Lecture No 155

The Fear Of Self -- Giving and Receiving

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. May this lecture prove helpful and strengthening once again for all of you, and thus become the blessing that opens the way further on your path of self-realization.

In order to realize that which you truly are, the fundamental prerequisite is fearlessness. In the last analysis every kind of fear amounts to the fear of self. For if there is no fear of your innermost self, then you could not fear anything in life. Therefore you could not fear death either. The fear of self is the key. Before a human being is on an intensive path of self-confrontation he does not know that he really fears only his unknown depths. He projects this real fear onto any number of other fears, which he may or may not become aware of in the course of his life. For these projected and displaced fears may be denied and covered up as well. For example, a person may fear a specific aspect of living. Then all the power of his hidden fear of self may converge and concentrate either on this specific fear, or life as such may be feared and thus avoided -- just as the self is avoided to the degree it is feared. This general fear of life may then be projected onto a fear of death -- since they are really one and the same. Therefore, he who fears the one must fear the other.

Only when this pathwork has become concentrated and awareness has increased sufficiently do you realize that you are really most afraid of yourself. You recognize this fear by the constraint with which you encounter yourself, by all the various forms of resisting, by your terror of letting go your defenses, and therefore allow the expression of your natural feelings. The degree of guardedness, of the prohibition of spontaneity and naturalness, is also not clear to begin with. These guards have become so much second nature that you do not even know that they are unnatural, and therefore that you could be quite different. Your inability to let the involuntary forces guide you is a sign of how much you distrust your innermost self.

In direct continuation of the last lecture, I wish to stress that anyone who constricts his natural soul movements does so because he is afraid of them. He is afraid of where they will lead him and he is afraid of what they will make him do. Anyone who is aware of this fear has made a substantial step toward his liberation, for without being aware of the fear of self it cannot be overcome.

The fear of letting go means that the real self cannot manifest. It can manifest only as a spontaneous expression. Such spontaneity exists, for example, when knowledge manifests intuitively. In other words, from within yourself and not through a learning process from outside. Only the person who does not fear himself, at least to some degree, can even register -- let alone have the courage to acknowledge and to follow through -- such intuitive, spontaneous manifestations of the inner being. The great artists and the great scientists make their discoveries by this process. In this particular respect they must be unafraid of their inner self. In other respects, they, too, may block it off.

The manifestation of the real self is always a profoundly creative process, whether it applies to intuitive knowing or to the fullness and depth of feelings that make the personality vibrantly alive and joyous on all levels of his being.

The fear of not conforming to the environment is another aspect of the fear of self. For the inner reality may be at variance with the environment. The real values of the self may be different from the values of society. Only he who does not fear his inner self in this respect will refuse the ready-made values handed down to him. Outer values, whether right or wrong, are still shackles if they are not freely chosen.

One of the most important aspects of the fear of self is the fear of pleasure. For the entity is created for the purpose of experiencing pleasure supreme, intense joy. The majority of individuals do not do so at all. The truly healthy and fulfilled individual, who functions as he is meant to function -- namely, according to his inborn capacities -- can completely surrender to the life force as it manifests in him with its pleasure currents. He will spontaneously express this powerful force, he will not fear it, and therefore reject it. This will enliven his entire system with beautiful strength, with energy, and with delight.

He who is caught in guardedness and defensiveness -- and who therefore is constantly watching over himself so that these forces cannot express themselves -- numbs himself to a greater or lesser degree. He becomes dead. The prevalent manifestation in this world -- today no more than at other times in man's history -- is what may be called self-alienation, or the lack of aliveness, or disconnectedness. It is a deadness that also brings up in its wake a sense of emptiness and of meaninglessness. It is deadness because the life force, in its vibrant flow, is willfully interrupted and prohibited by an over-watchful, denying attitude of the outer ego.

The average human being experiences some aliveness, at least at certain times. But this aliveness is so inhibited in comparison to what it could be that the full aliveness, even if there were a way to describe it in adequate words, would sound unbelievable. Man does not know how he could function and he does not know what his life could be like. He only has a vague longing, a vague sense that life could be different. And unfortunate is he who ascribes this longing to illusion, to the lack of realism, and who then -- as a result of this false belief -- resigns himself to a half-dead life because of the assumption that this is the way it must be. And fortunate is he who has the courage to acknowledge this longing -- no matter how late in life -- and who then begins by allowing for the possibility that this longing is justified. Such a person will then realize that this means that much more can be had in life. And much more can be had out of life if you become alive. And you can become alive only to the degree that you overcome your fear of self.

