The Idealized Self Image

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, God bless all of you, my dearest friends. Welcome to all of you.

Let us continue with the series of lectures so as to help you to gain further insight into yourselves and therefore into life. The two preceding lectures dealt with the great duality, the struggle between life and death, the illusion that it is a question of either/or. The more one is involved in a duality, the more one sees life in terms of extremes. The question of happiness versus unhappiness is also felt in two extremes, in terms of either/or, with happiness standing for life and unhappiness standing for death.

While still struggling in this duality, then it is impossible to first accept the realization and then experience that life brings both. This fact is often accepted and believed in the intellect, but emotionally is felt as: "If I am unhappy now, then I must always be unhappy." Then the tragic, unnecessary, and destructive struggle against death, or unhappiness, begins.

The event of birth is a painful experience for the infant. Other painful experiences are bound to follow. On the other hand, pleasurable experiences exist as well. Since the knowledge of the unpleasurable experiences, or of their possibility, is always present, then the fear of them creates a basic problem in man. It is the problem we discussed in the last two lectures.

Now I would like to discuss the most important counter-measure that man resorts to in the false belief that it will circumvent unhappiness, unpleasure, death, never realizing that this counter-measure not only does not avoid but in fact brings on the very thing that is most dreaded and therefore fought against. This common, universal pseudo-protection is the creation of the idealized self image. I have discussed this topic frequently with friends in their private work, but I could do so only to a limited extent. The reason I could not go into more detail, or discuss it in the public lectures so far, is because it had to follow suit to the last two lectures. If you do not fully understand your struggle between the duality, then you cannot fully understand the creation and the function of the idealized self image.

The idealized self image is supposed to be a means of avoiding unhappiness. Since unhappiness automatically robs the child of security, then self-confidence is diminished according to the unhappiness and the ensuing lack of security. This unhappiness cannot be measured objectively. What one personality may be able to cope with quite well, and therefore does not experience as drastic unhappiness, another temperament and character feels as a dismal woe. At any rate, unhappiness and the lack of belief in oneself are interconnected. Hence, the creation of the idealized self image serves the purpose of obtaining the missing self-confidence, so that thereby pleasure supreme can be gained. This is the unconscious reasoning process. It is not altogether different from the truth. In truth and reality, healthy and genuine self-confidence is peace of mind. It is security and healthy independence. It also achieves a maximum of happiness through developing one's inherent talents, leading a constructive life, and having fruitful human relationships in healthy interdependence. But since the self-confidence established through the idealized self is artificial and not genuine, the result cannot possibly be what was expected. Actually the consequence is quite the contrary, and it is frustrating only because cause and effect are not obvious to the person. It may take a person a great deal of life experience and inner will to find the truth about himself. Only then will he slowly discover the links between his unhappiness and his idealized self image. This is the work that needs to be done by those who follow this path. Some of my friends have already made some preliminary discoveries in this direction, but there is much more to it. Even you who have gained some insight in this respect have barely scratched the surface. None of you has grasped the significance, the effects, and the damages that follow in the wake of it. You have not even fully recognized its existence: in what particular way it manifests in your individual case. This requires a great deal of work, for which all the preceding work was necessary. But the dissolution of the idealized self is the only possible way to find your true self, to find serenity, to find self-respect, and to live your life fully.

There is much to be said about this topic, but now I can only go into the barest fundamentals. As time goes on, I shall be more specific and go into further details. But more important are the findings and the results of your personal work in this respect.

I have ocasionally used the term mask self in the past. The mask self and the idealized self image are really one and the same. The idealized self masks the real self. It pretends to be something that you are not.

