The Importance Of Experiencing All Feelings Including Fear -- The Dynamic State Of Laziness
By The Pathwork Guide
Greetings, my dearest friends. A great power of blessing and of love is generated in this room, and is forthcoming to all of you.
Every once in a while I give a lecture which is an outline, a plan, or a blueprint that sheds light on the path as an overall venture. But each time the approach is a little different. These lectures focus on the specific stage in which you happen to be at the time such a lecture is given. Here I am speaking to those of my friends who are really involved in and committed to this work, to their own intensive development, to their self-confrontation, and to their growth on the path. In those overall lectures I attempt to give a view of the ground that has been covered, as well as an outline of the principles governing man's life and his relationship to the universe. Some of the material I touch upon must be, by necessity, a repetition. But this is inevitable in order to connect, to unify, to comprehend, and thus to perceive on a new and deeper level the principles of life and your growth in it, and the laws that govern the soul.
It is essential first to face and then to accept those aspects -- feelings, convictions, and attitudes -- in you which are either not at all conscious, or not sufficiently so. Unless this awareness is cultivated, then it is impossible to free the innermost center of your being, the nucleus from which all life springs. This has been said many times and much work has been done already by you in this respect. Now let us try to see where you who follow this path are in regard to the ground to be covered within yourself. How much have you unearthed? How aware are you of what is really going on in you, as opposed to the superficial explanations you have so handy? When I address all of you together, I do not mean to say that everyone is at the identical place or phase within his own path. Nevertheless, an overall picture can be conveyed that is applicable to everyone of you, even to those of you who started relatively recently, for you have benefited from the work that others have already done. The groping of others has paved your way to some extent, so that if you are truly willing, then you can accomplish more at a faster speed.
As far as it is possible to generalize, I can say that many of you are
in a position to acknowledge your destructive, negative, cruel, hostile
and selfish feelings and attitudes. You are able to see the mechanism of your defenses to some extent -- if not yet to the full extent that it exists. But even this partial awareness makes so much difference. It shifts your entire position toward yourself. You no longer need to defend your defenses and you no longer need to pretend to be so perfect that everything
in you ought to be just right. The ability to own up to being fallible, to being human, to being vulnerable, to being irrational, to being wrong, to
being needy, to being defenseless, to being weak, and to being unhappy must,
by necessity, increase your capacity to be strong, truly right (not self-righteous), truly independent, and truly fulfilled. The admission of heretofore apparently inadmissible feelings is the bridge to inner unity and to a fulfilling self-expression of life. The acceptance of your hate will make you more loving. The acceptance of your weakness will make you stronger. The acceptance of your pain will make you more blissful. These apparent paradoxes have often been pointed out by me. But I believe that many of you have actually begun to experience their truth. To the degree that you have accomplished this shedding of your defenses -- and thus have become much more real -- to that degree you have gained significant ground. This will make the further steps in that direction easier. For the beginning is always the most difficult -- in any given phase and in every respect. To remove self-illusions seems at first insurmountably difficult, for all human beings believe that the underlying truth is unacceptable, and hence that this unacceptable truth makes them unacceptable or unlovable. Thus a double illusion must be removed: the underlying belief, as well as the cover of it. This is always the most arduous part of the pathwork. It cannot be accomplished in one swoop; it must be gained in stages and in sections.
This means that your future work must be even more focused on that particular point. But in conjunction with a continuation of this facet of the work on yourself, it is necessary that you comprehend on a deeper level where the destructiveness and the negativities come from. In other words, what is the real origin of evil? It is the denial of your vulnerabilities, the shame for your helplessness, and the feeling of being unlovable that create evil attitudes and destructive feelings. In other words, evil is a defense against suffering and against confusion. It is a result of
no longer being connected with the real feelings in the self.
Therefore, your work on the path can now be more directly concerned with the hurts, the suffering, the pain that you have endured in your early life, and that you have defended against until now. The concentration on these aspects of the self started already a few months ago when a number of you
came naturally -- as the organic sequence of their path -- to
a greater emotional experiencing of your past feelings. You who fall into this category have corroborated -- you have felt it as a reality -- what I have reiterated for so many years: The denial of the experience compels you
to re-experience it over and over again. In other words, it compels you to re-create the denied experience. This increases the accumulated pain and hurt. But more of this experiencing must be done. And now it can be done safely.
