The Fear Of Bliss Versus The Longing For It

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, all my dear friends, you are blessed indeed. The blessings result from the strength and the love that are generated by the search for truth, and by gathering together for this purpose with an open heart and with an open mind. In that way the universal powers can reach you and can get to work within you, and eventually bear fruit.

This lecture is dedicated to the theme of the human fear of bliss. Of course, we have discussed this before in various connections. But as you who are involved in this self-search go deeper within yourselves and discover more of what heretofore was obscure, it becomes necessary to understand more about this topic. Every single human being born in this plane, in this sphere of consciousness, has to some degree this apparently nonsensical fear. And, indeed, it makes no sense. But it nevertheless exists. At the same time there is an inherent longing for man's true birthright, which is a state of supreme bliss, of sublime joy, quite indescribable in human language.

No matter how unhappy he is, something in man knows and remembers that this is not the natural way of being. If this inner knowledge did not exist, then he could accept a state of frustration and lack with much less strain and with much less disturbance. For the nature of unhappiness is frustration. It is the absence of something that should be there. And the nature of frustration is not being in possession of something other than what one has now. Therefore, each unhappiness implicitly holds out the promise or the knowledge of an opposite state.

Humanity is ambivalent regarding its basic state of experiencing life. All other ambivalences follow from this: the desire for bliss and the fear of bliss, of happiness, of joy, of pleasure supreme. With some human beings this fear is much less than the desire. These will be relatively and proportionately fulfilled people, whose life is rich, whose state of being is joyful, whose capacity to feel and to experience pleasure is deep, whose attitude to life is trustful, positive, and expanding. For these individuals it will be comparatively easy to first work on and then to overcome their remaining blocks -- their defenses and their fears -- that shut off their further expansion into blissful being. However, many human beings fear happiness much more than they desire it. They will be basically unhappy people who must feel that life passes them by, that life is meaningless, that life is empty, that life is hollow, that life is wasteful, that they miss out in some way. Their capacity to experience and to feel pleasure is very limited. They are numb, lifeless, and caught in apathy. They are basically distrustful, negative, and withdrawn from life. Their resistance to look within themselves for the cause of their suffering is great -- and so are their defenses, their blocks, and their fear of expanding into a different state of consciousness, and therefore into a different perception of life. They hang on desperately to the very state of consciousness that is responsible for their complaints against life. This is their main predicament. They are the majority. Finally, there are many individuals whose desire for happiness and whose fear of happiness is approximately evenly divided. They will find areas in their life in which they experience abundance, expansion, gratification, success, and fulfillment. But there will be other areas in which they experience the opposite. The more deeply and the more honestly they would probe, the more it would become apparent that exactly -- as in a mathematical equation -- where they are happy, free, and unfraid, there is fulfillment, and where they are afraid of the best in life, there is unfulfillment. Every human being is totally unaware of the fact that he fears what he wants most. The further away the object of the longing, then the easier it is to overlook the fear of it. But when it comes closer and man questions his deepest reactions, then he will find an inner movement that closes up against it, that shrinks from it. This may be so subtle that it needs close scrutiny to bring it out into the open.

I know that it is extremely difficult to comprehend -- let alone to sense -- this fear of the most longed for, the most cried after state in life to him who is not yet deeply involved with the nature of the human unconscious. To such a person this sounds truly preposterous. Therefore, at first he may cast such an idea completely aside. However, I say to you that if you go deep enough and if you probe with honesty and with openness your most subtle reactions to fulfillment, to pleasure, to expansion, then you wll find that when there is the slightest risk involved, you are too distrustful to take it. Therefore, you cringe back from it, preferring to stay in the apparently greater safety of your gray life. Once you find this, then you have made a tremendous step in the direction of your selfhood and of your liberation. For then you are in the incredible awareness of the reality of life: that your attitudes, your hidden thoughts, and your hidden emotions -- and nothing else -- create your fate and your state of existence. This discovery has a revolutionary impact on the individual. Not knowing this makes the tension and the suffering infinitely greater. Not knowing this one feels a victim of hazard. And this, in turn, increases the fear, the insecurity, and the distrustfulness -- against which one thinks that one must defend the self, thereby becoming still further alienated from the center of inner truth and reality. One begins to displace and to project the real causes onto the outside world, with less and less relief. No matter how true some of the blame that one launches against others may be, they never remove the suffering. No matter how much one can bend others to comply with one's desires, this never removes the lack, the emptiness, the flatness that one suffers from. As long as you are removed from the cause in you that closes you up against what you consciously wish most -- and that you are most unhappy about not experiencing -- you must feel that life is futile. You must feel helpless and unable to do what is necessary to remove the pain of your non-fulfillment. You must teeter between self-pity and bitterness, between projection onto others and onto life for your misfortune on the one hand, and distorted self-blame and a sense of not deserving the best of life on the other. First knowing and then experiencing your rejection of pleasure is the beginning of removing this block. Yet, invariably, man at first fights this truth with all of his might. It seems that he prefers to remain dependent on outer circumstances, although the acceptance of the great truth of his utter personal freedom is the most joyful of all the discoveries along the path -- once truly seen, accepted, and understood in its full impact. Then one sees that therein lies the only way out. The beautiful reality of this independence cannot be conveyed to him who still battles against it.

