your conscious intelligence, then you begin to perceive that -- with these assumptions working on the creative life energy -- you have instituted involuntary processes that are destructive. Since the energy caught up in these images works according to the assumptions of the images, then the unconscious involuntary process is destructive.

The conscious mind is an instrument of the unconscious perceptions and connections that actually exist, but it is able to translate them only hazily. That is, the more a person is conscious of the inner -- and heretofore unconscious -- processes, the more exactly he will understand the messages coming through. But when an individual is still driven by his unconscious images -- and is thus driven by the negatively-operative involuntary processes -- then he cannot help but fear them. So, on one level, the fear is explained by the fact that his involuntary processes lead him into negative experiences which are due to the presence in him of unconscious false ideas. He ignores the fact that these forces are dangerous or negative only because they work according to certain of his own ideas. He ignores the fact that once these ideas are challenged and found to be untrue, then the same self-operative power can be trusted. Instead, his solution is not to trust any involuntary processes ever and to guard himself against them by a strict vigilance with the use of his ego faculties. In addition, he ignores how damaging this soluton is. In fact, the average person has no idea of what he is doing and why he is doing it.

The person who follows a path of self-confrontation is bound to discover his ingrained, and heretofore unconscious, assumptions about important aspects of living. He gradually begins to dissolve these images first through recognizing them and then through installing truthful ideas in his soul substance. He begins to observe the power of these images -- of the energy involved in them, of the automatic involuntary nature of these energies. Little by little, through this constant observation and understanding, you can begin to re-create correct assumptions. Then they will begin to work constructively for you. You proceed to set off new energy currents which go according to a vaster law. You never need to fear them.

Nevertheless, even when this begins to happen, when the images have been found and have begun to be dissolved to a certain extent, when self-acceptance and self-observation bring new understanding and harmony into the inner life, at this point you still find yourself afraid of your involuntary processes. This brings us to the second level of this question. At this juncture you may have arrived at understanding these precepts in theory: that the involuntary processes need not be destructive, that they are only destructive because of your hidden misconceptions. Yet, in actuality you still fear the self-perpetuating involuntary forces. You still believe that you need to guard yourself against them. In order to help you from this point on, the following words can be exactly what you need, provided you work with them. The summary of past material approached in this particular form was necessary in order to lead up to what follows. The next step is this. How can you begin to trust the involuntary processes? How can you be sure that after dissolving the false assumptions which formed certain images the free-flowing energy then available will not lead you into danger and into destruction, too, once you let go of the sharp control of your ego? Unless you trust the involuntary processes, then your exaggerated ego control cannot be relinquished. Therefore, you can never convince yourself of the benign nature of these creative forces within you. The productive, creative involuntary processes cannot become operative as long as you do not encourage them, as long as you do not wish them, as long as you do not give yourself to them. If you do not let go and permit them to happen -- and you get your whole being to want this -- then you can never experience the proof of the reliability of the involuntary creative processes contained in every human soul. In order to get to this point certain new considerations have to be made in order to explain why the involuntary processes can be trusted.

The words that I will speak now are designed to open up new understanding in this respect. I hope that all of you realize that it does not suffice to merely read these words. They need to be taken very seriously by giving them a great deal of attention with your innermost being, with your best intentions, and with your best will. In other words, by opening yourself completely and by letting go of the defenses that make you so tight and so rejecting of new ideas that seem to threaten you. When the control of the ego is too tight, then such words may seem threatening. That which is actually your salvation appears like your undoing. You have fought against this direction all your life. Now you are being told to do the opposite of what you thought you needed to do. Therefore, you cannot imagine that it will work.

Even those who have been engaged in this pathwork for some time, and have made significant progress, do not find it easy to cross the threshold and come to the state of mind that trusts what hitherto was the most threatening of all, life's involuntary processes within yourself. They, too, have to fight against too tight an ego control where reason and the will crowd out the involuntary processes.