Too much is still only known to you, as opposed to experienced. For example, how you suffered as children, how unhappy you were, often in total opposition to what you believed before. Gaining this knowledge is a necessary preparation for experiencing it. For often without such knowledge the defenses cannot be sufficiently removed for safe re-experiencing, so that the pathway to the emotional experience is either blocked and does not yield enough, or the crashing of the defenses causes injury to the psyche. This is something that can and should be avoided. But now you are ready to venture into the depths of your being, where you let go and you give yourself freely to all the feelings that have accumulated in you and which could never leave your system, or transform into their natural energy streams, because you have locked the gates to feeling your feelings.
Recently I was asked to discuss the problem of laziness. I said that this answer requires a whole lecture, or at least needs to be placed into a specific context, for otherwise the problem of laziness cannot be understood. There is an intimate connection between the problem of laziness
and feelings that have not been fully lived through, or felt through. Laziness must not be looked upon as an attitude that can be given up at will, if only the person finally comes around to being reasonable and constructive. In other words, it is not a moralistic issue. Laziness is a manifestation of apathy, of stagnation, of paralysis. And this is a result of stagnant energy in the soul substance. Stagnant soul substance, in turn, is the result of feelings that have not been fully expressed, that have not been experienced, and that have not been fully understood as to their significance and their true origin in this life. When feelings are not experienced, expressed, and understood, then they accumulate. As a result, they create a stoppage in the flow of the life force. It is not enough to know or to deduce that you must have certain feelings from your past that add up logically to the present circumstances. To be sure, such knowing is often the necessary opening -- therefore is a prerequisite -- in allowing yourself the deeper experience. It permits you to make room for the possibility, which then lets the existing
fact emerge as emotional experience. However, the knowing can also be a barricade. When you replace or substitute the feeling with the knowing, then the connection between these two functions is interrupted. In the same way as when you feel but you do not know what the feelings mean, why they are in you, how they came about, and how they direct your life now.
This is not new, for I have often pointed out to you that feeling
and knowing are not really two separate functions, but tail ends of the same phenomenon. Thus, knowing can be just as much a defense against feeling as not knowing -- as denying the knowledge of the existence of the feeling -- can be. This is a good example to show why rules cannot be made about these things. You will always have to look into yourself to see how you use or misuse a given approach.
My friends, in spite of much progress, you still have many defenses against the full experience of the feelings that have accumulated in you. Knowing this will help you to focus your attention and your awareness on it, so that you can gradually overcome it. You can systematically lower the threshold of defending against deep experiences that have accumulated in you. If they are not released, then they become poisonous. And they cannot be released if they are not known to exist, then expressed, felt, and lived through as fully as possible.
Let me recapitulate. All that is evil, all that is destructive,
and all that is negative in human nature is a result of defending against experiencing painful -- hence undesirable -- feelings. Those feelings stagnate. When your feelings stagnate, then your energy stagnates. And if your energy stagnates, then you cannot move. For feelings are moving energy currents. If the energy flows freely, then they constantly transform themselves from one type of feeling into another. Not experiencing the feelings stops the movement, and therefore stops living energy. When the natural energy flow is halted within your soul substance, then you find yourself in the position of laziness. Movement is possible only when it is forced by the outer will. But forced movement is painful.
Hence the hankering that exists in so many people for an inactive life,
which seems most desirable. It is not enough to say that these people find
the difficulties of life too much because they are immature. This is merely a label or the explanation of an effect. Natural movement is a spontaneous expression of the inner flow of energy that is never experienced as arduous,
as painful, as tiring, or as undesirable in any way. So when you find yourself in the position of stagnancy, of laziness, of passivity, of inertia and when you desire nothing more than to do nothing -- which is often confused with the spiritual state of being -- then you have a good gauge that there are feelings in you which have created psychic toxicity because you were loath first to acknowledge them and then to fully experience them.