Let us now consider this fear of self a little closer. Why is a human being afraid that if he is not guarded and constantly watchful with his will and with his mind then something dangerous might happen? This dangerous something would manifest from the spontaneous depths of his being. What is it? Fundamentally there are two possibilities, if we bring it to the simplest common denominator. There is the possibility that something negative and destructive comes out and there is the possibility that something creative, constructive, expanding, and pleasurable comes out. It is not true, as might be believed, that only the former is feared. Although this is one very substantial reason for the constrictedness with which the individual prohibits the free-flowing soul movements, the cosmic flow, as it manifests in each created human being if it is unhampered, unmanipulated, uninterfered with. The destructive forces which the individual fears vary from every conceivable degree of hate, of hostility, of resentment, of rage, of anger, of cruelty. They exist in every human being. They exist to the degree to which the positive expressions have been prohibited, first by the parents and by the environment -- in the ignorant belief that these positive expressions are harmful, and therefore that they may lead to danger -- and later by the individual himself. This is very important to understand. Once you are an adult, then you are no longer prohibited by your past. You prohibit yourself when you continue to hold back those same constructive forces which were originally forbidden by others.

Here, once again, is one of those famous vicious circles that result from every error, from every erroneous way instituted in human living. Because the positive forces are restricted, the negative forces grow. Or, to put it more accurately: The positive force is twisted, disturbed, converted, distorted and thus becomes a negative one. It is not a different force that comes newly into being. It is the same original substance that was love, and therefore it can turn back into love if it is allowed to do so. In fact, it is easy for it to reconvert to its original way of manifestation, for this is the way it comes naturally. For example, once rage is admitted to exist and is fully experienced in a way that is not destructive to anyone -- under the proper circumstances and in a way which at one and the same time lets one fully identify with the emotion and yet keep a sense of proportion about it; in other words, in a way which does not reject the total personality because of it -- then the rage will transform itself into warmth, into pleasure feelings, into love. This transformation may occur either directly or indirectly, via a number of other emotions, such as sadness, self-pity, pain, healthy aggression, and self-assertion. All these energy currents must be experienced and owned up to, they must be allowed to exist at the moment -- as long as they naturally exist. Only then will that which is unnatural and destructive reconvert itself.

Let us now go back to the vicious circle. When such a healthy procedure as outlined here is avoided, then the greater the existing rage, the worse does the fear of it become. Consequently, the more the individual guards himself. The more he is guarded, the less is it possible for him to be spontaneous, and thus to allow the destructive emotion to reconvert itself to its original pleasure current.

As I said, not only are the destructive forces feared, but often love and pleasure are feared at least as much, if not even more so. They are feared because the child has been made to understand that they are wrong, and therefore dangerous. They are feared because they require this unguardedness that trusts the spontaneous inner nature. The love forces can remain alive only when the self is totally unafraid of itself. Giving up guardedness seems like annihilation because when the guardedness is given up, then something other than the watchful ego cooperates in the process of living. Without this cooperation life becomes impoverished. But the acceptance of this cooperation hinges on meeting that which is feared. Thus in the vicious circle the love forces are feared because they demand giving up the watchful, stilted, premeditated guards that make all spontaneity impossible. Thus frustration and emptiness increase anger and rage. Thus the fear of self grows -- and so on and so on.

This is the process in which people are caught who are unable to make the decisive step to overcome the resistance in order to meet that which is feared within. But this is the one thing that most individuals wish to avoid like the plague. It does not suffice to acknowledge in a vague theoretical way the existence of some negative feelings. It does not suffice to make abstractions about them. They must be lived through and they must be dynamically experienced. This is not only necessary but inevitable. It constitutes the facing of the self that we are always talking about. Once this is undertaken, then it proves to be neither as difficult nor as dangerous as first anticipated. In fact, the relief, the liberation, and the coming to life are so real and so wonderful that your hesitation will now seem foolish in retrospect. He who can bring himself to make this step is blessed indeed, for life begins to open up only then. It is necessary to first let go of and then to let come out what is there, whatever the feeling may be.

