About The Fear Of Loving

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. I bring you blessings. Blessed is this lecture.

Many of the things we discussed in the last few months have helped you to gain insight into yourselves, proving once again how contrary your unconscious concepts, attitudes, and ideas may be to the conscious ones. When you gain a little more overall understanding about these recognitions, then you will find that, in the last analysis, it is always a question of love. Your desire for love and the lack of it is the result of the child in you. Realizing this fact will clarify in what way you fall short where your conflicts and your misconceptions exist.

As you all know, at least theoretically and intellectually, love is the greatest power in the universe. Every spiritual teaching or philosophy, every religion, even modern psychology proclaims this truth. Love is the one and only power. With it you are mighty, you are strong, your are safe. Without it you are poor, you are separate, you are in seclusion, you are in fear. But this knowledge cannot really help you unless and until you discover where, deep inside yourself, you cannot love; where you do not want to love, and you do not know why this resistance to love exists. Without this knowledge, then this great eternal truth remains a lofty ideal that you cannot possibly apply to your person and to your life right now.

Those of my friends who really work on this Path, who progress in their inner search, after much digging and exploring come across a fear of loving. Those of you who really work constructively have finally become fully aware that this fear exists. And this is good progress indeed. For, without this awareness, the further necessary steps cannot be attained. Again I say, it does not suffice to be aware of it theoretically. You must actually experience this emotion. Most people who do not wish to know themselves are not even aware that this particular fear is in them.

But even you, who have finally become aware of this conflict, do not yet really and fully understand why you are so afraid of it. Yes, you do find some answers, but, again, most of these answers are either theoretical and logical deductions, or they are only vaguely felt emotions. This is not enough. For this reason I should now like to discuss some aspects of this topic. But by no means will this be all there is. We shall return to this basic problem in the future and illuminate it from other angles.

He who cannot love is immature. And immaturity causes unreality. Unreality, being untrue, must perforce cause unhappiness and conflicts, darkness and ignorance. Thus, maturity is really the ability to love. We also discussed that the child in you requires an unlimited amount of love. This child is as unresonable, as void of understanding, as demanding, and as one-sided as all immature creatures are. Its impossible wants are: to be loved by all, to be loved totally, to have every wish gratified instantly; and to be loved in spite of its unreasonableness and its selfishness. In this factor lies the answer to why you are afraid of loving.

Since the child in you desires complete surrender, being so sure that this means love, how can it help but resist total surrender of itself? The child in you makes you wish to reign supreme over those who are supposed to love you, becoming thereby hardly better than submissive slaves.

Then there are times when you become a submissive slave yourself. (This is not to be taken literally, it refers to certain emotional reactions.) This happens if love, acceptance, and agreement from a particular person become so important to you, while seeing that this may not be gratified. In the fear of rejection and defeat such submissiveness seems the only mode of getting your way. Since certain outer aspects of such behavior seem to superficially resemble true love, then it is easy -- when you are in such a dismal state -- to deceive yourself into believing that this is when you truly love.

In other words, you thus create your own inner, unconscious concept of what love is. This parallels the general concept of love as taught in some religions and philosophies, at least in outer appearance. When you submit, then it seems to you that you are being unselfish and that you are offering a sacrifice. It seems to you that the other person is the center of your world. While this is true to some extent, it is not true in essence. For, in reality, it is you who are in the center. Your concern is to bring the other around to follow your will of loving you according to your childish concept. He is required to worship you, to follow your every whim, to give up his self-direction, and to be governed by the child in you who cries inwardly when its wish is slighted. Is it any wonder then that with this unconscious demand in your psyche you are afraid to love? Since your concept -- being unconscious is all the more powerful -- is that love means slavish submission, then you do not wish to love. You do not wish to follow another person's will. You do not wish to give up your self-government, thereby losing yourself in submitting to the rule of another person.

Hence, only when you recognize your own unconscious childish distortion about love will you be able to sense or recognize the childish demands of the other person. You will then be uninfluenced by it, not feeling obligated to give in; nor feeling guilty if you do not. You will see clearly that in such a case another kind of love can be given that has a much more detached character.

