Commitment -- Cause And Effect

By The Pathwork Guide

Peace, blessings, and love for all of you, my dear ones. The hard work that you have undertaken on this path, the courage, the honesty, and the humility that are involved in this pathwork have brought you, proportionately to your investment, fulfillment and peace. Many of you are now actually in the position to experience how their problems resolve -- something they have always doubted in their hearts. You now form closer and more authentic relationships with those around you -- and this is particularly noticeable within the group as a whole. It took many years of labor until this became possible.

Where peace, fulfillment, light, hope, and trusting closeness to your intimate friends are lacking, then let this be a gauge that something in you is amiss. This gauge is very exacting. You will experience your life circumstances and your inner state in accordance with the advance that you have made on your own inner path. There is no truer measurement of your development. You can never measure yourself against others. Where you are now may be just right for you. It may be exactly where you have to be. If this is so, then you will feel bright and hopeful. Another person who finds himself at the identical inner crossroads may lag behind on his personal path, behind his own potentiality. He may not accomplish the life plan that he has come to fulfill in this incarnation. Therefore he will be in strife -- both with himself and with others. Therefore, the only reliable and realistic gauge for the fulfillment of your life plan is how you feel about yourself, how you feel about your life, and how you feel about those around you.

This lecture will start off where we left off with the last lecture. It is its sequence and it is meant to help you a step further on your path, particularly in regard to coming out of the recently uncovered negative intentionality. For many, it is necessary to continue bringing out this negative intentionality: first to admit it and then to express it honestly and openly. But a number of you have already done so sufficiently and are now ready to give it up and exhange it for positive intentionality.

For many the key to finding the way out is a complete understanding of the topic of commitment on the one hand and of the topic of cause and effect on the other. These seem like two unrelated subjects and these two subjects, in turn, seem unrelated to negative intentionality. But they are all intrinsically connected, as you will see when we go a little further.

Let us first discuss commitment. What does commitment really mean? We use this word again and again without really understanding it and exploring what it means. It means, above all, a one-pointedness of attention. It means a giving of the self in a wholehearted way to whatever the area of commitment may be. If you are committed to give your best and your all to whatever it may be, then you will concentrate on all angles of the subject. You will not shy away from investing all your energies and from giving all your attention. You will use your available faculties of thinking, of intuition, of meditation. In other words, you will use your physical energies, your mental capacities, your feelings, and your will in order to activate your as yet dormant, and therefore unmanifest, spiritual powers so as to make the new venture constructive. This requires a wholeness of approach that can come only when your will is unbroken by negative counter-forces. In other words, in order for you to be fully committed, then no negative intentionality must exist in you.

Commitment exists in every imaginable undertaking. It does not apply merely to a great and significant venture, such as man's spiritual path of self-evolution -- which is the most important undertaking in life -- it also applies to any mundane little task of everyday living. To the degree you are committed, to that degree what you do will be pleasurable, it will be free from conflict, it will be fruitful, it will be rewarding, it will be one-pointed in direction, it will have depth, and it will have meaning. Therefore, it will be successful and it will bear the stamp and the feeling of blessedness.

If you give an undertaking your all, and not half of it, then how else can it be but rewarding and satisfying? But this is comparatively rare. Usually man gives only half of himself to an undertaking. Then he is confused, vexed, and disappointed when the result is accordingly incomplete.

Here is where cause and effect come in. When the effect is not being recognized as the result of the cause set in motion -- in this particular case the cause being a half-commitment only -- then a split in the consciousness exists, with all sorts of negative chain-reactions. The resulting confusion will at first breed a sense of helplessness and injustice. If you are not aware of the fact that you commit only a part of yourself to a venture, while another part says No, and if you then disregard the fact that the undesirable result is caused by this fact, then you cannot help feeling embittered. You cannot help feeling that the world is a haphazard place, without rhyme or reason. Thus you will become frightened, defensive, distrustful, grabbing, anxious, and ruthless. Instead of changing the counter-force that eliminates your full commitment, you will use your energy either to push others aside or you will withdraw into passivity, and therefore into failure.

