Self-Confidence: Its True Origin And What Prohibits It

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. I bring blessings for each one of you. Blessed is this lecture.

The subject will be self-confidence. What is self-confidence? When your real being, your real self, your intuitive nature manifests, then there is no uncertainty in you, no doubt about your right action or your right reaction. Therefore, there is no wavering. Your instant and spontaneous reaction is of such a nature that you know, deep down, "this is right, this is so." That has happened to all of you, at least occasionally. Under certain circumstances your real being could express and manifest itself, unhampered by the disturbing layers that usually cover your real self. Whatever the occasion, you lived up to it. You coped with it in the only way possible, and you knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that this was so.

The truly healthy and mature human being nearly always reacts this way. When this occurs, then genuine self-confidence is automatically established. For it is only when your intuitive nature guides you that you can trust yourself. From this part of your being you have nothing to fear; from the overlayers of error, illusion, and compulsion you have. They can only lead you into further illusion and error, and therefore into unrest.

The ultimate aim of this work of self-search is to free you from the superimposed layers so that your real self can take the reins and govern your life. Thus it is easy to see that your conflicts, your images, your misconceptions and your inner problems prohibit your real self from manifesting. At this point we have to understand the basic cause of the problem.

In the course of the work you are doing, you may have often wondered: "Where is my real self? What is it?" And you think of this real self as though it were something remote that can only come to the fore after you search for it in faraway places -- within yourself, of course. It is a mystery to you, you are slightly awed, and you somehow imagine that the real self is something utterly strange and new. Therefore, you fear it just a little bit. But nothing could be further from the truth. You know your real self. You have nothing to fear from it. It is not far away. In fact, it is close by, right under your nose, so to speak, only most of the time you do not realize it. You make no use of it and you prefer to express the other self, which you have become used to, but which is not the real you. It consists of the compulsive drives and impulses which you unconsciously think you have to express in order to be happy, or just in order to survive. Whatever comes from this level does not express your real feelings. Your real feelings come from your real self, which is right underneath that tense, compulsive, emotional behavior pattern. Once you stop believing, as you unconsciously do now, that the compulsive drive is necessary and use your real feelings instead, then your intuitive nature will emerge.

After some constructive work is done and some valid insights have been attained, you are bound to become aware of this compulsive current and feel it distinctly, almost as a separate "foreign substance" within yourself. You will then understand that all your wrong conclusions and images are a product of this current, which I have also called the forcing current. It is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about life.

In order to get a comprehensive view of the subject, it is necessary that I repeat certain things I have discussed before. I would also like to point out that a few of my friends have already found within themselves what I discuss here. For them my words will not be new, but they will fortify their own findings, bringing them into stronger focus. Others, who have not found this current -- or perhaps only small areas of it -- and still do not realize what a fundamental aspect this is, may be helped by these words to arrive at the point that is so necessary for them in order to obtain freedom, to lose their inhibitions and uncertainties, and to allow the real self to emerge. But, again I emphasize, mere intellectual knowledge will never bring you freedom.

What causes all your conflicts and all your deviations is your desire to be happy, or to be loved. Being loved is a necessary requirement for being happy, and therefore constitutes a major part of your compulsive drives. There exist subdivisions, such as the desire to be approved of and admired. This may take the place of your desire to be loved; it may also be an additional factor. There is also a second aspect. The child in you imagines that you can only be happy if your will is done. At times this may simply mean that your will is to be loved and admired. At other times you may feel unhappy if your dear ones have shortcomings that you disapprove of, or if their opinions vary from yours, or if you are prohibited from pursuing a certain aim. The child in you thinks that this prevents your happiness.

So you emerge from childhood with this rarely conscious conviction: "In order to be happy, my will has to be done." As long as you have not recognized this hidden conviction, you cannot arrive at the liberation you desire. The more your intellect conflicts with your hidden emotions, the more difficult it will be to unearth this deep-rooted misconception which creates a tight, tense current -- the forcing current. It creates constant struggle, constant tension and constant anxiety. The more unaware you are of it, the more potent it is within your psyche. You unconsciously feel that getting your will is a matter of life or death. Not to get it represents the abyss; not to get it spells annihilation for you -- unconsciously, of course. This fear is so strong that you often do not permit yourself to admit that you have not gotten your will: you try to pretend that what you really wanted is no longer desirable. This is not merely pride, but it is based on the misconception that not getting what you want means terror, darkness and unhappiness.

