Perceiving -- Reacting -- Expressing

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my friends. The universal love and the universal power are part of you and you are part of them. May you be able to mobilize them more than you usuallly do, so as to truly benefit from these words, so as to make this lecture a blessing for your future path on earth.

This lecture is an attempt to combine a continuation of the current sequence for my friends who are actively engaged in this particular pathwork, and also to reach the many new friends who have found their way here, so that they can, as best as possible, follow and benefit, even though much of it may be out of context for them.

The aim of every living creature is to free the eternal spirit. This aim may be unconscious in many, but this does not alter the fact. The burden of the encrustations is heavy and everyone feels this heaviness. Everyone longs for the brightness and the lightness of the spirit that dwells deep within the encrustations so as to truly come into his birthright. This pathwork is very actively concerned with fulfilling this longing. After all the labor and the search that my friends have been doing -- some of them for years -- a few of them are about to approach two fundamental points of self-awareness. The causal connection between these two points can be detected when you understand, feel, and experience what I say here. Then you will know that you are on a vital threshold.

The living spirit that you are, which is perpetually waiting to unfold itself in creative and joyful living and well-being, is contained in and held back by condensed emotions -- by powerful feelings which you do not wish to experience. It is not the nature of those feelings themselves that creates the heavy condensed crust, but the fact that you deny their temporary reality in you. This heavy mass is the burden which you carry around. It imprisons you to the exact degree that you fear letting out this mass and letting it unfold. Only then can it dissolve. This fear must be overcome.

No human being born into this limited environment and into the conditions that prevail in this sphere of existence is free from a conglomerate of strong negative feelings. There is hopeless agony, there is violent rage, there is the feeling of absolute helplessness -- first toward the world that seems to cause the agony, and thus also the rage; then toward the self because the ego does not know how to cope with these feelings. The way out of this predicamemt seems to be to deny the existence of the feelings. This seems the only alternative. But the more these feelings are denied, the greater does their power become. The power becomes so great because there is no way of letting in the fresh air of truth. Hence all these threatening feelings become more and more aggrandized, exaggerated, and are therefore misunderstood. Then it does seem as though one's own feelings were leading one into a bottomless pit.

For anyone who is new on this path this may sound incredible, because he has not yet encountered the violence of the feelings I speak about. But a number of those who are really engaged in this work have recently become acutely aware of such feelings. Especially since some of the new approaches begin to have their very beneficial results, so that even those who were most cut off -- perhaps even after years of hard work -- suddenly approach the threshold of this feared area in themselves. This is great and significant progress, without which no genuine experience of the Universal Self is possible. Some of you may not really be conscious of these feelings yet, but at least you begin to sense and suspect -- and be apprehensive about -- the existence of these feelings. Some of you may not yet have mustered the courage to let them out, as some others have done.

The result of letting the feelings out is the experience of a new life, a surge of new spiritual life. Conversely, the result of avoiding the feared area is disastrous: It paralyzes your best faculties. If you avoid these feelings, then you cannot really live in the true unfoldment of the eternal, living, breathing spirit that you are, and from which unlimited good flows into your whole being, into your entire life. Your spirit self has all the power. However, the spirit self cannot manifest when any part of the inner organism is feared, is denied expression, and is tightly held together. Thus living becomes a poor imitation of what it could be and of what it should be. Most human beings somehow sense that, but few have the courage to admit it to themselves and to do something about it. They somehow know that what they experience now cannot be all there is to life.

When you approach the threshold where you meet the apparently uncontrollable agony, pain, hopelessness, and violent anger -- and where you also meet your fear of not being able to ever exhaust these negative feelings, nor of being able to handle them -- then you have to make a vital decision. The decision is to bring your reason to bear on this entire question of whether to deny the existence of these emotions or to meet them and experience them. In other words, to let them out into the open, with the constructive view ahead of learning how to handle them from here on. This also requires a modicum of trust in the world -- of which you are a part -- that there is no bad as such. If this is ever true, then it must also hold true of distorted, destructive emotions. And since it is true, then you can experience it as a reality only when you give yourself the chance to do so. Your reason will also tell you, once you think about it, that what exists in you is by no means annulled simply because you look away from it -- because you act as though it did not exist -- and thus live a life of strenuous pretense at the expense of all the vital energy and life force. Without this energy, then the depth of experience that you long for cannot ever be yours -- no matter what you pin your hopes on. You may flock to this or that panacea, to this or that new spiritual approach, always in the vague hope that it will open the gates to life -- to the full and vital life that you somehow know you miss out on. All these must let you down in the end, for they are evasions, born out of the hope that you will not have to dissolve the hard mass of tightly packed feelings of violence and pain.

