Desire -- Creative Or Destructive

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings and blessings for all of you, my dearest friends. In order to go deeply into yourself so as to finally discover the core of your being -- your divine center -- it is necessary to go through all the layers and levels that separate you from your center. The misconceptions, the false images, the negativities, the illusions, the pretensions, the defenses, the unexperienced and therefore unassimilated feelings, the confused thoughts -- all of these together form one thick crust. This thick crust is surely the most difficult part to penetrate in the voyage to your innermost core.

In this thick crust are many layers, many aspects that must become known to you. Then you have to learn to approach them in the right way and you have to learn to accept them the right way. Once this crust is penetrated and you have made contact with every layer of it, then you will have to assimilate and begin to gradually dissolve the accumulated blocks. When you have learned the all-important right approach and the all-important right attitude to those aspects of yourself that you would rather not know, then you will come upon other levels and layers of your being that still separate you from your innermost divine core. To put it differently, other tasks are waiting for you in order to be fully aware of yourself, which is the absolute prerequisite for your unification with your central divine core. One such task is the clear awareness of and the connection with what I usually refer to as soul movements. You can also call them the energy streamings of your feelings and of your attitudes -- the positive ones as well as the negative ones.

Every attitude, every expression, and every feeling creates an energy movement in your system. It creates a specific soul movement. I spoke of this a long time ago and I shall do so again now in a more specific way. We shall discuss the energy movement of wanting, of wishing, of desiring -- its meaning, its significance in the total expression of the human personality, and its importance in terms of the self-creating process.

Self-awareness -- regardless of whether it concerns the awareness of one's inner problems, the awareness of one's confusions, the awareness of one's faults, the awareness of one's negativities, or whether it concerns the awakening of the ever-present ongoing divine voice within -- requires the art of focusing within. This focusing must also be practiced in order to detect the presence of those soul movements. In other words, in order to know what one really feels and what one really thinks at any given moment and what the soul movements are which those feelings and thoughts create. Such focusing implies some ability to concentrate. But this is not too hard to learn.

Every now is an expression within you and it creates a specific soul movement. Observe these movements in you. Do you feel a tightness? Is the movement blocked and stopped completely because of this tightness? Or is this tightness absent in its expression? Or is it hard-edged, pointed, disharmonious, and raw? Is it a smooth, enlivening, soft flow? When you feel good, happy, open, and alive, then the soul movements must be very smooth and soft, yet in this very softness lies an enormous strength. When your soul movement is stopped, then you feel dead. When your soul movement is hurtful, raw, edgy, or pointed, then you feel anxious, upset, apprehensive. Every soul movement is the result of specific feelings, of specific thoughts, and of specific attitudes. And you must focus your attention on them, too.

Let us now specifically deal with the soul movement of wanting or wishing or desiring. Everything that exists in human expression can be in harmony with the universal forces and the creative laws; it can be healthy, in truth, and therefore be creative and thus further creation. Or it can be distorted, sick, life-defeating, and thus cause further destruction. It is never the thing in itself that is either right or wrong, either good or bad, either desirable or undesirable. It all depends on the way in which it is being expressed.

Thus one cannot say that having desires is always a hindrance to spirituality. Eastern philosophy expounds on desirelessness as a necessary state. This is only partly true. It is untrue in the sense that if desire is absent, then it is impossible to create. You create by visualizing a new state of being. In order to do so, the desire must exist in you. It depends totally on how you express this desire. If the desire is too strong, too tight, if it evolves out of a misconception that implies any kind of a "must," then the desire is really no longer a desire, but is a demand, a threat, a forcing current. "I must have it or else I will perish. I must have it or else I will suffer unfairly. I must have it or else I will suffer unbearably. I must have it or else I will be treated unfairly." This indicates a threat that really contains the message to life that if it does not yield the result demanded, then life is bad and life is unfair. This the demander then proceeds to prove by the dismal results he is about to create. This can hardly be called a desire. But it often parades under the guise of being one.

A positive desire, a real desire is a prerequisite to the self-creating process. If you do not want, let us say, a new and more loving state of being, then there will be no motivation toward attaining it; there will be no incentive to overcome the often apparently insurmountable resistance; there is not even a visual impression of the existence or the possibility of such a state. In order to create a new state of personality, then the soul movements must flow forth. They carry the creative seed, just as the wind does.

We might also say that the desire is the blueprint which we then proceed to execute. In order to distinguish between the creative kind of desire current and the destructive kind of desire current it is very important to understand what I mentioned before. It can easily be ascertained in yourself -- and even in others -- whether the desire flows without a must, or whether it contains this forcing current. As with many other spiritual verities, we start off from an apparent paradox: in order to desire in the right way, then the desire must become so relaxed that it does not have to be fulfilled. If you can desire strongly, yet without a trace of a must -- in other words, with an attitude of: "I can live without it, I can go through the pain of it and not be annihilated, defeated, unhappy" -- then the power of your desire is truly limitless. Then the energy force that is thus released through the absence of fear and the absence of manipulation on the subtlelest of levels is enormous. Your desire must also be desireless, as it were.

