Image Finding

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings in the name of the Lord. I bring you blessings, my dear friends. Blessed is this lecture. The material world in which you live constantly presents obstacles to you. These obstacles prevent you from seeing the world as it really is. Some of these obstacles are time, space, and motion. In the spiritual worlds time, space, and motion are completely different than they are in your world of manifestation. You have definite periods of time and measurement, invariable and objective. A year, a month, a week, a day, an hour, a yard, or a mile exists independently of personal attitudes. In the spirit world this is not so. The same applies to distance; you have definitely designated directions -- right, left, up, and down. In the spirit world this is not so. I have good reason to mention this. Some of your scientists have sensed and found some of this truth, partly through atomic science, nuclear physics, and also through the exploration of outer space. In the not too distant future the exploration of outer space will be possible for humanity. It will be as commonly accepted as air travel is today. When a pilot sits in an ordinary airplane, he does not need machines to indicate whether he is ascending or descending. He can see that very clearly. When a pilot finally flies through outer space, this will not be so, and you will all come to see in your time that what I say to you to be true. The moment you leave the gravity of this earth plane, you will not be able to determine whether you are going up or down. When the plane ascends, then you will be under the impression that the ship is descending, and vice versa. This has a very significant meaning. For even though you still live in your world of manifestation, when you explore outer space by technical means, then you approach the laws of the spirit nevertheless. So these phenomena should open the eyes of a thinking person.

I have talked to you about the necessity of exploring your soul, particularly in the last lecture. I discussed the inner images, the inner wrong impressions and conclusions that a human entity forms in the course of several lifetimes. I spoke about the importance of finding these images. Only in this way will you be able to understand yourselves, to understand your lives, and to understand everything that has happened to you -- and that will continue to happen to you as long as you have not dissolved these images. As in outer space, so is this true in your own development. Only by going down can you go up. In other words, only by exploring your depths -- the deepest regions of your subconscious mind -- can you develop spiritually, and thus ascend in the true sense. It will temporarily appear as though you are becoming worse, as though you are regressing. Depression is almost unavoidable in the search for what you really are and for who you really are. But think of this analogy, which will soon be confirmed by human science. It is exactly the same when you explore your soul. At first it will appear as though you are going down. But you have to go down into your subconscious in order to reach the liberation and the clarity of absolute truth as far as you are able to perceive it while still in the body.

I promised that I would continue on the subject of image finding. There are a few facts that are important to know for all those who are diligent in this search. For those who still feel reluctant, and for those who merely read these words, what I say here will not mean very much, except to give them more understanding of the principle. It may eventually open the door for the active, personal search that is necessary for complete purification, so that they voluntarily step through the treshold from the darkness into the light. Whoever has not yet started but is willing to start (as I said, it cannot be done alone), I beg those friends to ask one of the persons of the inner group to work with you. Arrangements will be made and guidance will set in. Anyone truly desirous of spiritual growth will find help; of that you can be sure.

When you search for your images, then there are several facts which are important to know beforehand. The first one is that you not approach your subconscious with a moralizing attitude. Your subconscious does not like it, and therefore it will resist you. In other words, it will fight against you. This will make it all the harder for your willing consciousness to come to terms with it. In the course of your development, you have realized the importance of purification and the importance of self-knowledge. You have started to think about your mistakes, about your shortcomings, and about your weaknesses. The same holds true on all levels of your being. And when I say "on all the levels of your being," I mean that there are several layers. There is not merely a conscious layer and a subconscious layer. There are several degrees of consciousness and several degrees of being regarding every conceivable attitude, every conceivable fault, and every conceivable weakness-- as well as concerning your qualities and your strengths. The wrong image -- the wrong inner impression -- exists as a rigid form. It controls both your life and all the happenings in your life. It also consists of the faults that you may already consciously know well. However, you may not know that these same weaknesses exist also on a separate level. If you approach this search with the attitude of self-moralizing, then you will have difficulties. That is why I advised you the last time to start from another viewpoint. Start by thinking about your hurts, your conflicts, and your problems. Regard your wrong inner attitudes as ignorance and as error. Actually, that is what all faults really are. That is the best way to begin. Start by thinking about your idiosyncrasies, about your prejudices, and about your tight emotions in certain domains of your life. Think how you react emotionally to certain things and when and how these reactions repeat themselves in a pattern throughout your life. Begin by viewing your disappointments -- that apparently have nothing to do either with your actions or with your reactions. Afterwards, when you recognize a certain regular pattern, then you will be able to see the connection with your own inner attitudes that until now may have escaped your consciousness. This is the best beginning. Only much later -- after you have made a realization and after you have gained a certain understanding of your inner reactions and their bearing on outer happenings -- will you see that this is actually nothing less than a fault, or several faults that exist on these deeper levels, quite apart from your outer personality.

