The Meaning Of The Human Struggle

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings and blessings, my dearest friends who read these words. May this lecture help you in the tremendous human struggle to find your own fulfillment and to find meaning in your life. This human struggle is so immense because you have to cope with the disconnectedness of your consciousness. The reality that you experience as a human being and on this human plane is an infinitesimally fragmentary aspect of the total reality. It is even less than relative, and therefore is completely out of context. When a consciousness is not connected with the deeper meaning of things, then life must be a struggle. This applies to every human being, to some degree at least. For even the most aware and the most developed individuals have periods when they, too, get lost in the maze of their disconnectedness and their lack of understanding.

The problem is that the mind at your disposal -- that same mind with which man tries to grasp and comprehend -- is itself just as fragmentary as the reality which this mind is supposed to transcend. This seems an insurmountable hurdle. Thus, the struggle is really this: how can you expand your perception, your consciousness itself, so that it can grasp the meaning behind the manifestation?

Man invariably takes the manifestation as the cause or the root. He must learn laboriously, through his personal growth, to recognize what is cause and what is effect. In other words, what is reality and what is manifestation. This deeper -- and always liberating -- comprehension of life can be attained only through personal self-confrontation, never through theoretical speculation and philosophizing.

However, some general concepts are absolutely necessary, for they provide the means to actually open the locked doors. For how can you expand your consciousness unless you try out some new and wider-reaching possibilities of life? The scientist comes to new findings in the identical way. He always assumes new vistas, to which he temporarily gives every chance and every serious consideration. If his presupposition turns out to be wrong, then he has lost nothing and he puts it aside, trying out yet another alternative in order to reach a deeper understanding. When he finds the truthful answer, then his assumption becomes a fact, an experiential fact. It is no different with the development of the human consciousness.

In the course of these lectures I have occasionally mentioned aspects of the creative substance. But whatever I can say can never describe the marvel and the truth of it. All words must sound hollow in comparison with its actual, manifesting reality. Yet my attempt to verbalize some aspects of it may be just what is needed for a few of you at this time in order to glean your personal experience of this truth -- at least to some degree, as is humanly possible in any given stage of personal development. So let me try to find words which can convey a particle of this source of all life. The creative substance is the most powerful energy. It is the most fertile life stuff imaginable. Its malleability, its responsiveness to the creating mind, its pliability, is as infinite as the universe itself. Whatever a consciousness can conceive of and express in thought, in feeling, and in will direction, the creative life stuff molds, forms, and builds. To first know and then to experience this is being connected with the process of creation, which is an ongoing process that is available to all living creatures. To know this means possessing the key to the human struggle.

What a consciousness determines, the life stuff obeys -- like clay in the hands of a sculptor. The only difference is that the life stuff is a living, moving, energetic process. It contains its own immutable laws. It is forever active; and it always manifests. The creative substance of life is just as alive as the consciousness that molds it.

The sum total of an entity's consciousness -- which includes all levels of unconscious attitudes, thoughts, feelings, and will directions -- forms life experience, which then appears to the disconnected, unaware human being like haphazard destiny. When man starts on the road of his evolution on the most primitive level, then this haphazard fate is ascribed to the equally haphazard will of a deity far removed from the individual. In very broad lines, when development proceeds and the divine spirit, the creative spirit is no longer perceived as an entity outside the individual, but as a power to be found within, then the haphazard fate that man fears is his own unconscious. The powerful currents and attitudes that still elude the conscious perception evoke just as much fear in a human being as the strange removed authority figure of a punishing god. His further path from that state on must deal with establishing the connection and thus regaining genuine control over his destiny. The stages in between these two poles -- ascribing one's fate to a removed god and being connected with one's hitherto unconscious processes and determinations -- are varied. One of them is materialistic blindness. It is the belief that only what is seen and touched exists, while all occurrences outside one's control are coincidence, either good luck or bad luck. They are essentially not so different from the concept of a removed god-figure who willfully determines other people's fates, even if this god is credited with love, with compassion, and with wisdom. The point in both instances is that one feels helpless, and therefore not responsible for one's destiny and experiences and is utterly oblivious of how and by what means they are being caused. To discover this what and this how is the most significant turning point in the evolution of an entity. It can be stated with accuracy that herein lies the difference between suffering and peace, between helplessness and self-determination, between infantile dependency -- be it on another authority, on accident, on chance -- and autonomy, between living in fear and living fearlessly.