As a child, regardless of what your particular circumstances were, you were indoctrinated with admonitions on the importance of being good, holy, perfect. When you were not so, then you were often punished in one way or another. Perhaps the worst punishment was that your parents were angry at you and withdrew their affection from you. As a result, you had the impression that you were no longer loved. No wonder badness associated itself with punishment and unhappiness, while goodness associated itself with reward and happiness. Hence the need to be good and perfect became an absolute must; it became literally a question of life and death for you. On the other hand, you knew perfectly well that you were not as good and as perfect as the world seemed to expect you to be. This truth had to be hidden as a guilty secret, and you started to build a false self. You thought that this was your protection and your means of attaining what you desperately wanted -- life, happiness, security, self-confidence. Slowly, the awareness of this false front began to vanish, but you are still permeated with the guilt of pretending to be something you are not. You strain harder and harder to become this false self, this idealized self. You were, and unconsciously still are, convinced that if you strain hard enough, then one day you will be it. But this artificial process of squeezing yourself into something you are not can never attain genuine self-improvement, self-purification, and growth because you start building on an unreal basis and you leave your real self out of commission. In fact, you are desperately hiding it.

The idealized self image hase many forms and many facets. It does not always dictate standards of recognized perfection. Oh yes, much of the idealized self image dictates highly moral standards, making it all the more difficult to question its validity: "But isn't it right to want to be always decent, always loving, always understanding; never to be angry; not wanting to have any faults; trying to attain perfection? Isn't this what we are supposed to do?" Such considerations will make it difficult for you to discover the compulsive attitude that excludes the present imperfection; the pride and the lack of humility in which you cannot accept yourself as you are now; and, above all, the pretense, with its resulting shame, fear of exposure, secretiveness, tension, guilt, and anxiety. It will take some progress in this work before you begin to experience the difference in feeling between a) the genuine desire for gradually working towards growth, and b) the ungenuine pretense imposed upon you by the dictates of your idealized self. You will discover the deeply hidden fear in which you believe that your world will come to an end if you do not live up to any or all of the standards. You will first sense and then know many other aspects and differences between the genuine self and the ungenuine self. And you will also discover what your particular idealized self demands.

But there are also facets of the idealized self -- according to personality, to life conditions, and to early influences -- which are not and cannot be considered good, ethical, or moral. Aggressive, hostile, proud, over-ambitious trends are glorified or idealized. It is true that behind all the idealized self images these negative tendencies exist. But they are hidden. Since they crassly contradict the morally high standards of the particular idealized self, they cause additional anxiety in that the idealized self will be exposed as the fraud that it is. But the person who glorified such negative tendencies -- believing them to prove his strength, his independence, his superiority, and his aloofness -- will be deeply ashamed of the goodness that another person's idealized self proclaims as a must. He will consider it as a weakness, as vulnerability, and as dependency in an unhealthy sense. It is entirely overlooked that nothing makes a person as vulnerable as pride, that nothing causes so much fear.

In most cases a combination of these two tendencies exists. On the one hand, overexacting moral standards impossible to live up to; on the other, a pride in being invulnerable, aloof, and superior. The existence of these two mutually exclusive ways presents a particular hardship for the psyche. The conscious awareness of this contradiction is missing until this particular work is well in progress.

There are many more facets, possibilities, and individual pseudo-solutions combining all sorts of mutually exclusive trends. But all this has to be found individually. Let us now consider some of the general effects of the existence of the idealized self and some of the implications.

The standards and the dictates of the idealized self are impossible to realize. Nevertheless, never giving up the attempt to realize them, you encourage and cultivate within yourself an inner tyranny of the worst order. But since you do not realize the impossibility of being as perfect as your idealized self demands, you never give up whipping yourself, castigating yourself, and then feeling yourself a complete failure when it is proven that you cannot do so. A sense of abject worthlessness comes over you when you fall short of these fantastic demands, and it engulfs you in misery. This misery may at times be conscious, but most of the time it is not. Even if it is, then you do not realize its entire significance, the impossibility of your demands. And when you try to hide your reactions to your own failure, then you resort to special means in order not to become aware of your failure. One of the most common such devices is projection into the outer world, onto others, onto life. This we have discussed at length in the past, but now you will understand the deepest reason of such projections.

The more you try to identify with your idealized self image, the harder is the disillusionment when life brings you into a position when this masquerade can no longer be maintained. Many a personal crisis is based on this factor and much less on the outer difficulties. But these difficulties then become an added menace, beyond their objective hardship. The existence of the difficulties is proof to you of the fact that you are not your idealized self. And that robs you of the false self-confidence that you tried to establish with the idealized self.

