The Superstition Of Pessimism

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings and blessings, my very beloved friends. You are bathed in the love of God. You are bathed in the Christ Force that strongly awakens in your innermost being. This love and this strength reach into your being with millions of feelers. You can feel it if you permit it, if you open your inner gaze and your inner hearing to the sound, to the beauty, and to the aliveness of this new force that is awakening all over the universe.

On this Path you have journeyed into your inner being. You have encountered many obstructions and you have become aware of hem. You have become aware of negativities that you did not know existed. As you know them, you also make the connection that it is with those negative attitudes that you create your negative experiences. This is not clear at the beginning. In this lecture I wish to give you a specific new realization about a special kind of inner attitude that once discovered will give you a tremendous aid to eliminate further obstructions toward the realization of your divine being.

There is in all of you what I may call a superstition of pessimism. When you reach a certain level of awareness, then you will come across an attitude that says: "If I believe in the positive, then I will be disappointed. And by my belief in it I may actually chase it away. So I may just as well not believe in it. It may be smarter on my part to believe that nothing good can ever happen to me, to believe that I cannot ever change, to believe that I cannot ever grow out of my obstructions." This kind of thinking happens within you. Somehow you know, if you choose to know it, that there is a kind of deliberate game, a playfulness -- but such a destructive one -- which, if you truly examine it, is nothing but a superstitious attitude.

The obvious kind of superstitiousness is much more primitive, and most of you do not adhere to this on an outer level. But a superstitiousness of a much subtler nature does exist in all of you. I ask you to ascertain this kind of superstition, to find within you the voice that says: "I dare not believe in the good. It may not happen." It is sufficient to ascertain no more than this voice, this sentence, this "word" that you speak into yourself. That is exactly what I mean. In that sentence, in these words spoken into yourself in one form of another, you express this kind of superstitious destructive playfulness. But then you lose contact with it. You no longer know it after a while, and therefore you get lost in its effects. Then the effects are very painful for you. For example, one effect is that you really believe in what you had first assumed merely as a safety measure. Not to believe in the positive and believing in the worst instead -- as a supposed safety measure by which you try to appease the gods, as it were -- is a destructive thought. You do not know the power of such thoughts. There is no playing with such power without grave consequences. There is no such game that does not have a very grave effect.

The power of this particular kind of word needs to be made conscious. It can apply to many things in your life. When you have an illness, then it may apply to the healing. When you find yourself alone and unloved, then you may playfully -- safely as you believe -- express this belief: "It will always be that way." When you lack funds or when you lack a fulfilling profession, then you may say into yourself: "I had better believe that it must be that way, so that maybe then it can come to me unexpectedly." It is as though you hoped for some idealized parental figure to assuage your doubts, to come forth and tell you: "No, no, my child, it is not that bad, it is all going to be wonderful."

There is the underlying aim that you dictate into your soul substance without knowing that you are creating a belief within you which then creates the circumstances that prove that belief. Then you forget that you had started this game in a spirit of superstition, or perhaps in a spirit of emotional manipulation. You then became so involved in what you have unwittingly created that you really do believe that the negative is the reality. In other words, what had started out merely as a superstitious safety measure gradually becomes belief on another level of your consciousness, so that you become filled with this belief. Then the belief creates your reality and you stay in exactly that position.

This is a subtle attitude that previously you could not see in yourself. However, due to the work that you are doing and to the progress that you are experiencing, many of you are now capable of pinpointing this particular kind of superstition -- the superstition of pessimism. All such inner trickery -- the trickery of the mind -- is very dangerous. The danger lies in the misuse of the power of the word, the power of your thinking, the power of your self-indoctrination. When you encounter this negative attitude in you, then it is time to stop and to question yourself about its effects upon yourself and upon your life. You need to take some distance from yourself and to observe yourself in what you are doing. You need to connect with the level of intentionality in this respect. I ask you to recognize exactly the way you are doing this. Then the next step will be to affirm: "I want to stop this undertaking. I want to stop this kind of self-trickery. I cannot trick life. I must be honest. What I say to myself must be what I really mean on the deepest level of my being. It must be what corresponds to the truth of life." This must be the next step. As you thus counter this habitual trickery in you, you can challenge it with your decision to find a new pathway to your mind's activity.

The next step is the most crucial one. It may sound simple, and it actually is very simple. However, it may seem to you that is requires a tremendous amount of courage. It is the courage to believe in the good. This is truly an abyss. It is one of the abysses of illusion. Without assurance of the outcome, you will have to venture into an unknown land where you believe in the positive; where you assert your faith in the benign universe; where you express the truth that all the possibilities exist. It is your choice which one of the many roads, which of the many possibilities you wish to travel. You can take either the road of defeatism, the road of denial, the road of negation, the road of negative expectation, or you can take the road of faith in the unfoldment that is the innate nature of life. In other words, the road of your faith in the limitless possibilities of beautiful unfoldment in every area. These possibilities are anchored in your own soul.