This road is not easy, as you who are seriously involved in this pathwork know. It means learning many things, new attitudes and new aspects about yourself. Above all, it means overcoming the ever-present resistance to adopt new ways of dealing both with life and with yourself. It means breaking down old balance structures and establishing new ones. It means unifying splits in concepts on the emotional level and disunifying untruthful unifications. The searching, the groping, and the venturing forth must never be relinquished, lest one falls once again into the old despair of being disconnected from the inner reality. This despair may have been unconscious in the past, and therefore it may have manifested in such indirect ways that it could not be recognized. But as an entity grows, then such unconscious, displaced emotions become keenly conscious, although at first one ignores their deeper meaning.

When you experience a fate that you cannot understand -- perhaps you no longer blame the outside world, God, fate, life, chance, or other people -- then it means that you are still equally frightened of your unconscious, and therefore still inaccessible, processes. The greater the disconnection, the less reality your unconscious seems to have. You simply cannot believe that there is something at work within you that grossly contradicts what you consciously want, what you consciously stand for, and what you consciously believe in. The deeper the disconnectedness, the more does the manifest world -- the effects -- seem to be the only reality, and nothing else seems to exist for you. Only as you gradually become aware of your inner world -- as a result of recognizing certain of your attitudes, of your reactions, and of your emotions for what they really are rather than glossing over them -- does your inner world become more real. This inner world -- with all its destructive attitudes, its primitive reasoning, and its self-defeating will directions -- must become just as conscious as your also existing positive attitudes and positive will directions. Paradoxical as this may seem, the more this is the case, the more secure and the more unified you become. The more the split is on the surface, the less painful it is going to be, and therefore the less conflict it will produce. Hence the fewer undesirable experiences will come your way. At that point you will clearly see that your personal undesirable experience is a result of this hidden conflict between two irreconcilable attitudes, one side of which is hidden to you, so that it has the greater power to determine and to mold the creative life substance. Your consciousness has no opportunity to deal with the inner conflict -- the two opposite strivings -- so that the whole of your person is inexorably drawn into an undesirable manifestation.

The next question that arises is, why do you not permit yourself to know of the counter-currents -- the conflicting side -- so that they remain below the level of your consciousness? If this were not so, then you could create beautiful life experiences for yourself. Then what is it that prevents you from wanting good experience, from wanting fulfillment, from wanting pleasure, from wanting rich unfoldment? Off hand you will say, especially when you are new to this path, that this is ridiculous. You will be convinced that nothing in you blocks good experience. Hence other factors outside of yourself must be responsible. Those of you who have explored yourself a little deeper and further have become aware -- at first only fleetingly -- that it is truly you who resists this or that fulfillment that you desperately long for and which you think that you really and wholly want.

There is a good way of testing yourself. And that is when you speak deeply into yourselves -- with conviction and with determination -- words such as these: "I want to expand my life. I want to experience total love. I want to experience pleasure supreme. I want to be without negativities or blocks. I want to give of myself completely in love. I want to have health. I want to have fulfillment. I want to have abundance in every area of my life. It IS possible to have such a rich life, such a good life. I want to give to life just as much as I wish to obtain from life. I do not want to cheat life by secretly wanting more than I want to give. I want to shed my falseness. I want to shed my selfishness. I want to shed my self-centeredness. I want to shed my negativity. I want to shed my destructiveness, no matter how hard this may seem at first. I want to shed all the illusions I have about myself. I know that this must be the price for leading such a rich life. I want to pay this price. I want to overcome my false shame. I want to overcome my pride. I want to overcome the vanity that makes me hide behind my pretenses. I want to overcome my inner dishonesty. I want to overcome my self-indulgence. I want to face myself and change where this is necessary for me. I no longer want to suffer in a vaguely complaining attitude, thereby destroying the forces of creation at my disposal, hence not utilizing my life. I want to shed my ego defenses. I want to shed my negativity so as to give and receive the best. I want to accept difficulties on the way, for I know that by overcoming them I will be capable of receiving the good of life. I want to grow from these difficulties, rather than to childishly complain about them, as if someone else had given them to me. I want to overcome my self-pity and I want to overcome my fear, for now I know that they are but manipulative tricks of my childish mind so as to avoid accepting life as it is." In that way will you discover the true nature of life, instead of its distorted manifestations, which are due to your existing negativities.

