Personal Contact With Jesus Christ -- Positive Aggression -- The Real Meaning Of Salvation

By The Pathwork Guide

Joyfully I bring you divine blessings. Everyone can be touched by them in a very vital way. You need to raise your consciousness to this reality. You need to remove the barriers that prevent you from perceiving the Lord's presence in your life and from feeling His love for you.

Let me start this lecture with some words on the subject. Even though you have strengthened your faith and your realization that this world is infused with God, few have as yet made personal contact with Him. He became human so as to be always close to you in a very personal, loving way. For most believers God is a much less personal experience; He is a much more vague and general experience. And you know that you can experience only that which you can conceive of and believe in.

If you seriously pray for and search for a realization of Jesus Christ's personal love for you, then the answers will come forth. Perhaps the first answers will not be recognized as such. They may have something to do with specific barriers that prevent you from this experience, from this reality. They may bring up new (or, again, old) material on your pathwork. In other words, in the work that needs to be done for your purification. But these are indeed answers. Once the barriers begin to go, then you will experience what it means to feel Jesus Christ's personal love for you.

You are also involved in a vicious circle here. When you feel unworthy, unlovable, and unacceptable, then it is impossible to believe that Christ can love you personally regardless of your present state of development. So you need to forge ahead and re-establish both your self-acceptance and your self-respect. Yet this can be done only when you first recognize and then oust your real guilt, your justified guilt without annihilating yourself in the process. The total self-condemnation that so often accompanies insight into your lower self obstructs the cleansing and liberating process that makes room for healthy self-love.

It is also true that without at least a slight awareness of the fact that you are personally precious to and beloved by the personified God -- Jesus Christ -- then it is extremely difficult to accept your guilts and to find your real value. So what you need is a continuous double approach. On the one hand, your self-search, your determination to face all of your lower self, and to understand all of your being with compassion and realism; and on the other hand, your direct prayer for and your deep desire to feel Jesus' presence near you, to feel His concern for you, to feel His deep, abiding interest in your life, in every smallest detail of your life.

As you thus proceed on your path, the glory that will then come to you cannot be put into words. Nothing else is comparable to the knowledge that, no matter what the momentary circumstances are, you are personally loved by the Lord, you are personally cared for by the Lord, you are never forgotten by the Lord, and you are always protected by the Lord.

However, this total fulfillment can come only when you totally surrender to the will of God -- and you do so without any reservations -- in every large aspect of your life and in every small aspect of your being. This has often been discussed by us, and yet how difficult it still is for a number of you. You still hold back. You still have your little corners of holding out. In other words, you believe that your selfwill knows what makes you happy better than God does. Yet Jesus Christ is here and He is ready to give you eternal life, ready to give you safety, ready to give you total fulfillment if only you trust Him and if only you give yourself to Him. When you have made personal contact with the Lord, then you will be filled with joy and sustained by all the juices of life, in a constant flow of renewal.

Your fears and your distrust of others cannot be eliminated unless this total surrender to the Highest is a constantly practiced and renewed act within yourself. For you cannot subsist alone. No creature can. All the created beings hang together on a chain of interdependence -- physically, emotionally, and spiritually. When the weight of dependence is put where it belongs -- on God, on His personalized Aspect, Who is always near you -- then you can create a healthy center of gravity, anchored deep within your soul, for that is where He is to be found. When His presence merges with your higher self, then you truly become one. Then all your interdependence with others will be free from neurotic dependency. It will be a healthy interdependence that will give you a clear vision and the ability to adjudge realistically where your trust is justified and where it is not. Therefore, you will have a healthy relationship both with your leaders and with your followers. However, without that proper center of gravity in God, then you will always be confused, you will always live in fear, and you will always distrust your judgment. As a result, you will become either too distrustful in the wrong place or too gullible in the wrong place, or both.

So, my beloved friends, make it your business now to deepen your desire for a personal contact with Christ. Strengthen your commitment to give over all of your life to Him in the total trust that He deserves.

