The Evolutionary Process

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my very dearest friends. Blessings for all of you. Happiness and love follow truth -- the commitment to truth, whatever it may be. Deep in your heart is the seed for all these potentials: the potential for truth, the potential for love, the potential for happiness, the potential for wisdom, the potential for peace. You possess these attributes, these states of being, in ample quantity and quality. It is up to you to realize them. You do this first by conceiving of these potentialities deep inside of your innermost being. Then you conceive of spreading out these slumbering potentials. In other words, first you conceive to awaken them and then you conceive to spread them outward, so that they grow from within into the outer regions of your life.

The topic of this lecture is the process of the evolutionary journey, for it is a journey. This process begins to be noticed increasingly as you grow through your efforts on your path. The process is something that you increasingly see as an organic reality that communicates itself to you. It has its own laws, its own sequences, its own rhythm, its own inner wisdom, and its own inner meaning. At the beginning of your path you sense it only vaguely and only occasionally. But as you progress -- and as you become more anchored in the truth inside of you -- then you see this process unfolding as an organic happening, as an alive, organismic event.

The mistake that you make is in believing that this organismic event, this process, is a result of your decision to follow such a path, a path in which first you find yourself and then you develop. But that is a misconception. The process exists always. The only difference is that when you are not on a path that activates awareness of your inner reality -- in other words, when you are still in a state of blindness and ignorance about yourself, and therefore commensurately about the universe -- then you must also be totally blind to this process going on in you. So it is extremely important that you understand that difference, my friends. The process is not something that happens only after you enter on a developmental path. But the entering into and the progressing on such a path enables you to focus your awareness on something that has always existed, but that you have not noticed, and, above all, that you will be able to follow, to go along with. That is, in which you can involve the ego personality, rather than let it stay behind.

This is another aspect of awakening the consciousness. In that sense, this lecture is also a sequence of the preceding one. Consciousness is not something that happens suddenly. Rather, it is a process of awakening something that has always been there. The consciousness that begins to awake begins to perceive psychic events -- inner events -- to perceive outer events, to perceive states of being in the self and in others, to perceive connections and interrelationships between people and things, between the individual consciousness and the Cosmic Consciousness. Why has it always been there? Because time is the illusion of the limited mind. The limitation of the human mind is also responsible for not perceiving what is there. As the mind becomes less limited, it becomes capable of perceiving what is there. It will make all the difference in the world for you not to confuse this with the sequence of events, for this new perception will activate an aspect of your consciousness that is still slumbering: your power to perceive in reality. In the slumbering state man always confuses cause and effect. In other words, he always looks through the wrong end of the telescope, and thus he becomes even more confused.

You may begin to conceive of the process of your inner journey, of your evolutionary journey, as being always present, as being ongoing, whether you know it or not. Let us now speak more specifically about this process, so that you will obtain further help in self-understanding and so that you can begin to focus in the right direction. I might compare this evolutionary process -- that exists within all aspects of consciousness, within all entities, within all organismic realities -- to an ongoing journey.

Man often has dreams in which he is either on a train ride, or he is about to take a train, and he is anxious that he may miss it, or he fears that he has missed the train, or he is trying not to miss the train, or maybe he is getting off a train. These are recurrent dreams in almost all human beings. They are universal dreams that come in sporadic periods. When they come, then they convey your relationship to your process. Do you follow its movement? Or do you stay behind? The process goes on, just as the train continues its ride, but the ego consciousness has a choice. It can choose either to go with it or it can choose to stay behind. These choices are not always made consciously, but they are nevertheless made in distinct intentionality. (I wish to note parenthetically that when you do not happen to have a train-dream, then this is not an indication or a proof that you are following the inner journey. The unconscious may not always succeed in sending its message to the consciousness, or the messages may be given in a different form.)

For example, when an individual chooses to enter such a path -- when he chooses to search within himself, when he chooses to create more meaning out of his life -- then that is just as much of a choice as when he chooses not to do so, regardless of the rationales and the excuses that he may manufacture for himself. When he lives into the day as if it did not matter, then that is just as active and distinct a choice as when he allows himself to feel the inner urging to follow his inner journey. When he is passive and inert, then it is as much of a choice as when he is active and he takes the initiative. These are all choices. The all-important question is this: Do you choose to go with your inner evolutionary process or do you choose to stay behind?