When you speak such words into yourself and you then listen carefully for the response of your innermost self, you are absolutely bound to register reservations. The more finely you are attuned to the inner responses, then the more distinctly you will perceive your inner reservations. These reservations may take the form of disbelief: "Oh, it is not possible, it could not be. My wishing so is merely wishful thinking." When such a response comes through, then reply to it: "No, it is not wishful thinking, since I do not want it handed to me as a magical gift. I want to pay the price. I want to involve myself deeply and fully into living. I want to give as much as I wish to receive. I want to give to life so much that I am even willing to face unflattering, undesirable truths about myself, no matter at what expense -- even at the apparently greatest expense: to part from my illusions of how I would like to be." If you make such declarations into your innermost being, then you will no longer deceive yourself by pretending that this is unrealistic, childish magic. For this was nothing but a pretense to avoid facing the fact that you are not really willing to pay any part of the price just mentioned. You will experience your inner resistence, you will be able to acknowledge it, and you will understand its significance and its ramifications. You will see that your doubt about the possibility to establish a full life, a rich life for yourself -- your doubt that you may have indeed these powers and these resources -- is really a cover for your reservation to be involved, for your reservation to expose yourself to hurts, for your reservation to have honest and deep interactions with others, for your reservation to give up your pretenses, for your reservation to let go of your defenses. In other words, for your reservation to let go of any kind of destructiveness.

Unless you tackle these reservation to your involvement with life, your reservation to your willingness to give to life and to receive from life, your reservation to facing and changing what needs to be faced and changed -- in other words, unless you acknowledge the existence of these reservations and you profoundly face their significance -- then you cannot make your life a fuller and richer experience. You have to come to fully see how these reservations -- this basic reluctance -- are the reasons for your darkness and for the difficulties of your fate, which you are usually apt to ascribe to circumstances that seem to have nothing to do with your innermost being.

If you can assume responsibility for the undesirable occurrences in your life -- no matter what they are -- by establishing your resistance to your own expansion, then you have made a major step toward the removal of these blocks. As you continue -- and this is the pathwork -- then you will increasingly experience the words I shall say to you, but which now are still only a theory. But the time will come when they will become a personal experience. These words are: the life stuff that surrounds you and that permeates you consists of the most potent energy imaginable. It is the most malleable creative substance. It is of subtle matter, so it is not visible to the physical eye. But this does not mean that it is unreal. It is no more unreal than atomic energy, which cannot be seen with the human eye either. The energy of life is more powerful than any other energy the human mind has discovered. It is that which forms life and that which forms the manifestations of life. It is that which forms every aspect of the human fate. It is that which forms all happenings. It is the sum total of the manifesting consciousness that forms this material world.

No matter what other people's consciousnesses produce in your surroundings, the fact is that your life experience is determined solely by what you produce. Then what you produce determines whether a mass happening will affect you or not, and how it will do so. The mass happening is never in itself the reason or the final explanation for your personal fate or experience. It can only be a contributing factor to what you have already produced. For example, if you have not freed your innermost psyche of your fear, of your negativity, of your defense, of your hopelessness, of your unrecognized -- and therefore mischanneled -- anger, then a mass catastrophe will include you because this is the image you have set up in you. But in a state of connectedness with the root of things, then you will no longer use the mass happening to rationalize away your self-responsibility, your self-determination, and your positive involvement with life.