Simultaneously, the evolving conscious part has realized that you cannot always get what you want, and this creates an additional element of conflict. Your psyche seeks ways to overcome the threat of not getting your will. But since the means are sought unconsciously rather than in the light of awareness -- and since they are sought under the misconception that getting your will and being happy is one and the same thing -- these unconscious strivings are not only inefficient, but they bring further conflict.

On the one hand, these inner strivings are directed towards finding fulfillment. On the other, you are in constant fear of not succeeding, and you unconsciously labor to hide the "failure" from yourself. Thus a current is set up flowing in two directions. One calls for your pushing ahead, trying to force life, trying to force people, and trying to force circumstances to succumb to your will, to conquer the reality in which everything cannot go according to your desires. There are various ways in which you try to do that. Often you choose several ways at once, never realizing that they are mutually exclusive and would defeat your purposes even if it were possible to always get what you want. This is why you often have much less than life would actually grant you, creating the preposterous situation that the means employed to always get what you want cause you to actually get less than you would have without this struggle.

The second direction of this current concerns your fear of not getting what you want, or the conviction that you never willl. It causes you to adopt means which are so defeatist and negative that, again, you saborage that which you ordinarily would have.

Both the underlying belief that either you must always get what you want or that you can never get it, as well as the various means by which you try to force or defend against these wrong conclusions, are unreal. All the impulses and drives which you employ in their service are equally unreal, imaginary, and therefore ineffective and damaging. They are the superimposed layers which cover your real self. Your real self functions in reality. It cannot manifest in a self-created world of illusion, in a world based on wrong assumptions. That is why whenever your intuitive nature manifested in your life, and you experienced a deep and peaceful certainty, at that moment you must have been free of the forcing current.

Your real self and your real feelings are the same as creation, as God, as life, as fate, as the cosmic life force, as the stream of life, as reality. In reality you are not unhappy if you do not always get your will. In reality you are not unhappy if everyone does not love you. In reality you are not devastated if everyone does not admire you. In reality you are not miserable if others do not always agree with you. In reality you are not lost if others have faults that you cannot tolerate. It is not true that that you can never get what you really wish. It is not true that you can never be loved. It is not true that you can never be respected. It is not true that life is hostile to you. It is not true that the world is against you. It is not true that others prohibit you from unfolding the best you have to offer. You do not have to fight nor do you have to retreat and to withdraw so as to avoid the dangers of life. You do not have to beg, you do not have to cry, you do not have to submit, and you do not have to sell your soul in order to get what you want, although unconsciously this is constantly being done. Nor do you have to defend yourself against constant defeat -- another supposed fact of life that your subconscious often takes for granted. Your real self knows all this. But as long as you repeat your useless struggle, it cannot evolve. In your world of unreality unreal and untrue impulses must function. They can no more function in reality than real feelings can in a world of unreality.

Is it surprising then that you lack self-judgment? Your innermost self knows perfectly well that on this level you cannot trust yourself. Such trust would not be justified, for the superimposed layer, based on untruth, can only lead you to unsatisfactory pseudo solutions. Only if you free yourself of the idea that you always have to get your will in order to be happy will you be free of the "I want" current. And only when that is gone will you operate on the level that is real. You will know that happiness can be yours, but not always "the way you want it and when you want it." In reality it does not make you unhappy to wait and to occasionally give up. This unhappiness is an illusion.

If you are in harmony with the stream of life, giving yourself up to it, then whatever comes your way will carry you smoothly forward. While you are in unreality, you know only two alternatives, which are both equally wrong. The one is: "I can be happy only if everything happens the way I want it and when I want it." The other alternative is: "Since I have seen that so many times I cannot get what I want, then I can never get it. Therefore I can never be happy." You operate on a level of illusion, and where there is illusion, or untruth, there must be constant uncertainty, constant tension, constant anxiety, constant struggle and constant doubt. Something in you feels deeply that you have nothing secure to hold on to. And, in a way, you are right: as long as you remain in illusion, you cannot hold on to reality, which alone is secure. The only safe stronghold is the constantly flexible truth of the life stream, which is eternally independent of small wish fulfillment.

