Reawakening From Deliberate Anesthesia Through Focusing On The Inner Voices

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings. Loving blessings are pouring forth for every one of you. Welcome, my dearest friends. Let us continue with this specific series of lectures. And keep in mind that they are a sequence, one leading to the next, on the spiral of your evolutionary process, commensurate with your increasing awareness.

In this particular lecture I will again speak about the phenomenon of consciousness, particularly in connection with the evolutionary process and the meaning of individual life. This will connect in a very particular way, as you will see.

All the knowledge is in you. I have often said this, but rarely is this truly understood. As you are born into this life, a process of anesthesia sets in. There is a very specific reason for this. As you come out of infanthood, you awaken with a limited consciousness. That is, the awakening is partial and gradual. As you grow physically, mentally, and emotionally in this lifetime, you grope and you rediscover knowledge. At first you do this only in a very limited way, geared only to material life. You learn to walk, to handle objects, to speak; you learn reading, writing, numbers, and certain basic laws of outer life, of the life of the matter that surrounds you and that you must learn to handle.

Once that basic material knowledge is mastered, then deeper knowledge is reacquired or reawakened, provided the growth process takes place as planned. When a person is in an intensive growing process, then this reawakening will take place in ever-increasing depth and scope. However, if the person has stopped his movement, his life train, then he will also prevent the reacquisition of the knowledge that he potentially possesses.

Inevitably, here you will have to ask your first question: "Why does anesthesia set in? Why is it handled that way?" The anesthesia actually sets in quite a while prior to the process of birth. When in your spiritual reality, where the total entity that you are truly belongs, you have decided upon a reappearance in this dimension, then you will be deliberately anesthesized. After all the plans have been thoroughly discussed and assimilated, you will lose consciousness. A person who undergoes an operation on the material plane goes through a similar process. In fact, the process of anesthetization is "copied," remembered, rediscovered. Only, its purpose on earth is to prevent pain during the necessary operation. In the case of the incarnatory process, the reason is a different one. I will talk about this shortly.

Before the spiritual self takes possession of the human body in the birth process, the entity is already in a sleeping state, in an anesthetized, unaware state. When the birth process takes place, then there is an awakening to a very slight degree -- that is, in relation to its actual state. The limited part of the entity that takes possession of the infant body finds itself awake to some extent -- to the extent of certain physical functioning, of physical sensations, and of certain very limited functions of perception and awareness. But these cannot be properly assessed, interpreted, and assimilated. That comes later. So, the state of awareness after birth is increased as compared to the state before birth, but it is still a very limited state of awareness. And, as I said before, the process of becoming more awake, and therefore more aware, is a very gradual one, as growth and expansion in life proceeds.

The first years -- perhaps the first twenty-two to twenty-five years, although this cannot be generalized -- are geared primarily to acquiring outer knowledge. After this period -- provided the process is meaningful and organic -- then the focus should go into acquiring inner, spiritual knowledge. In other words, knowledge that transcends the physical reality. This can take place first on a psychological level. I include psychological knowledge when I speak of inner knowledge, for psychological knowledge deals with the laws and the processes of the inner self. Of course, it overlaps. With certain individuals who are highly developed, and who therefore are more capable of spiritual fulfillment, the awakening to the inner reality often occurs in an earlier period and it coincides with outer learning. So, for example, you have children on your path who begin, to some degree, already early in life to acquire and to comprehend some inner knowledge. This can happen because this knowledge is very near and is deeply anchored into the soul because in previous lifetimes it has become such an integral part of the entity that it is much easier and much faster to reawaken than it is for others who have not yet gone through such development, and who therefore must still go through certain processes of growing, of searching, and of struggling before their inner knowledge has penetrated every particle of their soul. And that is what life is all about. For all these are necessary: the groping process, the process of trial and error; searching and often being confused and not knowing, and dealing with the not knowing in the most constructive way. In other words, finding the often precarious balance between patience and humility for the grace of knowledge to communicate itself on the one hand, and between serious commitment, endeavor, focus, consolidated will, and healthy aggression extended toward this process on the other. In this process lies the key. When the lessons of these endeavors are being absorbed by the soul, then the reacquisition of knowledge will come much more easily in a future lifetime, if I am to use your terminology regarding time.