I emphasize again, so as to avoid all possible misunderstandings, that this does not mean acting out one's pent-up anger, which only comes back to the self in retaliation. What is meant is that these emotions must be felt and expressed under therapeutic supervision and in the right circumstances, where they can cause no harm. In fact, the more the destructive feelings are acknowledged and the responsibility for them is assumed, then the less will the person be driven -- against his will and against his intention -- to act them out in his environment. Such acting out is then excused by finding reasons for it. Or else the person is unaware of how much more strongly he feels in a situation than warranted, which inevitably affects others, whether or not he admits it to himself. The acting out that happens daily in everyone's life may not take on violent forms, but it is all the more destructive in a devious and indirect way. This fact is not sufficiently appreciated and is greatly underestimated.

All this will be avoided when the full strength of a destructive feeling is directly expressed and lived through. The more totally this can be done, then the quicker the transformation into pleasure feelings will take place. What happens after this depends on the extent to which the person is able to experience pleasure feelings. This depends on several factors, some of which we shall discuss.

Some of the foregoing is another re-formulation that sheds a little more light on the process of healing oneself. As long as the fear of self exists, then freedom and the fulfillment of one's life are absolutely impossible, my friends. Therefore, it is much better to acknowledge this fear of self than to continue to deny it. In other words, to own up to it by saying: "Here is where I am at this moment. I am afraid to allow myself to let out whatever is in me. I do not know the reason." This is much more honest than pushing it away and then making yourself believe that you do not have this fear. For this existing fear will then make itself known in indirect ways, which you then will continue to rationalize.

From here we go a step further and look at another topic that is directly connected with what I just said. It is very important to understand. It will give you a new slant on certain factors of the inner life of man. Psychology has postulated for some time, and quite correctly so, that a human being's unfulfilled need to receive creates damaging conditions in his psyche. Much emphasis has been given to this factor. Just as the body becomes thwarted when its needs are not fulfilled and it is not given the proper substances, so does the human soul become thwarted when its needs are not fulfilled and it is not given the substances on which it can thrive. Some of these are love, affection, warmth, and acceptance of its individuality. Both the soul and the body require pleasure. Without it the person becomes crippled. In other words, his growth is stunted. As a result, he remains a helpless child who is dependent on receiving all its needs from others, from the outside world.

Far too little emphasis has been put on and by far too little attention has been given to the importance of giving out. The frustration resulting from not sufficiently receiving was over-emphasized in the last decades, while the frustration resulting from not sufficiently giving out was very much neglected. It was correctly postulated that he who did not receive enough in childhood would find it difficult to give of himself. But usually this is as far as it goes. The healing of damage from insufficient receiving can be accomplished much better when the individual realizes that he is not helpless about his past, that he contains forces whereby a new balance can be established. But this can be done only when he comprehends the far worse pain of the frustration that results when he does not give out what he has.

This over-emphasis of one psychological aspect has created a generation of self-pitying people who go around bemoaning the fact that they have been shortchanged, that they have not received sufficiently in their childhood, and that, therefore, they have to continue as cripples. The ability to unfold and to give forth always exists, once it is contemplated, once it is taken into consideration. So much of the pain that resides in man's inner life is the pain that results from of witholding what one has to give and much less that of not having sufficiently received in the past. This is easy to understand when you think about it in a dispassionate way. If more and more accumulates of any substance, of any force, of anything, then this over-abundance must create more tension. The over-abundance exists, my friends, whether or not you know it, whether you constrict it and hold it back in your fear or not. Therefore many of you are pained at least as much as result of not allowing yourselves to give forth whatever it is that you bemoan and wish to receive.

The energy flow of these soul movements is a continuum. They are an ongoing process. In this ongoing process you must cooperate in order to be healthy and fulfilled by allowing this process to continue in a functional way. By functional I mean according to the laws of life, which prescribe that your positive forces be given on to others and that you receive from others what they let flow into you.

Religion has emphasized the aspect of giving. It has preached for a long time that giving love is more blessed than receiving it. It constantly stresses, in one form or another, the importance of loving -- that is, of giving love, of giving mercy, of giving understanding, etc. But there the distortion occurred in a different sense. There the distortion was, and often still is, that love appeared as a pious command that is sacrificial. The image formed itself that to love means to impoverish oneself. Loving assumed the connotation of being a self-sacrificing deprivation. If one does not suffer through loving and for the love of another by shortchanging oneself in some fashion, then it is not considered love. The command to love became more of an abstraction and it contained the threat of forcing upon the individual certain actions that went against his interests. Up to this day many people's unconscious concept of love is exactly this. No wonder that love is rejected if the pleasurable feelings it causes in the body are denied and accused of being sinful. One must fear love doubly: either one gives in to its spontaneous manifestation and then it becomes wicked, or one cuts out the very feeling that makes up its force, and then it becomes an unpleasant duty.