The choice is determined by how much you give in to the always existing fear and resistance that is so tragically misplaced. Because if anything needs to be feared and resisted, it is the non-movement, the stagnation, the denial of going with the process that evolves out of your innermost being as the wisest and the most meaningful reality conceivable. Therefore, when you resist following your inner movement -- that is much wiser and much more profound than the human brain can think of -- then you make a decision, and a weighty decision at that. It is very important for you to understand what that decision means. What does it imply? And also, what are its ramifications?

I want to say that the decision in question is not just whether or not to enter such a path as this. Even if the general decision for such a path has been made and is being followed, even if the general commitment has been made, there may be areas where a reserve is kept: "I will only go so far and no further. Here I will go along with the inner movement of my train. But there I will hold on and I will stay behind, for I am not willing to give up something and because I have no intention to change. I will go that far and then I will get off the train, even while I still follow the pathwork in other areas." You see, in psychic reality it is possible to be on the train in some respects, but off the train in other areas. These others count heavily because they create an imbalance and a discrepancy. Have you gotten off the train in some areas, and perhaps dwell in an interim station, and then you try to get on again? But do you not realize that the train does not wait? Your inner movement follows its innate plan and when the ego gets off, then the inner movement still goes on. Then it is much more difficult to catch up again. When you are in such a predicament, then you experience long, drawn-out states of disharmony, of anxiety, of crisis, of depression, of upheaval.

It is realistically impossible for man to always follow his inner movement one hundred percent. If he were that aware, then he would not be in the human form. The human state is the result of disconnectedness. Thus, a struggle is required in order to find the connection with the inner reality once again. So no human being, no path follower, can ever boast of never going through periods of darkness and crisis. That is inevitable. And it is good that way, because these states are reminders, messages, and signposts to spur man on to make concerted efforts toward finding once again the harmony with the inner meaning of the individual process. But here I am speaking of protracted states of disharmony, of escape, of resistance to deal with certain areas of the self on a larger scale. The question can simply be stated as follows: "Are you totally committed to all of yourself? Are you totally committed to the whole truth? Are you totally committed to complete non-avoidance? Are you totally committed to a total surrender to the will of God?" Only you can give a truthful answer to these questions. You can easily know the answer if you wish to know it. You can easily determine if and how you hold out, what are the areas where you hold back. In other words, where you have reservations. In short, the areas in you where you deny the holy process of your inner movement into your divine reality.

Some form of battle is always required to make you understand the signs, the messages, the direction of your inner process so as to get into its swing once again. Each stopping is much more of a delay than you realize. When I speak of delay, I do not want to give the impression that you should be hasty and rushed in your mental attitude. But you should realize this delay and then learn to tune in on the movement of your process and then learn to understand its messages and its meaning. At the same time, you need to learn to understand the meaning of the fear and the resistance in you that makes you stay behind and get off the train, as it were.

If you examine this fear and this resistance to its core and if you then translate the meaning of this fear and of this resistance, then what will inevitably evolve is something like this: "I do not trust divine reality. I do not trust divine life. I do not trust my higher self. I do not trust God's creation. I do not trust God's will for me. I would rather trust my ego defenses and my protective blockings, no matter how destructive they may be. I may regret this destructiveness, but since I trust it more than I trust God, then I will continue with it." Thus, you would rather trust the false reality of your misconceptions. You would rather trust your puny fears. You would rather trust your defenses. You would rather trust your false safety. You would rather trust your illusions. You would rather trust your laziness. You would rather trust the lure of the line of least resistance. You particularly trust the illusion that it is not necessary to move along with your evolutionary process. Thus you deny yourself the awareness that it even exists. You distrust the beauty of your inner movement and you trust the stagnation of stopping it. You distrust the truth and you trust the denial of the truth. You trust in closing your sensibilities to the messages of your process. You do not even give yourself the chance to find out how much God, the process, truth, and a total commitment to confronting all that is in you -- and thus following your process -- can be trusted, while you despair about your constant disappointments, refusing to connect them to the fact that you consistently trust the wrong things. You choose to trust wishful thinking, you choose to trust the motto that what you do not know does not exist, and therefore that it will not hurt you. You deny the fact that you miss out on fulfilling the potentials within you. Thus you create more illusion, more false reality, and you become more disconnected, more confused, more empty -- choosing not to understand why, and then accusing life of being bad. All the time you fear, and therefore resist, the truth and the beauty of the benign reality that you could live in. All this may not apply to the whole of you, but even if it applies to a part of you only, or to some aspects of your being, then it still represents unnecessary waste.