The disconnectedness between cause and effect regarding commitment creates the need to seek adjustment in the wrong manner. When there is a lack of commitment, then there must always exist negative intentionality as well. In the course of this work most of my friends have begun to explore their negative intentionality, that area within that deliberately says: "I do not want to give all of my best. I do not want to give all of my feelings. I do not want to give all of my effort. I do not want to give all of my attention. I do not want to give all of my honesty (or whatever it may be). I will do it because it is expected of me, or because I want the result without paying the full price. Or for some ulterior motive other than the thing in itself." It hardly needs to be emphasized how important such awareness and such an honest admission is. It is the key to understanding further indispensable connections.

However, this awareness is not sufficient in itself if you fail to establish the link between cause and effect. In other words, it is possible to be aware of this negative intentionality and still fail to establish the link in question.

Many of you who are really on the path have been able, at least to some extent, to admit some of your negative intentions. You have been able to admit your deliberate witholding. You have been able to admit your deliberate spiteful attitude. Some of you have not yet fully admitted this, but most of my friends have. A few of you even to the full extent that your negative intentionality exists. But so far there are only few of you who are aware of the fact that those aspects of your life which you suffer from the most and which you deplore are the direct effects of the causes set in motion by your negative intentionality. You still ascribe your suffering to other factors: to the wrongdoing of other people, to coincidence, to bad luck, or even to some unfathomable problem within yourself that you simply have not yet gotten hold of.

This is a most important point. I would suggest that you all explore what makes you most unhappy in your life: What do you suffer from? Do you suffer from an overt condition, such as unfulfillment with a mate or the lack of a proper mate? Then look into yourself and ask yourself: what is your intentionality in this respect? And when you can verify that there is a voice in you that says, "No, I do not want to give to love all of my best; I do not want to give to the relationship all of my best; I do not want to give to the opposite sex all of my best," then you will find your suffering explained. Then you can draw the link between cause and effect.

If you lack financial security, then see if you can find a negative intentionality in you that says: "I do not want to be able to take care of myself, because if I do, then I let my parents off the hook. I do not want to stand on my own feet because if I do, then I may be expected to give something, and I do not want to give anything to anyone." It is necessary that you connect the link that your own negative intentions bring you the result, regardless of how subtly and how covertly they may exist, perhaps hidden under an overt over-activity into the direction of fulfillment. This over-activity may deceive you, and you may be inclined to think that all this hard work on your part should suffice to bring you the positive result, while you disregard the power of the hidden negative one. And if you are already aware of the latter, then you may still negate its importance. If you are not yet aware of it, then this is as good a time as any to start exploring the inner regions of your mind in which you may harbor the key to the undesirable result.

Are you frightened? Are you insecure? Do you feel inadequate? Do you feel an unexplainable anxiety? Do you feel a mysterious tension? Do you suffer from guilt feelings that you cannot explain and that you try to talk yourself out of because the manifest guilt seems -- and on that level is -- totally unjustified? Do you deplore your weakness, your lack of self-assertion? All of these are effects of some deliberate negative intentionality that exists on a level that must be totally admitted and brought out into the open. For example, if you harbor spite, stubbornness, rebellion, malice, hate, and pride, then all of these traits must make you feel guilty. Such guilt may find its outlet in an artificial, unjustified guilt. This guilt must also lead you into self-destructive acts. It must also cause you weakness, anxiety, unassertiveness -- and all the ills that you would want to be free of, but which you can be genuinely free of only when you make the connection between these manifestations and the causes -- your negative intentions -- so that these negative causes can then be given up.

