The Universal Principle Of Growth Dynamics

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings and blessings for everyone of you, for every single individual who attempts, who searches, who gropes, and who struggles for inner unity. Every single one of you is motivated, either consciously or unconsciously, by this inner urge. This urge is a pull of the life force. The life force contains this push which motivates people into certain directions. They may not be aware of the deep meaning of this inner push, let alone that it even exists. Many people experience a vague inner urgency. But they do not know its meaning. This urgency can be consciously experienced by everyone at one time or another. Anyone who finds himself on a committed path such as this, in which the deepest problems are sought to be resolved and the dormant potentials realized, has made this urge conscious. Others are still grappling with the vagueness of this urge, without really knowing what the inner unrest signifies. Those individuals who steadily disregard the clamoring of this inner voice that is contained in the life force often come to deep crises in their lives. Therefore, many a crisis can be properly understood only when this deepest urge has been recognized.

This lecture deals with the topic of dynamic growth and with the spontaneous unification that occurs in the process of growth. I wish to discuss the dynamics -- or some of the dynamics and aspects -- inherent in the growth process. All life is a growth process. It it either deliberate and committed, or it is a haphazard, unconscious attempt that is obstructed by the opposite blind forces that pull backwards into a state of stagnation.

Let us understand a little more about growth dynamics. Before going deeper into this topic, I must tell you that this lecture can be fully understood only as a sequence of all the lectures given this year. We went systematically through various steps, which I shall briefly recapture at the end of this lecture. Off hand, these topics may appear to be unconnected with one another. Yet, when you follow through with a deeper understanding, then you cannot fail to perceive their link and the organic sequence between them.

Let us first get a concept of the real meaning of growth. Usually people do not think profoundly enough when they speak of such things as growth, life, death, love, and pleasure. This is because the concepts have become flat. So this is why we must state and restate certain terms: to fill in the meaning. Growth is not merely an event in which an organism becomes bigger. Growth is also an expansion, but in a particular sense. It implies mastering something that one was unable to master before. In other words, something -- either inside the self or in its surroundings -- that presented an obstruction before now becomes part of the realm of the self after the obstruction has been mastered.

When an obstruction is not yet mastered, then a disunity is present -- either within the self or between the self and the outside world. When growth has taken place, then the disunity becomes unified. Hence, growth is always a unifying process. It always implies bridging a chasm, mastering a conflict, resolving a contradiction -- an apparent contradiction. This applies to all levels of being. Let us take a simple example of physical mastery on the surface level. Until an infant begins to stand up and learns to walk, then there is for this infant a disunity between its physical powers, the laws of gravity, and the world around him. As long as the ability to walk has not been acquired by the infant, there seems to exist a contradiction or a split between the world and itself. Once this ability has been accomplished, then the specific disunity has disappeared. What at first had been a disparity has now become an extended field of operation of the entity in question. Its realm has been increased. Now it possesses a new piece of the world which it did not possess before. Thus the efforts of growth have brought expansion, increased range of being, more power, and more unity where before there was limitation of power, a limited range of being, as well as disunity. Not learning to walk renders the entity helpless, hence dependent. It prevents the infant from bringing out its dormant potential to walk and thus conquer the world in this particular respect. It creates a specific unhappiness. It also creates weakness, pain, and limitation, all of which are overcome when the ability to walk has been acquired.

Each phase of a human being's life signifies venturing out into new territory that has not been mastered before. The same applies to an entity's overall evolution from one incarnation into the other, and later into further stages of being and of creating. The sequence is always this. First the inability is taken for granted and therefore is not even recognized as such. Next, it is recognized as an obstacle that could be overcome. Then effort is being taken to do so. Later I shall discuss what this effort consists of. Only then comes the victory, the possession of the new faculty. This applies to all levels. A psychological conflict expresses the identical principle as outlined in the example of the baby learning to walk. Before the particular difficulty has been recognized as such, there is an unconscious helplessness and a sense of limitation. Then the problem is recognized as being a problem. After this the entity decides to do something about it and he envisages the possibility of resolving the disunity. Then he begins a path of struggle, of searching, of groping, and of testing his faculties in various ways. Eventually a new unity will be attained that grants a new power over life. Territory that before was alien and inaccessible now becomes "home ground" on which the person feels comfortable and at ease both with himself and with life. This is growth.