Stagnant energy does not trap only feelings, but concepts as well. Single occurrences are generalized and held on to. It is rare that stagnant feelings do not also include stagnant conceptualizations of
life. These images exist in the deepest recesses of the soul, totally hidden from the consciousness. These images are held within the psyche. When
I helped you to find these images, then you saw that you were compelled to re-experience both your misconceptions and your stagnant feelings. Because of the presence of these images in you, you are entrapped in the cycle of reproducing the past over and over again in one way or another until you summon the courage to live through now what was not lived through then. You cannot come out of these cycles -- no matter how good your intentions are and how much effort you use in other ways and as a substitute for experiencing your feelings -- unless you really and fully experience them. You must cross the threshold behind which you still harbor deep feelings. They are hidden so well that you are not aware of them. Therefore, you can still delude yourself into claiming that your present unhappiness and your bad moods just befall you out of nowhere, perhaps out of bad luck.
We have mentioned many times that the human predicament is the dualistic split, which is nothing but a delusion of perception. This delusion has many facets. One is a split in man's consciousness of himself:
He may feel one thing but believe another. He may then act without knowing
how both these functions govern him. The lack of awareness of what
man really feels and of what he really believes creates another facet of the split. When you unify knowing and feeling, then you work toward mending and integration. This then manifests as a wonderful new awakening and as a sense of wholeness.
When feelings are not experienced in their full intensity and reality, then the inner life flow becomes stagnant. Consequently, the person will find himself inexplicably paralyzed. His actions become ineffectual. Life seems to obstruct all his goals and all his desires. He finds closed doors to realizing his talents, to realizing his needs, to realizing himself. So-called laziness may be one manifestation. A lack of creativity is another. A feeling of general despair, without being able to pinpoint it, may be another. In this latter instance, the person may use either a current event or a current difficulty to explain away his inner state. A sense of futility, a feeling of confusion about life, and a feeling of confusion about his role in life must develop in man when he resists living through the feelings he harbors -- and that he goes on harboring -- because he deludes himself into the false assumption that avoiding the feelings will hurt him less than exposing them. There are many other manifestations which I have discussed many times. The inability to feel pleasure -- the inability to fully experience life -- is one of the most widespread effects. There is no other way to become alive than the course I suggest to you again and again.
The necessity to bring together feeling and knowing must become more obvious to you. But not only because of my words to you now and before, but also by the result of your progress on the journey into yourself. You have already tasted how it feels when you release the waste material of years of accumulated feelings. And it is waste material indeed -- with its own toxicity -- that you accumulate when you do not feel your feelings; and when you think thoughts which you do not know you think; and
when you act without knowing what motivates your actions -- and when you then contrive explanations for them.
The total experience of a feeling depends on your willingness and on your readiness to venture into it. The feelings are often accumulations of centuries and millennia, not just of decades. Each life incarnation presents you with the task to cleanse yourself by first experiencing and then understanding what is in you. You are purified when there is no more waste material. After you terminate one life cycle, the next one will afford you the opportunity to bring to the fore previously accumulated waste material by facing the conditions, the circumstances, and the environment into which
you are drawn by an inexorable law of life. But memory of the previous life incarnations is blotted out, so that you have only this life's past experiences available. The dimming of memory is a byproduct of the
life and death cycle in which everyone is caught who denies the experience of his own feelings. It is self-induced by the factor we are discussing now. When you go on denying both the awareness and the feeling experience of what you lived through in this life, then you perpetuate the cycle of dying and being born. This process always manifests in a break in the continuity of awareness. Conversely, you eliminate this break in the continuity of awareness -- and thus the cycle of dying and being born -- by living through now whatever has accumulated from this life, wherever it is possible to re-establish the links of memory. If all the feelings of this life are fully experienced, then all the residual soul matter of previous lives will automatically be dealt with because the trauma of now is only a trauma because the previous pains or hurts have been denied.
You can do this if you trust in the process and in the venture of letting go. But here is where the problem lies. You cannot let go if your innermost being defends against feeling your feelings; if it defends against what you know inside of yourself; and if it defends against establishing the connecting link between those feelings, your inner knowledge, and your current action patterns. Therefore, the paralysis that is often deemed laziness -- and that is moralized as such -- should be be viewed as an indirect symptom. It seems as though this -- as well as many other symptoms -- prevented you from living. This is not true. What really prevents you from living fully is your fear of -- and therefore your resistance to living through -- the painful feelings which you did not accept when they came to you.
