Releasing Awareness And Faith In Divine Grace -- Exposing The Deficit
By The Pathwork Guide
Greetings and blessings, my very beloved friends. The joy of seeing your community develop and expand is enormous. We praise the Lord for this wonder that springs from your personal growth, from your commitments, and from your devotion to serve a cause that goes far beyond your earth selves.
I wish to speak about the meaning of grace. For many of you this is a very difficult concept to comprehend. In former times the concept of grace was much more acceptable, for it was understood as a special dispensation from God that was either given or not given for His own reasons. The individual had little to do with it. At a time when self-responsibility was little developed, grace was interpreted in this manner and was therefore easier to accept.
At the present state of mankind's development, self-responsibility is much more developed. You understand that you create your own reality and your own experiences -- both good and bad. Then how does Grace come in? Is it totally eliminated from man's vision of life and reality? No, it is not. Grace is as much a reality as self-creation and self-responsibility. And yet they are by no means mutually exclusive. I wish to give you a new outlook about this important subject, which then will open up another equally important topic, that of faith.
The grace of God IS. It exists at all times. It penetrates all that is.
It exists in the very nature of ultimate reality, which is thoroughly benign. Grace means that all must work out for the best, no matter how evil, how painful, or how tragic it may appear at the moment. In the end, when these negative experiences are fully assimilated and lived through by man, then he comes around full circle to the light of love, to truth, to joy, to peace, to pleasure supreme, to eternal life, and to well-being in all respects. This must always be the ultimate reality, and therein lies Grace.
So you cannot help but live IN the grace of God. The very air you breathe is permeated with it. Every substance of life, on all levels -- from the finest vibrations and radiations to the crudest matter -- is permeated with it. The world you live in, the universe, all of creation, and the way divine law is constructed are all expressions of divine grace. You live, you move, and you have your being in a universe that consists of such tenderness, of such love, of such personal care of the living God, of the Eternal Presence in all that is, that it simply defies description. You are surrounded by a universe in which there is nothing ever to fear -- no matter what the momentary appearences may be.
The problem is not that you need to draw the grace of God to you, as you falsely believe. For it is already there, filling every pore of your being. The problem is your lack of vision, your limited view, your distorted interpretation, your faulty outlook, your personal blocks. These seem like iron walls that enclose you. They prevent you from perceiving grace, and therefore from experiencing it. In reality, they are just a vapor that must immediately dissolve once you rearrange your field of vision, and therefore you begin to dissolve your personality defects and your blocks. As always, this process begins with the small everyday events and happenings. The gauge is right at your disposal. You can easily tell whether you are in truth or not by the way you feel. If you are in harmony with life, then it means that you are in truth. If you are joyous, then it means that you are in truth. If you are hopeful, then it means that you are in truth. Then you can be certain that you are partaking of the grace of God that surrounds you and that permeates you. In other words, you can be certain that you are in truth -- at least in the limited way of your present state of consciousness -- as regards your immediate experiences and your reactions to the world around you.
But when the opposite occurs, then you forget this key. In other words, when you are in a state of disturbance, then it means that you are not in truth. When you are in a state of fear, then it means that you are not in truth. When you are in a state of disharmony -- with yourself, with others, and with life in general -- then it means that you are not in truth. It is then that you forget this key. I wish you would all choose to remember it. Therefore, impregnate yourself with it in your daily meditations. When you are unhappy, then it means that you are not in truth. When you are fearful, then it means that you are not in truth. When you are discouraged, then it means that you are not in truth. When you are in darkness, then it means that you are not in truth. When you find yourself in any one of these states, then at least know that you are not in truth. Knowing this -- that you are not in truth but in illusion -- will make a lot of difference. It is your blocks and your faulty vision that have separated you from the grace of God in which you swim even now, although you do not know it consciously.