When man begins to sense that there is more to life than he experiences now, he often puts such thoughts away, and then he adopts a cynical, resigned philosophy of life. But you must know that you can materialize more out of life than you do now. The first step is to search for your saying No. The more strained, the more compulsive, the more urgent, and the more impatient the outer striving for fulfillment is, the more certain you can be that underneath there is just as rigid a No as the surface urgent Yes. The surface urge is just as much a hindrance as the inner No, because it consists of fear and of distrust, born out of your unconscious knowledge that inwardly your Yes is blocked off. However, I want to make it clear that the absence of urgency and of strain toward fulfillment does not necessarily imply the absence of an unconscious block. This may merely imply a different personality structure. For example, it may mean that the person simply has given up. When there is a painful, anxious urge, then it can relax only when you find your own specific, your own personal saying No to what you want most.

I want to go back to the difficulty of the personality when he is still in the state in which he ignores his denial of his own desires. I mentioned the helplessness before. I mentioned the frictions and the constrictions when the blame for the lack is projected either onto outside circumstances or onto other people, the deep entanglements and the confusions that this creates. I must stress once more the dependency that this creates. If you ignore your inner obstructions -- and therefore you believe that either others or fate are the cause of your unhappiness -- then you cannot help but live in a state of tension and fear in regard to others and to life. This brings a number of disturbances and of distortions, too numerous to go into now. If you tie this up with practically all I have ever said to you about the human predicaments, the inner conditions, and the dynamics of the soul, then you will see that the determining factor is the awareness of one's obstructions. Then you will comprehend the true meaning of self-responsibility.

All the foregoing is not entirely new to my friends. But a brief review was needed in order to connect these facts with the deeper understanding I wish to give you now. Let us try to shed more light on this all-important question of why man says this mysterious No to the fulfillment of his deepest desire, the human longing for the most intense bliss imaginable. In other words, what makes happiness apparently dangerous or apparently undesirable?

To the extent that you reject yourself, to that extent you cannot bear happiness. In other words, you cannot sustain feelings of joy, of bliss, of pleasure. The reasons for self-rejection are basically two fundamental ones. All self-rejection must fall into either of these two categories or into a combination of them. The first is the following. There is a very exacting mechanism in you which -- regardless of your conscious rationalizations and your self-deceptive devices -- knows with an inner wisdom exactly where you violate the universal laws. For example, where you cheat life and perhaps try to get more than you wish to give; where you play those little hidden games of deception, of dramatization, and of pretense both with others and with yourself; where you do not dare to be your real self as you happen to be now; where you do not love but you pretend to love for your own ulterior motives. The key to the universe is real love, not the binding love that you so often give forth. Real, genuine love lets the other free and can accept a No for an answer. False love is like a lasso that wishes to dominate and to hold tight. It seems easy to pretend the latter to be the former, but the inner self cannot be deceived. Where is there a lack of generosity in your feelings? Where do you postulate different laws and different rules of conduct for others than you do for yourself? All of these violations go on constantly, inexorably, and unbeknownst to your conscious mind -- for you manage to shut out this truth, which is the gravest of all the violations. The pretenses are much worse than the primary violations. The pretenses deny and falsify. Then it becomes a double violation, which inevitably leads to the most painful of all mental and emotional states: being in a double bind from which there seems to be no way out -- that is, until this double violation is discovered and abandoned. Let us say that you are selfish, or that you have a streak of cruelty, or that you hate. If you pretend that your selfishness is the healthy version of self-assertion or if you rationalize it; if you feel your cruelty and your hate only in secret and you act it out indirectly under a facade that seems the opposite, then, in addition to these violations, you become hypocritical. This hypocrisy may not be crass and on the surface, but its subtle nature does not make it less so. If, on the other hand, you courageously and honestly admit to yourself what goes on in you and you look at it squarely, then the violation is already overcome to a considerable degree. For in accepting the truth about yourself you enter into a general climate of truth. You are on a platform from which the possibility exists to work yourself out of the particular violation. While you struggle, I advise you to seek further and deeper comprehension, to meditate for guidance and for help so that your feelings may change spontaneously. In these endeavors you are in keeping with the universal laws, for you accept your present state; thereby you establish inner conditions that are compatible with bliss. Have the honesty of saying: "I cannot help but feel this way, although I know that I do not like it and that it is destructive." In that moment you not only are truthful, but you make room for change.