By not being aware of this connection, then you will find yourself in a position in which you seem to be a persecuted victim. And the stronger your disinclination to admit your negative intentions is, the more you will capitalize on that position, always hoping that your resentful, blaming self-pity and your helplessness will convince either life or others to give you the desired result that only a positive intentionality can bring about. But positive intentionality requires a total unequivocal commitment. If you are unwilling to invest fully of yourself in that way, then you will seek the result through illegitimate means. This only fortifies your guilt. The guilt then increases your fear of meeting yourself in honesty, so that you convince yourself all the more that outside factors -- or harmless as yet unknown inner factors -- are responsible for your unfulfillment. And so the vicious circle continues.

Some of you have had a momentary glimpse of your negative intentionality. And this is progress, as compared to the total absence of it previously. But then you tend to forget about it. As a result, you disregard its impact. In other words, you fail to draw the necessary connections. Then you go on your way again.

Some of you have totally admitted your desire to hold on to your destructive attitudes. For example, to want to hold on to your hate, to want to hold on to your revenge, to want to hold on to your vindictiveness. Yet you are not yet able to see that this brings you definite results -- results in your state of mind, results in your attitude to yourself, and results from others toward you. For no matter how hidden you may keep these negative intentions and no matter how strongly you seem to express your positive attitudes that are also present in you, the former must affect both your actions and your expressions to others much more than you realize. Apart from that, it inevitably affects their soul substance: their unconscious perceptions. With the average human being, the perception will remain on that level, so that an unconscious interaction takes place in addition to the conscious exchange. It is the former that breeds rifts and troubles which are often inexplicable and mysterious to the parties involved. Confusion, self-blame, and deadness of feelings are examples of responses which bring forth the as yet unexplored negativities in the other person. And so it goes around. Only the spiritually mature individuals are able to make conscious these unconscious perceptions of negative intentionality. And that is a blessing, for this will avoid the deadly confusion that arises otherwise. Then they can deal with the situation.

When you can see the relationship of cause and effect in your life, then not only will you be motivated to want to give up your negative attitudes and your negative intentions and to institute positive intentionality in you, but you will also gain awareness, emotional maturity, and spiritual maturity. Maturity is, to a great extent, the ability to put cause and effect together. The ability to put cause and effect together also indicates the degree of awareness which an entity has reached through his development.

For example, take an infant. When an infant experiences a painful physical sensation, then it is incapable, with its lack of mentality, of bringing cause and effect together. The pain-producing agent is completely blotted out from its consciousness. It merely experiences the effect, the pain.

Then the infant grows into a young child. The young child begins to be capable of making inferences of cause and effect relationships when they are close together. Suppose the small child touches fire and burns itself. It will understand that the fire is the cause and that the burning sensation is the effect. It learns a lesson of life. If it wishes not to experience the painful burning sensation, then it must avoid touching fires. Here cause and effect are close together. With the learning of this lesson, the child has gained a degree of maturity on the road of human development.

The same child cannot yet comprehend cause and effect relationships that are further removed from one another. But an older child can realize, for example, that a tummy ache is the result of over-eating indulged in a few hours earlier. In this case, the comprehension of the longer-range cause and effect relationship implies that a further degree of maturity has been reached.

The more mature a person becomes, then the greater will be his ability to draw the connecting links between causes and effects that are less obvious, less visible, and of longer range.

The person who is emotionally and spiritually immature is not sufficiently aware or conscious to be able to trace cause and effect relationships realistically. He is disinclined to adjudge that both his experiences and his state of mind are direct results of certain specific causes. He neither sees that his past actions bring effects, nor does he see that his inner, covert, indirect, hazy attitudes have their inexorable, predictable results. He may search in all sorts of other directions for the causes and for the answers -- maybe even within himself -- but if he cannot bring the cause and effect relationship together, then he will go around in a circle, not in a spiral, which is the movement of the path.

The cause and effect relationship from one lifetime to the next seems broken to the human consciousness. But as awareness grows on such a path the spiritually immature person grows sufficiently to sense, and later to inwardly know, important connections of cause and effect from his former lives to his present life. This inner knowledge -- which explains key points of one's life in a deeply meaningful way -- is a revelation that must be earned through growth and which is totally different from one being told by a psychic about former incarnations. Such inner knowledge is an organic process.