The only way these involuntary processes can be trusted is to realize that they are self-regulating, just as perfectly and as just completely as many of your biological functions which you take for granted and whose self-regulating nature you never bother to think about. It would not occur to anyone to want to regulate his blooodstream, to want to control his nervous system, or to control his heartbeat, or to control the functioning of his liver, or to control any other inner organ. They do their work perfectly by themselves. It would not occur to you to try to control and to govern them by your outer reasoning processes and by your outer will. If you were to attempt such a thing, then it would only create harm. For the pressure you would exert with the wasted will power, with the wasted energy, would eventually affect the good functioning of your body in a negative way. All wasted energy has that effect. This is the background of all physical illness. Which organs are affected depends on their innate resistance to illness, on their inherent health. People are born with some organs that are more resistant to abuse. They continue to function for a considerable time in spite of consistent bodily abuse. Other organs are more delicate and therefore begin to give out when the slightest thing is wrong with them. To return to this analogy, the attempt to control something that is not amenable to ego control can only create imbalance, pressure, tension, anxiety, and finally manifest negative effects. This applies not only to the body, but to all levels of the personality. When you begin to focus on the fact that you do not have to exert any will power -- any pressure with your ego faculties -- in order to have your biological functions work in their own perfect way, then you will be able to see that the same applies to other levels. The same principle of self-regulation exists in nature in every possible respect. But you have to use your ego so as to nurture and to cultivate healthier habits in order to maintain the involuntary self-regulating processes. This is the ego's task. The ego has the possibility to take care of the body so as to maintain health. But it would be utter folly on the part of the ego to use direct pressure to control the functions that are not responsive in this direct way, but only in an indirect way, by the choice of habits regarding food, sleep, exercise, etc.

The same relationship exists between the ego and the involuntary processes of the emotional life, of the creative functions within, of the direction one's life is to take as a whole. These involuntary processes are just as perfectly and just as meaningfully regulated -- according to lawful procedures -- as the biological ones. If the ego does not interefere, then self-regulation occurs effortlessly and naturally. Again, the ego has its role to play. Its task is to choose healthful habits regarding the activity of the mind so as to set the proper direction. Man's mind can choose to nurture brooding thoughts which then encourage destructive emotions. Or else his mind can choose honesty with the self; it can choose to disclose all his self-deceptions; it can choose to do away with all the illusions that one nurtures about the self and look at oneself truthfully. It can determine to accept oneself where and how one is now. It can choose to give up the idealized version of the self that one tries to enforce. These are the healthful habits you need if your involuntary processes are to be indirectly affected, and therefore work in a reliable way. Then their self-regulating nature can reveal itself. The temptation to evade the truth of the self must be as rigorously overcome as the rigor of ego control must be relinquished. This is how balance can be re-established in the personality.

The cultivation of such healthful mental habits which the ego chooses can be paralleled with the physical level. Just as the body always responds favorably when it is treated constructively, so does the level where feelings and intuition create conditions and experiences of life. When your ego no longer dominates your involuntary processes, then your intuition will give you a new security and will help you to cope with life. Thoughts will come from the deepest resources of your solar plexus, rather than from the volitional, artificial thought processes that man is used to when over-emphasizing the intellect. He is used to this imbalance without knowing what he does and what he misses.

When their self-regulating nature is experienced, then the involuntary processes will integrate with the ego functions. Only then can life be really fulfilling and truly rich. Then a new freedom exists to receive what comes from within. One is being lived from within, as it were. This is self-realization. Then one can see how in their health these involuntary processes are just as trustworthy and just as self-regulating as a body functioning in health. An integrated, full life is impossible if these involuntary faculties are not allowed to be.

How many times do my friends say: "But if I give in, if I let go of my ego control, then what will happen? My feelings may want something that is destructive or something that I disapprove of." And I keep saying to them that this is possible. Unhealthy desires and negative emotions do exist. They are the result of the distortions, of the images, of the misconceptions, and of the misunderstanding of early painful experiences which need not, however, destroy your life just because you have built general concepts around these early experiences. The existence of these desires and emotions does not change merely because you acknowledge what actually has always been there, only you have never admitted it. Only after you have acknowledged the presence of the undesirable material -- negative wishes and destructive emotions -- in you can you begin to experience the ever present, but still more deeply hidden, constructive feelings: the positive power inherent in your deepest nature. Those latter feelings have the self-regulating wisdom built into their very existence, just as the destructive emotions and the false assumptions become self-regulating in the automatic reflexes which they force upon you.

Once you allow the negative material into your consciousness, then you must see the power of the constructive material in you. Then you will discover what I keep mentioning: Man is even more afraid of the positive power in him than he is of all the destructive feelings and all the negative desires put together. Any one who goes deeply enough in this path of self-confrontation cannot help but find out this truth, no matter how preposterous and how illogical it may seem to read about it.