Now I will return to the question about why the temporary anesthetizing takes place. Perhaps a part of the answer has already dawned on you by the foregoing, but I shall try to go deeper. Even though it is not easy to convey these principles, I shall do the best I can. I recapitulate briefly. Whether a soul has already gone through the process here described, and thus spiritual knowledge, spiritual understanding, and spiritual perception are natural even in the limited state of the human embodiment; whether this has not yet taken place at all; or whether a soul is within this very process and continues it life after life -- in all these instances alike, to begin with, the manifest personality does not know what it knows. To whatever degree it exists, this knowledge is blotted out, it is forgotten, as it were. So whatever state of development you may be in, you start off with a clean slate. In other words, you start off knowing nothing, regardless of whether you are highly developed or whether the process is still on a lower scale. So, to begin with, the knowledge that is in you is apparently not in you. Why must that be?

Here I must recapitulate a recent lecture I gave about the evolutionary process. I discussed how the mass of consciousness spreads, filling the void. As it does so, particles of this consciousness lose themselves. The essentially divine consciousness functions in a limited, and therefore distorted, way in its beauty, in its wisdom, and in its benign power. That isolated particle must seek its own way in order to unite once again with the forward-rushing, spreading movement of the divine state of life that inexorably fills the void. In this process, the separated particles -- the individual entities -- must find their way back on their own, by reawakening the divine potentials that are always present, even in the most separated aspects.

I bring back this analogy in order to make you understand the topic in question. In this particular case, that part of the soul that is still separated must forget whatever it has known in a more awake state in order for the undeveloped part to find its own way.

Now let me try to make this clear. Let us suppose that you would now know consciously all that you know deeply. Then the undeveloped aspects in you would not find their innate essence under their own steam. These aspects would be swept along, as it were, by the already knowing aspects, by the already developed aspects. They would therefore always be unreliable. They would essentially, although not necessarily manifestly, blur the beauty, the vitality, the creativity, and the wisdom. They would be swept along in the surge of the total glory of the God Consciousness, but they would not be totally infused with it. Purification and evolution mean that every smallest aspect of all that is must be infused with its own essence.

Let us apply this somewhat metaphysical, philosophical, and general explanation to your present state -- to your everyday life and to your struggle on your path. Then not only will you understand better what I said, but you will also benefit from it and find considerable aid in this explanation. You know that these aspects flare up by themselves at an early state of your development -- that is, without any provocation from the outside. They are so strong that you initiate them, regardless of what the outer situation is like. But as your development proceeds, then this is no longer the case. The negative aspects cease to manifest by themselves. They need outer provocation. You respond with them to the initiating negativity of others around you. However, you do live in the world of matter in which even under the best of circumstances life is not easy. Matter obstructs and frustrates, so that the act of living in this dimension of reality -- which is your production, of course -- is always a challenge. Imagine that you would live under circumstances which are so sublime, so favorable, so desirable, and so bliss-producing that even the worst in you could not and therefore would not find occasion to express itself. It is easy to see that then it would remain dormant and unexposed and thus could not go through its necessary process of purification.

You are convinced, and partially rightly so, that if only others would not do this or that to you, then you would be fine, you would stay in a state of harmony and bliss. However, the blurred areas in you would continue to smolder, because without their manifestation you would not know of their existence. They need exactly the triggering off, the exposure, and the provocation. By the same token, if you would consciously know all that you know, just as if there were no provocations from outside, then the undeveloped aspects in you would not flare up, and therefore would not acquire their own ingrained knowing. They would merely be affected by what the already-developed aspects know.

You have also experienced on your path that when you successfully work through those blurred areas, then you become absolutely safe, no matter what others do or fail to do. I do not mean unaffected in the sense of being remote and feeling-less. I mean that the particular negativity in you that you have worked through then no longer exists, and therefore cannot flare up when others do wrong to you. You may be either hurt or angry, but in an entirely different way than when your own unresolved faults and flaws are triggered off by outside circumstances. So you no longer depend on perfection in order no to face your imperfection. If your blurred areas have been purified, clarified, cleansed, and thus eliminated, then the destructiveness of others will neither make you lose your bearing nor make you uncentered.