Mankind fluctuates between these two extremes: either to remain the greedy, selfish child, who demands to receive exclusively and who is not in the least disposed to give out, or to strain into the false concept of love as described here. Since each of these two alternatives proves undesirable, man usually changes back and forth, although one element may be stronger.

Only when you look at yourself with great honesty and with a great deal of close discernment will you find both these distortions within yourself. How can a healthy flow of giving and receiving be created when such false concepts and such faulty attitudes bar the way? The fear of self must exist in both instances. For the natural impulse, or the natural, spontaneous urge is to give out abundantly -- just as abundantly and just as generously as all of nature does. This applies to the most outer and material level, as well as to the most subtle one. The greater this natural generous giving out is, then the less masochistic, the less suffering, and the less self-depriving the personality must be. The more the false giving -- by self-impoverishment and the lack of self-assertion -- takes over, the less real generosity and spontaneous outflow can exist.

There are innumerable occasions in people's daily life in which they stand at a point of decision: whether to retain the self or to give it out. The issue itself may not be important, but the underlying attitude is. The question may be either to hold on to one's old grudges and to one's old separating ways that exclude others in resentment or censorship, or to allow a new spontaneous attitude to come forth from the depth of the self. The latter happens naturally, not by force. It sees new realities about the other person that make the holding of a grudge meaningless. It sees no shame or humiliation in giving up arrogant pride. It sees no lack of character in understanding and forgiving. Many such little incidents loosen up the block of witholding that causes more pain than any lack of receiving. From there it becomes easier and more natural to allow feelings of warmth to flow out. But at one point the self must make this choice: Whether to remain in the old, excluding, restricting way, or to allow for a new strength from within -- and then to follow it through. However, this point of decision must be noticed. It is never unconscious in the way of certain truly unconscious material. It is quite on the surface, only most people prefer to gloss over it and do not allow themselves to acknowledge this tiny point of decision about so many issues in daily living. When this point is first acknowledged and then faced up to, then it may appear like a precipice. The new way may appear to be risky, and the old, cold, separating way may appear to be safe, although you all know with your mind that this cannot be true, that it does not make sense. Giving yourself to this apparently new inner force of giving out seems like going with a great unknown wave. You may even sense the joy and the liberation of it, but it still -- or pehaps because of it -- makes you fear its further implications. If you can let go and give up your destructive attitude -- whatever it may be in your own case, no matter how covertly it manifests outwardly -- then you institute an entirely new way of inner living. It is the healing that you have hoped for and therefore sought. This is the only way. In other words, there is no other way.

When you come to this point of observation, then you will not be able to take this step immediately. You will dwell for a while in this teetering position and observe clearly how you exclude yourself, how by holding on you restrict the cosmic forces within your soul and you retain yourself by constricting your outgoing flow. When you observe yourself at this cusp, then you will become aware of the implications of both alternatives: of the old constricting way, with all its rigid formulations and all its pat ways, and of the new vista that begins to open up. When you observe yourself for some time at this cusp, at this point of decision, and you do not pressure yourself but you simply observe in fullness and you know what each way means, then you will finally become capable of letting go the old way. In other words, of the way that refuses life, that refuses love, that refuses feelings, that refuses happiness, that refuses unfoldment, that refuses to give forth what you have to give. At this moment you may still not have the strong feelings yet, but you will have a new understanding that includes others.

This new way increases steadily, provided you do not stop the flow. The flowing movement is so beautiful that it cannot be described adequately. It contains a wonderfully working mechanism of self-regulation that can be utterly trusted. To the degree that you first let go of and then give up a self-centered attitude, or a selfish attitude, or a self-pitying attitude, or a self-destructive attitude, to that degree the fear of self decreases proportionately automatically. Something new begins to happen from within. The creative powers in you begin to work in their own functional way.

Thus you will no longer be thwarted by yourself. You will no longer inflict frustration -- and therefore pain -- upon yourself, because now the immense pleasure of following this natural movement will fill your being. The pleasure of giving and receiving will then become possible.