When you first discover and then experience the existence of the unfair demands of the child in you, then you can reason with it. You will realize that this misconception of love has nothing whatever to do with what love is in reality. Once you understand that, you will no longer fear to love. For, when you realize that love does not mean giving up your dignity, your self-government, and your freedom, then you will not fear it. If you do not make this demand -- and therefore you find yourself gradually able to love maturely -- then you will expect the same in return. And this way of loving bears no danger. In it you remain free. You do not become enslaved. It is as simple and as logical as that. By giving up your childish idea of what it supposedly is for others to love you, you will not fear to love others.

In this gradual process of growth and maturity you will not come to the point all at once when you experience the great, encompassing love that your soul strives for. For, it is one of the conflicts of your soul that you yearn for it and at the same time you hide from it in fear. The child in you knows only extremes. It is either the great height, the final goal, or it is nothing. The more the ever striving psyche is thwarted in its healthy instincts, the more strongly it will clamor to be heard. This manifests in a vague feeling of discontent. In other words, as of missing something. You do not know what. One part of your psyche sabotages the rightful demands of the other part. Since you are unable to achieve the final summit, then you withdraw altogether. This is due not only to the either/or attitude of the immature part of yourself, but also to the aspect of dramatization in the human soul. If the great drama cannot be, then you withdraw altogether.

In your growing maturity, you will realize that you can only hope to reach the final fulfillment of love by starting on the lower steps of this ladder. Perhaps one of the first steps is the ability of allowing other people to feel about you as they wish. If this inner permission is given genuinely, then you will learn to give up your will without feeling hostile; you will get to the point when you can truly like and respect others, even though they did not submit to your will all the way. This does not sound like much. In fact, many of you may believe that you have been practicing this all along. But have you really and truly? When things go wrong, then test your emotions. As you analyze these feelings and you discover that the child in you is strongly at work within you, then you will have the tool to work with in this particular respect. You will feel an entirely new emotional reaction in you as you learn to give up this subtle forcing current. You will feel as though a heavy burden were removed. Next, you let go of heretofore undiscovered hostility of which you have become aware in this work. As you do this, you will find a new liking and respect for those whose unconditional surrender you unconsciously wished, and whom you certainly did not like or respect when this surrender was not forthcoming. A tight band will have dissolved -- and in this dissolution you will let the other free, liking him and respecting him as a human being, but without having to possess his love and his admiration.

This is a decisive step, my friends. In reality it is more dramatic than anything that can be seen from the outside. This will launch you on the ladder upwards towards the heights that can eventually be yours. But that can never be achieved by skipping this seemingly trivial and undramatic step. In this way you will find it possible to apply the great concept of universal truth about love in your practical everyday life. In other words, right now and right where you stand. This is possible for you now. The final goal is not. For you are not yet able to forget yourself entirely; to never think of yourself; to not have a certain amount of selfishness and a certain degree of vanity. To reach for the final goal with all these feelings present is not only unrealistic, but unfeasible, and therefore would be discouraging for you. But the goal is attainable painstakingly. That is, by diligent analysis so as to learn of your emotions and let them mature gradually. Before you can truly love, you have to learn to like and to respect, even though you do not get what you want. And to do that, you first have to find where you really have not done that deep inside of you.

As I already said, the lofty ideal of love often appears deceptively similar to the wrong, weak submissiveness that poses for love. It is this sham that frightens you, it is never the real thing. But it is impossible to sense the real merely by reading about it. You have to experience within yourself where and in what way you deviate from it by your unpronounced expectations and your demands. If you are truly honest with yourself, then you are bound to find these emotions. This applies to eveveryone, without exception.

As long as the child in you persists in its strong selfwilled current of subtly, emotionally, and unconsciously forcing others to submit, then you construct wishful thinking unreality situations in your expectations. In doing so, you do not permit yourself to see that the condition may not be in accord with the unlimited demands of the child who has built this unreality form. This unreal form is a constant hazard; but you forcefully close your eyes to it, thus never seeing what really is. If you do not see what really is -- if you do not want to see what really is -- then how can you rely on your judgment and on your intuition? Your psyche knows that the way you perceive the other person in relation to you -- or the way you see the situation as a whole -- is not accurate. You do not see because you do not want to see. Therefore, you do not trust your judgment, nor do you trust that the other person will live up to your expectations. Hence, you feel that you do not trust the other person. This is an additional factor that causes you to refrain from wholly loving. For, how can you love as exclusively as you feel you ought to (since you also expect it) if you do not trust the other person? In order to do that, you have to permit yourself to see if this particular person or this particular situation calls for such a response. Or if it would not be more appropriate to give simple respect and human liking. By giving up a little of what you unconsciously want, you would be willing to see what is. With such an attitude you could perceive the reality situation. After that you can discriminate intelligently and you will respect yourself, not only for the ability to give up something you want, in freedom and without hostility, but also because you will thus gain intuition that can be relied upon. By being willing to see what actually is, you can deal with the real situation. Therefore, you will trust yourself, you will trust your judgment, and you will trust other people. In not overestimating them -- out of your forcing current -- you will be able to see, to observe, to sense, and to feel what is true, and not believe merely what you want to be true.