Your human fears can never be assuaged otherwise. I spoke in a recent lecture about one such basic existential fear that all human beings have, whether they are aware of it or not. This is the fear of the annihilation of their consciousness, which is generally believed to take place after the body separates from the spirit self. To no longer exist is the most insidious fear, one that must be met and dealt with. Only through total surrender to God can this be done. Only through removing your impurities can this be done. Only through no longer denying but experiencing your various pains can this be done.

The Creator has filled your earth sphere with signs, with symbols that speak loud and clear that nothing is ever lost, that nothing can ever disappear, that nothing can ever disintegrate into nothingness. These symbols will be recognized by you as you awaken. This awakening depends utterly on your surrender to the Creator and to His personalized presence in your life -- Jesus Christ.

One such beautiful symbol is the sea. Just observe the ebb and flow of the sea. The water flows forward in great masses, only to recede and diminish. Where does this receding water go? It seems to disappear, to disintegrate, to no longer exist. From your vantage point on the shore, where there was water before there is none now. But you know that this water does not disintegrate into nothingness. It continues to be, to exist in the greater pool, never losing its unique quality as this specific sea water. (In spite of their similarity, all sea waters are somewhat different. Their salt content may vary, as well as many other qualities that mankind as yet knows nothing about.) So the individuality of the ebbing, and seemingly disappearing, sea water is always maintained.

Could it be different with the individual consciousness? Could the individual consciousness go through all the painstaking steps of developing, of cleansing itself, of growing, and of expansion without any rhyme or reason? The more you establish your own inner connections between your life experiences and your attitudes, then the more deeply you will understand that the former are not arbitrary coincidence, but that they stand in direct relationship to you, to who you are now, to what you express, and to what you create, either deliberately or inadvertently. The awareness of these connections in the microcosm of your personal existence makes the universe comprehensible in an entirely new way. Then you must inevitably see that all has purpose, that nothing is for naught. You will see that there is a magnificent design at work whose purpose is to bring everything to perfection, to bliss, to oneness -- and therefore to ineffable peace. When you explore your microcosm painstakingly, honestly, and courageously, then you can no longer doubt the design behind the events in your life. And when you see the fabric of wisdom and purpose in all that comes to pass, then you will recognize the Great Spirit of the Creator at work.

When you work with the aid of the personalized God -- Who is always available to you and Who is always responsive when you reach out for His help -- then you will gradually establish connections that were totally obscure before. Nothing could be more painful and more frightening than the disconnectedness between a painful event in your life and its inner cause. Its appearance seems inexplicable and inconsequential. The establishing of the causal connection brings relief, liberation, and enrichment beyond description.

But there exists a certain rhythm that needs to be discovered, sensed, and accepted. Again I use the analogy of the sea. Ebb and flow function according to a specific rhythm, a rhythm that has been established under higher orders. This rhythm is never broken. Only when specific upheavals, like earthquakes, tidal waves, or human destructive measures interfere, is the rhythm temporarily disrupted. The sea is in crisis, as it were. But even this crisis conspires to re-establish its unique rhythm, its harmony with the rest of creation. The sea has the wisdom to follow this pattern. With his disruptive mind, man often makes himself insensitive to his own unique rhythm pattern, with which he needs to be in harmony.

So when you seek the connection between a painful event in your life and your inner person -- in other words, when you work for recognition of it and you pray for help -- and the answer still fails to come, then it means that you may be out of rhythm. You may have to use this waiting time to learn certain qualities within yourself that can be learned only in the time of ebb, never in the time of flow. The time span of the ebb and flow of the sea, of high tide and low tide, is never exactly the same. Most of the time one lasts longer than the other, if measured with earthly time. Often these time relationships change. It is the same way with the human being's rhythm. The time of fruition may come sooner in some areas and the time of waiting may last longer in other areas.