Anything that is contrary to the laws of love and truth must make the organism unprepared to sustain the powerful energy of happiness. For happiness is a very powerful energy. Therefore, it requires much more strength than unhappiness. This strength can be acquired by everyone by facing the truth and by shedding the illusion about the self and the illusion about life.

The second reason for self-rejection is imaginary violations, according to illusory standards of perfection. Perfectionistic ideals are extremely demanding, rigid, and strict. The adherence to them does not stem from an overdose of morality but really implies a violation of real universal laws in itself. For the reasons are always pride, vanity, the need to control others, pretense, living for the sake of appearance, living for the sake of making an impression, the fear of standing up for one's own ideas, for one's own feelings, and for one's own opinions. In short, not being true to the self. One is greedy for admiration and for approval by others. I do not need to go into further details on this subject, for we have discussed this enough in the past. It suffices to realize that when you do not accept your humanity -- your present limitations -- then you violate a universal law. In doing so, the climactic condition of the psyche, if I may use this expression, are incompatible with the state of bliss that you long for.

This may all seem simple, but it is not as simple or as easy as it may appear. For both the hidden self-rejection and the hidden reasons for it are very obscure when one starts out on such a path. Usually people are only aware of what they pretend to be -- pretend to themselves. If they cannot bear certain emotions which are locked away, then they genuinely believe that whatever they feel and whatever they know about themselves is all there is to them. Therefore it is neither easy nor speedy to find out how you really operate. It requires a new emphasis in a new direction, a new tuning in and becoming aware of the emotional reactions that you were so accustomed to glossing over and not paying attention to. The awareness of your violations of the universal laws will also reveal, commensurately, the awareness of your rejection of your own happiness.

It is therefore my advice to all of you to consider the following -- wherever you may be on this path, at the beginning, or perhaps not yet even started on it, or when you have already made substantial progress in your self-discovery. To the degree you feel that there is still something amiss in your life, or when you vaguely feel that you could have more feelings, that you could experience more intensely, proceed specifically in the direction outlined in this lecture. Find what you do not accept in yourself; what you do not like and close your eyes to; find that obscure, hidden, and yet available reaction which wards off pleasure. Cultivate a purposeful willingness to see whatever it may be that still eludes you. Step by step you will experience -- in the discovery of the areas where you push yourself away -- that as you cease doing that, then you will become better equipped to sustain happiness, to bear happy feelings. You will develop this fine awareness in which at first you observe yourself in a subtle inner soul movement -- an inner attitude toward yourself -- that when something good comes along, then you shrink away from it. As you discover this, then you will weaken the rage with which you blame others, circumstances, people, life itself. This already removes a poisonous atmosphere from your psychic organism that is totally alien to and incompatible with the bliss that is by right your inner home. Therefore, it is one and the same when the individual accepts the truth about himself and when he accepts happiness. These two acceptances are interchangeable, interactive, and interdependent. A third point that is part of this interactive nucleus, thus making it a triad, is the realization of the powerful creative substance which molds your life. There is nothing hazardous about your life. There is no outside power that determines the extent of your fulfillment, the extent of your fruitful life experience, or the pain, the suffering, and the frustration that you have to bear. It is not even necessarily a case of self-punishment, as it is currently interpreted. The violation of the spiritual law within the psychic organism simply creates a climate that is ill equipped to endure blissful, joyous feelings. In addition, ignoring the truth, being oblivious of what you are, ignoring what you do, being oblivious of the ramifications of your attitudes, not being in possession of the awareness of the power at your disposal that is contained in your mere thinking and feeling process, all this ignorance creates the obstruction. For example, if you do not believe that it is possible to be truly happy, then it becomes impossible. So in this respect the problem has to be solved by cultivating this inner knowledge. This, in turn, is only feasible by losing the fear of self-responsibility and facing the entire truth about who you are at this moment.