Man's habit of putting the effect before the cause creates misconceptions and misinterpretations of life that prevent you from experiencing grace. The automatic habit of this reversed thinking extends to many different issues and to many different aspects of reality. One example is the false assumption that the experience of God's grace is something to be given to you. Another false assumption is that faith comes from the outside. In other words, as if one day something would be added on to you, while right now you lack it. The truth is that you lack neither grace nor faith. As with everything else, they, too, already exist in you. If only you could begin to think of yourself in these terms, then all would fall into place much more easily. You may know the theory, but your habitual thinking resists this. You think of yourself as an empty vessel that needs to be filled from the outside, as it were. Becoming yourself implies acquiring something that you do not possess already. But in reality you are already all that
you could ever wish to be. You already possess the state of consciousness that you aim to attain. It is simply that only a limited part of your total self functions on this reality level of the world into which you were born. It is your task to gradually release those parts of you that
exist fully on another level of reality, but that need to be brought into this material level. The lower self exists because of the limitation with which you manifest on this level of reality. Expansion, growth, and development mean only one thing: To bring forth the perfection of what you already are in essence. If you could think of this process more in terms of releasing what is already there, rather than of becoming something that you are not, something that is still foreign to you, then you would aid your process considerably.
So you can release your intrinsic awareness of grace. You can release the faith that is already in you. You can release the knowledge that you live in a tender universe, shaped out of personal love and caring. You can release your knowledge that there is nothing to fear.
If you visualize them in this way, then you will be able to release new awareness, to release new knowledge, to release new faith, to release new ways of reacting that will surprise you and that will fill you with wonder and with joy.
What are the obstacles to releasing this faith that already exists within you, to releasing this knowledge that already exists within you, to releasing this awareness that already exists within you? The first obstacle is your not knowing that you already possess this awareness and this faith. Therefore, this knowledge must be cultivated. It has to begin in your outer brain and in your outer thinking. Considering the possibility that you are already filled with the living God will automatically make you challenge your fears, make you challenge your doubts, make you challenge your distrust, make you challange your negative beliefs. This will make it much easier for you to trust life and its laws sufficiently that you will risk giving. This is an important lever that touches upon an inexorable law of life. Only as you give out of yourself, from your heart and with your heart, can you truly receive.
What does this law mean in reality? Every human being contains a built-in mechanism that makes receiving impossible when the soul witholds its innate capacity and its innate yearning to give. Since in reality giving and receiving are one and the same flow, the same movement, the same phenomenon, then the one cannot exist without the other. Where distrustful, fearful holding back makes it impossible for the soul to enter into the flow
of universal life and of the universal movement, then the total process of giving and receiving is stopped. As a result, the grace of God -- with all of its manifestations -- cannot enter into the consciousness of the personality. It is as though all the riches were there, ready to be tasted and experienced, but the hand cannot reach for them; the senses cannot perceive them; the eyes cannot see them; the brain cannot even observe their vivid reality. It is as though the whole personality, with all of its perceptions, were dulled, so that the total vision of life is distorted. This strengthens the illusion that you live in a poor, empty universe. It increases the false belief that your inner universe is equally poor and equally empty. In other words, the misconception that you have nothing to give from within you and the false belief that there is nothing for you to receive from without.
Every attitude, every mental condition, and every emotional condition creates chain reactions and circles or cycles -- either benign ones or vicious ones, according to the truth or the error of your belief, of your attitude,
and of your resulting behavior pattern. When you are entangled in the illusion that both the outer universe and your inner universe are empty and impoverished, then you automatically create a vicious circle. This false belief must make you hoard yourself, hoard your innate riches, and
hoard your innate talents. In other words, hoard and hold on to everything
that you possess, both spiritually and materially. You hold in rather than give out. Hence, you separate yourself from all the riches that surround you and that want to penetrate you. This inner mechanism makes it impossible for you to receive. It strengthens -- and it finally seems to confirm -- your vision of the poverty of life and your vision of the poverty
of your self.
The benign circle can be established by risking to give out in
the conscious and deliberate expectation -- the faith, if you will -- that your abundance will grow because you are willing to consider the possibility that your fear of poverty and your fear of deprivation may be illusory. As you start giving to God in trust and with love, you release your inner faith and you liberate your clouded vision. Then not only will you see the abundance surrounding you and flowing through you, but you will also lift the lever that locked the mechanism. You will reach out into this rich world and allow it to bestow upon you all that it contains in its overpowering abundance, given to you by the Creator with limitless love. Words can never describe this magnificence. By risking to give out, you enter into a benign circle. You can afford to release more of your inner riches
and to release more of your outer riches because now you know that they are eternally and inexorably replaced, like a never-ending stream. So, the more you receive, the more you can give, and the more you give, the more capable you are of receiving. It is then that giving and receiving become one.