There are other types of personality who know perfectly well that they cannot identify with their idealized self. But they do not know this in a healthy way. They despair. They believe that they ought to be able to live up to it. Their whole life is permeated with a sense of failure, while the former type only experiences it on more conscious levels when outer and inner conditions culminate in showing up the phantom of the idealized self for what it really is -- an illusion, a pretense, a dishonesty. It amounts to saying: "I know that I am imperfect. But I will make myself believe that I am not." To recognize this dishonesty is comparatively easy. It is rationalized by the claim of conscientiousness, of honorable standards and goals, and of a desire to be good.

The basic premise of the genuine desire to better oneself is to accept the personality as it is now. If this is the main governing force of your motivation for perfection, then any discovery where you fall short of your ideals will not throw you into depression, into anxiety, and into guilt. On the contrary, it will strengthen you. You will not need to exaggerate the badness of the trend in question, nor will you defend yourself against it with the excuse that it is the fault of others, of life, of fate. You will gain an objective view of yourself in this respect and this view will then liberate you. You will fully assume responsibility for your faulty attitude, being willing to take the consequences upon yourself. When you act out of your idealized self, then you dread nothing more than that. For, taking the responsibility for your shortcomings upon yourself amounts to saying: "I am not my idealized self."

A sense of failure, frustration, compulsion, guilt, and shame are the most outstanding indications of your idealized self being at work. These are the consciously felt emotions of all that lies hidden underneath.

The idealized self has been called into existence in order to attain self-confidence and, therefore, ultimately happiness and pleasure supreme. The stronger its existence or presence, the more does genuine self-confidence, or remnants of it, fade away. Since you cannot live up to these standards, then you think even less of yourself than you did originally. It is therefore obvious that genuine self-confidence can be established only when you remove the superstructure of this merciless tyrant of your idealized self.

You could have self-confidence if, on the one hand, the idealized self were really you and if, on the other, you could live up to these standards. But since this is impossible and since, deep down, you know perfectly well that you are not anything like what you think you are supposed to be, then you build up an additional insecurity with this super self. Thereby, further vicious circles come into existence. For instance, the original insecurity -- which was supposed to be whisked away by the establishment of the idealized self -- steadily increases. It snowballs, and it becomes worse and worse. The more you feel insecure, the more the demands of the superstructure and the idealized self become stringent, the less you are able to live up to it, and the more insecure you feel. It is very important to realize this vicious circle. But this cannot be done until and unless you become fully aware of the devious, subtle, and unconscious ways in which this idealized self image exists in your particular case. In what particular areas does it manifest mostly? What are the cause and effect connected with it?

A further and most drastic result of this problem is the constantly increasing estrangement from the real self. The idealized self is a falsity. It is a rigid, artificially constructed imitation of a live human being. You may invest many aspects of your real being into it. Nevertheless, it still remains an artificial construction. The more you invest into it of your energies, of your personality, of your thought processes, of your concepts, and of your ideals, the more strength do you take away from that center of your being which alone is amenable to growth. This center of your being is the only part of you, the real you, that can live, that can grow, and that can be. It is the only thing that can properly guide you. It alone functions with all your capacities. It is flexible and intuitive. Its feelings alone are true and valid, even if for the moment they are not yet fully in truth, in reality, in perfection, and in purity. But the feelings of the real self function in perfection according to what you are now -- not being able to be more -- as applied to any given situation of your life. But the more you take out of that live center in order to invest it into the robot that you have created, then the more estranged you become from the real self. Therefore, the more do you weaken it and impoverish it.

In the course of this work, you have sometimes come upon the puzzling and often frightening question: "Who am I?" This is the result of the discrepancy and of the struggle between the real self and the false self.