Any truth of yourself and the nature of creation results in inner security, in trust, and in fearlessness. Ignorance creates fear. Fear creates an atmosphere of closing up. Then your mind will not use the powerful substance to create more expansion, but rather more tightly shut defenses.

Bliss is a necessity, for bliss is an expansion. You cannot expand and you cannot utilize your inherent potentials unless you are in a state of joyousness. Expansion and bliss belong together, just as stagnation and frustration belong together. Expansion is a self-activating process that combines the masculine and the feminine principles in perfect harmony. If bliss, and therefore expansion, is feared, then the fear of growth and the fear of change must also exist. So there must also be the fear of man's own inherent powers.

Bliss, pleasure, fulfillment requires the greatest of all strengths. Unhappiness requires much less strength than happiness. This strength can be generated only if the divine powers within the self are consciously and deliberately -- and concisely -- stimulated, activated, called upon so as to help you to become better equipped to sustain the state of bliss. In other words, to guide you specifically so that you do not inadvertently, unconsciously -- by dint of your deeply imprinted mechanism -- close up against your own happiness. This prayer is necessary -- just as it is necessary to seek contact with the divine powers when you are in upheaval and in crisis. When you are unhappy, then it is important to make a meaningful lesson out of the occasion so as to affect further growth. This requires contact with the innate superior forces. When you are happy, then it is important to become compatible with the universal powers and to sustain this state. This, too, requires help and guidance. At first, man finds it difficult to even think of this wonderful opportunity to be helped, to be strengthened, and to be inspired by this contact through meditation or prayer. He may have already experienced its effectiveness, its unfailing responses, its unimaginable wisdom, and its various solutions. Yet, when he is involved in deep conflicts, then he simply "forgets." But there comes a point when it is no longer difficult to remember to utilize this contact. As you do so, you become more proficient at it during such difficult times. Yet it seldom occurs to man to enlist these same higher powers again and again at all relevant opportunities. For example, to enlist these same inner powers for the expanding activity that takes place in him. For many of my friends who have reached this threshold this is a key.

Before turning to your questions, I would like to begin with another topic, directly connected with what I said here, and with which we shall spend much more time in the future. It is the following. Every human being has certain energy centers within his psychic and physical organism. I mentioned this fleetingly at some previous occasions, but not yet in detail. The time has come when it is absolutely necessary that in your approach to yourself you become aware of these energy centers. These energy centers are located at various areas in your body, corresponding to body areas. These centers are not actually in your physical body, but are in the so-called subtle body, in an area corresponding to the physical glands. Although the functioning of the glandular system is directly dependent on these centers, the centers themselves are not physical organs that can be discovered by x-rays or by other physical investigation. They are of psychic reality. Therefore, their physical reality can be determined by their effects. These energy centers, which are located in various body areas, each have their own relation to your mental attitudes. As the mental attitude changes from a state of ignorance, of fear, of alienation, of distrust, and of hostility to a state of mind that is open, that is trustful, that is truthful, and that is loving, then these energy centers open up. This is a distinct experience in the body, because at that point the unity between the body, the mind, and the spirit is a very intimate one.

Therefore, at this stage our approach must be a unitive one, one that includes the total personality. You will learn certain practices that will bring you the awareness of which center opens at what time, what to do about it, and what is the corresponding mental attitude. We shall go into this in the time to come. What I am saying now is merely a foreshadowing of it. You can see that there is a connection between the fear of pleasure and the energy centers. For if there is fear, then these centers are by necessity cramped up and closed. Therefore, the life force cannot go through them. While if you inwardly open yourself up for pleasure, for joy, and for happiness on all levels of your being, then this open, relaxed attitude of letting be eventually opens these centers, provided the degree of openness is sufficiently strong. In addition to the general pathwork of self-awareness -- of facing the truth and of establishing contact with the universal forces -- it will be necessary to become distinctly aware of the existence of these centers by certain practices and then to come to know how to approach activating them.

Are there any questions in connection with this lecture?

QUESTION: Can you say anything else about the centers at this time? Where they are?