The first step must be for you to risk giving out. Consider the possibility that the fear that makes you hold in and hoard is erroneous. Test a new ground rule of life and begin to discard the old one, one that has proven detrimental both to you and to others because it has painted a false picture of life. False pictures are reinforced by belief, just as true pictures are. Only when they are being questioned do they lose their energy. Challenging them is like pulling out poisonous weeds and planting new beautiful seedlings. When you give out of your faith in God, out of your love for God, and out of your trust in God -- even before you are convinced that your fear of giving out is ungrounded -- then you have already begun to plant your new, abundant, rich, beautiful spiritual garden. And when I say spiritual, I do not mean something far away, vague, and realizable only in an afterlife. I mean something tangible that sooner
or later must manifest in your material life, here and now, with both inner
riches and outer riches.
Now I come to another obstacle to establishing this benign circle
in which you flow in harmony with creation and you live in divine order and in divine grace. This obstacle is very important, yet seldom recognized for what it is. It exists on all levels: on the personal inner or emotional
or psychological or spiritual level, as well as on the general or universal
or collective level. This topic is chosen at this time not only to help you personally on your individual path, but also to help you to establish the
new model for world government within your ever growing community
This obstacle is a tendency in human nature to build on top of the existing deficit. It is a tendency that is intrinsically connected with the belief in an empty, poor, ungiving universe. Let me be more explicit. Take at first the personal inner level. When you build positive beliefs and positive life patterns on top of existing unconscious or semi-conscious negative beliefs, then you are building on deficit. Let us look at some examples. When you secretly believe that you are a totally unlovable
-- and therefore totally unacceptable -- human being, then you build on deficit. When your real guilts and your false guilts prevent you from turning yourself over to God fully, then you build on deficit. When you falsely assume the universe to be hostile to you -- and you then protect yourself against this alleged hostility with your destructive defenses, that you may or may not be conscious of, that you may rationalize and justify -- then you build on deficit.
Building on deficit can apparently succeed for a while. And that is the trouble. What is false seems to work for a while and it becomes temporarily convincing. He who builds a house on sandy -- and thereby unsafe -- ground may erect a lovely-looking structure that holds up
for a while. But when it begins to crumble, then the builder cannot see the connection, because he may have shut off his awareness of having chosen to build on such a weak foundation. The crumbling of the house may then be ascribed to different causes. Such rationalizations only maintain the illusory picture of life and encourage the human tendency of building on deficit.
The methods I have given you to work with on your path are meant to bring all your deficits to the surface of your consciousness. They are meant to prevent you from denying your existing deficits as if they were not important. This path is designed to create an inner order, painful
as this may be at first, so that you can begin to build on real assets, and therefore to never allow your inner economics to become fraudulent and unsound again. The temporary pain of exposing your debts -- your deficits -- comes from the wrong conclusion that by doing so you are doomed to accept the reality of your poverty. You cannot trust that your unsound managing can be changed. In other words, that you can create
real riches which are based on a healthy policy. You are constantly running
on deficit, always giving out in a distorted way that has nothing to do with genuine giving. This is pretended giving. For example, you either project your mask self to the world while you inwardly despair about who you believe you really are, or else you give out in order to accrue in a manipulating way what you believe you do not deserve. These types of lower self giving are manifestations of building on top of the existing deficit. False ways of giving may temporarily work on the surface. But as your deficits increase inwardly, then you frantically try to cover up the impoverishment that you have created in order to avoid the necessary bankruptcy. You grab outer, temporary, unsound means to coast along on pretense. Then you cherish the illusion that you can go on in this way indefinitely.
Thus you build a mask-self illusion -- the belief that this way of operating with yourself can go on forever -- on top of a lower-self illusion -- the belief that the world is mean and poor. To put it differently, you believe only in the illusory wealth acquired by you through scheming, through pretense, through greed, and you do not believe in the real wealth of God's creation. In practical terms this manifests in putting so
much energy into your mask self and into your lower self that you never dare to expose your deficits and the inner bankruptcy that smolders underground. When you work with your helpers and with your peers and you bring your guilts and your lower self machinations to the fore, then you stand there poor. You no longer cover it up with a false veneer. You no longer try to avoid this poverty that you have unwittingly created through your false beliefs and by destructive means that only increase the deficit. Then the fear and the resistance to declare the bankruptcy that you have frantically covered up is finally overcome through faith. Now you can begin to create the new sound order of your inner wealth that has waited precisely for this moment to manifest and to enrich you.