As you learn to trust yourself and to trust others, loving will cease to be a danger for you. But as long as you deliberately remain blind -- because the child in you thinks that by willing something it will be so -- you have all the reason in the world for distrusting your judgment, for distrusting your choice, and for distrusting the other person. Therefore, you shy away from loving all the more, although there seems no danger to you to be loved.

Letting go of the forcing current of the selfwill means that you become objective in your evaluation of others. You learn to give up your will gracefully. Thus you learn human affection and respect for the offender of your will. You refrain from constructing unreality situations which obstruct your view of that which really is. In that way you not only ignore reality, but you reject it. By accepting reality, thus seeing what is, your intuition will become more reliable. Therefore, trust in yourself will increase in the manner that you gain all this.

There is much talk in your time and in your world the term accepting reality. You know that your earth life is not a perfect one and this fact must be accepted if you wish to cope with life and to make the best of it. Up to now this was a general concept. Henceforth you have the possibility of actually applying it to a particular aspect of your inner life. It may be that certain people do not feel about you as you wish, but this apparent imperfection is your reality. Therefore, it has has to be accepted. By doing so a benign chain reaction is set in motion. It replace the vicious circle that existed before.

Intuition is the highest sense perception that man can attain. It cannot be attained to its full potentiality as long as the child in you is undetected, and therefore remains strong. Of course, as long as you are a human being that which you call intuition can never be one hundred percent perfect. But the moment you can say, "I do not know for certain, I may be wrong," then this willingness to learn from your mistakes makes the ignorance harmless because you are aware of it. This, too, is awareness. But if you are unaware of the open question "I do not know," then it is harmful. In the conscious, concise thought "I do not know" lies the possibility first of seeing, then of learning, and eventually of knowing. Intuition will never be a wall that you can lean on with iron-clad certainty. Just because of that, it is so valuable. Think about that, my friends. It is substance for meditation.

When you consciously and deliberately consult your intuition -- free from the forcing current and free from wishful thinking -- then you will sense certain potentialities, as well as certain limitations. The rest may be a question mark. This causes an openness, a readiness for further observation, and a perception that is very fruitful. It is also a sign of maturity, because it is only the immature that must have the entire answer immediately. It is the child in you that cannot bear leaving anything open, anything unanswered, and anything in doubt.

You prohibit your capacity to love due to: (1) the misconception between true love and weak submissiveness because this is what you desire from those who are to love you, and (2) the lack of trust in others because you lack the courage to view the other person as he is and the situation as it is. Both these elements thwart your intuition. It cannot function, at least in these areas of your life. The courage to see what is, rather than what you want, will heighten your intuition, will improve your discrimination, will increase your awareness, and therefore add to your self-respect. It will eliminate uncertainty, so that when the right situation is at hand, then you need not fear to love.

The courage to accept that which may be inconvenient means the acceptance of reality, it means the loss of the fear to love, and it means the cultivation of your intuition in a growing organism. It also means self-respect, trust in others without discrimination, and consequently more reliable perception.

So you see how all this is tied together on one string. Immaturity is fear to love on the one hand and an inordinate demand for being loved on the other. Immaturity is non-acceptance of reality because reality is not always perfect or pleasant. Immaturity exaggerates this imperfection so much that you close your eyes to it, thereby inviting further conflicts. Therefore, immaturity causes a crippled intuition and a crippled creativity. For creativity is unthinkable without intuition. Only as you grow and you learn to first face and then accept that which is -- as it applies to your everyday life and to your emotions -- will you lose your fear of loving. This sentence alone, out of context, would not make much sense. But if you consider it in the light of the links unrolled in this talk, then the meaning will become very clear.