Laziness is a protection against the movement of the soul substance which threatens to bring up those feelings that you falsely think you can go on avoding without blocking your very life. Thus laziness is simultaneously an effect as well as a defense. Movement stirs up what lies stagnant. By fully understanding this and by mustering the courage to feel what is there for you to feel, then you can re-direct your inner will and your intent toward overcoming this self-induced protective stagnation.
The truly serene state of being that every soul unconsciously longs for
is not a cautious passivity that tries to avoid movement, that makes movement appear to be undesirable. The true spiritual state of being is a very active state, although it is a calm and relaxed state at the same time. It is joyous movement and action. It is only the passivity of the fearful self that creates frenzy as a counter-action against stagnation. The personality fights against stagnation by superimposing compulsive actions. Then it becomes even more alienated both from the truth of his stagnation and from the reason for the stagnation, which is the fear of feeling all his feelings -- including fear. Only when you first fully understand and then inwardly feel this truth, only when you stop fighting against it and you dissolve what causes it by feeling your feelings, only then can you come out of both the frenzy and the paralysis. In other words, you must come to feel the fear that lies in your laziness -- just as it does in all types of stagnation.
This fear sits in everyone. It even sits in those who are
not overtly lazy, but who may be aware of other symptoms which this denied
fear creates. This basic human condition of fear must be allowed to surface. You must allow it to take over -- in the right setting,
of course. When you experience this fear, then you will find two basic elements in it. One is the childhood conditions which were so painful that you thought you could not let yourself feel them, so that you cut
yourself off from them; and the other -- even more important and significant -- is the fear of the fear. In other words, the fear
of experiencing the fear. This is where the real harm lies.
A number of years ago I gave a lecture in which I discussed the phenomenon of self-perpetuation. I illustrated how a denied feeling compounds itself, so that it multiplies. For example, denied
fear creates fear of the fear, and then fear of feeling the fear of the fear
-- and so on and on. The same is true about all the other denied feelings. Denied anger creates anger at being angry. When this is denied, then one becomes even angrier for being unable to accept the anger,
and on and on. Frustration itself is bearable when you fully go into it. But when you are frustrated because you ought not to be frustrated, then you become even more frustrated because you deny it. And then the pain extends. I often remind you of this process. It is significant and important because it points to the necessity of feeling directly, no matter
how undesirable the feelings may be. If you compound your pain because you deny feeling your pain, then this secondary pain must become bitter, and twisted. Therefore, it is unbearable. But if you first accept and then feel the pain, then a dissolving process begins automatically. Many of you have experienced this truth a number of times in your pathwork. Fear, anger, frustrated needs, whatever the feeling may be, all follow the same process.
Thus, when you feel the fear of your fear and you can let yourself drop into the fear, then this fear will quickly give way to another denied feeling. This denied feeling itself -- whatever it may be -- will become easier to bear than its denial: the fear of experiencing it. Fear itself is more bearable than the fear of the fear. In that way you can progress to the nucleus of the accumulated waste energy of denied feelings. Fighting your feelings -- in other words, defending against them
-- creates a whole extra layer of experience that is alienated from the core. Therefore, it is artificial, and hence more painful than the original feeling it fights against.
Your conscious self has to gather all its faculties, all its resources, and use all the ground that you have gained so as to become fully determined to feel your fear, to experience your fear. In other words, to go through your fear of deep, painful, hurtful, frightening feelings in you.
The only way is in and through. I have said this to you so often that it has become redundant. And yet very few of my friends have been
able to completely heed these words until now. However, sufficient progress
has been made in the past to effectuate the new influx that will now permit
all those who want to go deeper into themselves to do so and to come out
freed and cleansed. Therefore, able to truly live. Many of you have opened up in the right direction -- or at least are heading in the right direction. Further guidance will be given. As always, you will not be left alone at this point, where you are teetering. You will be helped to actually go into and through this experience.