The ability to make predictions into the future by clairvoyants and psychics rests on the ability to see within the soul the causes whose inexorable, lawful effects cannot fail to materialize. This process is often misunderstood. It is believed to be a supernatural, mysterious manifestation. All sorts of erroneous philosophies arise from this specific misconception. For example, the idea of preordained, predermined fate.

The increasing ability of connecting cause and effect, the maturation, and the growing awareness that are involved in it, bring such peace and such light. At first it may be uncomfortable for you to see how you yourself create what you deplore. But if you wish a different life experience, then you must first give up what you ferociously clutch at. But once the beauty of these laws is perceived and accepted, then the sense of safety and the freedom that arise are beyond human words. They convey, like nothing else ever could, in what a safe, just, and loving universe we all live.

The cause and effect relationships between this life manifestation and previous lives must also be established with regard to your inner attitudes. What seems like a fate that is beyond one's control -- such as where one is born, as what one is born, how one looks, one's face, one's body, one's talents -- will be sensed as actually being both self-caused and self-wanted. Sometimes wanted wisely and sometimess wanted destructively. The same principle works in this seeming fate as it does within you right now, in this lifetime. Within yourself you have both positive intentionality and negative intentionality. Both create entirely different experiences and entirely different states of mind. Why should this principle change when the entity changes its vehicle? The principle is perfect, and therefore needs no exemption, no interruption, and no alteration.

I recapitulate. The more cause and effect can be linked, then the more maturity exists, the more awareness exists, and the more positive attitudes and the more positive intentionality will be fostered. And, proportionately, the greater the peace and the rich fulfillment. The ever-available abundance of the universe becomes realizable in equal proportion. The lack of peace and the lack of fulfillment always connote the lack of awareness; the lack of maturity; the lack of awareness of the cause and effect relationship, linking up to your negative intentionality.

Our path -- or one like it -- can be subdivided into the following stages: you first grope, work, and struggle in order to explore deep inner layers which consist of misconceptions, of negative intentionality, and of residual pain. When the one or the other of these aspects is to be worked on varies each individual. The inner path brings forth the proper approach. But it always overlaps. It always requires a back-and-forth alternation. There are also a number of attitudes that must be explored and the approach to them learned. Many of thse aspects I have discussed in these lectures. But the primary purification consists of these three aspects. When the misconceptions can be exchanged for truth on the innermost level; when the negative intentionality is being exchanged for positive intentionality; and when the individual no longer defends against experiencing pain, then the substantial initial step of purification has been accomplished.

Your negative intentionality is a defense against experiencing pain. Misconceptions are a result of both. So there is an intrinsic connection between these three aspects. Maturity also lies in the ability to experience what one has produced without fighting against it. The mature soul fully savors them. This is the only way evil will cease to exist. Evil lies in all the defenses. It exists in any type of negativity. And evil always results from misconceptions.

It is every individual's task on the evolutionary road to eliminate evil. In other words, to transform it back into its original state: pure energy and truthful -- and hence loving -- consciousness. Many lifetimes are required to accomplish this phase of your purification.

Evil has produced pain. The fear of the pain and the consequent defense against the pain produce more and worse pain -- as well as more evil. The illusion of the defense can be experienced the moment the person fully opens himself to experience the pain -- and I do not mean here the false pain. There is a pain that is in itself a defense. This is an unbearable, twisted, bitter pain that stems from a forcing current that says, in effect: "Don't do this to me, life." It lacks the mature willingness to let be what is. The latter stops controlling, manipulating, hiding -- it simply IS. In this way of experiencing pain, you approach the state of being -- with all its peace and all its bliss. Some of you have tasted this already, and more of you will do so increasingly, until you shed all your defenses and are thus free to adopt a positive intent: the good will to express the best of you into life.