If you fear the constructive forces in you, then this is because you ignore the self-regulating nature of the cosmic flow that any constructive feeling is. To let yourself be carried by it seems risky -- even dangerous. In this particular phase your vague, or perhaps even distinct, fear, once it is conscious at all, says this: "Where will this carry me? Where will I go from here? What will it make me do? I will lose my individuality. I will lose all control." The good feelings seem to be even more threatening than the negative ones regarding the loss of your control and the loss of your individuality. Also the fear may exist that the good feelings may be directed to someone who is not worthy of them, someone who does not reciprocate in kind, someone who will reject you, who will hurt you, and who will take advantage of you. These may indeed be valid objections, but only as regards the object of your affection. They never justify the denial of the good feelings themselves. For if the choice of the love object is inadequate, then it is the result of your immaturity, of your illusion, and of your lack of awareness of self. Hence your lack of awareness of others. It is a temporary phase of growth. When feelings are stopped, then growth is stopped. If a feeling is allowed to function in the realization that it has to grow into its self-reliable and self-regulating nature, then it is bound to produce the fulfillment that no longer needs to be feared even more than the frustration. The choice of love objects who are unfulfilling and frustrating -- or who even produce pain -- expresses the torn state of the individual's inner direction: He wants the feeling and he does not want it; he desires fulfillment and he fears it. It is precisely because of this conflicting state that experiences accrue which seem to warrant the fear of letting go of ego control and of trusting the flow of the involuntary processes, of the spontaneous feelings. The difficult experience is never proof that feelings are not trustworthy, but only proof of conflicting wishes and of ignoring the fact that feelings, intuition, spontaneous thoughts, and inspiration -- in other words, all the creative processes -- undergo their own law of growth, just as any other part of the human organism does. When this part of man's nature is fully grown, then the self-regulating quality manifests more and more. Then man is self-realized. Then he lives on the level of the real self, where life is all good.

But man fears the total surrender to the involuntary processes. Therefore he cannot find out the perfection of the self-regulating law. Most of you still have this fear of letting go. You fear letting go, although you long for it. You fear it and you distrust it, although you understand the truth theoretically. You may recognize the tightness with which you do not want to let go. If you examine your emotional, irrational motive for holding back and distrusting the flowing, creative life process within, then you may come up with the false conclusion that these processes are chaotic and that only your ego is orderly and safe. This false belief is due to your ignorance of the self-regulating nature of the creative processes of life. The recognition of this image must help you to come a step nearer to the real life that leads itself from within yourself.

A further help will be to clearly understand that there is a harmful way of letting go, a distorted version of it, just as there is a distorted and harmful version of discipline. Self-realization -- the full bringing out of one's best self and the integration of the ego functions with the highly creative potentials that are still dormant, and therefore involuntary -- can come about only through a constant weighing and the testing of a relaxed discipline alternating with a proper letting go. Neither attitude can ever be harmful if the following key is observed: self-revelation and self-confrontation in an utterly truthful way. Nothing dangerous can ever happen, provided all the illusions about the self are rigorously given up. This is the perfect way in which discipline and letting go bring a harmony that reconciles these two apparently opposite attitudes.

When discipline is being used against letting go -- perhaps because letting go of the ego's vigilance means the recognition of facts that one does not wish to face about the self, facts that contradict cherished illusions about the self -- then discipline becomes a rigid confinement of the creative processes. The personality then becomes stiff, unspontaneous, empty of real feelings, bound to outer rules and regulations, tight and fearful. Discipline is being used against the truth, not for truth. This is what makes opposites out of discipline and letting go. By the same token, letting go becomes destructive when it is used in order to evade the truth; when it is the result of self-indulgence; when it is the result of cuddling a destructive line of least resistance; when it is the result of maintaining unhealthy attitudes. Then letting go leads away from the self. Therefore, it becomes just as dangerous as the wrong kind of discipline. Both distortions create a heavy defensive wall in the soul substance, for both wish to avoid the truth about the self. An inner tension, a rigidity exists that separates the personality from the real self, which has all the vibrant energies, creativeness, a wealth of healthy, strong feelings, and enough resiliency to cope with anything. Instead, there is a brittleness, a need to withdraw, and a need to be fearfully separate, over-controlled, and therefore rigid.

When the heaviness of the false discipline imposes too much structure, then some personalities break. For the strain becomes too much. Other personality types choose, as a way out, evasion through indulgence. Particularly in these times this is a frequent occurrence. It often takes place under the guise and the pretense of the real letting go. When looking at the self seems too painful, too uncomfortable, or too unflattering, and when rigid self-discipline either no longer works or when it is rejected to begin with, then evasion may finally lead to drug addiction in one person, while another person may become a derelict. What at first had been merely a weakness now takes on forever greater proportions: it perpetuates itself, until the personality truly loses itself. It seems that it can no longer stop the process. It may even glorify it under various labels and pretexts -- just as the over-disciplined person glorifies his own way.