Sense your own rhythm in all things. Feel your daily life in accordance with your personal universal rhythm pattern. It exists just as definitely as you carry your life pattern within your soul substance. If you work, if you rest, if you play, if you move, and if you have your being in harmony with your own unique rhythm pattern, then you will live a much more fruitful, creative, joyful, and peaceful life. Then a great deal of harassment and of restlessness will fall off your burdened shoulders. But this requires a consciousness raised specifically to this phenomenon. To begin with, you need to think about this concept. In other words, you need to meditate that it exists. You need to stir up your imagination and then feel into living one day in rhythm, as contrasted with your usual unconscious, rhythmless existence. Once you can visualize this difference, then you can concentrate on it daily and you can ask your personal guidance to help you first to focus on it and then to stay increasingly in your rhythm pattern.

When a painful event in your life still seems utterly disconnected from any personal cause or seems to have no meaning following a comparatively long time of search and work, then it means that something in your rhythm pattern demands that you accept this as a rhythmic phenomenon. True, the rhythmic phenomenon is also determined by the consciousness. That is, by underlying causes within the particular consciousness. But only when the rhythm pattern is respected, is accepted, is adhered to, and is utilized in the most constructive way will the rhythm flow without disturbance and therefore take its natural course. Doubt, rebellion, anger, and the belief in a meaningless universe that makes you suffer are destructive responses to the rhythm pattern that takes place. Therefore, they delay its natural flow. Equally disruptive is the self-rejecting attitude that says: "I am so bad that I deserve to be punished in this way."

A constructive response to a painful event is this: "What can I learn here? What could my response be to this painful situation that would most further my development? If there is anything in my lower self that I am not yet aware of, or that I am not sufficiently connected with, then I want to fully see it. Yet I never want to lose sight of the fact that I am loved by God and that I am His unique expression." This is a positive response that will allow your rhythm to take its harmonious course. Then, in its own time -- often when you least expect it -- new connections will open up. Sometimes they will pour out with such rich profusion that suddenly all your woes will disappear and your suffering will turn into the blessing that it potentially always is.

I say that personal contact with Jesus Christ will help you to live in this harmony. It will also help you to make all the necessary connections. But here, too, the rhythm pattern is at work. You may be completely reconciled to His reality mentally. In other words, you may have used your personal will to make this total surrender and you may sincerely mean it. But you may not have experienced the emotional reality of His sweet and loving presence yet. So you wait for this to happen. Often man becomes impatient and then he begins to doubt, thus disrupting the plant that he has sown. When the emotional experience fails to materialize for a while, then it does not mean that He keeps you waiting. It means that your inner barriers need to give way. That can happen only within the context of your unique, personal rhythm pattern. Remember that and do not despair. Christ is here! He hears you! He loves you! He protects you! He is deeply concerned with you, even though your senses are still too dull to perceive it. The time will come when suddenly you will be intensely aware of this fact. You will feel His loving and healing arms in which you can always rest and find sustenance for your life task.

All doubt is evil. But since evil has no permanent substance, then you can easily dispel it. You need to bring your positive aggression to bear upon it. But this is the opposite of what you usually do. Usually all your aggression is put into the service of your lower self aims. At the same time, you have an apathetic, passive attitude vis-a-vis the good that you desire to receive from life. Incidentally, you are just as passive and just as apathetic when you are enveloped in the negativities that stem from your unpurified self, and which draw evil forces to you. Then it seems much easier to let out all your aggression in a destructive way, and thus to give in to these negative influences. In other words, you do not use any of your aggressive aspects to either dispel them or to assert the positive forces within you and around you.