The possession of new home ground also gives a new security and a new peace. For the new power eliminates the old helplessness, with its accompanying insecurity and fear.

All growth function must combine the voluntary functions and the involuntary functions. If the emphasis is not equally distributed, then growth cannot proceed harmoniously. The finished product of growth appears effortlessly. It is a manifestation of the involuntary faculties which respond to the voluntary ones. The voluntary faculties do require effort in many ways. Effort in persistence, effort in perseverance, effort in groping, effort in searching, effort in trying out new modalities until they all fit, effort in self-testing, effort in removing defenses and vanity, effort in mustering courage and truthfulness with the self. All this is effort. Perhaps the most significant effort is when the line of least resistance is overcome again and again. Discovering a new dimension of life cannot occur without birth pains, which are primarily sustained effort, in order to test different approaches and new ways so as to finally accomplish the particular unification. I speak of birth pains not merely allegorically, for each new unification is a little bit of a spiritual rebirth. For birth is always a rediscovery of the self -- of the self in a new form -- with more faculties revealed and then activated. Every new skill attained is, in a sense, a rebirth. It is the discovery of a new realm of life through the discovery of a new faculty in the self. It bridges the previous chasm which was caused by the lack of that skill.

But after all the effort has been made, when the actual unification -- which is the result of growth -- finally occurs, then it happens involuntarily. It seems to happen by itself, as it were. In other words, it seems to have nothing to do with all your previous efforts. This can be so deceptive that people can be deluded into believing that it would have happened anyway and therefore that all that effort could have been spared. By the same token, when the result is expected as a direct, visible manifestation of the voluntary faculties, then such an expectation becomes frustrating, and is therefore discouraging. So it is extremely important that you are aware of these two sides of the growth process. In other words, of the creative process. This applies to the smallest details, as well as to the greatest and the most significant aspects of your spiritual development. It applies to meditation, which must combine the two sides, as I outlined before. And it applies to the most mundane acquisition of a new skill.

The effort of the voluntary faculties also includes a right attitude towards both the voluntary functions and the involuntary functions. This balance must be constantly groped for. The groping itself must be tested out. It must attain the right balance between poised effort and discipline, while being relaxed at the same time. Each step of growth -- each victory over conflict, over confusion, over ignorance, and over helplessness -- represents a new skill and a new mastery over life. It represents a new unification -- first of all within the person and, consequently, between the person and life.

I frequently spoke in these lectures about the dualism of this state of consciousness, as opposed to the unified principle of ultimate reality. This is what I meant: All of life is a progression in order to attain further unities and to eliminate more and more areas of disunity. Each new state of unity that you have acquired is a safety zone, a new margin, a new home base, so to speak. As growth continues, then hitherto undiscovered disunities are detected within this new home base. The entity then proceeds to venture forth into new territory by attempting, by groping, and by struggling to unify the newly discovered disunity. And so it goes on, until total unity is found. It may appear safer to remain in the old disunity than to venture forth into a new unity. But this appears to be so only because of the effort that is necessary. If effort is perceived as something inorganic, as something that "should not exist," then it is experienced as malignant, and therefore as undesirable. But if effort is perceived as a movement of life, then it is experienced as challenging, and therefore as pleasurable. With that attitude, the right distribution of effort and of effortlessness -- in other words, the right balance of the voluntary faculties and the involuntary faculties -- will reveal itself.