There is nothing that you cannot realize. There is nothing that you cannot experience if you truly give yourself to it; if you remove the anchor that prevents you from this new, flowing expansion; and if you allow the involuntary processes, with their limitless creative possibilities, to carry you and to bring you to ever new shores of fulfillment. This courageous faith in the best of your inner spirit must be asserted. The courage lies in bridging the gap between the assertion of the faith and the realization. In other words, until it begins to bears fruit. The temptation to lean on the old superstitious negative beliefs comes from there not being a waiting period, no uncertainty, no growing phase. As you speak the negative belief, so it occurs. You have the questionable certainty of immediate results that you are so keen on.

On the other hand, the journey to the positive belief -- your faith in the possibility of your positive unfoldment -- requires a growing period, a ripening period. This is necessary because your mind processes have been so accustomed to the negative belief that they have to readjust themselves; they have to acclimatize themselves, they have to take root in the new land of beauty and abundance. You are changing from one land of your inner being into another land of your inner being. So you are establishing new roots and therefore new unfoldment. That is why a period of gestation is necessary. For that you require the same kind of faith that the gardener possesses who sows the seeds and who then waits for the plants to sprout. He knows that the plants will eventually come out because he has experienced it before. But the first time that he ever sowed a seed he may not have known. It is thus with you. And that is wherein the courage lies. It is the courage to believe in the best that your innermost being has to offer, and therefore in what life has to offer. That assertion of faith is a substantial step that needs to be reinforced.

There is a pitfall here that I wish to warn you against. The courage to believe in the positive unfoldment of life can be easily confused with wishful thinking. There is a subtle and yet distinct difference between these two approaches to life. I wish to first stress this difference and then to help you in this respect. What is the difference between wishful thinking and a virile faith in the positive? All of you easily indulge in wishful thinking. Then, in order to be realistic -- as you think you are because you are always disappointed in the results of your wishful thinking -- you revert to the superstition of pessimism.

Let us be clear about the difference between wishful thinking and the realism and the courage of a positive belief. There is one distinct, clear, simple, and important factor that will simplify matters for you in order to distinguish between these two utterly different and yet seemingly similar attitudes. Wishful thinking is spinning dreams of fulfillment without any price having to be paid; without any change of personality; without any change of attitude; without any change of approach; without any change of thinking; without any change of feeling; without any change of acting; without any change of being. You spin the dream that this or that desirable fulfillment will come your way magically and gratuituously. But there is no investment of yourself into life, no investment of yourself into the process of creation, no investment of yourself into contributing to the evolutionary process by the commitment to your purification process. It is all a passive dreaming in which you hope against hope that something will happen to you that is desirable. But it is something that does not require of you to remove the block that prevents this desirable event or this desirable new state. The less you invest into yourself of that which could make all these desirable events or desirable states a reality, the less can you believe in the actual manifestation of these fulfillments, the more justified the superstition of pessimism, the less desirable your life becomes, and therefore the more do you wish to escape from it. Hence the more you spin those daydreams that substitute for your drab reality. This consumes a lot of creative energy that could be invested into real living and into real fulfillment. These daydreams are the other side of the coin of the superstition of pessimism.

So you see, my friends, the superstition of negativity, of pessimism and the daydreaming are closely interrelated and not mutually exclusive. On the same day -- or even within one hour -- you may indulge in daydreams and then -- sometimes even in a matter of minutes -- indulge in the superstition of your negativity.

The thing that you daydream about -- and which consumes a tremendous amount of your energy and your mischanneled creativity -- could be realized if only you were to make a total commitment to life and a total commitment to the self, and if you were to give your best to both, which are really one. Your disappointment when you fail to realize the daydream reinforces the superstition of your pessimism. What was begun as a game, as a kind of trickery, then reinforces your negative belief, until this vicious circle accelerates and you find it ever more difficult to extricate yourself from the vortex that you have created. You swing back and forth from the superstition of your negativity to your wishful daydream. The more you indulge in your wishful daydream so as to escape from the negativity that you create by your superstition, the less can you experience beauty, the less can you experience fulfillment, the less can you experience abundance, the less can you experience love, the less can you experience joy, the less can you experience peace, and the less can you experience excitement.

Wishful daydreams are often spun by a diminished ego. In other words, not by the desire that comes from your higher self, from your inner spirit. Thus in these dreams a diminished ego is seeking a false medicine against a diminished ego. For example, in a wishful daydream you do not visualize yourself in a productive vocation for the sake of joyfully and meaningfully contributing to life. You do not visualize your success and you do not visualize your abundance for the sheer sake of enjoying the fruits of your labor as a valid expression of life. Instead, you dream of yourself as a great person in order to impress others, perhaps your family or those who have slighted you.

