Being Values vs. Appearance Values -- Self-Identification

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings and divine blessings for all of you, my most beloved friends. May the last lecture of this working year help you into next year's series of lectures. It is a continuation and at the same time it summarizes your inner path on a very deep level. The growth and the change that has taken place, and that continues to take place, with so many of you is truly heartwarming and a most joyous sight to behold. You have grown much more than you can realize, for you are in the middle of it. More of you change over onto a new level of operation. It is one in which the old attitude of taking, of wanting, of demanding, and of not giving is transformed into an attitude of love, of giving, of devotion, and of sincerity. And that is truly the key, the key to happiness and the key to abundance. There is no other key. But to talk about it in a superficial level before one is even aware of the non-giving attitude is pointless. You have to travel through all the levels of your lower self and then recognize them before this key can become meaningful. In this lecture I want to show you on a deeper level how this relates to the problem of values and to the problem of self-identification.

There are fundamentally two value systems by which a human being is governed, with which he operates. One is the system of being values and the other is the system of appearance values. In this lecture I will attempt to show you the ramifications of these two value systems. Most human beings function on the level of appearance values. It is only the most evolved, those who have already gone through an extensive path of self-purification and transformation, who function according to real values -- for the sake of what is, not for the sake of appearance in the eyes of others. Here, too, as in so many other areas, it is not either/or, there are degrees. A person can function in some areas of his life with the true values, and in other areas be still bound to the importance of appearance. Only gradually, in the course of this pathwork, will the former take over more and more where the latter had prevailed before.

Before such an extensive path is undertaken, and for some time after it has begun, humanity functions in most areas with the appearance values. Let us now see the difference.

The appearance values always aim at the impression you give in the eyes of others. They may have their crasser manifestations, such as aiming for approval and selling out your truth in order to either impress others or to be thought of by them in the highest terms. This can be quite obvious and overt, but it can also be quite subtle and covert, and therefore not easy to detect. The inner focus is subtly geared -- in many activities, in many desires, and in many directions -- in a secret, hidden, semi-conscious expectation and concern about: "What will I be thought of?" The fear of a negative reaction from others causes a tremendous amount of anxiety. So the appearance value system is insidious and poisonous. It is much more harmful than it may appear. For it truly disconnects you from your inner reality, from your higher self, from the truth of the situation, from the sincerity of your involvement and of your investment. I hardly need to emphasize how many more most harmful results this causes.

If you start observing yourself from this point of view, then you will discover the areas that at first appear to be so subtle in your field of vision. When you tune into them and you become more conscious of them, then you will find that they are not so subtle after all. You will see that the value system of appearance actually makes all the difference in the world. The appearance values, no matter how strong, how apparently loving, or how apparently creative the effort and the goal may be, always connote an insincerity. For what you do is done for effect: either directly, through the activity itself, or in order to attain power and money for the sole sake of proving your value. When you operate with being values, then it means that you do what you do for the sake of what is, for the sake of the truth of the particular area in question, for the sake of being. This may simply mean to do the best that you have to offer, regardless of the opinions of others, but so that the activity fulfills its innate purpose. Or it may mean to make an offering to God out of the act or the endeavor: to contribute love, beauty, goodwill, comfort, something constructive to the world or to another person -- again, regardless of the opinion of others or even their noticing your effort and the effect of what you do. It makes no difference whether you make an important humanitarian contribution, whether you create a work of art, whether you develop a scientific project, or whether you perform the smallest, the most insignificant daily chore. It is just as important to do every daily activity in the spirit of being, as opposed to doing it in the spirit of appearance.

When you act, when you work, and when you accomplish -- again in large and small issues -- for the sheer sake of what the act itself represents, rather than using it in order to substitute it for your missing sense of self-value, then this always amounts to an act of love, to spiritual sincerity, to a giving and therefore enriching act. And what you give to others you also give to yourself. Not giving to others deprives you even more than it deprives the others because it makes you incapable of receiving what is available to you.