For you cannot receive either as long as you do not go this new way. When you remain in your old position of refusal and of isolation, then you cannot possibly open yourself up for receiving. In other words, as long as you do not let go of the restriction, not only do you make your outgiving impossible, but you make your receiving equally impossible. A vessel that is closed cannot be filled, any more than it can be emptied. When you hold yourself tight and guarded, then you not only do not protect yourself from any danger -- as you falsely believe -- but you also close yourself to all the healthy universal forces, both those that could and should stream out of you and those that could and should stream into you.

This guardedness impoverishes and deprives. Thus the person inevitably becomes enraged. The average person finds himself in the preposterous predicament of holding himself tight and restricted, guarded and over-watchful, thereby never allowing the creative process to manifest. Therefore he frustrates his tremendous need to be part of the creative process. He frustrates himself by witholding from himself the intense delight and the pleasure of being IN the flow of giving and receiving. But this is not an esoteric, other-wordly pleasure that is disconnected from the body. It must be physical pleasure as well. The ironic situation is that he resents the world for not giving to him. The world wants to give to him. And yet he can never see what is being given to him. He goes through life blindly resenting what he is not being given -- he does not even know what. He resents most those who really want to give to him -- while he subtly rejects what they want to give to him, thus depriving himself even more of that which wants to flow into him. The understanding of all this will help you to give out, so as to become part of the creative process once again. In other words, man disconnects himself from the cosmic creative flow of giving and of receiving. That is of the constant turnover, of the constant movement that takes place in the life process.

My friends, these words are not impractical philosophy, perhaps beautiful but not realizable in one's daily life. This is not true. These words are of the most practical reality, applicable any moment you choose to do so. At any moment you can observe yourself at some point of decision, as I stated. The truth of this applies to all levels of your being: the physical level, the mental level, the emotional level, and the spiritual level. In other words, it applies to your total being. It is all one and the same.

The impoverishment that man lives under is totally self-inflicted because he cannot face that moment I was speaking of in which he refuses that which wants to flow out of him and, as a result, he refuses that which is given to him. The new outflow wants to do away once and for all with that tight, constricted, resenting, destructive, enraged, rigid place from which you do not want to budge. Anyone who can find this place in himself and who then observes himself on the cusp has the best of chances. His good will to heal himself and to become free will make him reach for the inner strength and for the resources first to make and then to follow through the decision for the new way of life. Then all fear of self will eventually vanish. The fear of the negativity in you will vanish as you express it under the proper circumstances. As this fear vanishes, then the next fear can be tackled -- the fear of pleasure, the fear of happiness, the fear of fulfillment, the fear of being in the stream without constriction. When you truly wish to give forth what is in you, then you will see that acclimatizing yourself to happiness and to pleasure is not as difficult as it seems when you do not wish to give forth what is in you. It is unbearable only as long as you do not wish to give and only as long as you only want to receive. He who is still hooked -- either consciously or unconsciously -- on being in a receiving state must fear both fulfillment and pleasure. Not being aware of his predicament in its total significance and in all its ramifications, he then complains against the world for leaving him unfulfilled. These complaints and these resentments may take as many forms as there are human personalities. Most people are not even aware of making such a general complaint against life. For this, too, may be rationalized. It is part of your pathwork to discover it within yourself. That is, to discover both how resentful you become and how you refuse to budge from the negative position you find yourself in because you feel deprived. And you must feel deprived because you make giving out of your inherent wealth impossible. Therefore you are afraid of receiving -- and therefore you are closed up to receiving. Thus you are doubly frustrated. Both your refusal to let go of your negativity and your refusal to give of yourself make you unable to receive pleasure, delight, happiness -- often even material success. The great joyousness that you sense exists must remain unattainable to you. You cannot tolerate it, it frightens you, precisely because you are stuck on that spot where you simply want to soak in from others. It cannot work that way.

All your emphasis to attain liberation and well-being must pay equal attention both to the frustration of not giving forth and to the frustration of not being able to receive.

My dearest friends, may these words open up the way that makes possible the transition you seek so ardently with one part of your being, but that you still deny to yourself with another part of your person. Perhaps they incite a spark in you so that you can see -- and then little by little decide to relinguish -- all that which bars the way to your destination. This destination is complete fulfillment and pleasure supreme. Be blessed, be in peace, be in God.

October 13, 1967