False, defensive pain contains bitterness, self-pity, and resentment. Thus it destroys peace. Real pain is peaceful because it assumes full self-responsibility without self-manipulation. It neither says, "poor me, it is all being done to me," nor does it say, "I am hopeless, I am so bad that I can never exonerate myself." Both these attitudes are untruthful -- and therefore are part and parcel of evil.

Undefended, real pain opens doors, it brings light, and it exposes the core of the self -- with its resiliency, with its creativity, with its depth of feeling, and with its knowing. When the soul has learned to make itself available for what life offers, even if it is occasionally pain, then negative intentionality is no longer needed. When your residual pain has been worked off, then when pain comes your way now it is experienced for what it is -- without denial, without exaggeration, and without imposing artificial interpretations on the event. Then no misconceptions, no negative intentionality, no suffering -- in other words, no evil -- exist. This state brings the end of fear. No more fear of death, no more fear of life, no more fear of being, no more fear of feeling, no more fear of experiencing the height of universal love which is, strange as this may seem, man's greatest fear.

The second major phase in the evolutionary progression is that the soul learns to acclimatize itself to universal bliss. To the degree that evil exists -- namely, misconceptions, the defense, negative intentionality, and the refusal to experience one's self-produced pain -- to that degree bliss is unbearable. But even when the soul is free from evil, then at first it will still require strengthening in order to withstand the enormous power of the spirit. The blissful pure energy is of such strength that only the purest and the strongest can live comfortably in it. The truth of this principle can be recognized to some degree within the human development. It happens to all of you that sometimes you can no longer bear bliss, pleasure, ecstasy, happiness. You feel more comfortable in a state of greyness. The power of the Universal Spirit is incompatible with the slow-moving energy of evil -- of the defenses, of unexperienced pain.

This is why in these gatherings, and as a result of your development, you at first respond with crying to the pure influx of the spiritual power. You are all gripped by this strong feeling and at first it elicits tears in you. It brings out your as yet unexperienced residual feelings of sadness, of longing, of pain. But even while you experience this, you already feel the liberation, the spiritual nourishment, the joyfulness, the exaltation, and the love that are being poured forth. In the past these were merely words. Now they have become a reality as a result of your honesty to expose yourselves in truth to each other. This fortifies not only the bond of love, but also your ability to sustain the strength of the blessing and the force given. Thus it is logical that you first experience this force with crying. Later a new joy will manifest within you. Inklings of this new joy are already here. When you are here and you participate, then you feel differently from the way you used to feel before, when you were still a novice. Your tears open the channel of your joy.

Some of you are still too tightly defended to let the force come in as yet. You make yourself hard, and supposedly safe. But your continual exposure to the power of the spirit, your openness, and your honest exposure of the temporary truth of the evil within you will eventually make you strong enough to let go and to become both feeling and real. However, do not justify your defensive hardness by judging and by doubting. This is your greatest defense against who you really are and against what you really are. And what a folly this is! For you deal yourself out of life and then you complain.

So I say to you, my dear ones, surge forward on this road of exploring and admitting your negative intentions, your spiteful deliberate witholding. Admit it. And then make the next connection: Investigate what you really dislike in your inner state, and therefore in your life. What would you like changed? Make the bridge between these two aspects. This will give you an additional motor power and the motivation to want to feel old, unexperienced residual feelings -- pain, longing, sadness, and fear. When you are totally committed to feeling what is in you, then you will become free and truly alive. As you let go of your defenses, then you will make the transition from the false pain of complaining bitterness to the real pain that is soft, melting, and joyous -- yes, joyous. This real pain carries the germ of the real life. This germ will soon reach your consciousness and it will grow into a plant when you take the first step of making the commitment to your feelings and the commitment to experiencing what life is without holding back. How joyful life could be for you if only you gave up your stubbornness! How warm, how rich, and how good could be your ties with others! In other words, your relationships could be truly positive.