When you operate on the being level, then some drastic changes occur. These are byproducts that you might have never connected with the origin, namely the integrity of your motive on the deepest level. Let me give you an example. As long as you operate with the value system of appearance, when you are attacked or when you are being judged or when you are being criticized or when you are being rejected, then you will feel devastated in your total being. And how can it be different? If you attach your self-worth and your self-esteem to what you appear in the eyes of others, then you must feel annihilated when you appear in a bad light in the eyes of others, be it in ever so small an issue. You feel that you lose your inner ground, you are no longer centered in yourself. Of course, you are never really centered in yourself as long as you are governed by appearance values. But you are deluded about this fact as long as criticism does not come to you. You seem centered when you receive praise and admiration because you feel gratification at the moment. But you are unaware of the anxiety that eats you up, even in those most propitious moments, as long as you receive your worth from others. For you must constantly worry about your ability to maintain this decentered state of receiving your self-value from others. You have no real control over your sense of self-value.

Operating with being values brings a deep inner security. This is not to say that hostile judgments, unfairness, and the intent to put you down would not hurt you. But there is a world of difference between this kind of hurt that can never shake your foundation and kind of the hurt that does shake your foundation. If you operate with appearance values, then your foundation is shaken -- and even seems to crumble -- when your appearance is negative. This does not happen when you operate in the deep security of being. Given your total integrity, the knowledge of your real motives on the most hidden level, the truth of your giving, the sincerity of your investment, the pursuit of your goal for its own sake -- without hind thoughts and ulterior motives -- your faith in your own value will be so grounded in reality that no matter how you are being judged, and how much it may temporarily hurt you, you experience the unshakeable truth of your core. Then your value of yourself is not dependent on the opinion of others: on their knowing your assets and ignoring your liabilities. This creates a centeredness, a security, and an awareness of your eternal values that cannot be esteemed in words.

Another ramification in regard to this topic is the problem of identity. When you operate with appearance values, then you have no identity. You stake your claim to your own identity on the opinion of other people: on how you appear in their eyes. So when you are praised and honored, then you derive a momentary sense of gratification and the confirmation of yourself, and perhaps even a temporary exhilaration. But it is built on shaky ground. When that admiration and that approval are witheld, or perhaps even reversed, then the ground is shaking and therefore you become lost: you cease to feel your own identity. The false sense of your identity has been crushed and the real one has not yet been established.

As long as appearance values hold sway, then underneath the surface you constantly eat away at your self-esteem because deep inside you know that you are not in truth when you place so much importance on the level of appearance. You cannot connect with the identity of your higher self. Since you know that you only appear to give, doing it for ulterior motives, for something that you want to gain in a prideful, vain way, then you doubt yourself on a deeper level. So when others doubt you, distrust you, and criticize you in any way, on the surface you may be very indignant about this and that issue, but inwardly you cannot find your center since you doubt your integrity about the way you operate generally. Perhaps you don't lack integrity in the specific issue, but you have no sense of your true identity and of your true value since you forsake the true value system -- and therefore you forsake your knowing of your real identity -- by adopting the appearance values.

Another aspect of these two possibilities of value systems, that forms a permeating overall attitude toward yourself and toward life, is your ability to perceive the truth in others. This is a very profound and important aspect of this whole topic. Try to go beyond the mere words, which you have heard me mention in one form or another before. When you function in your giving in all your activities, in a deeply committed, sincere spirit, then whatever you do occurs in a wholehearted investment of your best faculties. But when this spirit is not there -- and therefore the appearance values reign -- then you can never really know whether you are right or whether you are wrong; whether others are right or whether they are wrong; to what extent you are right and to what extent you are wrong; to what extent others are right and to what extent they are wrong; in what particular area you are right and in what specific area the others are right; in what particular area you are wrong and in what specific area the others are wrong. All these questions plague you, although you may succeed to deny yourself awareness of them, as you unfortunately succeed to deny yourself awareness of the fact that the appearance values undermine your integrity. These denials are the cause of confusion and they create fog over such issues and questions, when you would need clarity in order to know who you are. So you flounder and you grope, but you do not grope in a healthy way. You are truly confused, you are upset, and the struggle is painful because it is a struggle that covers up the inner lack of security that can come only from a sincere commitment and from true giving. This lack of giving and this lack of commitment eat away at your psychic guts, if I may say so. They make you doubtful of everything you do and of everything you think.

