Identification and Intentionality: Identification with the Spiritual Self So As to Overcome Negative Intentionality

By The Pathwork Guide

Blessings and greetings for every one of you. Let the power of the spirit enliven you, let it live in you, and let it manifest through you. Only then will you be in the real world and only then will your life have meaning. Every step of the way that you take in this direction generates new energy. You who are truly involved in and committed to this work on the path, with all that goes with it, have gradually found out what this newly activated energy means. You experience it in ever greater measure in your personal life in a variety of manifestations. You who truly want to find out who you are and are prepared to make the sacrifice of giving up your old destructive patterns of thinking and of reacting find out what an incomparable treasure you discover in yourself, so that the word "sacrifice" becomes indeed ludicrous. For you give up nothing for everything.

In the last few months a powerful new energy has been generated by the efforts of each individual, as well as by the efforts of the group as a whole. You have set in motion something that is much greater than the human life you know. This has become noticeable to all who want to see and perceive. It would require a deliberate insistence to blind yourself in order not to be aware of remarkable progress in you: of new movement in your inner and outer lives, of a renewal of feelings, and of a depth of new experience. You all have become much more keenly aware of yourselves and, consequently, life begins to open up more and more. Similarly, this same new influx is also apparent in the life of the group: in the dynamics and in the feeling experiences, in the honesty of feelings, and in the more intimate relating among each other. What is more, the spiritual force is now so great, as a result of your efforts and of your progress, that even the most skeptical among you begin to see that their skepticism is, in itself, an adopted defense. At this point, the validity of this pathwork is no longer a theory, or a philosophy. It has become a reality and an experience that can no longer be questioned.

As you become more perceptive and more attuned as a result of your growing development, you then know that the reality of the spirit is much more real than the things you touch and see. The energy that is being generated becomes self-perpetuating. This is noticeable in your personal lives, as well as in your common undertakings. Of course, even with the greatest of progress you still have to deal with your defenses, with your negativities, with your resistances, with your distortions, and with your darkness. Hence we must plough ahead in our work so as to make available more spiritual strength for the purpose of eliminating more and more of the negative aspects in your personality. For example, more unreality, more masks. In order to do so, these aspects must first be fully acknowledged and then fully accepted. This is the indispensable prerequisite for giving them up. It is impossible to let go of something which you do not know you have; and it is impossible to let go of something which you do not express.

Now I should like to find the common denominator of where most of you are at this time. This applies only to those who truly follow the path in all ways, with all aspects of the available help. It will become apparent that right now you find yourself at a crucial point, which I will now discuss. Some of you may already have taken some steps in order to pass this point. Others may still struggle to verify this point of self-awareness, but they will sense that they are on the threshold. But most of my friends are exactly at the point I shall now discuss.

This common point is the awareness of your previously concealed but now conscious negative intentionality. This awareness was not accessible only a short time ago. You may have accepted the theory that you, too, have a lower self, that you have faults and character defects. You even faced a number of them and you may have dealt with them honestly and constructively. But this is not the same as the negative intentionality, although there does exist a connection between the latter and the character defects, the images, the misconceptions, and the destructive feelings.

For many years we have discussed the fact that whatever man fears he also unconsciously wants, and that whatever man experiences he also unconsciously wants. This entire pathwork is based on this truth, on this fact of life. In the course of the years you have verified aspects in you which proved this fact. But it is only recently that many of you are truly face to face with a basic negating attitude toward life. It is an attitude that expresses, that says: "I do not to want to give! I do not to want to love! I do not to want to contribute! I do not to want to reach out! I do not to want to receive! I do not to want to live well! I do not to want to live fruitfully!" This may sound preposterous to the conscious mind that wishes nothing more than all imaginable fulfillments. But there is this other part of the soul -- in a hidden corner of the psyche -- that says just the opposite. It wants to hate, it wants to be spiteful, it wants to withold -- even if this causes suffering and deprivation.