When the involuntary faculties finally manifest, then the new skill has become an effortless, natural part of the personality. This applies to all the levels of the person. On the physical level anyone experiences the difference between the phase of the voluntary effort -- the hard labor of practicing, of learning, of trying -- and the naturalness when the skill has suddenly become second nature. This can be noticed in a sport, or it can be seen on the mental level when a new attitude or a new emotional response has been acquired. For example, when you first deal with a specific destructiveness, with a particular negativity, then it is impossible to change this at will. Instead, you must use your will in order to grope first for a recognition of the problem and then for a deeper understanding of the problem. That means to be able to see its origin and its effects. In other words, to face the results, the consequences of this particular inner problem. Finally, you must use your outer volitional faculties for expressing the honest and wholehearted desire to change. All this is volitional. Then you suddenly register a new way of reacting, one in which you spontaneously react in a new constructive, positive way. This is spontaneous unification. After you have done all this, then it is no longer necessary to put laborious effort of thinking and of willing into the new skill, into the new attitude, into the new reaction, into the new feeling, into the new activity.

When you are torn by the pain of two equally undesirable alternatives at your disposal which make life itself futile and undesirable, then it means that you are in a state of utter disunity in the particular respect of your pain, of your futility, and of your conflict. Your false assumption that there is no way out -- a false belief that results in your hopelessness -- is a denial of the growth process that life is at all times. On the other hand, your willingness to find a solution is a commitment toward life and toward a new area of expansion of your personality. It is the readiness to find new mastery over your present helplessness and over your present constriction. The greatest difficulty is always the first step, when you do not even know what your specific disunities are. For there are many disunities in various respects. The voluntary faculties must consolidate in order to find, to state, to face, and to confront the specific disunity of the moment to be overcome -- to name it, as it were. Then, as I mentioned, the inner commitment and the investment toward overcoming it are part of the volitional faculties. Only after this step has been completed does an alternative process develop. Now the involuntary faculties in you can begin to yield new recognitions, inspiration, guidance, and revelation point by point, adding more pieces to the puzzle, until they all fit together. In this alternation every new insight requires a new commitment and a new search, until the next organic step reveals itself. And so it goes on. This is really a description of the path itself, which is all that. Part of the voluntary faculties is always to make room in your mind for the fact that a particular unity exists potentially where now there is a particular disunity. It is necessary to affirm that this unity -- which still eludes you -- can be attained and that, in fact, you will attain it. The amount of your investment will determine the outcome. It is often true that the desire is affirmed in principle, but when it actually comes to some of the more difficult steps of the voluntary part of dynamic growth, then they are not chosen. Unpleasantness, or apparent unpleasantness, is shirked. The self does not wish to expose itself where vanity -- appearance in the eyes of others -- is challenged. Here there may be cherished prejudices and illusions, and they must be challenged. The areas of stagnation must be stirred up and the total personality must cooperate and it must invest into this process if a spontaneous unification is to occur.

This investment of the mind, of the will, of the emotions, and of the attitudes -- as far as emotional, psychological, spiritual growth is concerned -- corresponds to sustained practice when new physical skills or new mental skills are being attained. The latter are also unifications where previously disunity had existed.

However, the first appearance of an effortless spontaneous unification will not remain so all at once. It will disappear again because the unification has not yet been made total. New material, new aspects, must still be sought; new attitudes must still be acquired; new mastery must be deepened and widened. Hence, more voluntary effort must follow suit, until the second appearance of this specific unification manifests spontaneously. But then it must alternate again, until the third, the fourth, and the fifth appearance of the spontaneous unification -- of the effortless involuntary functioning -- takes place, until gradually the new skill is incorporated into the personality and therefore has become second nature.

Whether the acquisition of a new mastery applies to physical skills, to mental skills, to emotional skills, or to spiritual skills, it always means the overcoming of a rift -- an imaginary rift, but nevertheless a deeply experienced and painful chasm. This means that the illusory duality or disunity has finally been bridged. In other words, it has melded into its natural and real state.