You may adopt an artificial brittle security that is not built on sound and deep self-esteem. The groping that is healthy, that is necessary, that is the doorway to security takes on a very different form. It feels different. It need not be covered up. It is a beautiful, growth-producing struggle. I can only deal with the subtleties here and merely hint at the difference in self-experience, for the words cannot convey the enormous difference between the hurt of being misjudged when you do not lose your being from it and the hurt that destroys you. Or the difference between the real struggle of growth and search, and the false struggle of covering up your hidden lack of identity and your hidden lack of security about your own value.

When you decide -- again and again and again, every day and every hour, in all your activities -- to give your best in truth, whether or not you get admiration, whether or not it is being recognized, but for the sheer sincerity, the truthfulness, the beauty, the love of God, the love of yourself, and the love of life, then little by little -- almost as if it were a byproduct -- a deep inner security and an intuitive knowledge arises about issues and matters where before you were uncertain; where before you needed to defend your uncertainty; where before you were truly groping in the dark in an eternal either/or, in an eternal duality. Even if your intellect already embraces the unitive system and knows theoretically that it is not one versus the other, it is still only a theory. This is different from the experience of clarity that you get from being connected to and identified with your innermost center: that intuitive certainty of what is what. It is a certainty about yourself, a certainty about others, and a certainty about life. It is a relaxed inner knowing and a deep peace and a clarity that no one can take away from you. It is free from all defenses and it comes as a result of true self-esteem that is built on that sincerity of giving and of commitment. In other words, on the being values that we are talking about. It is an illusion to hope for self-esteem and for security on any other basis than the inner truth of giving for its own sake.

Another aspect of these two value systems is knowing what you really want. If you do not know your higher self, if you are disconnected from it and therefore you cannot identify with it -- in other words, if all your energy is funneled into the appearance values and therefore you lack centeredness -- then how can you possibly know what you want? Everything is colored and determined by the appearance values. If appearance in the eyes of others takes precedence over what you may want, then you cannot even allow yourself to know what you want. For if what you want might reduce honor and esteem from others, then it may seem preferable to you to talk yourself into wanting what you think you ought to want. In other words, what you think would earn you praise and admiration from others. So when you operate with appearance values, then you have a great inner investment to not experience what you desire, to not experience what is your destiny, to not experience what is your real potentiality, to not experience what is your real fulfillment, to not experience what is your true longing. For they may not conform with the appearance values that you have borrowed to use as your system. And, of course, many systems of appearance values exist, while only one system of being value exists -- as far as your higher self is concerned. Individual as it is, with the infinite variety of the self-expression of all the higher selves. In other words, your own being value system can never interfere with the higher self value system of another person. There can never be a conflict between one person's being values and another person's being values. When a conflict arises, then it means that at least one of them is hooked on the appearance level, possibly without knowing it. Only deep self-confrontation can yield the answer. But the expressions vary constantly and in many wondrous ways.

By contrast, the appearance values interfere with one another. They are stiff, rigid, and unvaried in their conformity and in their dullness. Although they appear to be individualistic, they lack the flexibility and the breathing life that only being values can have.

If you do not dare to know what you really desire and what you really long for, then you suffer an unfulfillment, for the false goals of the appearance values can never fulfill you. You constantly hunt for something that never lives up to your expectations. Perhaps even more insidious and painful is the fact that you do not even know what you really want. For a period of time you may succeed in hiding this fact from yourself by ardently attempting to produce imaginary desires and false goals and then acting as if you believed in them. But sooner or later you find out that you are also confused about your desires, confused about your longings, and confused about your goals. This only adds to your lack of self-identity -- of not knowing who you are -- and to your despair about it.