The bottomlessness that you fear so much will prove to be an error only when you emerge from the experience of these emotions. Such an experience is threatening only before you enter into it. Once you overcome the hesitation and the reluctance and you let yourself into this experience, no matter what you feel, then it will not at all be what you feared. You will find that you can indeed control the flood of feelings, just because you voluntarily choose to let them out. However, if they explode out of you because they have been artificially denied and held back for too long, then you cannot control them, because their expression is involuntary. So you choose to express, to let out of you, when and how long you desire to express such negative feelings in the knowledge that this is your salvation. Doing so will leave you refreshed and strengthened, more yourself than you ever were.

This threshold is essential on anyone's path of evolution. It proves to be a turning point in your inner life, where you go from a limited existence of robot-like make believe to real living, in which you are increasingly in full possession of the vital energy and the creative wisdom of your innermost being. You do not permit yourself the luxury of finding out your inner wealth, your own resourcefulness, your inborn strength, and the richness of your own feelings as long as you lack the courage of experiencing all that is in you anyway, whether or not you wish to own up to it. By owning up I do not mean merely an intellectual admission, but the actual emotional experience and the volitional expression of it. For, if you do not meet that in you which freezes and paralyzes the living spirit, then it is impossible to be moved and lived by the living spirit. Its life is squeezed out if you have to hold yourself back in any form. I want to emphasize once again that this does not imply that you act out destructiveness any which way, but that you choose in what way to express it in a manner that no one, including yourself, will be hurt by the effect, all the while knowing -- without self-justification -- the irrational and destructive nature of what is flowing out.

I say to you, do not go away from that point where you say: "I am afraid of these feelings." Rather, remain there until you gain the strength to let them come to the surface. This is much better than denying, and therefore going away from, this point of awareness where you know that you do fear yourself. For if you fear yourself and do not know it, then it is infinitely worse than if you fear yourself and know it. Fearing yourself and not knowing it makes you dead and it makes you miss out on life. It makes you attach this fear of yourself to any number of other facets which have really nothing to do with the fear itself, as it is in its original state.

When you finally have the courage to experience the pain, the agony, the anger, the violence, and the helplessness, then you will come to see that it is not at all bottomless, endless, and that this is not all there is to your inner life of feelings. You will see that there is indeed an end. The end is that the living energy of all those feelings that you wish to avoid becomes a vital, living feeling of love, of joy, of pleasure.

However, there is this second point of awareness I mentioned, which must also be faced in order to become completely capable of the courage necessary to plunge into those frightening feelings. Without this second point of awareness, then it can, at best, be only a half-hearted attempt. Some of my friends have lately begun to recognize, at least occasionally, this second point, but such awareness habitually slips back again into the unconscious, from where it must be retrieved again and again. This second point is this. As a result of all the hopelessness and the agony, and of the rage that develops as a consequence, you have decided, deep inside of you, to turn away from life, to turn away from love, and to turn away from the desire to contribute positively to life. It is this kind of negativity that makes the courage to experience the destructive feelings so perilous. For as long as it is a fact that you do not want to love, that you you do not want to give the best of yourself, that you do not want to forgive and forget what harm life seems to have inflicted on you, that you do not want to generously risk of yourself in giving of yourself on the deepest possible level, where no deception can exist, then there can be no safety in expressing what is in you. The key to safety is love, the key to security is love, the key to all the treasures of life is love. As long as you refuse to forgive, as long as you wish to be resentful with life -- and therefore with people and with events as they come to pass from within yourself and thus also come from outside toward you -- you will close yourself up to all the good that wants to flow from you into the world and that wants to flow from the world into you.