How can this be? How can you come into a state in which what you want -- and consider a desirable thing -- can also be readily given up by you? How can you deeply wish, long for something and yet accept the pain of its unfulfillment? This seems a tall order, my friends. Yet the evolution of the human soul moves inexorably toward this state. The need for it is already evident on the most outer level, the previously mentioned crust in which all the negativities reside. One of the main reasons for its existence is the refutation of pain. Evil resists what is. Thus, it splits itself off from itself, forever fragmenting consciousness and energy into smaller, or more limited, particles. The way they can all come together again is by the great act of acceptance, or the right kind of non-resistance. Such an act requires a methodical path, with help at every step of the way. For it is very easy to veer off into distortions and misconceptions of truth, in so many different ways and in so many different areas.

If you are frightened of pain -- and also frightened of the derivatives of pain, such as frustration, disappointment, rejection, and you therefore believe that these feelings must not be experienced -- then there exists in you an overly strong desire to have no pain. Or there is an overly strong denial of the pain. A must-current is set up in you that says, "I must have this" (no pain) and "I must not have that" (pain). Any such demand is a creative block. It hinders the very fulfillment you insist upon most. This tightness, this saying no to something -- whatever it is in the universe -- this false, cramped no creates a harsh, tight soul movement. It is a movement that is full of sharp, cutting edges. It is a movement that is pointed and hurtful.

Both wanting and not wanting can be harmonious and soft and both can be disharmonious, tight, and pointed. It would be a mistake to interpret the acceptance of all feelings and experiences to mean that you should not refute certain experiences or certain actions that people commit toward you. I wish to make this clear. For instance, if you insist on not having any pain, then you will be so disconnected and so tense that you will not even recognize, let alone deal with, the negativity of others and see when their game-playing would abuse you. The pain that this causes makes you blind to it, therefore you react blindly: you can neither feel the true pain, nor can you assert yourself toward the offender. Conversely, if you do not fear pain, then you can stand up for yourself and you will not allow others to be deceitful, destructive, dishonest, and evasive in their subterfuges and their games. When you can experience pain, then you cannot fear confrontation. Then you will assert yourself if your pride permits you to be wrong -- if you can suffer that pain. So you see, my friends, not only is it untrue that the acceptance of pain implies a masochistic, sacrificial weakness and submission, but quite the contrary. Thus, both resilient strength and fearless self-assertion rest upon the ability to accept what is and to deal with it without manipulating it into something else.

The conviction that pain and disappointment must not exist creates a no-movement of a very tight and pointed nature. The no to it is not a decided, harmonious, firm strength that grows out of true dignity and self-value. It is a false strength that comes from the weakness of insisting on having it your way: "I must have this" and "I must not have that."

If you can accept the premise that no experience on earth could come to you that you are not capable of handling if you so choose, then a great deal of tightness will go out of you and will make room for creative movement. This will also eliminate a lot of fear. The moment you decide this, then the experience you are already involved in takes on a different aspect. In the very act of saying tightly No -- weakly and not healthily No -- then a cramp prevents creative receptivity. By the same token, the grabbing, insisting, tight Yes equally prevents creative receptivity. So both Yes and No can be either healthy or sick, either desirable or undesirable, either good or bad. Therefore desire and wanting are determined by the underlying attitude. This, in turn, determines the nature of the soul currents.

Creative receptivity arises out of a soft, relaxed, flowing movement. The pain of taking in something undesired if need be affords you the possibility of transcending this dark point and of finding the light behind it, as it were. The pain of accepting the absence of something desired affords you the possibility of transcending this emptiness and of finding the hidden fullness behind it. This is the law of life. Only then do you set the creative movement into action. However, you must be careful to either accept or to renounce in a spirit of trust. For doing so in bitterness and hopelessness is not the right way. For then the harsh soul movement may not be on the surface -- as it is when a strong, pushy forcing current exists -- but it is still there, hidden behind the surface acceptance.

It all seems to hinge on how you react to pain -- whether it be the pain of experiencing something, or the pain of experiencing the lack of it. Can you trust pain as you trust the rest of the universe, as the universe is supposed to be trusted? If you distrust pain, then you distrust the universe, for you cannot split off any single existing experience from the rest of creation.