When you come to the point of realizing that your inner reactions come from a faulty attitude, then there are two possibilities. Each represents an obstacle that is best removed by your awareness of its existence before you come to it. One possibility is that you finally find the same faults that you had recognized already on a superficial outer level. You may even have overcome some of these faults to some degree. It will be all the more shocking to find these same trends all over again. Then you may react by saying: "But I already knew that I had this fault!" Thereby you prevent yourself from the realization that you have come across something quite new, although you are aware of its outward existence. It is necessary that you approach it as something new, in spite of your being familiar with its outer existence. Unless you approach it in this way, then you cannot experience and re-live these feelings; and without doing this, you cannot gain the necessary understanding. When you come across known reactions or known faults in your inner images, then beware of the attitude that you know it lready. You may know it, but it still exists on another level, and therefore it needs the same fresh approach as though you encountered it for the first time. Remember this, my friends.

The second possibility is that you encounter trends that are completely contradictory to the self that you consciously know. Again, this may be a hindrance because you may be tempted to say: "Oh, but this is not so; it cannot be true. I do not have this fault. As a matter of fact, the direct opposite is one of my most significant virtues." Let us take a few examples to make it a little clearer. Consider a person who has a strong sense of responsibility in his outer life. He is known by his family and by his business contacts as being thoroughly responsible. But when he wants to understand his life and his own person and he begins to look for his images, then he may be shocked to find that in a certain area of his being and in a certain way he is irresponsible. Perhaps he is irresponsible in different respects and in different ways from where he is responsible, but nevertheless he is irresponsible. This discovery may cause a reaction of puzzlement that could lead the person to reject this finding as being wrong because it contradicts another part of his being. Thus, he might quickly cover up again that which he was about to bring out of hiding. Or let us take a person who is known to have a great deal of courage. By uncovering certain emotional reactions, certain trends, and certain inner facts, he comes face to face with a part of his personality where he is a coward. This realization may be such a shock, and he may be so incredulous, that it does not make sense anymore. Again, he will say to himself that this cannot be true. He may cite a number of instances where he has proven his courage in many respects, and yet he discovers certain emotional reactions in which he is a coward. So it is important for you to realize that you may find faults in your images that you do not have outwardly. Outwardly you have exactly the opposite reactions, and genuinely so -- not only as a mask. You always tend to think in terms of "either/or." Humanity has learned by now that it is wrong to say that a person is either good or bad. That far you have come. But the same exclusion of "either/or" holds true as well for every individual trend -- either good or bad. If you have this general understanding and if you indoctrinate yourself with this knowledge, then it will be much easier for you to reach the goal. In this way, when you go into the deeper realms of your being, then you will eliminate difficulties that exist because of your ignorance of certain general facts.

Nowadays people on your earth sphere talk about depth psychology. What you are doing is exactly that. But in order to win this battle, you also have to learn depth prayer, depth meditation, and depth thinking. At first you think intellectually in prayer or in meditation. But when you arrive at the findings of the inner self, then you have to go deeper. There are rare moments when you are filled with God and with His laws of truth. This may happen occasionally to you long before you have discovered the deeper levels of your consciousness. This feeling is not something that can be forced by a voluntary act. In other words, it cannot be controlled. It is Grace, my friends. And it will become a more or less permanent state when you cleanse your subconscious of all the falsehoods. What I mean by depth prayer or depth meditation is this. Take everything that you have found out about these repressed or hidden reactions -- whether they concern trends that you find repeatedly or whether you come across different reactions from your known outer ones -- and then think about their significance, think about their meaning, and think about their effects both on you and on others. Compare them with spiritual law as you know it. Think about it both from the spiritual point of view and from the practical point of view. Work with this newly found knowledge by re-feeling it and re-experiencing it. Then think about it again as objectively as you know how. Pray to God for further enlightenment and for more strength so as to change the erroneous reaction in you. You simply shift your thinking to a deeper level and you apply it to the knowledge that you have found, either the apparently repetitious or the shockingly new and different. This may not be easy for some of you to understand, particularly for those who have not yet started on the search. But I am sure that most of those who have advanced in this direction will understand what I mean. It is a subtle matter, but a very important one. In other words, do not leave the newly found understanding alone, for then it may slip back into the same old pattern.