Consider all this, my friends. Ponder the question of misplaced trust and of misplaced distrust that makes you decide to get off the train and to let it go by, and thus stay behind -- be it only temporarily, but nevertheless stay behind. So it is very important that you render account to yourself about your decisions and your trust, and that you confront these issues -- even if you manage not to know that you are making decisions every day and every hour of your life. These are decisions about what to think, decisions about how to view the events in your life and your reactions to them, decisions about where to direct your attention in your daily life -- to the outer projections of your inner reality, or to the inner reality itself. All these are decisions that you constantly make. If you test yourself regarding the meaning of these decisions -- and if you accept the fact that they are indeed decisions -- then at least you will stop the creation of an illusory and false reality that gives you so much pain and so much fear. "Illusory reality" may sound like a contradiction, but it is not, for temporary illusory realities are constantly being manufactured and then believed in. Life on earth is the best example of it.

Therefore, it is essential that you question yourself about where you are in regard to your relationship to your process. When you have answered yourself, then the next question should be: "what is the meaning of this answer?" Are you really allowing yourself to be guided by that inner movement and do you overcome the line of least resistance to follow that movement? It is only at the beginning of such a decision that to make it seems like a tremendous effort. But that effort is one of the illusions that you created by your constant belief in falsity In this case that non-movement is effortless and that movement is struggle. In reality the real effort lies in staying behind and stemming against the movement. Conversely, effortlessness, ease, and inner relaxation lie in the harmony that is being established between the ego and the inner process of your movement as a result of your decision to follow it at the same speed -- after you have discovered the meaning of your process.

That brings me to the next aspect of this topic. There is no event in your life, big or small, outer or inner, that is not an intrinsic message, or a meaningful manifestation, of the whole process. Your task on your path consists of deciphering these messages. In other words, of understanding the meaning behind the events in your life or the meaning behind the moods that you are in. To the degree that you make conscious and deliberate efforts to do so, to that degree you will succeed. Of course, not immediately and not always in a straight line. But the meaning will evolve, surely and inexorably. And the more this is the case, the deeper your security, your peace, and your joy will be. Conversely, the meaning of your life, the meaning of your experiences, the meaning of your moods, and the meaning of your state of mind will never take on a deeper meaningfulness without concerted effort and without commitment. To the degree you do not make this effort and you do not make this commitment, to that degree your life will be sterile and anxiety-ridden.

When you experience the events in your life as isolated, haphazard happenings, then life must appear meaningless, frightening, confusing, and burdensome. But when you begin to perceive the incredible meaningfulness, the much wider wisdom, and the purpose of every event -- in other words, how it is a part of, and therefore deeply connected with, the wise and wholesome totality of your life; that is, of the sequences of your life -- then all your fear and all your confusion must vanish, because then you will see that everything that you experience has its own deepest meaning and its own connection. That awareness can be established only when your outer consciousness is willing to make the effort and is willing to overcome the temptation to yield in the direction the line of the least resistance. Usually you just put it aside -- this event, or that mood, or this happening, or that inner climate, or a particular state of emotional reaction -- as just one of those things that you falsely believe happens because of an isolated, disconnected coincidence. Even though you may no longer pay lip service to coincidence, your emotional reactions are still geared to them. In other words, as if your experience were a product of coincidence. "If only this or that had happened differently, then I would be happy;" or "if only this particular person had reacted differently, then all would be well." These familiar reactions, although not necessarily expressed in these exact words, indicate a false belief in you that says: "life happens haphazardly." They also indicate a false belief in you that your state of mind depends on others and on circumstances that have little if anything to do with a meaningful reality beyond the surface. This is why you become depressed, why you become anxious, why you become confused. It is only when you ask yourself about whatever happens to you every day and every hour of your life, "how could this be a message, a reflexion, an indication, a sign of a total picture about my life and its course that I still do not completely grasp?" that you will gain meaningful answers and that the inner cohesive reality will reveal itself to you. Then all the little pieces of your life, of your experiences, and of your state of mind will fall into place. Believe me, my friends, there is nothing that you experience that does not have to be exactly the way it is. But not because some deity up in the sky predestines it for you in a spirit of punishment or reward. That kind of thinking totally misses the point. The truth is that your experiences are the product of where you are on your journey within your process. This is why you cannot be at any other place.