The same principle prevails in regard to the relationship between your own inner imperfections and the already purified parts. If you were born knowing all that you actually do know, then the uncleansed areas in you would depend on the cleansed ones and thus would not become whole within themselves; while if the wise, knowing, enlightened aspects of yourself are asleep, then that sleep is necessary so that the blurred areas struggle through on their own with the aid of the knowledge that is essentially in you. Thus, out of the lack of knowledge, knowledge is being developed. Out of the darkness, light is being developed. Because even in the darkest and the most ignorant part, there is the essence of knowledge and the essence of light. That essence must come from within itself, rather than from that aspect outside of itself that already possesses wisdom and light. So when the knowledge and the light are brought forth from within your own limitations and your own blurred state, then purification is thorough, reliable, and real. Then true independence from your surroundings is being established, and thus true freedom. Then each particle, each aspect of consciousness has brought forth its own miniscule Godness, if I may use this expression. That is the meaning of the anesthesia with which you enter into life. Your struggle for your essential light gradually and surely diminishes the anesthesia and awakens you to who you really are.

You also experience on your path the fact that the more courage you muster to face your truth, the more humility and honesty you bring to bear on your whole inner person, then the more awake, and therefore the more alert, do you become. This is an inexorable byproduct that cannot fail to manifest. Either suddenly or gradually, you see others, you understand them, and you perceive them in a way that you never could before. In other words, you begin to recognize the negativities of others without being personally affected and upset. You no longer struggle against the negativity of others in a blind, resentful way, without really seeing clearly and perceiving only vaguely, as through a fog. Now you first see clearly and then you comprehend intuitively the connections that no longer make the transgression a personal annihilation. Thus you also begin to see and to perceive the beauty of others in a way that fails to make you jealous, but that fills you with awe, with wonder, and with gratitude. You begin to perceive the connections of the interaction between you and others that eliminate both the riddle of life and the mystery of living with others. And that increases your security because now you see, and therefore you know, the processes involved in human interaction. As you go on in that way, dealing with and eliminating your own impurities then, either suddenly or at times gradually, a new focusing and a new awareness awakens inside of you. A knowledge flows into you, apparently from out of nowhere. It is not from the brain. It is not from the outer knowledge that you have acquired either in the first two decades of your life or later. It has nothing to do with what you have learned. It comes from a different source.

As channels open up, then a new focusing can set in. Now you can begin to listen deliberately into your inner universe from where all the wisdom flows into your outer being. Although this is a gradual process, it can also be sudden in its manifestation. It is a process that is interrupted and that seems to disappear at the beginning of its initial manifestation, so that the experience seems to have been a dream. It is a state that must be fought for in a positive and relaxed sense. As it is lost, it must be gained. It is lost and it must be regained over and over again.

After a certain stage of development and purification, this focusing must be done consciously and deliberately. This focusing will yield to you connections, listening, and hearing. However, the state of consciousness of humanity as a whole makes such focusing impossible. This is a result of mass conditioning. Thus, even those who would essentially be developed enough to do so do not even try. Their still unresolved problem may be a fear of ridicule or a fear of disapproval from the world around them. Therefore, they lack the courage to establish the inner self as the center of their individual life. The whole of humanity is conditioned in such a way as to focus only on certain phenomena -- both outside and inside -- to the exclusion of other aspects of reality, until only that which is in focus seems real. Thus, a whole world exists around you that you simply do not see -- and which therefore you cannot experience -- and that seems like a fantasy when it is being discussed by others. This limitation of perception is the result of a conditioned reflex in focusing, which, in turn, is the result of the aforementioned anesthesia.

If you were to listen into yourself at the beginning of such a path, then you would probably hear nothing. Then you would be convinced that there is nothing but emptiness. Or perhaps you would occasionally hear the voice of your childish, demanding, negative self. Then you would be convinced that this is your final reality. This frightens you, and therefore you avoid facing the negative self even more, until you learn -- perhaps with outer help -- to make room for deeper, as-yet-unheard levels of your inner reality.

Only as you question and you challenge this negative voice; only as you deal with it on a level of self-confrontation; only as you identify it without being identified with it; only as you learn not to allow it to control you; only as you learn not to act it out -- even though you recognize the existence of this voice of selfishness and of meanness -- only as this attitude becomes consistent in deed -- in other words, only as the confrontation between the lower self and the conscious, reasonable ego self, with its goodwill, takes place constantly; only as you do all this again and again will you eventually find your focus on another level of consciousness, which -- you will suddenly discover -- has always been there.