You can easily deceive yourself and think that merely because you have found an important and significant piece of knowledge about your soul that this is all that is necessary. The fact is that you can have the theoretical knowledge and still go right on reacting in the same old way. It is not sufficient to find inner understanding about you hidden trends and reactions if you then just let it go at that. The work only begins after such a recognition. And that is the meditation in depth on the level that you have discovered. If you do not, then you will retain what you have found, but gradually it will become more and more remote. It will remain as theoretical knowledge -- as merely in your brain -- while underneath you go on reacting as before. This is because you have not succeeded in integrating and unifying your erring emotional reactions and your inner conclusions.

Your emotions are more habit-bound than your outer trends. In addition, they are so elusive that they may easily escape your attention, so that in spite of your efforts, your old patterns go right on working. You are so accustomed to shoving uncomfortable knowledge into your subconscious that you cannot get out of this habit from one day to the next. It requires a great deal of training, of concentration, and of effort. New habit patterns have to be established, until you recognize the signs of the hidden trends that must be made conscious. You have to develop a special sensitivity for that -- and that takes time. It is also possible that you go to the opposite extreme, which is just as harmful as the old reaction and just as bound by your image. This may happen because unconsciously you are impatient, and therefore you want to correct your soul tendencies in a hurry and by drastic means. And this is not feasible. This may also happen because you are angry at yourself. As a result, you act in a spirit of defiance against yourself, as well as against the world at large. This procedure is just as wrong as the old established pattern. You merely use a different manner of operation. Beware of these two pitfalls, my friends. The only way to go about it is to work with the understanding you have gained already. You have to do so quietly, patiently, and steadily. You have to accept your temporary inability to react differently because you know that slow growth is the only possible way.

Take the newly found knowledge and view it from various angles. Then pray and meditate on that and not on the outer level on which you have worked before. You may have established a habit pattern for your prayer and for your meditation. This was useful and good while you were in the last phase of your development, but now you have to shift the level. You have to go into a deeper realm.

Another point I want to bring to your attention, which is of equal importance, is that it is a strange phenomenon that everything connected with these wrong inner images causes the person acute shame. It may not even be something that is truly shameful, objectively speaking. There might not be any justification for it, if it were out in the open; and you would not feel that it deserves this reaction if you encountered it in others. After you have had the courage to bring it out into the open, then you will experience for yourself how this feeling of being embarassed and ashamed completely vanishes. But before it is out -- in other words, when you are still struggling with it -- then you will feel this shame very strongly. You may have a fault that is infinitly worse, but by having discovered it a long time ago, you have accepted it, you have come to terms with it and, therefore, you no longer feel ashamed of it. You may even be able to discuss it openly with others. However, something that is a much lesser fault, or a trend that apparently has nothing to do with a fault or with the recognized standards of sin, causes you acute shame as long as you have not come to terms with it. Let us say that you find a strong influence by -- and therefore a dependence on -- one of your parents. This is something that is nothing to be ashamed of, something that is discussed generally every day. You have been unaware of this trend so far. You ignored how much and in what manner you were influenced by it, and how much you are still dependent on similar emotions. Yet, when you first come across this realization, then it causes you this feeling of acute embarassment. This is a typical image reaction. If you realize this beforehand, then you will make things easier for yourself. You will not be under the subjective, emotional impression either that you stand all alone in this world or that you alone have such feelings. For that is what your emotions believe, and therefore why they feel so ashamed. This is the separateness that you have built for yourself with all your wrong defenses, and because of which you suffer in such instances. But if you realize that this is a common fact that everybody is going through -- in other words, that it is a symptom to be expected -- then you will be able to counteract your subjective and fallacious emotional impressions by not giving heed to them, instead of continuing to let yourself be governed by them.