The realization of this part of the soul is of paramount importance. It need not be the overwhelming part of the self. In fact, it suffices that a relatively small part of the consciousness is locked in this negation, while a much more substantial part of the self strives for the very opposite. But no matter how small in relationship to the liberated positive aspects of the self, the former holds a magnetic power over the life of the individual by virtue of it not being recognized. In other words, as a result of the lack of awareness that exists in regard to it.

When the full awareness of this negative intentionality finally surfaces, then it dawns on you what a grip this devastating attitude has on you. In spite of your knowing how destructive and how senseless it is, you still find yourself unable -- that is, unwilling -- to abandon this attitude. A great deal of effort to overcome your resistance is necessary before you can accept this initially shocking realization about your life. As a matter of fact, much of the resistance that you encounter both in yourself and in your companions is based precisely on not wanting to see the existence within you of such senseless destruction and negation of life.

But when you finally do see it, then it is a blessing. For then you can deal with this negation of life. Of course, you have already done so to a considerable extent. There are a number of reasons for negativity, of which you are already quite conscious. Nevertheless, you still cannot move from this point. Yet the fact that you know that it is you who wants isolation, that it is you who wants loneliness, that it is you who wants lovelessness, that it is you who wants to hate, that it is you who wants to spite, and not some fate that innocently befalls you, represents a major key through which the next link in the chain of progression and evolution can be established.

At this point in our work together it would be useful to make a clear distinction between negativity and negative intentionality. Negativity comprises too wide a term. It also includes your faults, your hostility, your distorted reality, your envy, your hate, your fear, your pride, and your anger. But when we speak of negative intentionality, then the words take on a different meaning. It is the intention to expressly hold on to the state of a negation of life and of a negation of the self. The mere word intention connotes the fact that the self is in charge, that the self makes a deliberate choice: that it intends to do, that it intends to act, that it intends to be. Even when you own up to the most destructive, cruel, brutal attitudes in you, then there is always an implication that you cannot help being the way you are. But when you finally ferret out your negative intentionality, then you can no longer deceive yourself that negativity happens to you. Sooner or later you must come to terms with the fact that your life is the result of your own choices. And choice implies the possibility to adopt another attitude. In other words, on a deep level you truly discover that you are free. Even your narrow confines are the result of a freely-chosen course that you follow. It is a road that you will continue to follow until you choose to change this course.

To the conscious mind such negative intentions may appear unthinkable. But whoever reads these words and has not yet verified them should rest assured that negative intentionality does indeed exist. To deal with this extensively and profoundly takes considerable struggle, effort, patience, and the overcoming of fierce resistance. I am not talking about a vague recognition here or there, which then is left to itself. In fact, truly dealing with the negative intentionality is a major crisis in a person's life and signifies a basic transition. It is not something that a person can easily come by.

Now let us look at certain fundamental stages and progressions in regard to this transition. A person starts out on such a path without any awareness of his stubborn negative intentions. If he were to be confronted with this fact, then he could not believe it, let alone feel it and observe it in himself. He may be aware of some faults, of some destructive attitudes, of some neurotic behavior, and of some negative feelings. But this is not the same as awareness of his negative intentionality. I cannot sufficiently emphasize this.

When the pathwork progresses well and he gains deeper and more honest insights into himself, then the person accepts more of his good feelings as well as of his painful ones. As a result, he gains strength and objectivity. By the renewed commitment to facing the truth in himself over and over again, and thus activating the purest of spiritual energies, he finally comes to discover his intentional negation of all the good things in life. He will find that the more frustrated he feels for not attaining what he ardently desires, the greater is his negative intention inside, and the less inclined he is to deal with it. This correlation is extremely important. The same applies to doubts. The more the person fears that what he wants will not materialize, then the less faith he has in his life, and therefore the less connected he is with his own negative will.