The life substance is so responsive and so bubbling with explosive energy that it is immediately affected by the molding power of the consciousness -- the total consciousness, including the one below surface awareness. When I say immediately, I mean that the substance responds at once to every movement of the consciousness. But this does not mean that it must necessarily manifest immediately. In most cases what you build now manifests timewise somewhat later. In other words, what you build now becomes your fate in the future -- either near or far, depending on the unification and the strength of creative energy formation, and the presence of counter-currents that must be detected, worked through, and eliminated first. And what you experience now is the result of what you built yesterday, last year, decades ago, or perhaps even centuries ago. The immediacy exists nevertheless, for each thought, each feeling, each attitude, and each will direction creates a result in the substance that forms your life experience.

But it is not only your consciousness -- which include your unconscious concepts -- that creates. It is also your feeling tone. In other words, the climate of your inner being. If your thoughts are productive and positive, but your feeling tone is depressed and negative -- in other words, if it is unwilling to accept the possibility for a happy expansion -- then this indicates that there are hidden layers of consciousness in you which contradict what you may pay lip service to on the conscious level. This is why the exploration of and the confrontation with the finest nuances of your innermost being must be made.

In the last analysis and brought to the simplest of terms, the human struggle is nothing but the struggle between that which is the ultimate reality -- in its goodness, its richness, its beauty, its joyousness, and its unending possibility for blissful expansion -- and that which is dark, constricted, confined, hopeless, negative, destructive. To put it in even simpler terms, between good and evil. All the religious philosophies of all times have postulated the same basic truths. But since these basic truths become redundant and eventually become mere words, then they must be brought to mankind over and over again in new forms clad in a new terminology, in a terminology that fits the present society.

There is a new consciousness coming into this world. It is beginning to spread. It is a consciousness that perceives the wider reality behind the apparent, fragmented reality at your immediate disposal. This new consciousness is a result of beings whose development and whose connectedness is deeper and more profound than those of the average person. They may be few, but their power is much greater than you can imagine. Also, this new consciousness is helped along by what may be undesirable in a different frame of reference, namely the glimpses which the taking of drugs have revealed. Damaging as it may be for many individuals to do this, especially when it is done for the sake of escaping life and its struggle, nevertheless from an overall point of view the glimpses that have been gained have revealed the reality behind the surface. And in spite of individual damaging effects, on the whole a new influx has swept the world the direct and indirect consequences of which cannot be measured by man. You know that I discourage the taking of drugs for reasons which I have already explained. But it is possible that something that is undesirable for one individual may have an overall balancing effect in the scheme of things, thus contributing to faster development on the whole.

It is always up to the individual what he makes of something. A person can choose to make a one-time drug experience either an incentive to speed up his personal development or he can choose to indulge in it as the ultimate escape. Nevertheless, on the whole, more and more people -- even those who have used this as an escape -- begin to change their perception. This change heralds a new dimension of being. Usually the deeper meaning of mass happenings -- regardless of how apparently desirable or undesirable they may be -- can only be evaluated much later. Perhaps even centuries later, when an objective, distant, detached, overall picture is available and when other aspects can then be seen in connection with the happening in question, aspects which are unrecognizable when one is involved and therefore is too near to see the whole of it.

In the struggle between the constructive attitudes and the destructive attitudes (I will not say forces, for the word "forces" seems to imply as if we were dealing with two sets of forces) in reality the destructive attitudes are distortions and limitations that the consciousness has suffered due to losing its connectedness -- its knowingness, if I may coin this word. As the knowing of the ultimate reality was lost, then destructiveness set in proportionately. That knowing must be recaptured. The human struggle is how to recapture that knowing with the unknowing mind. This struggle can be overcome only when you listen into your subtle emotional responses and you train yourself to no longer either gloss over them and take them for granted, or else you deny their existence. You have to do this with the help and the guidance of qualified others, for this cannot be done alone. Your hidden negativity must first be recognized and then paid attention to. It is the direct key to how you create your negative fate. In other words, to how you mold the life substance. By disconnecting yourself from your wanting to be negative and from your wanting to experience life in a limited, undesirable way, then you become truly helpless.