When you think of loving, then you can think of only one kind, the highest and the most perfect. You ignore the fact that there are many stages of love, many kinds of love, many degrees of loving, and many variations of love. In this ignorance you shy away from the kind of love that you could be capable of giving right now. Therefore, when this kind is given to you, then it does not count.

As you proceed on this particular road on you Path, you will begin to function differently as a human being in all respects. Your life experience will become much fuller. You will be alive in each moment. You will be aware of yourself and aware of others as you never knew it possible. Forces will develop in you such as you cannot imagine possible. Creative forces, new perceptions, a growing and unfolding intuition that will give you a stronghold and a security such as you cannot realize, even now after all your progress.

These words are not directed to your brain, but to those aspects of your personality that you have discovered due to your work so far, or that you are about to become aware of. Apply these words to the respective emotions. We shall discuss this from other angles in the future, when the need arises.

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QUESTION: It seems to me that with the new phase a new group of subjects has begun this season. Until the end of last season we were still talking much about images and various aspects connected with them. Now we seem to enter a new phase which I can't put my finger on .

ANSWER: Of course it is a new phase. I even said so before your summer vacation. I said that we shall deal with those elements that prohibit your creative faculties in a more direct way than before. It goes without saying that any prohibition of such creative faculties is due to negative aspects, to deviations, to images, and to misconceptions. So we still have to deal with such elements, but the approach is different in this phase, as you rightly perceive. While in the previous phase we concentrated mostly on details that were eclipsing or prohibitive, in the present phase we are able to put the pieces together, so as to gain a more overall view with regard to love, to maturity, and to creativity. This does not mean that we will not discuss details again. But when we do, then the approach will be different.

QUESTION: I should like to discuss something in connection with the last lecture. In the second part, about the concentration exercises, you repeat the term "instructing the subconscious." I was wondering if this idea of instructing the subconscious is not in some way a paradox and may not lead to forcing the subconscious, instead of allowing us to realize what is in it. I am sure it is not a paradox, but in what way is it not?

ANSWER: The question is a good and constructive one because it is easy to go from one wrong extreme to the other. The best way to sense the right way of going about it is this. Do not use such instructions as a force, but as the expression of your inner will. When you realize that certain of your emotions cannot function in the right way yet, then you may express the desire that they should learn. This desire should be uttered without pressure and without haste, but rather with a calm quality, in the realization that emotions do not learn quickly. Moreover, an importan part of such instructions should be for you to affirm that you wish to become aware of where, in what way, and why your emotions still deviate. State that you want to have a growing awareness of where you are still confused. State that you want to become aware of what your inner, unanswered questions are. And, last but not least, express your intention to give up all your resistance to facing yourself fully, honestly, and without restrictions. In this way, you do not superimpose right reactions on still deviating emotions, and thereby you avoid the pitfalls of self-deception and of self-suggestion.

Prayer, if rightly understood, operates in a similar way. When you pray, you should ask for help to be able to face yourself; you should pray for strength; and you should pray to be able to understand the problem you are currently dealing with on your Path. You should pray to be able to apply the little, seemingly insignificant daily disharmonies to your work on the Path so as to gain deeper insight into yourself. By the same token, you may direct these desires into your subconscious, thereby strengthening the healthy aspect of your psyche and weakening the aspects that are unhealthy, childish, and resistive. After all, you do know that God lives deep down within yourself. In other words, I assume that when you pray you do not direct such a prayer up into the sky but deep into yourself. So there really is not a big difference between prayer and such instruction. It is a slightly different approach. Whereas a prayer is directed towards that part of yourself that is most deeply hidden from your conscious mind -- that which you might also call the superconscious, or the supraconscious, or the divine spark in you -- the instructions are directed to a part that is more accessible to you.

Such instructions deal foremost with the wish to face yourself, with the wish to understand yourself, with the wish to assimilate, and with the wish to see where your emotions still deviate due to a lack of understanding. This desire should be formed with a quiet calm and without tense urgency. It should be kept in mind -- and accepted beforehand -- that change and growth are a slow process.

QUESTION: With regard to the last lecture, and relating to the lecture on "The Abyss of Illusion," you say: "You are the master of your life and of your fate. No one but yourself creates your own happiness and your own unhappiness." Again, in the lecture on "The Abyss of Illusion" you state that "this basic spiritual truth has been obscured and for good reason." You go on to say that "humanity in its development is required to reach a certain basic spiritual understanding before it can use this knowledge in the right way, for misunderstood it could indeed be very harmful." Could you clarify this statement for us? I think it might be helpful for us now, in the light of the last lecture. It seems to me that it represents a great step forward to the individual and to humanity, and it could begin a whole new cycle of spiritual development for the individual in society. For science and philosophy could find unity in spiritual law -- and to that end a positive perception of our being in God.