Disunity is always painful, unpleasurable. Pleasure always depends on unity. The expansion into life means a constant forward movement through which a hitherto alien and apparently hostile world becomes one's own home, so to speak. Each unification means that you have made an apparently foreign aspect of the world your own world. As a result, you have found new ease, new comfort -- in other words, the new experience of comfort and of ease -- as well as peace in the world through your efforts at unifying this particular rift.

It is exceedingly important to understand all this. You have often used the terms expansion, growth, experience, and so on, quite freely. But, as is often the case, words are being used without the full understanding of what they convey on a deeper level.

Let me recapitulate. Effortless, spontaneous growth and unification occurs only as a result of effort and struggle. This requires a forward movement into life. But this movement must be poised and relaxed. In other words, effort must be exerted, but it has to be a disciplined, relaxed effort, rather than a tense or rigid effort. The latter kind of effort reveals an unconscious reluctance. The former is possible because there is no reluctance attached to it, no reluctance in you about making the effort. Therefore, when you feel that relaxed effort is impossible for you, then you should search for and seek to determine your unconscious reluctance to move forward. The relaxed movement is pleasurable in itself, while the rigid movement -- which covers your hidden reluctance -- is painful. Instead of denying your hidden reluctance, you must focus on it.

The relaxed and determined movement into life -- so as to accomplish further and further unifications -- is pleasurable in itself, although it is difficult, challenging, and often even taxing at first. Each unification that has been accomplished brings further pleasure and each further pleasure, in turn, leads to more unifications. And so it goes on, endlessly. This is the stream of life. Unification brings pleasure and is pleasurable when it is no longer falsely believed to be something that should be already over with or something that should not exist because it is too difficult for you, or else something that is too painful. Then the whole cosmos will be unified into the self and the self into the cosmos.

The constriction, the restriction, the static, the non-movement, the stagnation denotes that the personality contents itself with a very limited state. Therefore, growth dynamics is also -- apart from unifying disunity -- mastering ignorance and overcoming negativity. It is also mastery over the existing misconceptions. Misconceptions always lead to more splitting, to division, to disunity. But they stem from an erroneous attempt to find unity. I have said before that neurosis is, in itself, an erroneous attempt to find health and well-being. In its own blind way, it makes peace with something traumatic and painful. On your path, you have found those misconceptions that equate, for example, love with pain and danger; that equate pleasure with humiliation and shame; that equate self-assertion with unacceptable aggression; and many others. Thus a vital aspect of living must be denied because its apparent byproduct is too undesirable. These are typical examples of false unifications that must be split again -- disunified -- in order to then find harmony, fullness, wholeness, and real unification.

As a result of the existing misconceptions, negativity, and the destructive attitudes, all forward movement appears dangerous. This movement must often bend in order to unify. This movement must stir up what has found a temporary, costly, wasteful, and limiting peace. It moves out of an apparently safe place into danger. The stagnating, restricting, limiting life -- in which one does not dare to venture forth -- seems to represent safety. Everyone of my friends who is already involved in this pathwork has gone through and confronted some of the more hidden irrational feelings, attitudes, and responses, such as those we discuss here. When we speak of the resistances which you begin to be aware of, this is what is always behind them in one form or another. If you really question them with an open mind and in a simple fashion, then you will find that the resistance to growth is fear and that the insistence to stagnate and to remain as you are -- even though you somehow know that this means the sacrifice of your happiness, of your pleasure, of your wholeness, of your love, and of your expansion -- is due to the idea that this is the only way you can be safe. In other words, the misconception that further stagnation is the illusion that safety can be found only in a limited way of life. Ignorance and non-mastery seem to represent security. It means seeking a tiny point -- one with a very narrow circumference -- where you have your basis of life, your frame of reference, your movement, your being. This amounts to an abdication of your universal destiny. Contenting oneself with the limiting fences is both life-denying and growth-denying. It denies pleasure. It results in the unnecessary waste of the most valuable spiritual power that man possesses in his deepest soul. But in order to unfold these powers -- which should be a privilege for you -- challenge, effort, and mastery are necessary. But these efforts must be freely chosen. Then growth becomes both an adventure and a pleasure.