The voice of God has always spoken to you, just as it continues to always speak to you. It always speaks to you in a new way, always in a way that is adapted exactly to what you need most at any given moment of your life. It is an ongoing voice that you have overlooked and that you have focused away from, so that you are left with the illusion of silence. (By "you" I mean mankind as a whole, in its mass conditioning.) It is impossible to focus back onto this beautiful voice either by avoiding or by skipping over the confrontation with your lower self that always speaks to you as well. Your ego has to learn to distinguish between them. The voice of the lower self says: "I want it all for me. I do not care about others." That part of you believes in a division and in a mutual exclusivity of interests between you and others, so that it must have its own way even at the expense of others. That part has no connection with the truth that you can have it all without depriving others. That voice must be confronted, it must be questioned. The voice of meanness and of malice must be questioned. What must also be questioned is your stake in seeing others as bad, and therefore for not even wanting to make room for doubt in this regard. At the same time, a part of you doubts the beauty and the trustworthiness of the universe. The voice of fear -- with its lack of faith -- must be questioned, it must be confronted, it must be dealt with. All these voices must be dealt with. Only when they are confronted in a most sincere, total, and thorough way will the ongoing voice of God be heard. Then you will discover that it has always spoken, clearly and beautifully, although it could not push itself beyond your deliberate focusing away from it.

Focusing is deliberate, both in a positive sense and in a negative sense. In a positive sense, in the way I explained in this lecture, you had to be born in and with this anesthesia -- in other words, you had to forget all that you know -- in order to totally purify all the aspects of the self. If you had always heard the divine voice, then that purification could not take place. You would not have been able to focus even on the negative part, and thus deal with it. It would have been quieted down and swept along. So, in that sense, your focusing away from the divine voice is the anesthesia that your total self has deliberately decided upon for the incarnatory process.

In the negative sense, the deliberate focusing away from the divine voice is due to the strength and the power that you give to your negative self -- which does not want any other rule and any other law but its own. The negative self does not want to know itself, yet the divine voice leads the negative self to know itself. That is the first step for the negative self to purify itself.

So perhaps many of my friends on this path can now begin to take conscious and deliberate steps toward hearing distinctly both voices. What is the voice of the negative self, of the lower self? This voice may manifest under a clever disguise. And what is the divine voice? You have to learn to consciously and deliberately shift your focus. You need to spend time in meditation to learn how to make this differentiation.

You will note that for a long time the main aspect focused on in meditation was what I called impressing. In one of the basic lectures about meditation I spoke about both aspects: impressing and expressing. In other words, instructing, conditioning, re-creating on the one hand, and listening, hearing, and receiving on the other. Now the time has come when you can safely focus consciously and deliberately on expressing. You can learn to listen to the whole wonderful universe, which is an ongoing, alive phenomenon. You dwell in this universe and it dwells in you. You can discover it by focusing on it. You can awaken out of your dream state, out of your anesthesia, my friends. You can truly become alive and know the aliveness that is in you.

Now are there any questions?

QUESTION: Yes. Most of my life I have been listening to my negativity. The negativity has been conducting me. This negativity is excessive control and contempt. Going from that lower voice, which has been such an element in my personality, to trying to listen to the other part, let's say the sweet part of myself, the child's voice that was squashed, I am afraid that then I will not deal with the negativity, that I will go overboard and be false and not go into the negative parts.

ANSWER: In the groping process that is always the danger, that is always the difficulty. That element of wishful thinking -- that the positive voice is now the only reality in the self -- must be taken into consideration and then self-deception will no longer present a danger. It is possible to hear the divine voice in many areas, and yet the negative self still exists. The ego's block against recognition of the latter makes it impossible for the former to come through in regard to those specific areas. However, if the ego specifically requests wisdom from the divine part of the self in order first to recognize more deeply and then to find the best way to deal with the unpurified aspects, then the divine voice will be heard. Then it can be applied to where it is needed most.

On this path you have a number of good tools to help you avoid the danger of overlooking the undesirable aspects of yourself, even when you begin to awaken the wisdom and the splendor of your divine reality. You learn that one does not eliminate the other; you learn to deal with apparent contradictions; you learn to keep a record of your daily disharmonies in your daily review; you learn the power of repeated impressing in meditation. For example, you can affirm that you want to be aware of every aspect that your inner path wants you to be aware of at any given phase. By using all these tools, then you can strengthen your determination to see and to observe the undesirable part, and yet elicit the glory of God in you. Then you can listen to it and get to know it.