As long as you adopt them, the appearance values disconnect you from your true desires and from knowing what is essentially you -- in your expression, in your direction, in your self-expressions, in your talents, in your tastes, in your opinions, in your philosophy of life, in your true feelings, in your way of life, in your potentiality to develop, in your general trends of life, as well as in your little everyday decisions. The decisions regarding what to do and what not to do in the most mundane matters, as well as in the overall direction of one's life, are always determined by whether you operate with being values or with appearance values.

So when you are governed by -- and therefore polluted by -- appearance values, then you never truly know what is really you and what you really want. So you borrow an imagined desire that fits into the appearance value system that you have adopted. And when you follow through and fulfill it, then it leaves you empty. No wonder it is a disappointment, even if you succeed in fulfilling it at the cost of a tremendous expenditure of your energy system. This tremendous effort is necessary because your energy system functions contrary to your true higher self, to your reality, to who you really are. So despair, a sense of futility, and a hopelessness about life arise. You say to yourself: "I have done all this, I have invested so much, I have tried so hard, I have used so much effort to accomplish this and that and the other thing. Yet I feel dissatisfied, I feel empty, I do not even know who I really am. What's the use?" This happens whether or not one succeeds in the false goals of the appearance value system. Most human beings are conscious of such occasional thoughts and feelings, but they do not know why they have them.

On the other hand, the functioning of the being values creates a totally different situation. Since you are not afraid of finding your desire, of finding your direction, and of finding your expression -- regardless of whether or not others approve and applaud your choices -- then you can afford the luxury to relax inwardly and to let out your true being, with all its expressions and all its desires. Therefore, you will find what it is that you really want. What a tremendous richness to know what you really want. How rare a phenomenon in this world of yours. How hard the struggle of self-purification must be in order to come to this blessed event of finding the treasure of knowing what you really want. It is not something to come by so easily. First you have to detect and then you have to eliminate where you eat away at your true being and your true expression by borrowing what you think you ought to want in order to be what you think you ought to be, as opposed to what you really want and what you really are.

When you function with appearance values, then you cannot trust your perceptions and your desires. And indeed they are not trustworthy. Often your perceptions and your desires are tainted by the falsehood of the appearance value system in which you live and with which you have disoriented yourself. So you continuously doubt your perceptions and your desires. Something may be desirable, but you do not even know it. You ask yourself: "Is it right? Is it good? Is it for me? Am I perhaps wrong in wanting it? Is it beyond my capacities?" You flounder, you do not know, the cohesion is gone.

But when you have a deep, sincere, and genuine commitment to invest your best in all your activities -- in all you do -- and when your integrity makes sure that you do not have any other hidden motives, but you give for the sake of giving -- which is always giving for God's sake -- then sooner or later you will experience the incredible miracle that your heart's desire is God's will. At first -- by your old habitual standards -- you will distrust that your desire is good and right. Even when you already operate with being values, you are still used to distrusting your desires. They have been polluted for such a long -- for centuries and centuries -- that even when there is no longer any need to distrust them, you still doubt them. You automatically assume that your desire must be wrong; you automatically assume -- somewhere in a hidden corner of your personality -- that if somebody disagrees with you, then he might be right and you are not trustworthy. But as you begin to discover the effects of the being values, you discover the miracle that what you thought was the work of the greedy little child in you -- who has these forbidden desires -- may indeed be, and will turn out to be, the will of God. While when you function with appearance values the will of God actually is -- or at least must seem to be -- contrary to your desires. It often is, because your real self cannot enjoy doing things that you do not really want. The superimposed, false desires neither give you real pleasure nor are they the will of God. They are dictated by the appearance values. Such desires and God's will are opposites. Sometimes the desires seem pleasurable, perhaps because they seem naughty and rebellious, and thus are contrary to God's will. At other times, they may not even be contrary to God's will. But you will never know when you are disconnected from your truth. And you must be disconnected from your truth when you function with appearance values and you do not do things in a true spirit of giving, regardless of whether others notice it or not.