All your personal crises and all your breakdowns are nothing but bankruptcy exposed. Often such a crisis is consciously and deliberately induced under controlled circumstances. For example, when you work with your helpers and in your groups. You go through the shame of showing your deficits
-- in other words, you finally stop building on top of them -- and you sail through the fear and the pain of believing that this is your final reality. But soon you discover your real wealth behind the frantic efforts to hide the assumed -- and hence self-created -- poverty by pretending to have true wealth, when in reality it is one that is built on deficit.
Your spiritual and emotional findings often manifest on the material level as well. Many people live above their means. They coast along on debt. They cover up one hole with another, newly created hole. Although they live in a constant climate of anxiety, they refuse to create order because (1) they do not believe that order and abundance can exist for them and (2) they are unwilling to give. Perhaps they do not want to give by paying the necessary price, which may be working -- giving in their work, giving their best. Thus they cannot make a decent livelihood. Therefore, they depend on others and thus they accumulate debts. The inner process of your pathwork will finally reach the outer levels of material manifestation. On your path you have created budget sessions for those who have manifested their inner deficit on the outer level. In that way you create a new sound order. As a result, you no longer have to run on deficit. Budget sessions are an exact replica of the inner pathwork that you do on psychological and spiritual levels.
My beloved friends, it is extremely important for you to see that finances, economics, and collective governmental procedures all follow the exact same patterns. They are sound when a government is built on assets, not on deficits; when it is built on reserves, not on debts; when it is built on fullness, not on emptiness. For those of you who have some knowledge of the way governments
-- both national and international -- are run, it will be easy to see how the principle that I speak about here applies just as much to the outer collective level as it does to the inner personal one. When a country goes through severe crises -- riots, revolution, war, financial collapse -- then it is a result of having waited too long to establish cleanliness, order, and truth voluntarily: through conscious and deliberate choices and by working things out in controlled circumstances. In other words, it is the result of not wanting to expose the deficits, so that true abundance can then follow. Such governmental crises can be likened to the inevitable breakdown of a person who stubbornly refuses to expose his inner poverty, his pretense, his deficits.
When governments live predominantly on injustice, on greed, and on power drives, when they scheme and they lie to deceive the people, then they always
create not only a spiritual deficit, but inevitably also a material one. The imbalances thus established can only be covered up for so long. Eventually they must all surface, so that a new order can be established. When countries go through such crises, then at first changes are often brought about with the best of intentions. New laws, new modalities, new collective measures, and new forms of government are created. But when the inner meaning gets lost once again, then the same deficit will arise through different means. The forces of darkness can again distort
the truth and tempt man away from the inner truth of God. His vision will be blurred once again, so that new deficits will accumulate. Thus the solution never lies in what form of government you adopt, or on what outer measures
you institute, although admittedly some measures are better than others at different times.
If you take a close and well-informed look at the various governments in this world, then you will see where and how their deficits are being created. Sometimes the direct, material deficits are obvious in a particular country's economics. It is clear that the government avoids temporary exposure by frantically pretending, by coasting along, by covering one hole with another, and never daring to trust the possibility that real wealth can actually be established. Admitting the imbalance and the mismanagement is too frightening. Sufficient faith is lacking, and the false picture of a poor, untrustworthy, empty universe makes this step toward honesty impossible.
This step is possible only when totally going to God, through God, in God, and with God. Risking to have faith can create faith. It can also create the experience that it is justified to have faith. Therefore, it is foolish to assume that a balanced, harmonious, abundant world order -- one
in which justice and peace exist -- can be established without a direct communication with the Divine World and with the Christ within you and around you. If you ignore His existence, then you cannot perceive His presence, you cannot hear His guidance, you cannot hear His advice, and you cannot hear His loving inspirations. Thus you cannot summon up the courage you need in order to go through the temporary exposure of your inner bankruptcy -- which often is also outer bankruptcy, both in individuals and in countries. The shambles can be collected and the structure rebuilt in a better way only when all the participants are seriously filled with the purest of motives and consciously and directly ask God's eternal Presence to help them and to inspire them. This is the hope of the world in which you live. Everything that is undertaken without God, no matter how intelligent and efficient it may seem at first, is bound to fail in the long run. Only through God and with God can the courage and the honesty exist to trust total openness. Then rebuilding can begin in earnest and in glory. Only then will all the governments run on assets. Only then can they function healthily, with a constantly-balanced flow of giving AND receiving, and therefore never exhaust their reserves because everything is based on truth, on justice, and on fairness. One country will not deny the other its resources. Mutual pressures and power plays will not have to corrupt the world that was created by God so that all can partake of everything, no matter where it originates. Why do you think that God has put some resources in certain parts of the world only, and other resources in other parts? The Creator disposes with the deepest of reasons and meanings. Nothing is ever an accident. The reason for the distribution of the world's resources is to help people to share them and to consider all other people. This will also enable them to freely receive what they need and what others have. Right here you can see how a spiritual law works on the most practical levels. Giving and receiving can exist only when countries share their resources, rather than hoarding them and using them to gain more power and more riches, regardless of how many people are deprived.