Now it is important to focus your meditation in this direction. You who have convinced yourself of the great power that you generate when you meditate have learned that this specific focusing and this specific conscious direction evokes an inner guidance which then enables you to follow through. The proper direction is twofold:
1) Your commitment to go into yourself, not around yourself. With few exceptions, humankind is continually going around rather than going through. The commitment to go in and through should be the motor force in this specific meditation. Your declaration -- in other words, your statement that this is what you want and that this is what you intend to do -- will create a new condition in your soul substance. Your request for specific guidance for it will immediately loosen up some of the stagnant matter. Now the laziness that makes you avoid, that makes you postpone, and that makes you procrastinate
will dissolve sufficiently to set in motion a new influx of energy. The voluntary attitude of commitment will create an involuntary energy influx and it will activate the guiding wisdom of your spiritual self. Meditating in this way -- stating your intention to experience all the accumulated feelings in you and your wish to rid yourself of the waste matter in you -- is the best and the most effective beginning. In addition, the right balance, the right timing, the inner guidance, and the outer guidance will come forth in just the way you need it for your personal requirement. You will learn to become attuned to this guidance so that you can sense it, rather than being blind and deaf to it -- therefore missing out on it. For it always exists as a waiting potential. But not just for this phase of your path, but for every specific phase that you need to go through.
Let me repeat what I said in other contexts. The outer self, the volitional self, the voluntary self must play its part so that then the involuntary self can take over. This involuntary self manifests in
two entirely different ways: a) as the higher wisdom and the inner guidance I just mentioned, and b) in the surfacing of the self that often writhes in -- but which denies the experience of -- the residual pain of long ago. The former aspect of the involuntary self helps and guides this latter aspect of the manifestation of the involuntary self.
Through this approach energy is released which then can be used for this all-important purpose. Often are you convinced that you lack either the energy or the time to go into the depths of your feelings, while
you manage to spend a lot of time and energy for other activities which may seem more important at the moment. But no matter how vitally important they are, they can never be more important than going into yourself. For
this is your reason for living, this is your task, and this is your key to productive living right now.
2) The second important aspect of meditation is to summon your faith that going in will not annihilate you, as you unconsciously believe. I hope that what I say here may be helpful to you. Without this act of faith, then you will not have the courage to do it. Let me put it differently. If the safety and the validity of this course is not clearly conceived and perceived, then your disinclination to experience your painful feelings will inadvertently lead you to create an artificial doubt -- in other words,
a fear that going in is dangerous -- as well as an artificial illusion that it can be avoided. In other words, the false hope that integration, health, and a full life can be realized without going into yourself. The avoidance of your feelings always creates such dualistic paradoxes: Both false doubt and false hope.
Many years ago I gave a lecture which is also pertinent to this topic now. It was called "The Abyss of Illusion." I said that the path of self-realization and unification contains many junctures in which it is necessary
to let yourself fall into what appears to be a bottomless abyss. Falling into it threatens to annihilate the entity. I said that up to a certain point in the individual's evolution he crouches in front of this abyss, holding on and not daring to jump. Although he is miserable in this state, he believes that the false safety of this cramped, fearful position is preferable to his annihilation. Only when he finally trusts sufficiently to risk the jump can he find out that he floats. I said that many such junctures are necessary, each time to make the discovery all over again that it is safe to jump.
So it is in regard to letting yourself fall into the apparent abyss of your feelings -- painful feelings and frightening feelings. Unless you do so, you will remain in the crouched, uncomfortable position in which it is impossible to live and impossible to enjoy yourself. The faith necessary to take the jump can be activated by confronting the issue squarely and examining what is at stake. You have to give consideration to the fundamental question which can be summed up as follows: "Is there at the basis of human reality a bottomless pit of negativity, of destruction, of evil? Or are these manifestations of distortion, and which therefore need not exist?" If it is true that the universe is really benign, trustworthy, good, and safe, then you cannot and need not fear to let yourself be what you are. There are many junctures where man's faith is put to the test. In other words, where you have to face the discrepancy between what you claim you believe and what you actually do believe. If you believe in man's ultimate spiritual nature, then you have nothing to fear. But if you do not, then it is necessary that you be aware of this underlying doubt, and that you confront it as to its real nature. At the very least, this will protect you from the illusion that you have faith in the spiritual nature of man. If you discover that you really believe that man's ultimate nature is bad, destructive, fearsome, and chaotic, then the motive for having this belief must be examined. Such confrontation with what one truly believes versus what one thinks one believes -- and the reason why -- must be always honestly worked through. It must not be overlooked in every single issue of importance. Help and guidance can and should be activated through a meditation for this specific purpose.