I want to mention one last aspect in regard to this topic, which will be the foreshadowing of much of the work that we shall be doing in the next working year. And that is the creating, the recreating, and the molding of life and of the soul susbtance. It deals with the power of the word. It says in the bible: "In the beginning was the word." There is a deep meaning in this saying. The word is the first creative impulse. The word is the expression of the intent. The word gives form to the intent. Then from the word can follow action, creative action -- the follow-through process. The word is the first blueprint, it is the plan. There is a tremendous power IN the word, whether the word is actually spoken with a loud voice, or whether it is spoken in silence with an inner voice, but one that is affirmative and decisive. The word is the chisel, it is the tool with which you mold and give form to the soul substance that dwells in you and in which you simultaneously dwell. It surrounds you, just as much as it penetrates you.

So every thought and every intent is a powerful agent. The creative power behind the uttered word or the spoken word comes from its one-pointedness and from the conflict-free attitude behind it. Now perhaps you can see that when you function with appearance values and you are, consequently, disconnected from the truth of your real being, disconnected from your real values, disconnected from the truth of any issue of the moment, disconnected from the truth of your real desires -- your legitimate desires -- then you are inevitably disconnected from knowing your Godself. In this case many conflicting levels must also exist. Your word -- either uttered with the voice or uttered in thought -- cannot have the strength, the power, and the clarity it needs to have in order to create. There are so many conflicting thoughts, so many conflicting desires, so many conflicting feelings, and so many conflicting intentionalities present that a perpetual flickering of interfering, self-defeating short-circuit actions occurs, one cancelling out the other. There is a lot of agitation coming from those conflicting levels, from the uncertainty and the confusion, which also creates a sort of lightning effect on the level of your energies, but in a destructive, self-defeating way. Thus the word has no true power. Its power lies in the unconflictedness, in the oneness, and in the wholeness of your utterance. Your feelings, your desires, your concepts, your perceptions, and your knowing must all be one cohesive, compatible, fused energy stream. Then the power of your word is enormous. And no matter what you create with the word as the first agent of creation, then it must take form and shape.

When you discover difficulty in what you create, then look at the disorder of your various levels of thinking and feeling, at the contradictions. Then look to see how this emanates from the appearance level by which you function. As you see this, then you will take another step toward committing yourself to being values. But not just generally and philosophically, but specifically in every act that you undertake in your daily life, as well as in the general direction of your life. And if you do not yet know what the general direction of your life is, then you can use the being value system as you grope, as you ask, and as you then wait receptively for the answer. That is following the being values. That is the struggle that is producing life and light, and not chaos and confusion.

In the future we will also deal with other aspects of the power of the word -- the word that you speak, the word that you think, and the influence that you have with every word, whether thinking it or speaking it. For you underestimate your power when you feel distrustful of yourself because you operate with appearance values. You then think so little of yourself that you cannot possibly consider how powerful your emanations, your expressions, and your attitudes are. They can hurt, they can influence, they can harm; or they can heal, they can help, and they can produce life.

If you think of yourself as nothing -- while you are still in the error and in the subsequent lack of integrity of appearance values -- then you insult your inherent divine manifestation. This is yet another proof of the fact that you are one with everything that is. If you insult yourself because you underestimate yourself -- and therefore your power -- then you must hurt others, you must harm others, and you must insult others. It is false to imagine that he who thinks so little of himself is humble and good. This is one of the many dualistic misconceptions that your world is permeated with. Self-devaluation is equated with humility and with goodness, while self-value is equated with pride and with arrogance. Nothing could be further from the truth. For if you truly know your own value and your own power -- and if you then respect this value and this power -- then no matter what you do now and no matter where you are now, you must be considerate of others. Therefore, you cannot help but value them. So there is no possibility that you devaluate yourself and value others, or that you devaluate others and value yourself. This is yet another proof of the illusion that you and others are separate. All is one, all is one. These are mere words, but perhaps if you look deeply into this, in terms of what I spoke of in this lecture, then you will truly understand the meaning.

Be blessed, all of you, my dearest ones. Go further into the light center of the race of man -- into the center of your innermost being -- which is the innermost being of all that is, of all that ever was, of all that ever will be. Joyfully you are blessed.

June 4, 1975