Only by doing this hard work will you free yourself of the separating wall that encloses you in darkness, in loneliness, in fear, in guilt, and in false shame. Only in this way can you evolve as a free person, with your head held up high, instead of being governed by -- and therefore being oppressed by -- your wrong impressions and by your false shames. It only takes a moment of courage to go through that which seems shameful. You do this by facing yourself as you are. That is the only way for you to discover that you have lived in a phantom world of fears and shames that have absolutely no reality whatsoever. Remember that.

Thus you will see that when you go down, then you actually gain clarity and an understanding of the shadows in your soul and of the reason for their existence. When you look at your erroneous emotional conclusions, then you will discover that through fighting your imagined shames and your resistances with the tools of patience, of sound endeavor, and of will power, you will find that in reality this is the only way you can ascend in spirit. Thinking that this apparent descent can be avoided and that spiritual development and growth can still be attained is false. The latter is impossible without the former. To believe that the latter is possible without doing the former is self-deception and wishful thinking. It cannot be done.

QUESTION: You said that all humans were given the same amount of time. Does that mean that time is different to each individual spirit?

ANSWER: What I mean is this. Let us say that you have an hour. An hour will remain an hour, regardless of how it appears to you. This is true whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. You can still measure it and it still remains objectively an hour. Your own impression, what you think and feel during that time, is subjective and has no bearing on the objective hour that has passed. In the spirit world it is exactly the opposite. Objectivity is the validity of the spiritual attitude. Everything else is subjective, every measurement is subjective, any other value is subjective. Is that clear? (Yes, thank you very much.)

QUESTION: I find it very hard to understand that which concerns meditation and prayer in depth. If you have approached a problem already, then how can you approach it on a deeper level?

ANSWER: The approach to the same old problem on a deeper level happens automatically as you go on working. But when you have uncovered it, then you have to think about, you have to meditate on it, and to pray with this new finding all over again. Whether you discover the same trends that you were either fully aware of or partly aware of, or whether you discover some completely new reactions and feelings, you have to approach these findings with a spirit of newness, with a new surge, so to say, with a new outlook and with a new feeling -- where you vibrate in the experience of this realization. And then you have to think about it. Pray with the new material in order to assimilate it properly. Pray that you will be able to integrate it with your personality, so that the latter will become well-rounded. Such new findings usually do not fit into the mental picture that a person has made of himself or herself. It stands out like a sore thumb. In order that these distorted emotions become whole and healthy, one has to utilize these findings by thinking about them in the way I explained in this lecture.

QUESTION: You wanted to talk about the problem of desirelessness and desire versus renunciation.

ANSWSER: On a previous occasion I said that the word desirelessness is one that can be easily misinterpreted, and therefore misunderstood. This is true especially if a person happens to have an image in which he is afraid to live, afraid to feel, and afraid to love. The outer intellectual knowledge that he may gain through spiritual teachings may be an echo for this image and may be used by him as a rationalization and as a justification, something which the subconscious is constantly on the lookout for. With the knowledge you have gained in the meantime, you will understand better why I said at the time that desirelessness has to be approached carefully, otherwise it will do more harm than good. A person with an image as cited here is afraid to face the world, he is afraid to face his feelings, he is afraid to face the unavoidable disappointments. Consequently, he withdraws. Then he uses the word desirelessness as a camouflage and to fit into his image. This is a very common phenomenon. Only he who has no such fear can understand desirelessness and renunciation in its true meaning and not in its distorted one.