ANSWER: One of your questions seems to ask what the danger of such knowledge, and the resulting misconceptions, would be for a humanity that is still not ready spiritually. Let us go into this first. Since man ignores both the existence and the power of the subconscious mind, he will take such knowledge on a superficial level. This can be dangerous in two ways. If one believes that one creates his own fate and if such a person somehow -- due to certain circumstances and to conditions whose true origins he ignores -- comes to possess certain power, then he would be likely to abuse such power on the ground of this premise. On the other hand, people who do not have such power would feel extremely frustrated. Therefore, their sense of inadequacy would grow. By exploring the significance of emotions which heretore they were unaware of, they would acquire an understanding of the inner world, of its laws, of its reality, and of the interplay of cause and effect in human relationship within this inner world of emotions.

Therefore, in order to understand the truth of this fact -- that man creates his own fate -- self-search, the exploration of the subconscious mind, is a necessity without which humanity cannot grow sufficiently to make use of cosmic, spiritual, universal truth. If such truth is half understood -- and therefore half digested -- then it can be dangerous and it can lead to damage for the indiviual, as well as for mankind as a whole.

The growing trend in your time of accepting the existence of the subconscious and of its exploration is indicative of the steadily-increasing general development -- despite the pitfalls, the misunderstandings, and the half-truths that go with it. This is part of the growing pains that every living organism goes through. As this general growth and this awakening continues, then mankind will perceive reality more and more, the reality of the inner universe, thus understanding the universe with all its spiritual laws on a more general basis. Only in perceiving the inner universe -- with all its infinite possibilities, with logical and just laws operating both within man and between himself and his fellow creatures -- can he truly sense God and His creation. Thereby unity will be achieved -- slowly, laboriously, step by step. This will be the common denominator that will unite all existence, all religions, as well as all the branches of human knowledge, which are functioning separately at this time.

QUESTION: I have been thinking about these things and I should also like to know whether the persistent effort of humanity so far was in order to justify its existence and whether humanity's creativeness was towards that end. In line with your answer, this creativity abides with the spiritual perception of your remark about removing the bonds that prohibit creativity so that the soul can freely express itself in accordance with spiritual law. If we are, in the highest reality, one in mind with God, then we will truly have self-responsibility. It seems to me, in contemplating "The Abyss of Illusion" and what you have been saying about love and creativity, that our responsibility lies in the acceptance of the re-expression of that love and creativity, which has its source in God. In this regard, the attainment of self-mastery... there is a confusion here, I cannot express it.

ANSWER: Could you clarify where the confusion is? It would be helpful for yourself to clarify where the confusion lies. In addition, I cannot answer your question unless I know what it is.

QUESTION: It is about self-responsibility. Certain philosophic fixations we seem to have, which include both a fear of loss and a fear of the unknown. This, again, ties in basically with love and trust, as you mentioned before. I can now see how it ties in and this will answer it...

ANSWER: The fear of the unknown is a very important element in most human beings, to some extent in every human being. But the unknown becomes known as you actually experience all the things that I have been telling you in these lectures. This means a very serious effort in self-search. It is not enough to read these words. It will never do anything really substantial, except perhaps to serve as an incentive to begin, unless you experience all the emotions that we mention here as living within your soul. When you do so, then the unknown becomes known. And where it remains unknown, then it will lose its ability to frighten you because now you can admit to yourself, "I do not know." And that makes an enormous difference.

In the realization of all this, then self-government will cease to be a "must." It will be a privilege and a freedom, whereas the child in you rejects it as an unknown danger.