It is tremendously difficult to admit that the self deliberately chooses a course of denial, of spite, and of hate, even at the price of suffering. But once this is done, then the door to freedom opens, even before one is actually ready to step through this door. Even before the self is ready to make a new choice, the mere availability of another road, of another approach to life -- that of investing all of one's energies and all of one's resources into this new way of life -- brings realistic hope, not false hope.

You pin so much on false hopes, my friends. You invest the best of yourself into neurotic solutions based on unrealizable hopes, on sheer illusion. But there exists a real hope, a realistic hope, and therefore a realizable hope. In other words, it is a hope that is not bound to wind up in disappointments and disillusionments. It is a hope that slowly but surely grows into manifest reality and fact. And that is the fulfillment of the self, the realization of the best that is contained in you, and therefore your accessibility to what life has to offer. Just think of what of all the potentialities that life has offer. They are endless and they are yours for the asking.

However, we must be clear that important as it is to discover the existence of the negative intentionality in you, that it not the same as giving it up. Those who have arrived at this point have found this to be only too true. It is possible to fully recognize and admit negativity and yet not to be ready and willing to let go of it. This is not true of all the recognitions and of all the insights. Sometimes the realization of a destructive or distorted attitude automatically eliminates it. But this is not always true. With this particular aspect, it becomes evident that in spite of knowing how senseless and how destructive negative intentionality is more than just recognizing it is required in order to be able to change the mind, the will, and the intentions.

We have already gone into many of the reasons, the motives, the beliefs, and the misconceptions why this is so. We have worked on many of them. There is the fear of the unknown; there is the fear of being hurt; there is the fear of being humiliated; there is the fear of and therefore the refusal to experience pain -- both past and present. Thus a negative attitude is a defense against real feelings. Holding on to the negative will direction is also due to a refusal to assume responsibility in life; to a refusal to deal with unideal circumstances; it is an inner insistence to force the bad parents to become good parents, as if one's own misery were a weapon. Then this misery is actually used as such. Negative intentionality is also a means to punish life; that is, the bad parents. All of these feelings, reactions, and attitudes have been amply explored, verified, and worked through. Yet many of you still insist on holding on. Why?

We have worked on the origin of this negation. It is often the only way a child has to preserve its selfhood. If this inner resistance is not maintained, then the personality feels threatened. The child equates giving up the resistance with the capitulation of his individuality. This, too, is recognized by most of you, and you are aware of the inappropriateness of transporting a once valid position into the present, when it is no longer valid but is downright destructive.

It may seem almost inconceivable to him who has not yet made this self-discovery that one can admit to a downright senseless, wasteful attitude that does nothing but bring undesirable results and yet insist on maintaining it.

Why does this apparently senseless refusal exist, even though you know that your negative intentionality causes you and others pain; that it makes you miss out on living fully; that is makes you miss out on being in joy; that it causes severe guilt and self-punishment? A powerful reason must exist that goes beyond any of the aforementioned causes -- true as they are in themselves. Many of my friends are stuck at this particular point. They need help to get beyond it.

What prevents you from saying: "I do not want to hate, I want to love. I do not want to withold any longer, I want to give the best of myself to life. I do not need my spitefulness and therefore I truly desire to give it up. I want to reach out and give to life and then receive the best that life has to offer?" We hope this lecture will help you to further understand this resistance.

In order to deal with this bottleneck the question of identification has to be focused on. What part of yourself do you identify with? Such identification is not something which the conscious ego chooses. But it is something that must be discovered by your observing mind. In what way are you identified with what part of your being?

For example, if you identify exclusively with your ego -- the conscious, willing, acting part of the person -- then it is automatically impossible to bring about a change that is not within the province of the ego to bring about. Inner change -- such as the change of the deepest attitudes and feelings of an individual -- cannot be brought about by the limited functions of the ego. One must be identified with a deeper, wider, and more effective aspect of the self in order to believe in the possibility of change at all. This change comes about by the ego committing itself to wanting the change and then by trusting in the processes of the involuntary spiritual self to bring it about. But if there is no identification with the spiritual self, then such trust and positive expectation -- one that is free from pressure -- cannot exist. And if it does not exist, then the person cannot even want it, for the conviction of failure would drive home the powerlessness of the ego in too unpleasant a way. Thus it is preferable for the limited ego to say, "I do not want to," than to say "I cannot."