So the movement must become open and sweet, both the movement of Yes and the movement of No. Even if it is firm, then it can still feel sweet. It can be either the expression of your trust, or it can be the expression of your fear. It can be either the expression of your love, or it can be the expression of your selfishness. All this determines the nature of your movement, the nature of how you desire, the nature of how you approach the painful experience, which immediately and directly determines creative receptivity, positive desire -- not a greedy, distorted desire, not a fearful rejection of life's pattern.

In the meditation that you will perhaps practice more now in the course of your further development, turn inward in order to detect the nature of your soul movements. Determine what they mean: what feeling, what attitude, what thought pattern, and what type of desire do they express? This is a new dimension that is being added to your approach to your inner person. You will become more adept at recognizing these soul movements. After a while, such recognition will be effortless and natural. In other words, without a conscious and deliberate focusing and concentrating. This new emphasis does not imply that now you are beyond your negativities. In other words, that you have transcended them. But many of you are sufficiently aware of them that you can add this facet to your self-confrontation. The negativities that still have not been dissolved will be seen in a new light and in another dynamic expression.

For example, you may look into the nature of your desire in regard to your still existing resistances and problems. How strong and firm is the desire? Does it flow smoothly, or is it a tight, pushy current? If the latter, then what does that mean? What does this way of manifesting your otherwise laudable desire hide? Or is the desire overtly weak and even absent? Can you feel a movement of this desire in you? How do you feel it? If the movement is right, then there is always confidence and trust that it will come to pass, even if not right this minute. If there is an area in your life where a strong desire has still not been fulfilled, in spite of ardent attempts on your part, then investigate how tight this current is. The tightness may hide an important clue that you need to know and eliminate before the fulfillment can come. Or the tightness of the current may reflect your lack of trust in the universal creative process of which you are a part. Then you must deal with this attitude and see the meaning behind it.

In order to follow through with this important work -- in order to be able to tune into your inner movements -- you have to cultivate the ability to concentrate. This is not as difficult as some of you may think. All it needs is some good will and a few minutes' exercise daily. I have given concentration exercises several times in the course of these years.

Now I should like to discuss something that is related to this topic, although at first it may not appear to be. It is very much a part of how to institute a state of receptive creativity and positive desire. I want to recommend a new approach to dealing with your negativities. Of course, after they are being expressed and after you learn to take responsibility for them. I see among my friends, especially now where many of you have more opportunity to be together for protracted periods of time in the Center, that there is still a good deal of acting out. This need not be, and it must be vigorously discouraged. There is no necessity for it. Not doing so need not lead back to repression and to denial. I detect that often you will now admit, but simultaneously proudly act out, all under the guise that this acting out is concomitant with the admission. Do you not see that acting out refutes self-responsibility just as much as does total denial? You are all ready to assume responsibility, to admit your destructiveness, your meanness, etc., and then choose the right action.

Mankind as a whole is so indoctrinated with denial, with acting out, with projecting, and with blaming others that at times it seems insurmountable to the individual to simply admit it and not act upon it. This requires inner prayer; it requires a commitment to the truth; it requires the good will to let God in you fill you with the proper action and the appropriate knowledge, even before the feeling can follow suit.

You believe that you neeed a scapegoat because you are still too frightened to fully look at yourself. You are threatened by what you may see. In the last analysis this fear is always unjustified, no matter how difficult it may be at first to give up a cherished illusion about the self. No matter how ugly these traits may be that gradually ooze out of you as you allow this to happen, this is never the whole truth. You cannot fail to finally become receptive to the beautiful eternal You if you fully commit yourself to seeing and accepting both: both the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the divine and the evil. If you wish to own up to both, then you will find both and you will come to see that the good is the real and the eternal, while the bad is only a temporary aberration and not the final you. You must make up your mind to take in all of yourself, whatever that may mean, for better or for worse. You must ask for guidance to do so in a constructive and realistic attitude that leaves room for many possibilities and that never denies life. If you ask, then it will be given to you. It will come from within.

Begin to focus on both the ugliness and the beauty. See that the fact that you own up to the former comes from the latter. For only the divine infiltration into the self makes it capable of wanting to be in honesty, in truth; capable to have the courage to do so; capable to undertake the wondrous journey into the inner world and learn the many difficult lessons. This act deserves the greatest respect from you to you. It is a respect which you can pay to yourself only when you stop either projecting the unacceptable onto others, or else you use the ugliness of others to hide your own.

Here is where I suggest that you help each other. When you are tempted to spew out to the other person, then ask yourself: "What is ugly in me and what is ugly in him or her?" And then, "what is beautiful in me and what is beautiful in him or her?" But really mean these questions. Leave the questions open and wait for the answers until you are receptive enough for them to reveal themselves to you. Do not merely mouth such questions while you really want to condemn both others and yourself, and you find negative pleasure in doing so. If this is where you still are, then this is what must be owned up to. You must admit that you do not want to see the good, either in the other or in yourself. Being right is no substitute for seeing yourself as good, you know.