ANSWER: There is one center at the base of the spine. There is another center in the solar plexus region. There is one center at the front of the throat. There is one center at the base of the head, between the back of the neck, but a little further up -- between the neck and the base of the head. There is one center in the back. There is one center between the eyes and there is one center at the top of the head. These are the seven basic energy centers. Each is connected with a mental attitude. Each center determines certain mental ways of being and certain emotional ways of being. Each has its own function. The center at the base of the spine represents all the physical feelings and all the emotional feelings -- such as, sexuality, partnership love, personal love. The solar plexus center opens the way to the connection with and then to the unification with the spiritual wisdom, with the universal truths -- and with the impersonal love feelings connected with this experience. Opening up this center must bring you to the seat of all your feelings, which usually precedes contact with the Divine, at least to a considerable degree. This is as far as I can go now. What I have expressed here is the barest of all abbreviations or summaries. Much more is to come later in a series of lectures.

QUESTION: Is the physical work going to be connected with breaking through these centers?

ANSWER: Yes, indeed. The physical work has a great deal to do with it, since it deals specifically with the blocks in the body. As long as there are blocks in the body, blocks in the psyche, or blocks in the mentality, then the centers cannot possibly open up. But in addition to that there will be other practices later. Breaking through these centers can begin only after a certain degree of self-knowledge has been obtained and only after certain basic resistances, certain fears, and certain mental blocks, certain emotional blocks, and certain physical blocks have been eliminated. Then this new approach can begin. It would be impossible before. And if it is attempted through artificial means, or by mechanical means, then it could even be dangerous. However, it is perfectly safe to open up these centers when the personality is firmly grounded in reality, firmly grounded in love, firmly grounded in a state of fearlessness, and firmly grounded in a state of undefensiveness. In other words, a certain basis of selfhood must be attained in order to energize the self with all the available spiritual energy. The physical work is but one aspect of the preparation. Later we will also be concerned with some new approaches. For example, a combination of breathing together with meditation.

QUESTION: Can you comment further on the centers in relation to the movement of the energies? Do they charge, do they discharge?

ANSWER: As I said, I shall comment much more on the topic in the future. Now I shall say this. When the human being is totally self-realized, then these centers can function fully because then their flow is no longer stopped. Both the charging and the recharging take place in a constant self-perpetuating inner movement -- just as everyhing in creation is subject to these same movements and laws. This creates such an immense feeling of bliss that it cannot be described. It is the most intense pleasure on all levels -- physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Most human beings are never truly charged by these centers, and if so only fleetingly, to a relatively small degree, except for exceptional states in their life. Most people are are usually in a state of cramp. Therefore, in most people their centers are closed. All misconceptions, all fears, and all negativity create this cramp. It is the task of each incarnated entity to discover the truth of these laws and to make them applicable to the self. As self-lying ceases, then a relaxation of a much deeper kind than is usually understood sets in. A flow occurs and an undefendedness takes place that makes the personality chargeable, if I can use this expression. Another way of trying to convey almost unconveyable facts may be the following. Imagine the conscious, functioning personality as an overall center. Imagine it like a planet. Then imagine the universal Spiritual Self as another center, timeless, spaceless, the center of everything that ever lived and of everything that shall ever live. Imagine it as a huge planet, so huge that this center is the same for everything and for everyone. A totally self-realized entity is totally parallel to, exposed by, and in orbit with his spiritual center. It is always in its field of vision and therefore subject to its influence. In other words, the movements of both coordinate completely. But most human beings are off center almost all the time. That is, their personality planet is not exposed to and in the field of vision of the spiritual one. At times the former moves slightly towards this field of vision, for the latter is constantly moving within itself, as it were. At times the personality center moves into this field, at other times out of this field. On this depend the strength, the truth, the love feelings, the aliveness -- or their lack. All this depends on self-acceptance, on truthfulness, on positive attitudes -- in short, on all that you hear from me again and again. The more you tune -- in awareness, in trust, and in love -- into the universal life center, the more this convergence occurs. Total self-realization makes the two one. At first the personality center is completely parallel to, is covered by, is charged by, and is enlivened by the spiritual one, until it is soaked up by it. This is not an annihilation of self, as many falsely believe. For all of life is really in the spiritual center which enlivens the rest. Death means a separation from this center, so that its light can no longer shine upon the personality and fill it with its energy.

Let me bless everyone of you with the great strength that has been generated more and more by many of you, who have come a long way. Rejoice in the knowledge that life is intrinsically the most benign and the most joyful fact. It is a constant, immutable, unalterable fact that no amount of separation from the spiritual center can deny. Ultimately you must come to this truth. Be God.

January 31, 1969