He who is fearfully over-controlled and rigid will use the example of the crass opposite -- the totally weak, self-indulgent person, the derelict, the one who negates all discipline, all responsibility -- as a warning to justify his over-control. He will say: "You see, this is what happens when one does not control himself. I cannot afford to let go, I might end up the same way." On the other hand, the self-indulgent one -- who evades self-honesty just as much as the over-controlled person -- will claim the rightness of his course on the ground of the example of the rigidly-controlled person who has lost contact with life in himself. The self-indulgent solution is no more in contact with the real self than the other extreme.

It is important for everyone of you to become acutely aware of this see-saw that exists in you. Realize both extremes, that of the heavily guarded, over-controlled, rigid, unspontaneous, unfeeling, over-watchful person and that of the person who is running away from the self by abandoning all discipline. The cohesive factor that makes all danger impossible, that removes all threats, and that combines the apparent opposites of discipline and letting go, is the willingness -- a commitment which must be ever renewed -- to be truthful with the self; the willingness to face whatever the self is; the willingness to give to life one's best: all one's honesty, all one's integrity, all one's constructiveness, all one's most sincere and total attention. The more this commitment becomes ingrained, the less there is to fear in letting go and the less one needs to guard against anything. Thus a relaxed, spontaneous being is at one with the cosmic flow of life.

To the degree that fear of the involitional processes of the inner life still exists and to the degree thay are still distrusted and their self-regulating reality is ignored, to that degree self-deception must still exist; to that degree a will to be destructive and negative must still exist; to that degree a desire to cheat life must still exist. Conversely, to the degree a person cultivates the attitude of "I want to look the truth in the face, whatever it is, under all circumstances, at all times, and whatever the momentary difficulty may be," to that degree the fear of the good life must vanish. When this truthfulness, when this courage, and when this humility are practiced -- and when they gradually become second nature -- then there is nothing to fear, and therefore all unfulfillment ceases. By humility I mean to know that you do not know all the answers. Do not always assume, and therefore do not say so readily, "it is this or it is that." It is not -- and even if it is, then there is always more to it than you know. If you knew it all, then you would be in harmony with life. Therefore, there would be no anguish, no bitterness, no fear, no emptiness in you. When this truthfulness is cultivated every day; when it is taken into consideration that deep inside there are many aspects of yourself which are overlooked: the aspect of your relationship to yourself, the aspect of your relationship with others, the aspect of your relationship with life; when you expand; when you extend yourself in a relaxed search for answers that come from within you; when you use your ego faculties, your will faculties, and your discipline to involve your total being in whatever you do in this self-search -- for example, in finding the answers to whatever the issue in question is; when you cultivate truthfulness and a totally constructive involvement in which you give the best of yourself, your attention, and your honesty -- in other words, when this discipline is being cultivated -- then you have nothing to fear from of letting go. When you really want to give your best total self to everything you do, then you have nothing to fear from your involuntary processes. For you will convince yourself of the deeply meaningful lawfulness of their self-regulating nature that just takes care of itself. You will be able to flow in the great cosmic stream. You will detect both the wonders of life and the wonder of your innermost self.

Once you focus your attention on it, then you will see to what degree you still refuse this honesty, to what degree you still refuse this integrity, to what degree you still refuse this desire to give your best, positive self either to a specific situation or to an aspect of life. In fact, it is precisely in the areas of your unhappiness that the will to be negative exists, that the will to be destructive exists, that the will to to cheat exists, that the will to defy exists, that the will to pretend exists, that the will not to give but to take exists, that the will to harbor hostility and self-pity exists. Your discovery of this will facilitate your further progress greatly. You will see that there is a lawfulness involved here that does not make you an innocent victim, that does not make you helpless. The power to create your life is all there, my friends. It is an immense power, once you stop pushing it away with your ego control.

When you begin to sense the richness and the treasure locked up in every single one of you, and when you bring out this richness, then you will begin to live. Only then will you begin to live! This is possible for each and every human being who is willing to follow these steps. Find that place in you where you not only refuse to give your best, but where you secretly wish to give your worst to living, and then you will have a key. You will have a freedom of choice that you never possessed before.

These words -- provided you truly and deeply feel them and work them through -- will prove to be a gate: a threshold through which you can move. You can move into this new life where everything is different and vibrant with joy and with meaning, and where fear and emptiness have no more room. You can approach this threshold by understanding this. For this understanding will release more will power in the right direction, it will release more energy, it will release a new outlook, it will release a deeper sensing of what life could be -- and how it is not only not a theory but a directly available and accessible experience deep within yourself when you re-establish the balance between the involuntary processes and the ego functions.

Be blessed, my friends, be in peace, be in God.

June 2, 1967