My beloved friends, these are the principles that you need to establish in your community. In that way you will become a true model. Now let me say a few words about the process and give you some guidelines
whose details you can work out among yourselves. You need to make yourselves channels for God's will in every detail. But some outer guidelines are necessary. I have recently been asked a question that deals
with this very topic. You have become aware of a certain imbalance within
your structure. Balances constantly change when one side outweighs the other. In the development of an individual, as well as in that of a collective organism, the balances need to be constantly re-examined and adjusted in order to establish inner and outer harmony, health, and wealth
that has been acquired honestly. In other words, divine abundance that has
been earned.
Here are some specific guidelines:
You need to examine when the individual needs to give more to the collective entity and when the process can be reversed, and the collective entity can give more to the individual.
You must never live above your means. Function out of fullness and do not run on deficit. This should not be done in a spirit of anxiety and lack of trust. It is possible to have faith and yet not use misapplied faith in order to justify the current tendency in your world to function on deficit. At the same time you need to establish priorities in a deep way. There may be temporary situations when a deficit on the material level may be unavoidable until a sound basis -- consisting of fullness and of functioning on assets -- is being established.
If you keep this goal in mind, then you will attain it. In order to do so, it may be necessary to keep your budget smaller than you may wish. It may mean that you, as a community, may temporarily have to do without something that you may like to think of as essential until you can truly afford it. You may have to reconsider what is essential and what is not, and look at it from the point of view of the work that is being done and with a view of the task that is being fulfilled on a larger scale. More of you may have to temporarily pitch in with your giving, as some have done from the very beginning. For without this, then there would not have been this community as it exists today. The law clearly fulfills itself in that
no one has ever come to deprivation from his giving. On the contrary, more abundance has accrued for them. When more of you adopt this spirit, then more abundance will be created both for those who give and for the collective entity, until the latter will be sufficiently healthy on all
levels, including the material one, so that it can give more to the individuals in question. But do not forget that even when spiritual and material health and abundance are firmly rooted, each new person who desires to commit himself or herself to stage four -- in other terms, to the third level of development, that of nurturing others -- needs to go through a period of giving without much recompense. If this step is being skipped, then the spiritual health of the community will suffer, and this will eventually also affect its material health.
A lot will change with this new outlook and you will completely lose that slight and nagging anxiety that exists, at least to some degree, because there is still a groping in the dark with regard to establishing an economy that functions on assets, rather than on deficit. You must understand that this duplicates exactly the inner process of the path. However, if the concept and the vision is lacking, then you may not express the outer picture with the same speed as the inner order that already exists. Often a problem needs to be tackled in the tunnel fashion, from both sides. You need to deepen your inner work on the spiritual and psychological level and you need to purify all that which runs on deficit. At the same time you also need to realize a similar process in your personal financial affairs (and budget sessions are an integral part of this aspect); and, last but not least, the same principles need to be established for the material affairs of the collective entity. This is true harmony. Then your entire path -- in all its workings -- will function smoothly and richly. You will have more abundance that is well earned, honestly deserved, and that can thus be guiltlessly enjoyed. This abundance will benefit many. Among other things, it will make it possible for those who need to be materially sustained at the beginning to have scholarships until they become self-sustaining.
This lecture goes way beyond the factual advice at the end of it. You need to deeply understand a divine law and principle. You
need to recognize all the obstructions that prevent you from perceiving --
and therefore from partaking of -- the ever present divine
grace. Then you can release the faith that is within you. It
is a faith that is realistic because it is an experience of what is and not
a belief in and a hope for what might be illusory wishful thinking. Faith
is often mistakenly identified with this latter attitude. Therefore, it is shunned because man understandably fears being unrealistic and then inevitably disappointed.
My dearest ones, Christ's embrace enfolds all of you and it accompanies you in all your doings and in all your thinking. You are blessed.