Where there is such an image -- and many people have this to a greater or lesser degree -- then the only way you can reach true and genuine desirelessness is to face your fear of life and your fear of love. In other words, it is important for you to risk and to bear the hurts of it first, rather than to try forcefully to prevent yourself from going through this necessary stage of your development. Only after having voluntarily tasted the hurts connected with desire will you grow out of it. You cannot do it by going around it. You cannot force yourself into a state that you have not yet attained organically. This would amount to a lie and even to cheating. As long as you still have desires, then you have to acknowledge this and you have to go through them in order to grow out of them honestly. Only after you have gone through that -- gradually, in the organic growth that spiritual development always is -- will the hurts become less. But they will never diminish because you fear them and you avoid them because you are unwilling to face them. That is be the only way renunciation and desirelessness can be obtained without error and without self-deception. Only each individual personality can be the judge of how useful it is at the present time to meditate about desirelessness. Only when you are completely fearless of hurts and of disappointments is the time ripe -- not before. If you have forced yourself into a state of resignation, then you have chosen this state with the unconscious motive of escaping that which you fear.

This is the only valid procedure there is, namely accepting your state of still having desires and accepting their price. This will be different from the desires of a person who has no spiritual aims. Such an individual will let his selfwill push ahead. Therefore, he will be controlled by his desires. As a result, he will revolt and rebel against everything and everyone who stands in the way of having his desires gratified. But you who are on this path can evaluate these currents, viewing them from a distance and controlling them in consciousness, neither giving vent to all of them nor suppressing their existence. If you listen within yourself and you interpret your feelings, then you will be able to see where your selfwill, where your pride, and where your ego claim gratifications that your higher self deems wrong. He who knows that the purpose of life is not the gratification of the selfwill, or that its sole purpose is not happiness, but that it is given to you to learn both from happiness and from unhappiness, will not give in to the desires of the lower self. If he cannot help it at times, then he will learn an additional lesson from that. Only he who does not escape unhappiness can achieve true desirelessness, perhaps only at a much later period. So therein lies the answer, my friends. And with these words I hope you will not use the idea of desirelessness and renunciation to rationalize away your inner fear of life, your inner fear of love, your inner fear of being hurt. Is that clear? (Yes.)

QUESTION: The next problem is selfishness in prayer.

ANSWER: I have also discussed this on various occasions, but I will do so again, perhaps with a slightly different slant. There are many people who are afraid that when they pray this is merely selfishness. It depends on how you pray and on what your motive is. You cannot say about anything that it is either selfish or not selfish. Unless it concerns crass acts, in all desires and in all attitudes it is your motive that counts, and it always depends on the how. The answer to this is really very simple. If you pray for things because you want them and because it is pleasant, and if that is all there is to it, then it is a selfish prayer. Apart from that, it will do no good at all. For only a spiritual force coming out of your soul will have an effect. Such a prayer indicates a misunderstanding of life, and is therefore an untruth, even though you do not commit a deliberate lie. Nevertheless an untrue thought, innocent and in good faith as it may be, cannot meet with the true forces of the cosmos. Like attracts like, and this law cannot be changed.

One of the first things you learn on this path is to ask yourself about your own motives. In other words, why do you desire a certain thing? You need to ask yourself the why of certain emotional reactions of yours. And if you cannot give yourself an answer, then a good beginning is to pray for the will to recognize yourself fearlessly and truthfully. This cannot be construed as selfishness. Thus you will pray that your motives will become purified. There is certainly nothing selfish if you wish good for other creatures. There is nothing selfish if you can bring yourself to pray for those who have harmed you -- provided you truly mean it. That in itself is a purification. And if you pray for strength and for understanding in order to be able to overcome your own cowardice so as to face yourself and in order to overcome your resistance to develop yourself, there is nothing selfish in that. If there exists a doubt in you that the unavoidable happiness that results from your purification -- of course, after a certain point has been reached -- is in itself a selfish act, then it would seem that it is a higher aim to remain unpurified so as to be unhappy, because this would mean selflessness. In this connection, you must understand that God's laws work in this way: Only he who is happy can give happiness to others. I do not mean a cheap and easily obtainable happiness, but the real thing that comes only by hard labor and that no one can then take away from you. You will never see an unhappy person who can give happiness to others. That is impossible. He may do a certain good deed, a single unselfish act, but he cannot possibly make another person happy.