Let us assume that an organism, human or any other, is angry, self-rejecting, and impatient because its growth process is only halfway accomplished. Let us assume that a child is angry and impatient, guilty and self-rejecting because it is not yet an adult. Would that not be foolish? The growth process is beautiful, meaningful, and to be respected in itself. It is the same with the evolutionary process, which includes the purification of distortions and of negativity. If an organism is only half grown, then that is exactly where that organism is. And to scold it -- or for its own consciousness to scold itself for it -- is senseless. Only when that state is fully accepted and not obstructed, when its meaning, with all its ramifications, is clear -- which includes a clear assessment of the effects of the specific negativity -- is the growth process free to evolve. Rejection of the current state and anger about it are obstructions that are like barricades that prohibit the train from taking its course. If you apply this principle to the physical level, then it is easy to see. Imagine that you squeeze a growing physical organism into a tight container. This would thwart its growth and therefore cripple the organism. It is the same with mental processes and with psychic processes. Misunderstanding the dynamics of growth, the necessity of growth, and the meaning of growth -- with its processes of purification, of the expansion of consciousness, and of the deepening of perception -- and thus feeling impatient about the present state, only leads to self-hate, to denial, to repression, to self-justification, and to projecting onto others. Therefore, to more negativity, to more real guilt, to greater confusion. In short, to a crippling of the growing organism.

At first glance it may appear as if this attitude of impatience with the limited state of the self indicates an eagerness to grow. In other words, the good will to move toward a more perfected state of consciousness. This attribute is, of course, the original divine qualification behind the distorted expression. And it is good to know this. But it is just as important to know that the way this manifests is in distortion, and therefore far from furthering the growth process.

You can see where you are once you free yourself of the unnecessary burden of the denial of your present state. Denial and repression lead to self-justification, to destructive guilt, and to the blaming of others. These are unnecessary burdens that your pathwork helps you to shed. Then you can perceive your present state, for which you have entered into the process of evolution. In other words, for which you have contracted an incarnatory chain. Thus you are part of the divine plan to bring light into the void. Your task -- a task which is destined to re-establish this connection that was lost -- lies precisely where your manifest consciousness has forgotten its connection, and therefore has lost touch with its divine nature.

Ignorance of these principles and of these truths leads to hating your incomplete present state. This, in turn, results in hate of the self, therefore in fear of the self, and therefore in the resistance to working on the whole of your being. That means to let it out, to view it impartially, to assess it objectively, and then to infuse it with truth. Here you can see the logical sequence of psychic events in a clear demonstration. When you no longer fear yourself, and therefore hate yourself, then you will not fear and resist the journey. You will go with it. You have nothing in you for you to fear, you have nothing to fear from the journey of life, you have nothing to fear from change. The contrary is true. You will look for your different inner landscapes with joy, with excitement, and in complete trust. You must understand the inexorable connection between the fear of self and the fear of life, as opposed to a total commitment to all of the self, hence the ever-increasing loss of the fear of self, hence trust in the self, hence trust in life. Making the total commitment to yourself means making the total commitment to following harmoniously the movement of your process. Conversely, hating -- and therefore rejecting -- your present state means fearing yourself, which means obstructing your journey and your movement. This is what missing your train means.