Out of this same fear of the unknown man makes a fixation out of true concepts, thereby diminishing their truth. It was significant that you put it in these words. Truth is flexible. By its very nature it cannot be fixed. Therein lies a significant misconception. Nothing that is true can be rigid, static, or fixed. It is always flexible. This flexibility appears as a threat to man. He wants the fixed pseudo safety of a stone wall on which he can lean. This tendency has caused religion to be distorted into dogma. It satisfies this irrational, unfounded fear in the human soul. Man thinks that what is fixed is safe and that what is flexible is unsafe. Since truth is alive, then it must be flexible -- just as with anything that is alive. So man fears truth, man fears light, and man fears life. This unreality -- that flexibility is unsafe -- is one of the great abysses of illusion. As you proceed in this work, you will find that this particular fear also exists in you. In other words, that you also cling to the supposed safety of the fixed rule. You seem to feel that you can lean on that wall. It seems like a strong support, while -- as you will perceive later -- it is not so. And therein lies the confusion about self-responsibility. When leaning on the fixed rule, then the responsibility is shifted to the rule. When you realize that there is no such thing, then you are frightened, because you have to determine each time anew both what your conduct and what your attitude are going to be. With the flexible truth, then the responsibility is automatically shifted onto yourself. When you no longer fear self-responsibility -- due to the loss of your self-contempt and to the loss of your mistrust of yourself -- then you will no longer fear the flexible universe. You will not need to cling to the fixation -- to a rigid law. You will see the flexible law working, and it will not be a danger to you. The inflexible or fixed rule or law is for the child that either cannot or dare not assume self-responsibility. In this respect, the fear of the unknown is really the fear that says: "Will I be able to cope with it? Will my judgment be adequate? Will my reactions be right? Will I make a mistake? Dare I make a mistake?" In other words, not knowing yourself is the deepest fear of the unknown. As you lose this fear, then you will not fear self-responsibility. Thereby, you will not fear the truth of the flexible law and of the flexible universe. Nor will you fear life, which is flexible all the time. And in its very nature of flexibility, in the final analysis, is is unchangeable, yet never static.

QUESTION: The word "fear" has come up a number of times this evening. And you used the word "irrational and unfounded fear." This leads me to believe that there must be a rational and a founded fear. We are taught here, for example, that fear has a negative connotation and stands for a destructive emotion. And then we read in Scripture that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." And also, in Zohar (The Book of Splendor) there is a comparison of "love and fear of God on the wings of a bird." I wonder if you could speak a little about these two kinds of fear.

ANSWER: There are two distinct questions, and therefore two distinct answers are required. The first about the rational fear versus the irrational fear. If you are in some kind of danger, then your reaction of fear is healthy. It is like a signal giving you the opportunity to do something about it, to save yourself from danger. In other words, it is constructive rather than destructive. Without the danger signal, then you would be destroyed. This is decidedly different from the psychological, unhealthy, destructive fears that we generally discuss in our work.

As to the fear of God, this has absolutely nothing to do with the healthy protective fear we just discussed. Any reference to the fear of God in Scripture is due to translations on a wrong and superficial level. But the deeper reasons why such wrong translations could occur in this particular connection have to do with man's God image, as well as with the fear of the unknown. On the one hand, he needs the strong authority of the fixed rule so as not to be self-responsible. On the other hand, the result is an unhealthy fear. This always happens when maturity and self-responsibility have not yet been attained. Whether you fear an avenging God, life, other human beings, or yourself, it is all the same.

There is a misunderstanding about certain terms. In reality the word fear means something quite different. It could perhaps best be described with the words honor or respect. It is the respect paid to the highest intelligence, to the highest wisdom, and to the greatest love that is conceivable. In this unlimited greatness all beings have to be in awe -- but never in fear. In coming across such wonder, one cannot help being in awe. It surpasses all understanding. That idea is conveyed in the erroneously translated word fear. But it is not meant that way. Is that clear?

QUESTION: It is clear. I should like to add a thought that is related and which supports what you have said. In the Cabbalistic teachings pertaining to the word given to us as "fear," the Hebrew word is Y(I)R(A)H. This word ties in with the ninth of the Ten Sephiroths (Emanations), which is indicated as "Foundation." This is the turning point where involution ends and evolution begins. Here is the start of the upward turn towards God. The awareness of God is the beginning of wisdom.

ANSWER: Yes, that is true. Is there any other question?

QUESTION: What is the psychic law operating between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind? Is there a strict dividing line and what is the law operating that something is down and something comes up?