On a superficial level the exact opposite situation exists: the "I won't" is denied with an "I can't." On a deeper and more subtle level, it is reversed, simply because the ego does not want to admit its limitations, and yet the self has not found the way to identify with the spirit.

Identification, like everything else, can exist in a most positive and constructive way, and it can exist in a most negative, obstructive, and destructive way. The difference between these is not determined by whether you identify with either one or the other of the various personality aspects -- as if one would be good and the other bad. Any identification with any aspect of yourself can be either desirable, healthy, and fruitful, or it can be the opposite. Let us see how this is.

For instance, you might think: "How can it be destructive to identify with the higher self?" Or, conversely, "How could it be desirable to identify with the lower self?" I say that it can be either.

If you identify with your higher self -- with your spirit -- without being aware of your lower self, of your mask self, of your defenses, of your dishonest devices and of your negative intentionality, then your identification with your higher self becomes both an escape and an illusion. This is not fruitful. Neither is it a real experience under these circumstances. It is more like paying lip service to and having a mental belief in a philosophy. It is good when you know that you are a divine manifestation -- and therefore that you have potentially limitless power at your disposal: the power to change yourself and your life; and when you know that you are the spirit of the universe manifest. This is true. And yet it is a half-truth when this kind of identification overlooks the part that needs your scrutiny and your candid attention.

By the same token, identification with your lower self can be either desirable or undesirable. Perhaps we can best put it this way. If you identify either with your lower self or with your mask self, then it is one thing. But if you identity it, then it is quite another. When you are identified with your lower self, then you believe that this is all there is to you. But when you identify it, then you can observe it, you can admit it, and you can tackle it. Now you no longer believe that this is all there is to you. For if it were, then you could not identify it, observe it, evaluate it, analyze it, and thus change it. For that part of you which is doing all this watching is more in charge, has more power, is more active, and is more real than the part that is being observed, evaluated, and changed. The moment you identify something -- good, bad, or indifferent -- then the identifier is more you than that which is being identified. In other words, the observer is more real and is more in charge than that which is being observed.

There is a vast difference between identifying and being identified with. When the mask self, the lower self, the negative intentionality, and the dishonest games are being identified, then real feelings can be felt and honestly experienced. Pain need no longer be denied. This is so because the energy that is no longer invested into denying what is will now bring you what is. When you can feel your feelings, then you can identify with your spiritual self. The lower self should be identified. The spiritual self should be identified with. The ego first makes the identification and then gives itself up voluntarily so that it is integrated into the spiritual self.

When he is in the process of giving up his negative intentionality, then the person already begins to experience himself as something more than his lower self that should be dissolved. That is, its energies are being dissolved in their present form and are being reconverted, altered, and channeled in a new and better way. But when the senseless refusal to give up the negative will exists, then it is because the person is completely and totally identified with this aspect of the self. This is so regardless of the developed aspects of the self where this may not hold true at all. In other words, this is not a total condition. It is not true that the person is either entirely identified with the lower self or not at all. It is invariably a combination. In other words, some aspects of the self are free, and there a deep spiritual idenfication may be sensed. At the same time, the as yet unidentified lower self aspects and the as yet unfelt feelings create -- at least in part -- a fearful submersion into the lower self which the self then believes to be its only reality. At the same time, a third identification with the ego as the only valid, reliable function can exist, too. This is the way people are split in regard to identification.