Each process is intrinsically your own and each process is intrinsically different from the next one. Each individual has his own reality, even though that reality must be in concordance with the universal reality and must be based on its laws and on its truths. The acceptance of the state you are in leads to going with your movement, to going with your process, and to fearlessly allow yourself to let out whatever there may be. My friends, let these words be an incentive and an inspiration for you to make a fuller and more total commitment to all of yourself. For in that way you will find the trust in your inner process and you will understand its heavenly beauty. You will understand its language. It is a language that will communicate itself to you and through which you will discover the immeasurable beauty of that process, the wisdom of it, the meaning of it, and the peace that is contained in it. You will feel the ever-ongoing aliveness that now you know you possess and that you are are a part of, regardless of the outer manifestations of what is in you. These outer manifestations are a meaningful and alive part of the Whole, even though they may momentarily seem painful, ugly, and not alive. But when the connections between these manifestations and your process are being made, then your perception must change drastically. As a result, what before was experienced as senseless -- and therefore as frightening and ugly -- suddenly becomes infused with divine meaning.

There are a number of laws that apply to the evolutionary inner process. These laws must not be confused with the general universal laws, which apply to all the states of consciousness and to all the entities. They apply to those who are beyond the evolutionary process, to those who are not yet within the evolutionary process, and to those who are within it. But then there are the laws of the process itself that apply only to those who have entered into this process. Some of these laws you will learn in the course of our future lectures. Now I would like to speak about two important such laws, which will be very useful for you to work with.

The first is that the further the inner consciousness is advanced in that process -- or, to put it differently, the greater the spiritual potentiality to go with the process, to be aware of it and to understand both it and its meaning -- then the greater must be the repercussions if that potentiality is not followed through. For example, if an individual is ready to follow such a demanding path of self-confrontation and growth but resists his experiences and his states of mind, then he will lack peace, joy, meaning, and aliveness. This is not true about an individual who is simply not yet at the point where such a path can be followed. When I speak of repercussions, I do not necessarily mean tragedy, although that, too, is part of it. The greater the discrepancy between the person's spiritual potentiality and the actual direction he takes in life, the more severe his experiences are. But often it is not just a tragic event that indicates such a discrepancy. It may be a chronic state of depression, of anxiety, of disconnectedness. The same principle applies to those who are already on such a path. They may be committed to it on the whole, but yet they keep a part of themselves in reserve. They do not commit all of themselves to the process. They hold back in fear, in shame, in secrecy, and then in the wishful thinking that this will not matter. The blindness that inevitably results, even if it is only a momentary one, must present experiences that are puzzling, painful, disquieting, confusing, or simply robbing you of your momentary peace.

Learn to view your daily life -- even your hourly life -- in the following terms. What does the mood that you are in, or the experience that you have, or the perception that you have reveal to you about to your process? Then you will go with the process and you will recognize that the disturbance is a reflexion of some blindness. Often this blindness lies in a totally different direction from the one that you half-consciously fear and assume. The moment you know that, then you have the freedom and the possibility to use this knowledge as your gauge, as your doorway, as your key. Do not allow the discrepancy between your process and your ego state to accumulate into more disturbing elements, so that the repercussions become more unpleasant. This is not a punishment, my friends. It is the grace of God that has made it so in order to help you not to stay behind in a useless stagnation, to give you the incentive -- if only you choose to open your eyes -- to use these experiences and then to pray deeply for the guidance to understand them, to let yourself be open to the guidance, and to entrust yourself to the will of God and go with it. Let yourself be carried by it. On the one hand, make all the effort possible so as to first see, then to comprehend, third to search deeply for the meaning, and thus to overcome your resistance. On the other hand, surrender yourself to the inner movement that will carry you. These are not contradictory premises. They are mutually interdependent attitudes. Make the effort to overcome with the ego attributes; but also give up the ego control to the guidance of the divine inner will and of the inner movement. If this way were always kept up -- in other words, if it could become second nature for you -- then your potentiality would create a peaceful and happy life for you. Since you are in the human shell of blindness, and since you have to battle against the aspects in yourself which are as yet unrealized and undeveloped, you have to use this blockage of your potential as an incentive that will give you the opportunity to avoid staying behind and thereby avoid the repercussions to a considerable degree. The degree is really all that matters, for some blindness is inevitable.