In view of this truth, then it is a sin against life not to grow. In other words, to stagnate. This may appear like a crass statement, but nevertheless it is true. Since you are an expression of the Divine, since you are God, then it is your birthright and your destiny to fulfill yourself by making more and more, and greater and greater unifications; by acquiring more spiritual skills in order to bridge disunity; by doing away with the disunities within youy; and by creating bliss by achieving unity in new areas within yourself.

Many people are active in forever increasing their physical skills and their mental skills. This is also valuable. It is a movement toward life as well. It also represents mastery over disunity. Not knowing what one is particularly interested in represents a limitation. The attainment of those skills affords a new pleasure and self-mastery. Thus another piece of the cosmos has been made into one's own world. In addition, the steps leading to this new mastery are in essence the same as those which are necessary when the inner universe is being discovered and enlarged. The same attributes are fundamentally necessary, even though one deals with outer often mechanical aspects of living. While the outer serves as a mere substitute for the inner enlargement of life, it is still preferable to total stagnation, which is bound to end up in temporary physical death. Spiritual growth and mastery-- dynamic growth on the inner level -- the spontaneous unification of emotional rifts, of psychological rifts, and of spiritual rifts holds the inner balance and the harmony. Out of these then grow -- organically, naturally, effortlessly, and spontaneously -- the intuitive guidance and the knowledge that will lead you to other unifications. Physical skills and mental skills -- in other words, intellectual growth -- all have their value. But when they are sought as a substitute for the lack of inner growth -- in other words, for stagnation -- then they must miss their mark. Often they can even become an exaggerated activity. When inner growth is the center of one's being, then everything else falls into place without the pendulum swinging from one extreme to another. Unessential goals will fall away.

When cosmic truth is ignored, then disunity must exist as long as this ignorance exists. It is every single entity's fate to bridge over this ignorance by struggling toward these unifications, step by step. They are most difficult on the most hidden, innermost, emotional levels, since emotions cannot be directly willed, nor can they always be conscious. Therefore it requires a search to first determine the existing disunity before the work of unification can begin. Human beings go through several stages in their overall evolution. When they are more primitive, then they must deal with the outer levels. Later their task lies in the unification of their inner world.

When one's universe is being enlarged by attempting the unification of painful disunity and conflict, then trust in the involuntary functions is essential. This trust can be gained only slowly. For everyone starts out by not having experienced it yet. Thus, you must give yourself the opportunity to experience it. All your effort will be wasted if your involuntary functions are not allowed to manifest. They cannot manifest -- or even be recognized -- when the consciousness does not make room for them and then pays attention to them in a relaxed, calm, patient, and trusting way. This is a vital part of your growth procedure. When you realize that your efforts cannot bring you a direct result, but an unexpected, spontaneous, dynamic one -- perhaps when you least expect it -- and when you wait with an inner readiness, then the harmony between your voluntary faculties and your involuntary faculties will establish itself. That is the most important thing. By harmony I do not necessarily mean that the effort is equal in measure. Months of groping with your voluntary processes of the mind and of the will may spontaneously bring forth an inner feeling that springs up in the fraction of a moment. It does not last long, but its depth, its intensity, its significance -- in terms of change, of security, and of the realization of what life is -- is so profound that it cannot be measured in terms of the personal investment on your part of your volitional efforts. Thus, the harmony between the voluntary faculties and the involuntary faculties exists primarily in making room for both in your attitude, in your awareness, in your expectation, in your outlook, and in your activity. It requires your intuition to know how to grope for how and when you first combine and then you alternate these two functions.