When a secret -- albeit partial -- identification with the lower self exists, then giving it up is like self-annihilation. To that part of the self that is destructive, that is cruel, that is hateful, and that is spiteful this seems to be the real self. The other self seems unreal -- perhaps even phony. This seems especially true when an actual phony veneer is used in order to cover up the reality of the lower self. Then giving up your hate, giving up your spite, giving up your negative intentions seems like giving up your very being. That apparent self-annihilation cannot be risked, even if the promise beckons to you that joy and fulfillment accrue from this sacrifice. At best this joy -- if it exists at all -- appears to exist for someone other than the familiar you. What good do joy, fulfillment, pleasure, self-respect, and abundance do if they are to be experienced by someone other than you? This is the inarticulated feeling or climate.

This is the most difficult part to overcome. Or, perhaps, I should correct this and state that it is the second most difficult part. The first is to make the initial commitment to find out the truth about yourself. This includes the mental observation of and the admission of your real thoughts and of your real feelings; the experiencing of all your feelings; and then owning up to them on all levels. The second most difficult part for you to overcome is this: How are you going to extricate yourself from your identification with your lower self?

When the self experiences itself as real only in the lower self -- to whatever degree this may hold true -- then it cannot give itself up. The refusal to do so is the misplaced will to live. You live IN the illusion that nothing else of you exists beyond your negative aspects. In other words, you feel real and energized only when your negativity and your destructiveness manifest, no matter how much the environment curtails it and therefore forces you to experience this energy only inside of yourself. Your outer deadness and numbness seem to be the result of having given up your evil. But it has not been given up at all. Nor do you have to do so, for the same energy will be reconverted. Therefore, it no longer needs to be denied.

My friends, let this sink in: Your resistance to giving up what you hate most in yourself, what you know is most hateful, is due to a false identification.

At this point many of you are puzzled about yourselves. You do not understand why you do not want to budge from this extremely uncomfortable and undesirable inner position. You know that there is a beautiful world waiting outside. And if you deny this fact, then that, too, is a means to justify your position. If it does not exist anyway, if all is dismal anyway, then there is nothing so strange about your state. So you often make yourself believe in a terrible, senseless universe. Or, if this is not so, then your belief in the good and beautiful universe cannot be brought to bear on your negative intentionality.

The way you are bound and frozen into this position of your resistance to give up your negative intentionality is not only obstinate and spiteful. That would be too stupid. But the obstinacy and the spitefulness harden your position, so that your fear of annihilation in giving up your lower self increases in strength, and therefore a negative self-perpetuation is set in motion. You then live in this small, self-enclosed world in which the worst of you seems to be your only reality.

How are you going to find your way out of this? The first thing to do would be to question yourself: Is this really all that you are? Is it true that your reality ceases to exist when you give up your negative intentions and your negative will? Is this all there is to you? The mere fact that you raise these questions honestly will already open a door. Even before answers will come -- and eventually pour forth -- the fact that these questions are being raised will permit you to come to the second stage in this progression. From there on it will not be quite so difficult to find a voice in you that answers in a new way that is beyond the limited scope of the lower self -- which you used to protect so jealously.

Therefore, reach out with tentative questions, questions asked with good will and in good faith. This is the first step to find your way out of your prison and of your unnecessary suffering. When you do this, then you are no longer identified with your lower self that knows nothing but these confined walls and that derives its identity and its reality from being negative. Instead, you come to the point when you can identify it and therefore be its observer. The observer then becomes a first extension of the familiar experience of the self.

Let us assume that you have grown accustomed to experiencing yourself as haughty, as cold, as contemptuous. Giving up this attitude seems like dying. But dying into what? Into your true self, where your real feelings are, and hence where your real being is. If you are willing to feel your feelings, regardless of their nature, then you will know who you are. If you are not willing, then you must remain that hard, stiffened, limited self. Here lies your choice.

It cannot be claimed that when you give up your negative intentionality, then you will instantly experience universal bliss -- or even earthly bliss. You will experience your real feelings, some of them quite painful. But the pain will be much easier to bear than the position you maintain. And in its flowing nature it will carry you into new and better states, like the river of life itself.