The more your path progresses, the more aware you become of the inner meaning of this process. Take the tiniest mood of disturbance and ask yourself: "What does this mean in terms of my inner process? Where am I blind? What may I see differently from the way see it now?"

The second law I wish to speak about is that of making the connections. When the connections are being made, then the process evolves in its full glory. When the connections are not being made, then the process remains hidden. As a result, the events in your life take on an isolated and disquieting appearance. First there are connections to be made between your outer experiences and your inner process. Then there are connections to be made between the inner attitudes that seem totally disconnected from one another. Let me briefly speak about both.

The first, the connections between your outer life, your inner moods, your reactions, and the process can be made only in the way I said before: That you first of all consider the possibility of such a connection and then that you open yourself to its realization. The moment you raise that question and your open yourself to receiving the meaning, then the meaning will communicate itself to you sooner or later. As these meanings become clear, as you begin to see all your experiences as being events that are intrinsically meaningful in terms of your total inner reality and in terms of your total path -- as well as of every particle thereof -- then you will gain a totally new and infinitely more connected understanding of your life.

The second category is making connections between inner aspects. For example, between problematic aspects. This is something that you begin to experience as you progress on your path. But much more of that can and will happen. In the course of your path, you discover apparently isolated problems (outer as well as inner), apparently isolated faults, apparently isolated shortcomings, apparently isolated impurities, apparently isolated conflicts, and apparently isolated difficulties whose inner dynamics you as yet ignore. All of them seem to have nothing to do with one another. And yet, as you go deeper, then you find that there is a direct connection between the apparently disconnected attitudes and aspects. For example, what connection could there be between a difficulty in establishing a fulfilling relationship and a blockage in your career? Or what connection could there exist between a greedy and pushy attitude and sexual dissatisfaction? Or what connection could there be between submissiveness -- the lack of self-assertion -- and covert hostility? I could name many more such examples. To see the connection between them will give you a new sense of meaningfulness, a new sense of wholesomeness, and a deeper understanding. Suddenly things are no longer so fragmented, and therefore anxiety-producing. At first you may only sense the totality in all these various connections. But little by little it becomes more than just a sensing, it is a real and strong understanding in depth. The parts of the whole are all put together. The truth is that there is nothing in you that does not connect with everything else, whether it be good or bad, whether it be positive or negative, or whether it be indifferent. Not only are the various positive aspects that seem different in kind from one another actually connected with one another; not only are the seemingly different negative aspects connected with one another, but all the positive aspects and all the negative aspects are also directly linked on an inner level.

In order to establish the connections, start to use your mental abilities to whatever degree you can -- in a spirit of exercising your mind. That may be helpful to some degree. But it must come primarily from within. You must allow your intuitive faculties to provide you with the specific connection. Then everything will take on a new form, a new shape.

These two laws are very important for you to understand. I hope that this lecture will contribute to your conscious and deliberate choice of finding out what your outer life means in terms of your inner process so as to make the daily choice and the daily commitment to trust the movement of that process and to follow it. Therefore, not to stay behind. The more you do this, the more exhilarated your consciousness and your energy system will become. As a result, your life will be more joyful, more peaceful, more secure, and more meaningful your life will be. Meaningful in terms of the total creative process -- not just of this one individual lifespan. Then you will first know and then deeply sense that you are a part of a much larger process of which this one little lifespan is only a small link in a very large chain.

As I leave you and give you blessings and love, I want to say to all of you that there is so much growth and so much change happening in many of you. There is so much sincere devotion to your path and so many real fruits that you begin to reap. And that is a beautiful sight for us in spirit. We see the form of it, we see the light of it, we see the glory of it. And we know the value of it: how you contribute to all of life with each little individual step of progress that you make. You are blessed, all of you, my dearest, dearest friends. Be in peace.

February 6, 1974