This needs to be changed. It can be changed. You have both the power and the means to change it. But first you must be aware of this displacement and then you need to put more awareness and a clear intention into straightening out this imbalance. Therefore, visualize yourself taking a firm stand against all thoughts that are negative and divisive in any way. If they seem correct, but they fail to give you a feeling of peace, of love, and of unity -- in other words, if they make you feel disharmonious and uncomfortable in any way -- then you should seriously question them. The fact that you are willing to let in the truth of God -- and not cling stubbornly to your temporary perception of the truth -- will create a shift in your consciousness. The result may not be immediate. But sooner or later you will have less of a tight urge to pursue -- often with undue aggression -- untruthful, and therefore negative and constricting, aims. Visualize yourself questioning your position in every situation that creates disharmony either within you or around you. See yourself doing that in your imagination. See yourself in your imagination always surrendering your position to God's vision of the truth. Often it may not be a question of sharply divided right versus wrong, but the truth may still be different from the way you see it.

When you visualize yourself surrendering to God's vision, then you will find out the truth of any particular situation. You will be enlightened and you will lose a tremendous burden. The relief and the liberation are enormous, especially if you do not have too big of a stake in your egotistical self-righteousness. However, if you feel personally humiliated by being wrong, if you feel personally humiliated by being imperfect, if you feel personally humiliated by having made mistakes, then it will be much more difficult for you to let go of the tight hold of your position.

The reason is that secretly you hold such a low opinion of yourself. The lower this opinion is, the greater must be your stake in some prideful, egotistical, self-elevating, and self-righteous position that, at the same time, creates a projected judgmentalness of others. Please, my friends, remember these words well, because here your personal contact with Jesus Christ is your best solution. Only through allowing yourself first to know of and later to feel His love for you and His total acceptance of who you are now -- regardless of how flawed, of how imperfect, and of how destructive your lower self may be -- will you be able to do the same with yourself. Only then will you trust your ultimate divine nature. Therefore you can afford the luxury, if I may put it in these words, to accept your distortions, your "sins" if you will, without losing the ground under your feet. And that is the healthy position that allows you to reach truth and harmony with yourself, with others, and with life.

Then you can go to the next step. Visualize your aggressive forces being put into the service of your positive aims. You can claim your refutation of negative influences. You can talk to your false thoughts with firmness and with reasonableness. See yourself doing that. Invite Christ to be your assistant in this endeavor. Then claim -- with all the vigor at your disposal, with all the aggression that is beginning to transform from negative aggression to positive aggression -- that you want only the will of God. State that you trust that the will of God will bring you the best that you could ever hope for. Affirm that any distrust of the will of the Highest is a lie that you need to rid yourself of. The more aggression you put into such declarations and into such intents, then the better the seeds will grow in your soul substance.

Your aggression needs to be transformed. Then this will enable you to become who you are meant to be -- who you actually are already on another level of reality. Begin to visualize another picture of yourself. Imagine your real being that is free from all the encumbrances that burden you now. Whether these encumbrances are in your body, in your psyche, in your relationship to others, or in your relationship to the world does not matter. They are all expressions of pain, the pain that you suffer from as a result of some untruthfulness that is contained within your psyche. It is not easy to ferret out this untruthfulness. Sometimes it is on the surface, and therefore it will become clear to you after a slight effort on your part to want to see it. At other times your defensive blocks blot out your own view. But they are obvious to others, who could help you if only you let them. This is why working with others is such an important aspect of this Pathwork -- both in the helper/worker relationship, in groups, as well as in your interactions in your daily life. But then there is also untruthfulness that is buried so deeply that it may take a long time and much trial and error before you can make it rise to a sufficient surface level to be recognized. These are the areas that were not necessarily planned to be taken on in this incarnation. Nevertheless, they were chosen to be tackled by your spirit, provided you have fully completed your task as planned. I spoke about this in a recent lecture (No 255).

Once your untruthfulness is on the surface and you are both able and willing to see it and you confront it, then the moment has come for your aggression to be transformed. This is also the moment when a further visualization can take place. Imagine that your true being -- which means your being that is all in truth -- observes that suffering part of you, the part that is squeezed into a smaller world in which you sometimes appear to suffocate. Your real being is without any shades of untruthfulness, of error, of distortion. In other words, of sin. Therefore, it is in a state of total well-being. There is no pain there. Your true being observes your earth being that has undertaken the task of correcting the distorted part with compassion for your momentary difficulties. But it sees no tragedy, for it knows that all is well and that the temporary suffering must lead to salvation.