Let us assume that you have already painstakingly gone through the four steps I suggested in my lecture about negativity. When it comes to the fourth step, then you are often obstructed by the vagueness with which you approach the spontaneous manifestation of the involuntary powers in you. Your not really believing in them weakens your assertion and your affirmation that you want to have the positive attitude, as opposed to continuing to cling to the negative one. Or you want to give up your fear of and therefore your resistance to pleasure. Or you want to give up the roles and the pretenses that stand in your way. This wanting, this desire must be affirmed in calm trust and out of a conviction that it will be received. At this point the voluntary must make room for the involuntary, until the indirect manifestation -- the spontaneous unification -- occurs. You will let it happen by a wanting it that is both relaxed and determined. This is the marriage of the voluntary and the involuntary, the active and the passive principles.

If growth is seen in this light, then a lot of fear, of hopelessness, and of wasteful effort will be eliminated. You will have a more consolidated effort. At the same time, you will be less impatient with the time element that is involved in order to create a unification where now a disunity exists.

Now I would like to show you the importance of the sequence of the lectures I have given this year. In the first we were dealing with the creative process itself. In other words, with the creating of positive or negative life circumstances that every human being, either deliberately or unintentionally, creates by his very being. In other words, by what he believes, by what he thinks, by what he wills, by what he feels, and by what he aspires to. I have shown you that living and being inevitably means creating, for the life substance is constantly being molded by every expression of the conscious being and the unconscious being of an individual. In relation to this particular lecture on the dynamics of growth and unification, it is self-evident that the person who ventures forth into life in the spirit of overcoming disunity creates an altogether different life than he who contents himself with his narrow confines. In the second lecture I discussed the importance of man's negativity and how it creates misery, failure, and discontent. And yet how difficult it is to abandon it because the creative process holds a fascination over the person. In connection with the present lecture -- the creation of negativity and of a narrowly confined life that continually turns and revolves around itself; negativity that creates disunity rather than unity, pain rather than pleasure -- which deals with the dynamics of the spontaneous unification that results from the growth process, it is up to an individual's inner commitment and decision to create a wider life, to create a unified life, to create bliss and pleasure, rather than to create a narrow life, disunity, and pain. With we apply the third lecture on pleasure and its importance in creation to this one and we consider the contents of this present lecture, then it is easy to see that pleasure is possible only in a unified, expanding, ever-enlarging state. By traversing the self-imposed narrow fences, you make more of the universe your own, thereby fulfilling your destiny. The voluntary faculties and the involuntary functions are not separated in reality. They are not any more separated than your intelligence -- your individual consciousness -- is separated from the Universal Intelligence. It depends on your degree of awareness of universal truth. They are separated only due to your own splitting off in consciousness. In reality it is all one and the same. It is one and the same consciousness, one and the same faculty of power, one and the same faculty of intelligence, one and the same faculty of creativity, one and the same faculty of knowing, one and the same faculty of flowing. That is the reality. But as it manifests to you -- in your present state of awareness and in your human limited state -- you seem to be dealing with two entirely different faculties and two entirely different brains: the inner and the outer, the conscious and the unconscious, the directly available and the indirectly available.

These words are only a blueprint from which you can work and attempt more and more spontaneous unifications out of disunity, and more disunity after a limited unity that brings further, wider, and more differentiated disunity for you to work through and to mend, so as to obtain wider, deeper, and more differentiated unity. And so on and so on. So that your life expands and you become more and more master where now you are weak, helpless, and dependent; so that you become more and more blissful where now you are in pain; so that you become more and more in truth where now you are in error. Error, pain, suffering, helplessness, stagnation, and disunity are one unit. And pleasure, growth, unification, and expansion are another unit. May you make your choice over and over again. Commit yourself to your choice over and over again -- to that which is truth, to that which is love, to that which is growth. Be the Gods that you truly are.

December 5, 1969