If you cannot trust yourself, then you cannot trust life, you cannot trust the world, you cannot trust God. So once you have established this inner reality by removing the untrue premise and taking leave of it forever, you are bound to trust yourself, and therefore to trust the life stream. Only then will you realize how this stream provides you with exactly what you need at each stage of your life. You will give yourself up to it, since it and your real self are one. This does not mean a fatalistic, passive attitude in which you wait without ever doing anything. It automatically creates the right balance between activity and passivity.

Those of you who have encountered the tense nucleus which loudly claims, "I want," will feel my words inwardly; you will derive a deep understanding from them and they will give you a new outlook. Those of you who have not yet found this nucleus will do so sooner or later, if you persevere in this work. Find the harsh, tense, rigid, and at the same time wavering, current of "I want." Find also the means you resort to in order to either get it or to "protect" yourself from the horror of not getting it.

I have often mentioned certain attitudes which I will repeat in this connection. So far, you may not have understood that these attitudes are the result of the forcing current. One of them is submissiveness. In this submissiveness you cling to others and you hope for their love. In order to obtain it, you forsake your own self and your own opinions, and you do not stand up for yourself. You always put yourself at a disadvantage, losing your dignity and your self-respect. All this is covered with the rationalization of unselfishness, of sacrifice and of your ability to love. In truth, you just use the forcing current in the most blatantly self-centered way. You simply try to make a bargain and you say: "If I submit to you, then you must love me and do my will." Although outwardly you appear meek and flexible, inwardly the very opposite is the case. It is necessary that you find this aspect in you, no matter how hidden. It is also necessary that you understand it. Submission must never be confused with love. It may look similar, but the inner content is very different. When you try to appease the other person, you want something. In fact, you grab for it, not waiting for it to be freely given to you. The stronger the submisiveness, the stronger the forcing current, which expresses your desire to get your way.

There is another attitude, often chosen when people are more inclined to be hopeless of ever getting from others what they consider necessary. The only hope they see is in using all their power, all their selfish and ruthless drives in order to defeat the enemy who always stands in their way. They become hostile because they think that the entire world is hostile and therefore that aggression is the only means of getting the happiness they desire. Needless to say, the opposite effect is the result. They are bound to antagonize people, so that these actually do become hostile to them. This only strengthens their wrong conclusion. They do not see that they themselves have caused this condition and that they are constantly aggravating it. This can be so hidden that at first it would seem impossible to trace. In fact, often the stronger the hostile attitude is, the more it is covered up. It is also possible that this attitude exists only in isolated parts of the personality. It may take a great deal of self-search and analysis of your real reactions, going to the roots of their significance, until you find the existence of this attitude. When you find an attitude of battling in fear against annihilation, for instance, then you can be sure that this trend must exist within your psyche. In other cases, such a fear may be so unconscious and it may apply only to certain aspects of your life, while in a larger part of your personality you feel at ease with the world that, again, it may be difficult to trace.

While a submissive person is obviously dependent, the one with such a hostile attitude deceives himself into believing that he is independent, standing alone and fighting alone, never bending to the will of others. They never realize that they are just as dependent as the submissive type, only they choose different means to pursue the conviction that they must get what they want in order to be happy. Their way is to reject emotions, affection, and what they consider to be softness. To them all this represents danger. Instead of real or false positive emotions, they will manufacture a hardness and an aggressiveness inside themselves that is no more real than the submissive kind of love.

Another way of coping with the basic will to be happy is the attitude I have so often called withdrawal. In this case, people are convinced of never attaining happiness. And this seems to be such a tragedy that they protect themselvs by pretending that they do not want anything from others, from life, or from the world. They withdraw into isolation, thereby never experiencing the dreaded defeat, and never realizing what a dreadfully poor bargain they have made with life. They may protect themselves from disappointments and failures, which would not hurt half as much as they now imagine, but they would experience much happiness and joy which they think they do not miss, whereas now they vegetate without any real life experience. Although a person with this predominant attitude may appear more cheerful and well-adjusted than another, deep down there is a greater hopelessness. Otherwise such drastic means would not have been resorted to.

All this is not new to you, my friends. I have pointed out many times that a combination of all these aspects exists in most people, which creates additional conflicts in the soul. If a person resorts to several means, hoping to be fully guarded without risking anything, then he will be pulled into opposite camps.