The pain of existence is due to disunity within yourself. It is never a fate that someone else imposes on you, or something that anyone else can do to you, or something that life does to you. It is your own inner disunity which is painful. It is where your dualistic split reigns. In other words, where your positive attitude is constantly obstructed and fought against by your in-dwelling negativity and destructiveness. No matter how much it may appear that your suffering has nothing to do with you, the truth is that must be so. And t is only a question of your finding it out.

Where negativity exists, disunity also exists. Hence pain must also exists. It exists to the degree to which the self is already embarked on a positive road as well. In those individuals whose destructiveness is so overall in their manifest, human personality that no pangs of conscience -- no guilt -- exist, then a temporary negative unity exists. Cruelty, brutality, selfishness -- the truly criminal nature -- can find a certain distorted peace and unity. Only when the eternal spirit has freed itself sufficiently to create a conscience will disunity manifest on the upward scale. Thus very lowly developed individuals are unified in their evil state. They suffer little pain when they violate the laws of love and truth. So in them there is a unification, temporary and precarious as it may be, that is nevertheless a unification at the moment. It is unification in negativity. This unification must be split asunder at a certain point of their evolution in order to eventually re-establish unity in positiveness. The in-between state is disunity: where one aspect of the personality strives towards love, towards truth, towards integration with the whole, and towards a comprehension of ultimate reality, while the other side strives towards separateness, towards destructive aims, towards fear, towards hate, and towards blind assumptions which never open the door into the light. The pain of this disunity ultimately becomes an incentive to increase will-directedness toward overcoming the negative side and strengthening the positive side. Such an effort ultimately leads to the new consciousness, the greater consciousness, where a new unification is then established.

Most individuals -- with the exception of the few who pursue such a path -- are not aware of their own destructive strivings. They have managed to look away from them. Therefore, they do not notice in what devious, misplaced, projected ways the destructiveness manifests. Even those of you who are actively engaged in your work of self-confrontation often overlook where your destructiveness exists and how it manifests. You do not see how its indirect manifestations affect you and how you still tend toward blaming circumstances outside yourself for your negative experience. In reality your negative experience comes exclusively from the destructive side of your inner split. The more deliberately, the more consciously, and the more purposely you fight against it, then the more successful you will be in establishing unity within yourself, and therefore in producing and creating a wholly desired and wholly desirable life experience in which you are deeply aware of your fulfilling yourself.

When the destructive side conflicts with the side striving toward true fulfillment and tending toward positive expression, then often the destructive side needs a good cause in order to find an outlet for itself, for hostile activity and for legitimate hostile feelings. This is why you often see individuals who become combative and militant for a good cause. They are no longer in a position where they can guiltlessly express their destructive impulses for an overtly destructive cause, such as crime in any form. They need genuine good causes, which then serve as an outlet for a strength and for a power which the positive consciousness does not know how to deal with. This strength and this power is put into the service of evil. But the total personality rejects evil. Thus a compromise has been found in using negative feelings for a good cause.

A more desirable state is when these negative feelings are no longer repressed and therefore need no outlet. Then the good cause can be embraced without serving as an outlet for negative feelings, such as repressed hostility, because the hostility is then dealt with in a more direct and self-accepting way. This is a difficult juncture where many stumble again and again. And even you who work diligently and with such good will stumble over and over again over the difficulty of not knowing how to fight against your negativity in the right way and of not knowing how to accept it in the right way. For both fighting against it and accepting it can exist in a constructive way and in a distorted way -- which is self-defeating. If the latter is the case, then it only widens the split, and therefore the pain of your disunity.