As long as this negativity exists, then the courage to face, to experience and to express destructive feelings cannot be completely mustered. Therefore these two points must be worked through, sometimes alternately and at times simultaneously. The causal connection between these two points must be clearly understood. As you see yourself in this resentful negation -- and you can acknowledge this because this awareness has now come -- then you will comprehend more deeply the causal connection between the two points. On this deep and secret level of your inner existence you do not want to give anything of yourself. Outwardly this may be well concealed by apparently quite opposite patterns. But the false submission cannot ever be a substitute for real inner giving of the self. In fact, real giving knows no self-depreciation, no martyrdom, no unjust treatment from the world. On the contrary, I suggest that such a pattern points the way to a very crass lack of giving when it comes to real feelings. Of course, in principle you may be be willing to give something, but only when everything is exactly according to your own specifications. These specifications are often based on a stark ignorance of the lawfulness in human interchange, on ignorance of the existing conditions -- of course, produced by yourself -- that make such expectations of perfect relationships logically impossible. Quite apart from such ignorance, this tentative bargaining and such petty, distrustful witholding of all the spontaneous generous moves of the soul closes the very door that you hate to see closed.

Since you do not wish to give to life, then how can life give to you? So you run around in circles, and then it becomes a vicious circle, because the less lifes gives to you as a result of your not giving to it, the more resentful you become, the more you refuse to give of yourself, the more drawn into yourself you become, and the more violent does your anger grow from this uninterrupted frustration. Then this anger frightens you, so that you hold back, and on and on it goes -- until the circle is broken. In such a negative cycle, the vital flow of your energy and of your feelings becomes a tightly packed, hardened mass behind which your spirit seems to wither. Of course, it does not really do so. It cannot ever do so, since it is an eternal living force. But it cannot manifest to you, and therefore you must remain separated from it as long as the negative attitude remains. You can get to it only when you see the negation and you become honest and humble enough to pronounce it in its true existence: "I do not want to give anything of myself. Whenever I feel threatened with rejection, with criticism, with the frustration of my immediate desires, then I immediately withdraw from life my vital energies, my good will, and my positive spirit of participation in life. All I want to do is to remain onto myself in anger and resentment." When you can acknowledge this, then you will instantly know that it is this very attitude that makes the facing of the rage and the agony perilous. Rage and agony must seem endless as long as you are unwilling to give up this negative attitude to life, in which you hug your resentments and you use dishonest games of suffering as weapons against others in order to put the blame on them. But the moment you are truly willing to give the best of yourself in principle -- in other words, even before being able to do so -- then the Supreme Spirit will help you to make this a reality, and then there will no longer be a question of fearing bottomless negativity and destructiveness.

This is one of the reasons why on a path such as this no danger can ever exist, because you learn, as you face the temporary negative truth, to call upon the forces of the Infinite Cosmic Spirit in you. And with its help, you learn to become giving; you learn to become positive; you learn to risk to invest of yourself; you learn to become generous; and you learn to let yourself feel, even if you do not have a blueprint that it will come out all right. For that is the only way your strength and your resiliency can grow, so that nothing can ever faze you again. The combination of these two points of awareness is a key. Those of you who are near this point, or who have already made some recognitions in this respect, can now proceed. As you meditate, say into yourself: "I want to invest the best that I have into my life. I do not want to withold anything of myself. I want to contribute to the cosmic unfoldment and to the plan of evolution with all the faculties I have -- those already manifest but perhaps not used in this way, and those that are still dormant in me. I truly want to contribute. And I know that only as a thoroughly fulfilled and happy person can I do so. Not ever as a suffering one."