Still another way of coping is to cripple your real feelings. This also happens with the three attitudes described before. But in this attitude -- which does not necessarily exclude those already mentioned -- you never allow your feelings to function freely or naturally. You either whip them artificially into a more dramatic state, exaggerating them for reasons that seem to you expedient. The expedience is, of course, another way of forcing the other person to love you and to obey you. It sets up a sort of obligation to the object.

Or else, if you fear defeat, then you do not allow either your intuition or your real feelings to guide you and to carry you safely through the stream of life. Instead, you artificially cramp, prohibit, and squash your natural feelings. Maybe your real self would cause your real feelings to recede, too, in a particular instance. But this is a very different procedure and has a very different effect on your personality than the artificial manipulation has, even if the goal is the same. At other times, the goal may not be the same and what you do based on your limited view is not only unnecessary but damaging. Your real self knows. Trust it. Your superimposed compulsive behavior pattern is completely blind. Even if by chance it may occasionally pursue the same goal as your real self would, it matters very much out of which level you operate. The one is haphazard. It may be either right or wrong, but you remain unsure. It is an unnatural, forceful procedure. The other is in harmony with your nature and therefore with your life. Hence, whatever happens is organic and right. If it is right for you to feel for someone, then you do not need to increase your emotions artificially. You will feel as strongly as you should feel if you allow your personality to develop freely. This cannot happen with all the deviations and the basic false premise you depart from.

In this artificial manipulation, you prevent your soul from growing in harmony with your innermost self. You prevent your innermost self from evolving. You prevent your feelings from maturing and from manifesting. You may not be aware of all this, but in the course of this work you will find it to be true. Some of my friends have done so already. It is important to understand the implications of the artificial manipulation of your feelings: either making them bigger or making them smaller than they are. The negative result is that you prohibit the growth of a living organism, for feelings are that. Any living organism not left alone but constantly manipulated will suffer a very crippling effect. This is what you do with your real feelings. You do so when you either exaggerate or dramatize a positive feeling about a person. And you do so when you talk yourself into resenment and contempt for a person because you believe that this is protection against the tragedy of being rejected. So, finally, it is not surprising if you no longer know what you really feel, what you really want, and who you really are. Your feelings are the expression of your being. If you constantly prohibit your real feelings from functioning and you substitute artificial ones, then you cannot know them, and therefore you cannot know your real self.

There is only one way to find the real self that you are so ardently looking for in your work. First, become aware of the forcing current, this current of "I want" on the one hand and "I fear that I will not get what I want" on the other. Once you are clearly aware of how this current manifests in you, then you will be able to let go of it. And only then can you give it up. If you do that again and again, then soon you are bound to become aware of the feelings of your real self which slowly rise to the surface after you have banned them in fear for such a long time. You did not trust them, and therefore you could not trust yourself. You can reverse that process only by first becoming aware of and then removing that element which you substituted.

You will be able to distinguish between the real feelings underneath and the compulsive manipulations, drives, and impulses which you confuse with your real feelings. The real feelings are calm. They do no mind being patient. When they express themselves, then there will be no doubt, no wavering. Since they are one with the stream of life, they wil carry you in the right direction and you will have no doubt, provided you are willing to trust them.

How can you have self-confidence if the only thing that can truly give it to you -- your real self, your real feelings -- is not allowed to function and if you instead use substitutes that leave you in a state of inner frenzy? Those who are outwardly calm and well-balanced are not necessarily free of this aspect. In fact, with them it may only be more hidden, and thus be even more damaging. But I venture to say that the frenzy exists in each person, unless it has been found and dissolved in your work. Unless you become aware of it, feeling it almost like a separate element in you, then you cannot relinquish it. Once you reach that state, then you will experience feelings which are almost impossible to convey in words. The relief of losing a burden that you have unnecessarily carried will be so tremendous that your joy and your liberation will be a strongly-felt reality. What until now you have experienced only in isolated occasions, namely the manifestation of your intuitive nature, will become more and more a constant reaction. You will have the deep inner knowledge -- not in your brain but in your solar plexus -- that your reaction is right, or that your knowledge is right, or that your decision is right, without either guilt or pride, without either superiority or doubt. You will spontaneously be the best you can be: poised, unrepressed, without inhibitions. You will say the right thing at the right time and you will know when not to speak. You will be relaxed and concentrated at the same time, fully aware of and alive to the moment and its requirements. You will know that nothing that should be yours could fail to come to you. Therefore, you will not need to be in a frenzy about it, worrying whether or not you do either too much or too little. You will just do what is necessary and you will eliminate that which is unnecessary, without fear and worry.