However, even these ego gratifications that you experience in your wishful daydreams and in your wishful thinking contain original facets of true value. The true value of your dignity is a reality that you look for. But often you displace that dignity onto the limited level of the ego. As a result, you confuse it with the petty pride of your ego. The true value of your inner spirit aims for rich fulfillment, for love, for abundance, for friendship, for communication and, yes, even for recognition and for respect. But in the daydream all of these come in a fairy-tale kind of manner that does not really convince you. So you cannot believe in it.

In the course of your pathwork many of you have observed that at the beginning of your path you still had the habit of indulging in daydreaming. Perhaps without noticing it specifically, or without having intentionally tried to stop it, you lost your desire for it. The more you deal with the reality of your being, the more real does life become, and the less of a temptation exists to daydream. In other words, to manufacture wish-fulfilling situations. Yet many of you may find that, at least in certain areas of your life, you still indulge in it. Where this is the case, then look deeper and find the level where you also still indulge in the superstition of your negative beliefs. If you pursue this thought to its root, then you will discover yourself hoping that someone will come along and give you all the fulfillment gratuitously. In other words, without any effort on your part. That means not only without removing your obstructions, but without even attempting to see that the obstructions to the fulfillment lie within yourself. In short, you hope for this super authority to reassure you that it will happen as in your daydream, that it will be given to you. In other words, not earned, not acquired.

Try to ascertain these random fleeting thoughts. If you make them conscious, then you will see their absurdity. This will help you to give them up. You will realize that abundance is indeed available to you. But only to the degree that you wish to squander yourself into life. In other words, only to the degree that you wish to give of your inner riches to the process of the Whole just as generously as you wish to receive from life's abundance.

Often you encounter the common difficulty of sustaining happiness and pleasure. You may have begun to prepare and open the road to it through all the purification work that you have undertaken. As the results begin to stream into your being -- both outwardly and inwardly -- you shrink back. This is not only an old habit. It is also the result of still being committed to the imaginary safety measure of the superstition of your pessimism and, simultaneously, to the wishful-thinking daydreaming. In other words, you want happiness and pleasure without changing, without giving, without loving, without bringing forth all the riches within your own soul. The thing that is your fulfillment, namely your inner richness, can create myriad kinds of fulfillment. But you withold it, and yet you strive for the results you want through the superstition of your pessimism and through your wishful daydreaming. You avoid delving into the inexhaustible well of yourself which could enrich every minute of your life.

The enormous change and the growth that has already occurred in many of you has brought results that you still dare not believe. Much more fulfillment, much more happiness, much more pleasure, and much more abundance exist in your lives. But I am speaking of those areas that are still blocked and where you, consequently, reject pleasure because it feels uncomfortable. At least now you are fully aware of this, which is immeasurably important. This message may help you to make the further connections, so that you will eliminate all the obstructions to real happiness, rather than to dream about gratification. This material -- if you use it, if you observe it in you, and if you then apply it -- will make a big difference in the transformation work. As I predicted for this working year, you will become capable of transforming a negative belief because you can see it as a game on a very subtle level: it is a trick. It is meant to be a trick. By first giving up that trick, then by having the courage of the positive belief in your richness, and then by having the positive intentionality to give of this richness to the best of your ability you will create the courage necessary to have faith in the best that your life could be.

My dearest friends, you in this community of human beings are fulfilling an all-important noble task. The creative processes of this universe depend on, count on every individualized entity. Every step of good will within you, every intent to be in truth, every intent to face the truth, every intent to confront the worst in you and to transform it into its original best adds to the great reservoir of creative forces that flow and that push themselves forever more into all of life as manifestations. Each step in your growth aids not only your own happiness and fulfillment, important as this is, but is also a powerful force, as powerful as atomic energy. It is a nucleus that spreads and that multiplies with many other such nuclei, created both by yourselves and by others, so that the Christ Force gains a greater impetus.

QUESTION: (Aida) This lecture seems to apply to my life very much now. It seems almost miraculous. The business venture I've started looks very positive. It looks as if it's going to be a success. I have blocked so much of the positive, yet something very good is happening. Now that it is happening I feel that I'm going into my ego. I find myself thinking that I'm better than others. I would like you to comment on this.

ANSWER: That is how you destroy. What you can do when you discover yourself in that way of thinking is to very simply -- and yet firmly but without pushing effort -- formulate another thought. This thought might be: "I do not wish to set myself above others. If a part of me desires this, then I do not want it. I pray for the divine forces within me to help me to create another kind of attitude, and therefore another kind of reality. If I want to be better than others, then I must also feel undeserving to get even the slightest fulfillment. I am not better than others and I am not worse than others."