SALVATION. That word! There are a number of words which many of you have become allergic to. They are words used in the Bible and in organized religion, words that often have been misused and abused. But these words nevertheless have a true origin that should not be forgotten. The name of Divine Manifestation in human form -- Jesus Christ -- is one such word. Yet, if you heard a description of God as Form, as Personal Helper, as Friend, as Guide, as All-Forgiver, as a Being of translucent light and perfection, then you could accept it. So do not let the word "Jesus Christ" stand in your way. He is the Christ and He was Jesus when He incarnated.

Similarly you have associations with the words sin, hell, evil, and devil. It is true that all these words have been grossly abused. But they nevertheless only indicate the same facts that we now call by different names, such as lower self aspects, negativities, destructiveness, and a painful state of mind.

Now what about salvation? Traditionally the interpretation of this word leaves a lot to be desired. It lends itself easily to misunderstanding, although the more enlightened among religionists do perceive the truth. Salvation means, among other things, Christ's endless forgiveness and unconditional acceptance. It means that you can always find your way back to God, no matter what you have done and no matter what your lower self still wishes to do. The door is always open. Therefore, you are never closed out. All you have to do is to knock. Ask for the bread of God's mercy and you shall receive it. Ask for love and you shall receive it. Ask for forgiveness and you shall receive it. Ask for personal help in all ways and you shall not receive a stone. Ask to know yourself and you shall receive it. Ask to know your lovability and you shall receive it. Ask to know the nobility of your spirit and you shall receive it. Ask to know the beauty of your true being through His redemptive love for you and you shall receive it. That is salvation. All of that -- and much more. God's Personalized Aspect has brought it all about. The incarnated Christ has made it possible for all the other incarnated beings to be saved from their painful state of untruth -- of sin -- and the consequent destructiveness of themselves and of others.

Now let us discuss some aspects of salvation that create a lot of confusion and contradiction among mankind. I would like to give three elements that are necessary parts of salvation. One cannot function without the others. I am now discussing a specific aspect of salvation, namely the salvation of man's personal soul. As I said before, there are other aspects of salvation that go beyond that. To repeat, they have to do with the possibility of every created entity leaving behind the state of consciousness that might be called hell -- or various lesser stages of it. It is a state of consciousness that reflects error, and therefore suffering, the wheel of death and rebirth, which carries with it fears due to a break in consciousness. Christ's demonstration of supreme love, of forgiveness, of mercy, and of acceptance -- due to the deep penetration of His vision into man's ultimate nature -- opened all the doors that were closed to man before. But closed not because God punished man and therefore locked the door, but closed because man was deeply immersed in the false belief that he cannot be forgiven, and therefore that he is doomed to suffer eternally. This conviction, in turn, took away all his incentive to work on any process of self-purification. Where there is no hope, then both the will and the incentive are also lacking. Through the life and death of Jesus, a new modality was created within the mind of man. This new model or way enabled human beings to choose the path which the Master has shown. He said that He is the way, that He is truth, and that He is life. Therefore, it was no longer futile to try. Forgiveness for all your sins -- for every single one of your transgressions -- exists already. This is because God recognizes in much deeper terms than anyone why you are driven as you are and why you must go through your sins in order to recognize them for what they are. Because of Christ man now has an incentive to spur him on to the great journey that you on this Path are already embarked on.

The personal aspect of salvation seems contradictory to the mind that is steeped in the dualism of either/or. Let me cite these three paradoxical aspects.

(1) Only you yourself can affect your own salvation. In other words, it is your responsibility.

(2) You cannot do it alone. You need the help of others who share the journey with you and who often may see what you do not see.