Negativity is a defense. It arises out of the tragic misunderstanding of duality, the dichotomy that is rampant on this earth sphere, where it is so often a question of either/or. In this particular case, it is believed to be a question of your happiness being opposed to the happiness of the other person. Therefore you secretly feel that by giving to others you will be impoverished, that you will be put to some sort of disadvantage, while by grabbing for what you want and witholding of yourself, you add to your advantage. This belief is always there, underneath. It is either half-conscious or else completely unconscious. This image creates a terrible conflict. When you examine dispassionately the irrationality of your negation -- of your destructive insistence to remain separate and ungiving -- then you will come to see that this unrealistic dichotomy is contained in your attitude. When you bring it out, then you will be able to correct it. Little by little, you will recondition your perceptions, your emotional reactions, and your deep inner knowing of the way life is. Then you will know the truth, namely that the happier you are, the more you contribute to others. In the process of removing unhealthy conditions that are the result of false beliefs in the deep psyche, your fulfillment can never really infringe upon the fulfillment of others -- even if at first it may appear that way. When you go to the root of all things, then there is no conflict between your fulfillment and the happiness of others -- quite the contrary. So you will not need to be ungiving, nor will you need to feel guilty for wanting your own fulfillment and for wanting your own joy. With that understanding, then all the negativity must vanish -- even from the deepest regions and the most secret areas of your psyche. Then your unfoldment can become complete. You will be yourself more more and more -- freely and fearlessly. You will open up toward life and you will expand into life. As a result, you will receive its gifts.

Very much related to what I just said is the important aspect of relationship. Relationship is the very essence of life. No one is capable of living productively without warmth, without love, without sharing, without mutual understanding. It is truly in the scheme of things of the Universal Creative Spirit. There are certain basic aspects of relationship that are important to understand. A threefold principle exists that applies to all elements of any kind of relationship and that determines its nature. It is perceiving, reacting, and expressing. When this threefold principle operates in health, in truth, in harmony, and in reality, then relationship must be fruitful and joyful. But when these three aspects of relationship operate in a distorted, unrealistic, disharmonious way, then relationship cannot possibly be either fruitful or joyful.

You cannot possibly have a good relationship with others unless you first have a good relationship with yourself. Therefore these threefold aspects must first be applied to yourself. How do you perceive yourself? How do you react to what you perceive in yourself? And how do you express that which you perceive in yourself? If you are not at war with yourself, then your perception will be clear. But if you are at war with yourself by demanding to be other than you are now, then you cannot perceive yourself correctly. For example, if you are unwilling, and therefore apparently incapable, to shed your idealized self image -- in other words, if you insist on living up to its unreasonable demands -- then your perception of yourself must be faulty and limited. If you perception of yourself is faulty and limited, then your reaction to what you are must be very disturbing. Anyone of you who is so close to the threshold of your inner destructiveness -- to the fear, to the pain, to the rage, and also to the deliberate (although at presently possibly unconscious) mean refusal to give of yourself to life and to others -- will have a negative reaction to all this because his self-perception has been faulty. You still battle what is and you insist on being what you are not. Thus you do not perceive in truth, so that your reaction to it when it manifests indirectly must be disharmonious and disturbing. You will go on denying what tries to make itself known to you, and therefore more dissent and more warfare will come into you. For, one side -- the spirit side -- makes an attempt to reveal the truth -- which is unacceptable to you. The other side battles it. In that battle your reaction becomes even more painful. Greater dissension with yourself and even more rage against the world follow. A great part of the rage, of the anger, and of the pain is not so much a question of the helpless conditions of childhood -- although these may have set it off in this life. Much of it is produced because you battle yourself as you are and you do not succeed in becoming willfully that which you want to be. Thus what you perceive makes you more angry and more pained. This is vastly responsible for the apparently bottomless despair and rage that we were talking about.

When you perceive yourself in the wrong way, and you consequently react to what you perceive in the wrong way, then your expression of it must be equally distorted and equally destructive. You cannot express the truth of what you perceive in yourself since you do not know it -- you do not wish to know it. In such confusion helplessness increases. The thus mounting inner tension seeks an outlet. To look for scapegoats that can be blamed for these unpleasant feelings and reactions is a very frequent way out. And scapegoats can always be found if you look hard enough. Sometimes one does not even have to look very hard, for the imperfection of the world lends itself well to the attaching of the enraged and threatening feelings. Thus the expression becomes one of hostility and rejection.