Another good tool is to pay heed to your reactions. Assess them according to how you feel. If you are in joy and brightness, if you are free of anxiety and in a happy state, then in that particular moment you are truly in touch with your divinity. And your inner path does not invite you at that particular time to deal with anything else. But maybe the next day something blurs the picture. Some unhappiness comes into you, some doubt comes to you, some heaviness comes into your life, some anxiety overtakes you. These are signs that there is something that you are overlooking. Your life manifestation is an inevitable and reliable gauge that shows you whether you are overlooking what should be dealt with -- and therefore are living in self-deception -- or whether you are truly following your path according to your plan. Examine your state of fulfillment in your relationships, in your partnership, in your work, in your pleasures, in your inner state of joyousness and peace, and in your outer state of fulfillment and abundance. These are your gauges. To the degree there is unfulfilled longing, to that degree you know that there is something that you are not focusing on.

Realize also that the divine voice will not lead you astray and away from where you should focus. This happens, or seems to happen, only when the ego has a strong intentionality in this. It will not tell you beautiful stories about your already purified part or about generalities. Rather, it will point with love and firmness to exactly where you have to go. But your ego self must want that and then it must ask for it. Humbly ask the best in yourself: "What do I need to see in myself? Where am I still blind? What can You tell me?" If you really want the truth and if you then open yourself to receive it, then God in you will instruct you in a most marvelous way. Nothing can strengthen more your faith in the truth of God's existence than this connection with God. Thus you create a unification. The teaching that you receive from within you will be a tremendously strengthening and unifying experience, so that listening to the beautiful voice will not get you away from your unpurified part, but rather it will bring both parts of you together, so that your negative part will transform itself and thereby become part of your Godself. You see, the manifestation will be exactly a result of your intention. If you want to use the voice of beauty in order not to deal with your ugliness, then you will hear only beauty. You will hear only what your ego consciousness is ready to receive. The divine voice cannot manifest in any other way.

QUESTION: I have difficulties in interpreting the messages that I receive and in believing in them. I receive messages, but it is only later that I realize that I did. I don't realize it on time.

ANSWER: That is the learning process I spoke about. Only by experience, by selection, by assessment, and by trial and error can you learn to understand the laws involved here. There are certain rules, in broad outline. Those who have gone through this process extensively can be helpful, as, for example, the instrument through whom I manifest. However, even that is limited. For every person is different. Every person has different leanings, every person may have different weak points of wishful thinking. And you will be tested in terms of the extent to which you really have to grope and learn and question yourself. The most valuable treasure a human being can possess -- the connection with his divine voice -- cannot be handed ready-made on a silver platter. It must be earned through the groping process. You must learn to question yourself about the extent to which your wishful thinking may possibly be coloring your reception. On the other hand, beware of the equal danger of the opposite. In other words, to what extent does the fear of wishful thinking color the reception and therefore obstruct the truth that would be only too welcome? If the voice says something that is so desirable that you do not dare to believe it, then it may still be true. But you must test it and explore your inner self as to whether there still exists either a desire to cheat or a desire to avoid something that is necessary for you. You must try again and again. You must listen, you must give it your attention, and you must take it seriously. But also you must not be gullible; you must realize that tests may come in order for you to learn what needs to be learned by you.

If you discover the divine voice only after the fact, then that, too, is all right. Then it is up to you to deal with it, to think back how it was that you heard it. You can meditate for enlightenment and you will slowly learn the process. If there were hard-and-fast rules, then that security would not come. It can come only through the process of groping, of learning, and of making mistakes. Eventually the inner knowing will come. You will have the feeling deep inside, in your center, where it will feel right and good, and you will know that "this is it." Therefore, you will learn to trust it.

My dearest friends, I bless all of you. Divine love and divine wisdom are here in abundance. You who work on this path create so much blessing for yourself and so much light. More and more you will awaken from your sleep, so that you will never have to fall asleep again. Rest will not impair your awareness of a joyous, peaceful, exciting, and blissful universe in which you live and which lives in you. You are blessed.

April 3, 1974