ANSWER: There is no strict dividing line between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. In this work you may have noticed that you often expect to find recognitions that were completely unknown to you, although this happens occasionally also. But you know that what you now find as a new recognition, with a new understanding of its significance, was not really new. You merely had looked away, but it was always there. It was in a region somewhere between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. There is no strict dividing line. Rather there is a fading transition, so to speak. Imagine the entire personality, the psyche, or the mind -- both conscious and unconscious -- as a rounded form. The more evolved and developed a person becomes, the more is this form free of haze and of fog. The less developed a person is, the greater is the part that is fogged up. That which functions consciously is a smaller area. Spiritual philosophies and teachings use the term raising of the consciousness. It means exactly that. If you visualize such a form, then you can imagine that as the consciousness is raised, it comes out of the fog of unconsciousness. Gradually the haze recedes. As a result, you become more conscious of yourself. Since the universe is in you, and since you are a universe unto yourself, then the univeral consciousness can be gained only by this process of self-finding, through which you lift the fog. You cannot gain it by concentrating on things that you learn with your brain alone. That may be valuable, it may prove a tool for this work of self-finding -- which is the process of making the fog recede so that the part which was unconscious becomes conscious.

What determines the fact that things are hidden or known is, broadly speaking, one basic element: your will to face reality, your will to face yourself, your will to change, and your will grow in the face of all the passing, seemingly unpleasant consequences.

QUESTION: Does patience hinder ambition?

ANSWER: Patience -- if it is really just that and not a distortion of it, as for instance inertia -- cannot be a hindrance to anything. People often make a virtue out of a fault. Thus, those who are inert may deceive themselves and think thay they are patient. Those who are impatient may deceive themselves and think that they are active and energetic. So it is always a question of finding the real trend or the real emotion. However, no asset can ever be detrimental. But impatience will hinder ambition, because impatience is a form of immaturity. It is the child in man that wants everything, not only according to its own will, but also right now. The child cannot wait. As I explained the last time, it is the child who lives only in the now -- but in the wrong way. It does not feel the reality of the morrow. Therefore, it thinks that what is accomplished now does not count, that it has no reality. The mature being can wait. He realizes that if the desired goal is not accomplished right now, then there must be reasons. Some of those reasons may be in the self, so that the time of waiting is constructively used in first finding and then eliminating those reasons. The time that one has to spend waiting will be used in gaining the necessary -- but still lacking -- insight, ability, or understanding. So patience, if it is really that and not inertia or inactivity, is something purely constructive. Therefore, it can only be an advantage. True patience will always know how to discriminate. At one time, just waiting will be indicated; at another time, action will be right. But patience will also prevail during the times of most concentrated activity, because patience is really an inner state. Therefore, it has nothing to do with the outer manifestation. The person who acts can be inwardly patient. The person who is completely inactive outwardly may be in an inner state of impatience. Is that clear?

QUESTION: Yes, thank you. I would like to hear a definition of patience.

ANSWER: Many definitions are possible. But in the frame of our discussions now, I would like to put it this way. Patience knows that one cannot always have exactly what one wants when one wants it. Patience is not hindered by the pressure, the tension, and the anxiety of the soul. If you analyze that impatience -- and you will find this to be so not because you should accept my words but through your experience of the emotions -- then you will notice that when it is felt, then is accompanied by such feelings of tension, of anxiety, and of inner pressure. All of these are based on a feeling of inadequacy and are connected wih the sense of "I will not be able to accomplish this," whatever "it" is. That is impatience. Hence, patience can exist only in the personality who is secure, who is mature, who knows his limitations, and who trust in the self because he also knows his potentialities. The state of maturity that is our aim will bring, among many other assets, patience.

QUESTION: I would like to go back to the question that was asked about fear and the mismanagement of instinct in that regard. The instinct is natural to us in the normally functioning human being. Would you comment on the mismanagent of instinct in that regard?

ANSWER: It is connected with the question of trust in the self that we discussed before. If you thwart your instincts due to the deviations under discussion, then you do not trust them. You have often found that your fears were unjustified. As a consequence, you ceased heeding them when there would be good reason. Then you are all the more engulfed in fear, never knowing when to trust your intuition or your instinct and when not to. As you cease being fear-ridden for unrealistic reasons, then when fear does come up you will question it intelligently, instead of burying it.

The last lecture, as well as this one, should furnish quite a lot of material for your further work, and also for questions and discussions.

Be blessed all of you, my dear ones. May you find the way to realize maturity and love by finding where, how, and why you are not mature now and you do not love now. May you find the courage to free yourself of this unnecessary burden of fearing love and of fearing life. Go in peace, my dearest friends, be in God.