Only upon solving this most vital and profound question will your live center respond and function to its full capacity; will your intuition begin to function to its full capacity; will you become spontaneous; will you become free of all compulsions; will you trust in your feelings because they will have an opportunity to mature and to grow. Your feelings will become every bit as reliable to you as your reasoning power and your intellect. All this is the final finding of the self. But before this can be done, a great many hurdles have to be overcome. It seems to you like a struggle for life or death. You still believe that you need the idealized self in order to live and be happy. Once you understand that this is not so, then you will be able to give up the pseudo-defense that makes it seem necessary to maintain and cultivate the idealized self. Once you understand that the idealized self was supposed to solve your problems, the particular problems in your life, above and beyond the generality of happiness, pleasure, and security, then you will come to see the wrong conclusion of this theory. Once you go still a step further and you recognize the damage it has brought into your life, then you will shed it like the burden it is. No conviction, no theory, no words that you read or hear will make you give it up. But the recognition of what it was specifically supposed to solve, and what damage it has done -- and is continuing to do -- will enable you to dissolve this basic image of all images. You also have to recognize, most particularly and in detail, what your specific demands and standards are, and you also have to see their unreasonableness, their impossibility. When you have a feeling of acute anxiety or depression, then consider the fact that your idealized self may be questioned and threatened, either by your own limitations, by others, or by life. Recognize the self-contempt that underlies the anxiety or the depression. Or when you are compulsively angry with others, then consider the possibility that this is but an externalization of your anger with yourself for not living up to your false self. Do not let yourself get away with the excuse of outer problems to account for your acute depression or for your fear. Look into this question from this new angle. Your private and personal work will help you in this direction. It is almost impossible to do it alone. Only after you have made some substantial progress in this direction will you recognize that so many of your outer problems are, either directly or indirectly, the result of the conflict between your capacities and the standards of your idealized self and how you deal with this conflict.

As you proceed in this particular phase of the work, then you will come to understand the exact nature of your idealized self; your demands, your requirements from yourself and others in order to maintain the illusion. Once you fully see that what you regarded as commendable is really pride and pretense, you will have gained a substantial insight that enables you to weaken the impact of the idealized self. Then will you realize the tremendous self-punishment that you inflict upon yourself. For, whenever you fall short, as you are bound to, then you feel so impatient and so irritated that such impatience and irritation can snowball into fury and even wrath at yourself. Then this fury and this wrath are often projected onto others because it is too unbearable to be aware of self-hate, unless one unveils this whole process and sees it in its entire light. Nevertheless, even if this hate is unloaded upon others, then the effect on the self is still there. It can cause disease, accident, loss, and outer failure in many ways.

When you take the first steps toward giving up the idealized self, then you will feel a sense of liberation as never before. You will truly be born again. That is, your real self will emerge. Then you will rest within your real self, being centered within. Only then will you truly succeed in making yourself grow; not only on the outer fringes that may have been free of the idealized self dictatorship, but wholly and fully free, taking in every part of your being. This will change many things. First will come changes in your reaction to life, in your reaction to incidents, in your reaction to yourself, and in your reaction to others. These changed reactions will be astounding enough. But, little by little, outer things are also bound to change. Your different attitude will cause new effects.

The overcoming of your idealized self means overcoming an important facet of the duality between life and death.

At present you are not even aware of the pressure of your idealized self, of the shame, of the humiliation, of the exposure you fear and sometimes feel, of the tension, of the strain, and of the compulsion. If you have an occasional glimpse of such emotions, then you do not as yet connect them with the fantastic demands of your idealized self. Only after fully seeing these fantastic expectations, and their often contradictory trends, will you relinquish them. The initial inner freedom gained in this way will allow you to deal with life and to stand in life. You will no longer have to hold on frantically to this idealized self. The mere inner activity of holding on frantically to this idealized self generates a pervasive climate of holding on in general. Sometimes this is lived out in external attitudes, but most often it is an inner quality or attitude. As you proceed in this new phase of your work, you will at first sense and then feel this inner tightness and you will gradually recognize the basic damage of it. It makes going through any change -- one that would allow life to bring forth joy and a spirit of vigor -- unduly difficult. You keep yourself contained within yourself and thereby you go against life in one of its most fundamental aspects.

The words are insufficient. Rather, you have to sense what I mean. But you will know exactly what I mean when you have arrived at weakening your idealized self considerably by the mere process of fully understanding its function, its causes, and its effects. Then you will gain the great freedom of giving yourself to life because you no longer have to hide something from yourself and from others. You will be able to squander yourself into life. But not in an unhealthy, unreasonable way, but healthily -- as nature squanders herself. Only then will you know the beauty of living.