To recapitulate briefly. The wrong perception of the self leads to a destructive reaction, and then to a destructive expression out into the world. This, in turn, must affect all relationships. This is so self-evident that it hardly needs further elaboration. Since you would rather blame others, then they must respond in kind. Since you are unwilling to be positive and giving -- and since you do not wish to admit this by dint of its disillusioning nature in regard to your self-image -- then others reflect this negativity. Your reaction to that must also be faulty, since you choose not to admit your own negativity, which makes you feel unjustly treated. How then can what you express to others be anything but negative and therefore destructive? Moreover, how can your perception of others be accurate when your self-perception closes your eyes to what is in you and seeks others as scapegoats? How can your perception of anything be accurate if you are unwilling to perceive yourself correctly?

The triad of perception/reaction/expression in truth and creative living works quite differently. If the perception is truthful, then the entire picture changes. You do not have to be already a perfect specimen if you use this in a positive way. Your truthful perception of what in you is far from perfect will make you capable of acknowledging this without losing the balance within yourself and without losing sight of the fact that you are a divine spirit, with all its faculties intact. As you perceive yourself accurately, then your reaction automatically becomes very favorable. For then you will want to get rid of the negativity and you will seek the fruitful way which does not deny what is, but that bases all further steps on a clear perception of the Now. In that spirit, what expresses itself must be infinitely positive. In that attitude, you see everything both as it is and where it really belongs. You see both the good and the bad in yourself. You see the truth in yourself and you accept it. Therefore your expression will be a truthful one. This will make the unfoldment of highly creative feelings, currents, and knowledge more and more possible.

With such a unified relationship toward the self, rather than a divided one, then the relationship to others must become equally positive and fruitful. It cannot help being so. So I repeat once more: when you find yourself in strife, then there is something in your relationship to yourself that is not according to the positive aspect of this threefold principle. My advice is to acknowledge this fact and to let go, and then to ask for the truth within you. It will come to you. These answers always come if you are sincere in wanting to know, and thus properly receptive.

Only then will you be able to develop the same threefold principle toward the Divine Spirit within yourself. You will perceive it more and more. You will react to it -- but not with the old fear. For as long as fear exists regarding the in-dwelling negativity, then fear must also exist of the in-dwelling power for positive experience and for unfoldment. You will no longer react with fear to the greatest power in the universe, which is right in you. On the contrary, you will be receptive to it. Then you will express this power, for you are a living part of it and you become more and more so.

I recapitulate the gist of all this. First the point of recognition that there is an apparently bottomless fear in you about violent, uncontrollable emotions of any sort. As a result, you do not wish to deal with them. And then the point of awareness that you wish (not completely, but in certain areas) to remain negative toward life and toward others. As the wish to remain negative is being given up and is being exchanged for a wish to be outgoing, positive, and giving, then the fear of self will vanish. Then the threefold principle about relationship that I outlined here will change from negative to positive. As a result, you will perceive yourself correctly, you will react productively to what you perceive, and you will express it in a meaningful way.

Little by little, this will change your entire life. Where your life is now disharmonious, limited, frustrating, and witholding, it will gradually open up and in its unfolding it will give to you richly. This is not an easy formula to apply. Although its truth is simple enough, to put it into practice requires the maximum of investment and the greatest possible commitment on your part -- commitment to the truth within, commitment to the truth of your life, commitment to the Living Spirit of perpetual growth. To apply this formula demands time, perseverance, and wise and mature insight into the dynamics of growth. It requires continuous groping for the right way of letting the destructive, ignorant, irrational child in you express itself, but without falling into the trap of believing that its truth is the only truth. When you find the right way, then an intelligent dialogue can be established with the life-resisting part of your personality.

May these words lift you in hope, in courage, and in ever renewed stamina to proceed further on this path, so that you can break through this wall of your fear of self. You must emerge triumphantly, cleansed, stronger, and better, for the life of the spirit in its undifferentiated goodness and fulfillment will become more and more a reality of your life. Be blessed, be in peace, be what you truly are -- the Living Spirit, the Universal Living Spirit.

October 11, 1968