But if you have worked your way through the maze of your crust to where you can already genuinely want to know both sides -- both in you and in the other -- then you will soon witness the unitive principle unfold in you. You will discover what you know in theory but that you still cannot practice, as is evident in your everyday acting out, when you get involved with others in a negative way. What I see happening is that even if you no longer blame others and exonerate yourself, even if you admit your negativity, you often do not experience this emotionally. Emotionally you still have a stake in blaming others and in exonerating yourself. This always means that inwardly you totally blame yourself, but you do not wish to admit this. The more you blame yourself, the more you are hooked on blaming, and the greater your investment in doing so must be. In that battle it is always either/or, either the other person or you.

As you ask for both the good and the bad in you and for both the good and the bad in the other person -- and as you open your heart to want to see both the good and the bad in you and in the other -- then you will truly experience the unitive principle. You will see how the negativities of both you and the other interact and how both of you have beauty and goodness, as well as those negative, destructive traits. This will eliminate hate, either for yourself or for others.

In spite of the great progress that has been made so strikingly and often so visibly in the various life manifestations -- in the changing of your life both inwardly and outwardly, the changing of your personality -- the acting out, the desire to blame, still exists quite strongly.

Let us apply what I said in this lecture about right desires and wrong desire to the topic of blaming. You desire to blame because you do not desire to see yourself. Such unhealthy, distorted desire, contrary to the truth of being, creates the constant threat that the untruthful, the unrealistic will be exposed sooner or later. Therefore, a protective defensive tightness is put into both desires, which then influences the soul currents. Approach the current of these desires and feel it. As you feel the current of the need to blame -- the tightness, the strenuousness -- see it happening in you. Allow the experience of it to take place in you, as you observe this drama -- truly as an observer. Then you will become intensely aware of the soul movement that is created by your desire to blame.

As you fully take responsibility for the desire to blame, open your heart in a relaxed new way for the desire not to blame. In other words, for the desire to see the truth both in you and in the other without blame. Never blame! Seeing the truth never leads to blame. When you blame, then you are never in truth, even if what you see is partially the truth. The other may actually do all those things, he may actually be all those negative aspects, but it cannot be the whole truth, for if it were, then you would not blame. The same applies to you. Seeing the truth does not mean that either you or the other will be totally exonerated of all negativity. But understanding the negativity in truth can happen only when you are totally engaged in and committed to seeing yourself in truth. The moment you see yourself in truth, then all guilt, all self-rejection, and all self-blame disappear. You know this, for you have all experienced this miracle. The same applies to the other person. The truth that you fail to see may not be something terrible at all, but because you unconsciously believe that it is, then you do not risk to even want to see it.

Seeing in truth may elicit anger, but never blame. And that is very different. You must become attuned to this very special difference. Also, as you truly desire to see the truth, then you can wait for the truth to reveal itself. You can wait in a state of flexible desire, in a stream of soft waiting -- trustful waiting -- for the truth to reveal itself to you as a gift from your innermost being. When it comes, then it will feel as a gift. It is so revealing, it is so conciliating, it sets you free in all ways. Yes, you may experience pain, but the nature of the pain is different from the pain that comes from the cramped space within you.

Then the desire can make room for the visualization and the creation of a new state. When I speak of desire and the state of receptivity which is totally free from any must, I do not refer to an expectation of something to happen from without. I am referring to an inner creative process of suddenly seeing reality in a new and sharper light. This sharp light is the grace of truth and love that makes one so free and yet so safe.

So I say to you, my dearest friends: You need to create the desire for a new inner state in which you let go of all your musts. You can easily feel every must as a very definite movement in you. And that must defeat healthy desire, therefore creating the unfulfillment. But I might also say that for a short period the must may appear to yield results under certain circumstances. And this is the temptation. However, these results are not only shortlived, they usually lead to a crash, to a severe disappointment, whose origin then cannot be pinpointed. And this is the worst part about it.

The ability to tune in onto the soul current or soul movement of desire -- both right and wrong, healthy and distorted, relaxed and creative or tight and uncreative -- is a focusing that you need to specifically concentrate on in order to expand into new states of consciousness and experience. As you learn to do so, then the rewards will be like blossoming flowers within yourself.

The love of the universe is in every pore of your being, in every cell of your being. It is in every particle of your psychic processes. First try to know this and then try to feel it. Try to tune in on this. As you grow on this path, my dearest ones, you will increasingly learn to concentrate and to use energy in certain directions. This will come out of the organic process of your purification, and it will not be a superimposed attempt to direct energy willfully where to go. To this organic process you can entrust yourself from the core of your being. Listen to it, become receptive to it. You are all blessed and you are all loved.

December 15, 1972