Therefore, if you are afraid of selfishness because happiness is attained by your purification and by your development -- and this should be your main prayer, apart from praying for others -- then consider this happiness as a byproduct, as a means to an end, and not as the end itself. Even if selfishness -- namely the desire to become happy -- enters a little bit at the beginning of your upward climb, then recognize this, but do not mind it too much. Since you are still not perfect, then this selfish motive is not yet pure. This selfish motive is not as pure as the one stated here, namely the happiness that should be only a byproduct, a means to an end, but it is certainly a step forward in the realization of the truth. Only by purifying yourself can you become happy. The person who has a lower degree of consciousness believes that happiness results from giving in to all the desires coming out of the lower nature. If you are not free from your selfishness -- and scarcely a human being is -- then it is healthier to see this clearly, instead of pushing against it and trying to force it away. In that way it will only hide in your soul and it will cause you more harm than the clear and courageous recognition of its existence. Know that the aim is a higher one, but also know that emotionally you are not there yet. Also recognize that secluded happiness is impossible.

The separating wall in you must fall off. But that is what all of you are afraid of. You feel endangered without it. You do not realize that by keeping your separating wall, you defeat your own purpose and you contradict -- illogically -- your own desire to develop that which exists just as strongly in spite of your fear of it. You all desire happiness and you all desire to give happiness, yet you cannot achieve either one of them without losing your separateness. And how do you lose your separateness? You do this by doing the very thing that seems hardest for you to do. Perhaps it is giving up your pride, perhaps it is going through your apparent shame. When you approach this problem in this way, then you will realize that in a prayer of this kind there is certainly nothing selfish. God wants you to be happy. It is a long tradition of misunderstanding -- an often unpronounced conception -- that to be Godly means to be unhappy and severe. This image is engraved in mankind on the whole. This is supposed to be martyrdom. No, my friends, it is not so. So do not feel guilty if you also become happy. That does not mean that you should pray for happiness. What you should pray for is for the strength and for the ability to first overcome and then to remove the obstacles which you yourself have placed between yourself and your own happiness. This removal must mean to go through the self-inflicted unhappiness -- which wase created by your errors and by your ignorance -- not to shirk it. But at the other end of the tunnel the outcome must be the clear light of peace, of harmony, of beauty, and of the joy that must be yours regardless of other people's actions and deeds. This is the spirit that you should have when you pray.

QUESTION: May I ask why it is so difficult to start praying at all?

ANSWER: Your development does not proceed upward along a steady line, or downward for that matter. It fluctuates. It goes up and down in spirals. Sometimes when you are on a downward curve, then you do not realize that this downward curve is a step higher than the last upward curve that you were on. Although the last upward curve was, on the whole, lower than the present downward curve, every upward curve feels better. You felt an elation and a liberation that you do not feel on the downward curve which you have worked yourself up to now. When you are on a downward curve, then you encounter conflicts, problems, and contradictions that you have not yet solved. These disquiet you, they make you unrestful, they make you fearful -- but only until you have laboriously worked them through and you have understood them, and until you have fitted them into the whole picture as fas as this is available to you now. When this is done, then the upward curve sets in again. Then you enjoy the clear air of another truth that you have gained. But when the downward curve comes again, then you must delve into the darkness of your own confusion and of your own error. And that cuts you off from the Divine Stream. You may over-simplify this by saying: "Things are depressing, I experience unpleasant things. That is why I am cut off from the Divine Flow." You are right, only it is a half-truth, and that is always dangerous.

The unpleasant things that you are experiencing are but a reflection and a necessary effect of the negative cause that you have within yourself, an evil root that waits to be dug out. That is why during such times of being on the downward curve -- and this may vary in length according to the personality and the inner problems to be solved -- the flow is cut off. You are surrounded once again by the strong impressions of the world of manifestation. You can no longer penetrate into the feeling of reality that you have tasted at other times. But this is necessary. To attain another victory demands demands a battle on your part. Every victory means a new upward curve. It is natural that in such temporary periods of darkness you cannot feel God's absolute truth, and therefore that you do not vibrate with it. This cannot be forced by the will. What you should do in these periods is to think clearly and reasonably about your findings in the light of what you know now, although this knowledge at the moment sits only in your brain. So you have to wait until you become filled with this knowledge again.

November, 1958