(3) Without God, without the personal assistance of the Personal Aspect of God, the undertaking is too vast for you to accomplish.

These three categories may no longer seem contradictory or confusing to you because most of you have imbibed for a considerable time my lectures about dualism and the unitive principle. You may see quite clearly that none of these categories are mutually exclusive. Yet there may still be some among you who feel a confusion and who ask, "But how could it be that I am solely responsible to do it myself and yet I need others as well as God?" Even for those who are not particularly confused about this concept of salvation, it may be helpful to have some clarity on the subject.

So it is true that your salvation is your choice, your intent, your responsibility, your will, your effort -- and often what seems to be your sacrifice. And at first it does seem like a sacrifice to give up your time and your energy for the undertaking of your self-work. It often seems even more of a sacrifice to shed a habit that stems from your lower self and that gives you some lower self gratification for a while so that higher pleasures can then take root in you. No one else, not even the Creator, can make you do what you do not wish to do or what you do not choose to do. This would go directly against all spiritual law, whose author after all He is.

Often you are too involved in the misperception of your reality. As a result, in your interactions with others you are too blind as far as what is your own part in a negative interaction to be able to set your distorted perceptions right. That is why you need the mirror of others. In order to have a healthy relationship with others, you need to learn to be open to them; you need to learn to give up your pretenses; you need to learn to give up your defenses. In other words, you need to show yourself as you are, with all your vulnerability and with your total inner truth. This is an integral part of your journey toward self-realization. Then you need to learn to receive, even though this may make you feel weak and vulnerable at first, for only then can you give of yourself. You can give many things, but you cannot give yourself unless you are able to receive.

Working with others -- being with them and being open to them -- fulfills the law of brotherhood. I spoke about this many years ago. There are spiritual aspirants who deceive themselves that they can reach the goal by seclusion and by separateness. They have their rationales. But the truth is that they never want to expose themselves to others. Thus, whatever success they have can only be a half measure at best. Therefore, it cannot last because it is not grounded in spiritual reality, as well as in practical reality.

And how could you ever overcome the hurdle of your self-hate that festers underneath all your defenses if it were not for your personal experience of Christ's personal love for you, of Christ's forgiveness of you, of Christ's unconditional acceptance of you, and of Christ's total vision of you? How could you learn to love yourself without first knowing of and then finally experiencing His love for you? How could you activate the power to change your involuntary aspects that do not respond directly to your outer will? The outer will and the outer aspects that respond to it need to be aggressively activated by your dedication to your Path; by the many daily decisions to face the truth in difficult or confusing situations; by your choice to fulfill the law of brotherhood; and by overcoming your initial resistance to show yourself as you are. But then there comes a point in which you deal with involuntary emotions, with involuntary responses, with involuntary reactions, and even with involuntary beliefs that do not respond, no matter how sincerely your outer self wants to change them. So you constantly need the Higher Powers. Therefore, ask Them to help you to find your way into those deeper levels and to affect a change that your mind alone cannot bring about.

All of this teaches you the wisdom to distinguish between where the self is master and where you desperately need the Great Master without Whom nothing can be accomplished.

My beloved friends, take in these words and make them your own. They will enlighten you and they will help you to achieve the state of mind that you yearn for. They will open new doors that will then make a personal experience of Jesus Christ possible for you. When you allow this to happen, then all your doubts about His reality will vanish. Once you have been held in His arms, once you have been consoled and encouraged by His sublime tenderness for you personally, once you have been rocked with all the comfort that only He is capable of giving, then you will never doubt again, although you may lose that feeling experience that needs to be recaptured again and again, until your entire consciousness is filled with Him Who is in you.

His blessings and the blessings of His angels are with all of you. Listen and sense the reality of these blessings. Know that the love of all of us accompanies you at every step of your beautiful Path. Work for the Greater Cause, my friends. Your own cause, that at times may seem selfish, will be furthered through it. Be who you truly are.

February 7, 1979