I want you to know that great responsibility accrues to you from being incorporated into the great plan. Every single one of you who pursues this path has such a responsibility. Everyone of you without exception! But such responsibilities are never burdens. On the contrary, they are the greatest privilege that a human being can experience. Nothing could make man as happy, as fulfilled, and as free. Another hallmark of maturity is one's attitude toward responsibility. The childish person will experience responsibility as a burden, and therefore as an unwelcome, undesirable constriction. The more mature he becomes, then the more he sees that freedom and responsibility are interconnected. Therefore, that they are both interdependent and hence inseparable. Hence, when you do not feel responsible, then you can never be free.

The unhappiness that you breed with your negative intentionality is not only your own, but also what you exude and what you give out to others. You do give it to others, inevitably so. And whether you know it or not, it must make you feel guilty, rightfully guilty. For when you are negative and witholding, then you are not only unloving, but you actually deprive others and you hurt others. This may not take place on the level of actions, but it is every bit as tangible, and even more so, on the level of invisible interactions. The more so when the other person is not intuitive and therefore is not aware enough to see what is happening.

The physical level of action is only the result. The inner level, the inner reality is the cause, and thus it determines. This is why an apparently good action often has disastrous results. This happens when the parties involved act right, but this action is undermined by their covert negativity. On the other hand, an apparently very bad occurrence may be a blessing in disguise The underlying motives, factors, and the inner attitude in how the experience is being met are in truth, and therefore positive in this instance. The unmanifest levels are much more real and incisive than the manifest level. Hence, your negative intentionality, even if it does not appear as an overt act, has its dire consequences -- not only for yourself, but also for others. It hurts and it deprives.

If the others are sufficiently free of their own defenses, then they will experience the hurt because they are aware. They will experience it cleanly, and therefore it will leave them unmarked. It will be a momentary hurt, and therefore it will not add to their repressed residual pool. But those who still have to battle with their own masks, with their own defenses, and with their own negative intentionalities experience a bitter pain: a new rejection -- even though they may not be really conscious of their own reaction. Then it is up to them whether to make the pain conscious and go on from there on their own path of development, or to choose to fortify, to justify, and to increase the old defensive and negative pattern.

I am saying all this to you because your responsibility is growing due to the effects of the good work which you are doing. Hence the impact of everything that you issue forth grows commensurately. The more you advance, then the stronger the impact of your still existing negativity becomes. This is another spiritual law, about which we shall talk another time. The progress of this group as a whole creates a new positive energy that transcends the effective work itself. The work has inevitable results. But the invisible effects surpass your comprehension at this stage. Your commitment to what you are doing and the help that you give to each other are very beautiful. Realize that you thus fulfill a spiritual responsibility. On the invisible plane both the positive and the negative actions and attitudes also have commensurately stronger impacts and effects now. Realize this and let this be a help to you and an incentive for you.

Now I come around full circle and close this lecture by saying: commit yourself wholeheartedly to your truth, commit yourself wholeheartedly to giving your best, commit yourself wholeheartedly to giving up your negative intentions, commit yourself wholeheartedly to giving up your spiteful witholding. Now that you see it, want to give it up, and then let God within you help you to bring in the opposite positive attitude. The blessings are truly immeasurable. Perhaps this lecture will help you a step further to make new positive commitments -- again and again and again. When you find another facet of your still lingering negative intentionality, then make the corresponding positive commitment. In this way you will elicit a new spiritual energy that will bring you forever greater blessings.

I will leave you, so that you work a little among yourselves, as you have been doing lately. And this is so wonderful. It brings you closer together. It generates a pure and strong energy. All of you can feel that this is true. My beloved friends, help each other. Expose yourselves and accept each other. Thus, by openly expressing your hate, you become more loving -- in a truly genuine way. Forever greater blessings must arise, and will arise. When you are troubled, seek the truth, and then all will be well. Commit yourself to the truth, and all must be well. Be blessed, my dear ones. The love of the universe envelopes you.

December 17, 1971