Fighting against the destructive side must not be done by denial of what exists, until you no longer know that it exists. The fighting against it must be done by activating all your energies toward a courageous recognition of the negative forces within you, even if they manifest so indirectly that theyt seem apparently harmless. What are these indirect manifestations? Let me name a few, so that you can be reminded. They are the lack of energy, tiredness, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, illness, frustration, failure -- or the lack of success -- the feeling of inadequacy, the feeling of pleasurelessness, and the feeling of listlessness. All of these are indubitable signs that there is a destructive force in you which you still have not fully recognized, acknowledged, accepted, and understood. Therefore, you still cling to it because you consider it a defense which you have no intention of giving up. This is why you deny it. Once you choose to confront it, then you must heed the signs and you have to acknowledge the indirect manifestations of your destructiveness, and see it as being deliberate in the secret regions of your inner self. Test your reaction so as to see whether you really want to give it up. Then ask yourself if your holding on to it may not have a great deal to do with your unhappiness, with your difficulties, and with your unfulfillment. Could you truly feel fulfilled, with all your dormant potentials realized, when destructiveness still exists in you and is tenaciously being held on to -- so much so that you do not even know of it? When you feel yourself in full possession of your power to deal with whatever comes your way and when you feel a strength growing in you from the experience of tackling and challenging your self-produced difficulties, then you will feel an inner growth taking place within you as an inner, involuntary movement that follows indirectly -- as if it had nothing to do with your deliberate efforts. This happens when you are reconciled to rooting out every last vestige of evil, of negativity. In other words, your destructive patterns of feeling and of behavior.

Do not fear to recognize it. For your fear of doing so is infinitely worse than the fact of your negativity itself. Recognize it, acknowledge it, and then accept it. Only then will you find a way out. Only then do you conciliate the right way of fighting your evil and the right way of accepting it. The latter helps the former. In fact, without the latter the former cannot be accomplished. Therefore, in order to make this fight productive and in order to make proper self-acceptance -- which does not deteriorate into self-indulgence -- possible, then a systematic approach must be used. This meaningful approach could be put into the following stages. First, strengthen your will first first for the recognition and then for the elimination of your negativity. Commit yourself to wanting it and then request inner help. Say this into yourself in so many words -- very concisely and yet decisively. Then listen to your own inner answer. Do not gloss over the inner answer, over the first vague feeling of resistance. Acknowledge your resistance articulately. Realize that this means that you wish to retain it -- in other words, that you do not want to let go of it -- and therefore that you hide this fact from your consciousness. Speculate upon the effects of this fact and then make this hidden intention more conscious. Then consider the possibility of this fact being largely responsible for all that which you would want different in your life. Do not stop the search without drawing the connection between your suffering, your unfulfillment, your unhappiness and your inner refusal to give up your negativity. Only when this is worked through, only when you see the connection clearly and obviously, and only when you subsequently have overcome all your resistance -- and therefore you have a totally positive response to your efforts and to your investment toward the elimination of your negativity -- will you experience the truth of the following statement: You have the power to create the most desirable life experience that you can think of, that you can imagine. Then you will know without even the shadow of doubt that the constructive life force is unlimited for you. It expands into forever new areas of joy and pleasure as greater inner strength and as more resources manifest from within your innermost being.

When you have doubts regarding your fulfillment or your possibility to create a new and better life experience, then you should look with a discerning inner eye for the corresponding negativity which does not want to give itself up. If this lecture is truly used and put into practice, then it will be a substantial instrument with which you can overcome a bottleneck that may have hindered you in your further progress. You should use this approach specifically.

May you carry with you new material and an inner energy force awakened by your good will and by your increased understanding that leads you to a decision about a new approach to your complaints: "I want to seek the cause in me -- rather than blame others -- so that I become free to love and free to live. I will take the apparent risk to do this. I know that by doing this I will establish and create self-respect, courage, honesty, strength, and positive energy patterns." If only a germ, if only a particle of these words is carried away by you, then this has been a fruitful lecture. Be blessed, all of you, my dearest friends, so that you become the Gods that you potentially are.
April 10, 1970
Copyright 1970, the Center for the Living Force, Inc.