The commitment must always be to the self -- what it really feels, what it really thinks, and what it it really is. If the commitment to the self is the aim, then you cannot realize anything else but yourself. You will experience new depths and new scopes of feelings. You will welcome the pain, for it is real and flowing. It is moving and totally yourself.

The first answers that you will receive to your questions may not even come from the deeper spiritual self. In other words, you may not experience magical revelations, visions, and mystical inspirations. The first answers may come from your conscious mind. Your ability to formulate new possibilities and new answers, and to use knowledge of truth that is already integrated into your consciousness will feel safe and very real. At the same time, it will give you a new key to use the equipment at your disposal in other ways than in the old groove.

Such thoughts may take into consideration the possibility that trying out a specific positive intentionality could be interesting and desirable for you. You could play at first with forming new thoughts, with weighing new possibilities and alternatives in the way you set your thinking apparatus. This is an exciting endeavor and one that does not, in principle, obligate you to a specific course. It merely means giving a new scope to a very set mind. You can always exert your right to go back to where you were. In other words, you are never coerced by life or by anyone else. It is always your choice. This knowledge will make less final the apparent risk to try out a new thought direction. Just investigate how it feels to set in motion a positive intentionality. As you avail yourself of this new freedom, then you bridge another gap toward a greater expansion of the self. Little by little, you can become calm, listening into yourself, and perceiving the ever-present, ongoing voice of truth. In other words, the voice of God. This will gradually increase in intensity and in frequency, until you realize that you are everything that exists. There is nothing you are not, my friends. This may sound very far off, but it is not as far away from you as it may now seem.

Can you try to take this step after this lecture? Maybe you can meditate together and help each other. This step must be repeated many times, like the initial commitment to finding the truth inside of you. But every little step liberates more energy, and that makes the successive steps easier. I will now give the force to those who request it and who make their commitment where they wish help. Afterwards all of you can generate tremendous spiritual energy by your meditation and by your commitment. He who comes forth regarding the step I explained after the lecture is over will not only help himself, but also others who are stranded at the same juncture. Those who make a commitment and ask for the force also take such a step. This, too, helps everyone who is truly open in mind and feeling -- or, at least, who wants this openness to occur gradually.

He who makes himself available to new possibilities in concept, in perception, and in inner attitude will experience the richness of the universe. In other words, the richness of his innermost being. New action streams forth from that, as well as new outer experience. He who only stays confined within his old possibilities -- in other words, who stagnates -- must stay in an unsatisfactory condition, no matter how developed he may be relative to others. There is no standing still. If you stand still, then you confine yourself. Only when you expand forever more can you truly become yourself.

A beautiful golden force wants to work its way through the clouds. The clouds disperse more and more. To the degree you take a step toward merely wanting it, to that degree the clouds become thinner. To the degree you hide behind negation and doubt -- which are the strongest defenses against coming out of your hold -- to that degree the golden sun and the golden force cannot come through. But it is there. Do not believe that you have to become a different person. You become the best that you already are. When you become it, then you will recognize it, you will experience its familiarity, and you will feel how safe it is, how much you it is. It is the best of you. You do not betray your reality, you do not become something that you need to be ashamed of. Try to believe this. Those who are here, let go a little. Let the light come into you and accept the possibility that reality is not as dismal as you think it is. The truth is that reality is beautiful . The universe is full of love. Truth is love and love is truth. The freedom of your own spirit will be found in truth and in love. Be blessed, all of you.

****

(What followed cannot be described. It was an extremely moving experience. Strong energy was generated, which propelled a few of our friends to take this step. This led to deep feelings and crying, but we helped each other with affection and love in a deep and genuine way. The whole group was lifted up into a new and freer, liberated state. Unfortunately, such experiences cannot be conveyed in words. But at least we want our friends who were not present to know what is happening.)

November 19, 1971