This serenity sounds like an ideal impossible to attain on this earth. And I do not say that you will reach it overnight. But gradually and surely you will increase it, having the first unavoidable setbacks more and more seldom. Eventually it will become your real nature, as it truly is, once you dissolve the fearful and tense inner clamoring that says: "I want it, I must have it." Once this tension is relaxed, then you float, you do not fear, you have no doubt, and you will clearly recognize what an illusion your struggle has been. Hence, you will no longer need it. Therefore, you will shed it like an old, dirty, heavy cloak that you have no longer have any use for. All that which until now has been only a potential in you will now become a reality. You will be poised within yourself and poised in life. You will not need to exaggerate. You will not believe that you must either have everything or else have nothing. You will find happiness, but you also will know that not everything need go according to your wishes. You will not believe that people are either good or bad. You will neither depend on them too much nor distrust them, thereby standing alone in a seemingly hostile world. You will judge in reality, seeing what it is that is valuable and trustworthy, but not needing it. And you will also see the weakness of people without fearing it as a personal threat and without generalizing this human trait. Right now you are doing all of this constantly, no matter how much it is camouflaged.

Your right, spontaneous, uninhibited expression depends solely on whether or not -- and to what degree -- you first become aware of and then let go of the forcing current of "I want." This work is a path within the path. Once you have the distinct awareness and feel the current, visualizing it as a foreign substance, then you are on the halfway mark of this aspect of your development. The awareness will be more difficult to attain for those who have inverted the current by withdrawing from th world and therefore creating a false harmony.

Now, are there any questions?

QUESTION: I feel this forcing current in me. I know that I want certain conditions, while I intellectually know that I can't have them. How can I give up this forcing current? In which way do I work?

ANSWER: The first requirement is to feel its existence. Just verify it. Then ask yourself specific questions. What is it that I want? Why do I want it? The clear and precise answer to these questions is of the utmost importance. Know what you want in any given moment and why you want it. Moreover, why does this attainment seem so important? Also, consider whether it is really as important as you now think. Ask yourself: "What would happen to me if I did not get it?" Consider the alternative with a fresh outlook. Sometimes it is necessary to concentrate temporarily on something else that appears to have no bearing on the subject, but in the end you will see the connection. The work itself guides you in the proper direction, as my friends have often noticed.

When you have considered the illusion of the importance of your wish fulfillment and your feelings still remain just as tense and just unfree as before, then this means that there must be something hidden that you have not yet found. You will see that the intensity of your feeling is out of proportion to your intellectual view of its importance. Emotionally it seems that your life depends on it, while you know perfectly well that it does not. This will show you the discrepancy between the issue and the intensity of your feelings. When you realize this, then you may be quite shocked.

After realizing your wishes and the discrepancy between them and your actual needs, and if the intensity still remains, then you will have to decide if the desire stands for an imaginary protection against an imaginary danger. This may often be the case. Needless to say, you have to find your particular imaginary danger. Unless you are aware of this, then you cannot let go of the weapon of this forcing current.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough that in this work you cannot get any real results by absorbing general knowledge. It does not suffice that you know, and even feel, that you have the forcing current in you. You have to find the exact, specific way in which it works, what the issues are, and in what way you try to overcome the obstacles to your childish concept of happiness. This may vary not only with each person, but it also varies with the same person. One day your forcing current manifests in one way, the next day in another. You may find two or three ways simultaneously which conflict with one another. All this is very individual and it is necessary to find out how these different ways are expressed in you. In fact, when you have a real insight, then you will probably even forget, at that moment, that "this is the forcing current." Only afterwards will you see what it is. Perhaps this is one way of distinguishing real recognitions from false recognitions. In the former, you hardly realize what it is that you seek at the moment. In the latter, you struggle to use knowledge that you have heard and you try to apply it artificially.