In your meditation you should also state that you wish to be aware of
your special methods of avoidance. In other words, affirm that you
no longer want to deceive yourself in this regard. It is better to go on avoiding the jump into the abyss, but to know that you do so and why you
do, than denying your fear of it and then pretending. By freely admitting your fear, you are more in touch with yourself than when you deny your existing fear. By confronting the validity of your fear, you may find that the real reason behind the fear is shame and its concomitant, pride. Denied pride and denied shame often create fear. The false idea that it is humiliating to have certain feelings, the false idea that it is humiliating to be in certain vulnerable states, the false idea that you ought not to be where you are, and the false idea that your past suffering as a child is due to your being unacceptable and unlovable create the tendency to deny the state you are in. The pressure of this denial then creates fear. And the fear, in turn, requires the person to concoct theories that justify the fear. If a person convinces himself that it is dangerous to feel his feelings, then this conviction may bring forth a breakdown and a crisis that is merely the result of this deep conviction. It says in scripture: "According to thy belief it will be done unto thee." This is not a magical process. If the fear that is generated is sufficiently strong, then it leads to terror, and the terror can bring the person into an acute state of crisis. In other words, to a breakdown. But the true underlying core is often merely shame or pride, as well as the misconception that the childhood pain existed because of personal inadequacy, which the individual is too ashamed to expose.
Thus crossing the barrier of embarrassment, of humiliation, of shame, and of pride will dissolve the fear. These issues must be confronted and squarely faced. Only then can the way be smoothed so as to let yourself fall into yourself. Meditation is a requirement without which the way is needlessly more difficult. With this approach and with this attitude you can build the climate you need in order to go into the apparent abyss of your fright, into the apparent abyss of your loneliness, into the apparent
abyss of your helplessness, into the apparent abyss of your pain, and into the apparent abyss of the anger that is generated in you because of the suffering that you had to endure. Every tear not shed is a stoppage. Every protest not voiced sits in you, and then it makes you express it where it is inappropriate. All these feelings seem like bottomless pits, like abysses. But once you jump into them, then you are bound to find that there is something deep inside of you that some of you have already begun to experience as a reality -- whenever you have not avoided the reality of your painful negative feelings. That something is the divine nucleus that dwells in you and of which you are an expression. It is a light, it is a warmth, it is an aliveness, it is a security. This is a stark reality. But it can be experienced only when you go through the heretofore denied reality of your avoided feelings.
The realization of your spiritual self -- with its joy, with its safety, and with its peace -- is right behind your sadness and right behind your pain. It cannot be activated by a direct act of will, nor by practices and actions that leave out what I am trying to convey to you. But
the realization of your spiritual center manifests inexorably. In other words, it is a byproduct of and an indirect act of your willingness to go through
your denied -- and therefore not experienced -- feelings.
I will terminate this lecture by telling you that the fear is not real. It is truly an illusion. But you must go through it by feeling it. Through the gateway of feeling your weakness lies your strength; through the gateway of feeling your pain lies your pleasure and your joy; through the gateway of feeling your fear lies your security and your safety; through the gateway of feeling your loneliness lies your capacity for fulfillment, for love, and for companionship; through the gateway of feeling your hate lies your capacity to love; through the gateway of feeling your hopelessness lies true and justified hope; through the gateway of accepting the lacks of your childhood lies your fulfillment now. When you experience all these feelings and states, then it is essential that you not delude yourself into believing that they are caused by anything that you either experience now -- or, for that matter, that you fail to experience now. Whatever the Now brings you is only because the past still resides in your system. This, too, is redundant, but it needs to be said again.
Through these gateways you will find your true life. All the temptations that beckon you to follow paths which imply that it is possible to find the spiritual reality of yourself without going through these gateways are wishful thinking. There is no way around what has accumulated in you and has poisoned your whole system -- your spiritual system, your psychological system, and often your physical system as well. This poison can be eliminated only by feeling what you had hoped you could avoid feeling. Then a new energy influx comes in ever greater measure. Many of you have experienced to some degree what I am saying here. And therein lies your growth. But you all have to go further in this regard. The self-punishment for one's hatred, for one's spite, for one's cruelty, for one's greed, for one's selfishness, and for one's one-sided demands upon others must be transcended into the terror of your fear, of your shame, of your pain. When you stop fighting this, then you will become real, you will become open, and you will become alive.
Blessings to you all.
March 26, 1971
Copyright 1971, the Center for the Living Force, Inc.