All human beings are wonderful manifestations of divinity. One flower is not better than another flower. One bird is not better than another bird. The mountain is not better than the sea. The pine tree is not better than the oak. Think of yourself and of other people in those terms. Then assert your good will to let others be their best, so that you can then let yourself be your best and so that you can enjoy the fruits of your efforts and feel deserving of them.

QUESTION: (Mordi) I have, all my life it seems, done exactly what the lecture was all about because I didn't want to deal with the disappointments. But I also felt that I must have it, that I can't bear not having it. It seemed incredibly important, and if I was to fail, then I was afraid not only of the failure but of the meaning of the failure. Is it something that I was not meant to have, or what? I found this superstition safe, but I see how it has limited me.

ANSWER: The most productive attitude to have about the possibility of not realizing your wish in this form right now would be somewhat like this: "If such and such a desire is not fulfilled right now, then I have the courage to confront myself and to find out the meaning of this particular frustration." The meaning is not something bad, nor does it imply that you are undeserving or that there is something terrible that you need to fear. It may mean many different things. It may mean that there are certain obstructions within you that you need to know. But not just for the sake of this particular fulfillment, but even more importantly for the sake of your total unfoldment as an entity so as to become whole, so as to become fully unified. (Some words were lost in turning over the tape.) Say into yourself: "I have within me all the the equipment necessary in order to learn what I need to learn. I have intelligence, I have openness, I have good will." This learning process can be a glorious experience. If such and such does not happen now in this particular way, then what will make you happy, what will make you whole, and what will add both to your life and to the life of your dear ones can and will happen in another way that may turn out to be even more desirable once you see it. If not now, then maybe later. Pursue the truth of your potential and then state: "I can take a momentary disappointment and I can make it a stepping stone. I need not fear that it must be now or that it must be in this particular way. There are many ways." With this attitude you will create a relaxed inner climate, so that attaining the result will not be a question of do or die. This inability to withstand frustration not only becomes an unbearable tension and pressure, but it is often the direct block to the fulfillment of your specific desire. That would be the growth-producing attitude that would let you off the hook and that would make it possible for you to believe in the best. Now you will no longer fear that if it does not happen exactly in the way you want it and when you want it, then it means either that you are all bad or that life is all bad. It might happen the way you want it, but if it does not, then not only is it not a catastrophe -- as you unconsciously believe -- but you will actually gain something from it not happening that way. You will open the door to finding out more about you. And this will be infinitely richer than the mere fulfillment of your wish could have been.

QUESTION: (Bob Zimmerman) In reference to one word you used that I'm struggling with -- the word courage -- can you amplify what the elements of courage are and where courage might be felt represented in the body?

ANSWER: First of all, the elements of courage are to be able to experience a pain, to be able to experience a disappointment, to be able to experience a frustration. It is the willingness to experience all this, to learn from it, and to use it as a threshold. That is courage. It takes courage to risk all that. It takes courage to not always stand back and have the safety of a little backdoor open, so that one never ventures forth completely into a new situation. To love is courage because the loved one may not always respond according to one's desires and selfwill. To give is courage because the petty heart -- which is still steeped in the old superstition of your negativity -- believes that when you give, then you will lose, and that no one will then give you anything. It is courage to risk finding out that it may not be that way. It is courage to risk finding out that at the beginning of trying out these new attitudes it may appear that way. It is even more courage not to be discouraged.

In what part of your body do you feel courage? In all of your body, just as you feel love in all of your body, for courage is an essential part of love. Every cell and every pore vibrates and resonates with every divine attitude that you can possibly follow through. Then you will allow it to express itself through your mind, through your will, through your soul, and therefore through your entire body.

I will close this meeting with a prayer that the God in you expresses. I ask you to listen to your inner God and to hear the words that resonate within you. As I say the words, pick up the echo within. This will help you to attune your listening inner ear to the voice of God filling you with messages such as this:

I Am working through you.

I Am in all your thoughts, if you wish to hear Me.

I Am in all you see, if you wish to see Me in all things around you.

I Am in all the words you speak, if you wish Me to express Myself through you.

I Am in all your actions, if that be your commitment.

Since I Am in you and since I manifest through you, you will rediscover life in new terms. You will see that life is a glorious oneness in which there is nothing to fear.

What need you fear if you discover Me?

What need you fear if you identify with Me?

Know that you are Me. As such you can never die. Give that which is you now -- in your thinking, in your being, and in your perceptions -- to Me. As you give yourself to Me, so must you be eternal.

Listen for a minute into yourselves while I stay with you.

You are richly blessed, my beloved friends.

December 3, 1975