When an emotional obstinacy is discovered in the course of this work and you are perfectly aware of its unreasonableness without being able to help it, then, as I said before, it means that you must be afraid to let go of the attitude because it is supposed to be a protection against something you fear. It is an armor. So it becomes imperative that you find specifically what the danger is that the stubborn holding on to the "I want" current is supposed to save you from.

The answer is that the child in you believes that you will avoid the abyss of unhappiness by holding on to this current. But this general answer is not sufficient, because many individual variations in which this is experienced in the subconscious are possible. Perhaps the only way you can discover the truth within is by using completely different words. You have to find it all afresh. Then you may see that it amounts to just what I say here. Unconsciously, you may think of it in different terms, so that emotionally my words have no meaning for you.

Incidentally, I would greatly welcome questions, especially from those friends who do not yet have an opportunity to get private help for their individual work, and who still have to wait. If they persevere, then the time will come. They need it more than others who are already well launched on this path; they can do more to prepare themselves for receiving more intensified help. It would be constructive for all of you, even those who already work with a helper, to ask what to do as preparatory work. This will also be beneficial for those friends who cannot attend personally but who read these lectures. So, give up your shyness and your inhibitions. The more you participate with questions, the better it is for your inner readiness and for the shedding of your inhibitions. This will be of substantial benefit that you cannot yet evaluate.

QUESTION: Isn't it sometimes because we want to nurse resentment from a certain person that we seek their faults? What do we do about that?

ANSWER: This is a very constructive question. When you want to have resentments, then the most obvious and first question would have to be "why?" Once you realize that you want to have such resentments, then it will not be so difficult to find out why. As always, this should be approached as dispassionately and with as new an outlook as though questions of this sort had never been asked. Disregard the ready answer that would say, "because of this or that fault in the other person." This is not the reason. You have to find out what your imagined advantage is when you are aggressive and hostile.

QUESTION: An armor, so as not to be on the defensive?

ANSWER: If you are afraid of being on the defensive, then you must find yourself guilty, otherwise you would not have to protect yourself by going on the offensive.

QUESTION: Yes, but also self-confidence and self-trust.

ANSWER: Actually, it does not give you self-confidence if you resent another person, and you are then helplessly caught in this resentment. Your emotions become so strong that you cannot handle them anymore. This does not make for self-confidence. But in your unreality you may believe that it does, simply by avoiding looking for what you feel guilty about. If you attack in order to hide something, then it will make you just as helpless as the object of your attack. Thus you are caught in a whirlpool, thereby losing self-government.

It is often the case that one resents in the other what one actually resents in oneself. If you take that which particularly irritates you, then you will inevitably find that, perhaps in a distorted or modified way, you have a very similar aspect or attitude. The stronger your dislike of it in yourself, the more do you project this dislike onto others. The more it is hidden, the more you may overcompensate for it by going to the opposite extreme outwardly. But since any ungenuine solution has a negative effect, so must this, too. One of the symptoms is that you particularly resent the same thing in others. The remedy, therefore, lies in finding that in you which is still hidden and then, through understanding its imagined necessity, really dissolving it. In that moment, you will no longer have such strong reactions towards others. Is that clear?

QUESTION: Yes. I also think that it is a cover for the procedure, "If there is a hurt anyway, I'd rather have a self-inflicted hurt than be hurt by someone else."

ANSWER: Yes, that may often be the case, too. I have touched upon the subject of self-destructiveness in the past, but in the light of our new knowledge, I would be glad to discuss this element again. So, please bring it up again.

My dearest friends, let me part from you with the assurance that this is a benign universe, that you have nothing to fear if you come out of your illusion, if you give up the fear, as well as the wrong conclusion that your little self can be the judge of what brings you happiness. Let your big self, your real self, that is so much nearer than you believe, guide you in the stream of life. All the people on this earth who have found ways of going into the realms of the subconscious, whether in psychoanalysis or any other form of psychotherapy, if truly successful, discover the old truths of metaphysics and spirituality. The more successful your earth methods become, the more they will integrate with the basis of all religions. For the laws work eternally within the psyche and this will be discovered to be so more and more.

Go in peace, my friends. Rejoice in the knowledge that reality must make you happy. Be blessed, be in God.

January 6, 1961