You cannot approach this most important part of your inner work by a general concept. As usual, your most daily reactions considered from this viewpoint will yield the necessary results. So continue your self-search with these new considerations and do not be impatient if it takes time and relaxed effort.

One more word. The difference between the real self and the idealized self is often not a question of quantity -- for example, as regards the goodness or badness of a trend -- but rather one of quality. That is, the original motivation between these two selves is different. This will not be easy to see. But as you recognize the demands, the contradictions, and the cause and effect sequence, then the difference in motivation will gradually become clear to you.

Another important consideration is the time element between these two selves. The idealized self wants to be perfect -- according to specific demands -- right now. The real self knows that this cannot be and does not suffer from this fact. Of course, you are not perfect in your real self. It is a combination of everything you are at the moment. Of course, you have your basic egocentricity. But since you own up to it, then you can cope with it. You can learn to understand it -- and thus to diminish it -- with each new insight in this respect.

Then you will experience the truth of the following words: the more egocentric you are, the less self-confidence you can have. The idealized self believes just the opposite. And this egocentricity makes self-confidence impossible.

So this great freedom of coming home is finding your way back to the real you. The expression "coming home" has often been used in spiritual literature to mean the return into the spirit world after physical death. Much more is meant by "coming home." You may die many deaths, one earth life after another, but if you have not found your real self, then you cannot come home. You must be lost -- and you will remain lost -- until you find the way into the center of your being. On the other hand, you can find your way home right here and right now, while you are still in the body. When you muster the courage of becoming your real self, even though it would seem as much less than the idealized self, then you will find out that it is much more. And then you will have the peace of being at home within yourself. Then you will find security. Then you will function as a whole human being. Then you will have eliminated the iron whip of a taskmaster whom it is impossible to obey. Only then will you know what peace and security really mean, and therefore you will cease to seek it by false means once and for all.

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QUESTION: So the real self does not have two souls, no duality?

ANSWER: Of course not. The duality ceases to exist once you accept yourself as part good and as part bad. In other words, as consisting partly of your higher self and partly of your lower self. These two sides will be integrated and live in peace with one another once you accept yourself with both. And only then can the lower side gradually develop and grow out of its blindness. But as long as you do not reconcile yourself to the fact that you are both good and bad -- in other words, as long as you battle against this badness and you believe that you should not have it -- then the duality will exist. By accepting your lower self you can gradually overcome it, as you will also overcome the duality between the higher self and the lower self. By non-acceptance you increase the duality. It is the same question I discussed regarding life and death. By accepting death, the duality between life and death is gradually decreased, until it disappears altogether. By struggling against death, just as you struggle against your lower self, the duality increases.

QUESTION: Could you tell us what Goethe meant by saying "Two souls dwells in my breast?"

ANSWER: It can be interpreted to mean the higher self and the lower self. And it can also be interpreted to mean the duality between the idealized self and the real self. The lack of peace between the higher self and the lower self brings the idealized self into existence. These two dualities are interdependent.

You see, the more the idealized self is placed between the real self and life, the less can life grow. As a result, the more it shrinks and therefore becomes prohibited from functioning.

QUESTION: In modern psychology we frequently hear the word schizophrenia, and it is applied to those who are psychotic. According to your talk, this evening and previously, we are all disentegrated and split. Is this duality only a matter of degree?

ANSWER: Yes, it is a matter of degree, of intensity, and of how many areas of the personality this includes. With the clinical psychotic the areas of non-acceptance of self are overwhelming. With more normal person functioning in life, the idealized self may pervade the whole personality, but there may still be a certain sense of reality.

ANSWER: In the last lecture we learned that it is important for us to face death in order to live fully. There is at present great publicity given to the trial of Adolf Eichmann. My questions are (1) Can we, and should we, try to face the death of these millions of unfortunates in order to learn something for ourselves individually? (2) Is it healthy to revive an era of death and destruction? (3) Can any positive lesson be learned by mankind through reviving this?

ANSWER: Answering the first question: Can any lesson be learned as to the subject of life and death, or any other topic for that matter? That depends entirely on the individual and whether or not he either can or wants to learn a lesson. But as to the lesson of death: I venture to say that every individual has to go through that himself, whether it be actual physical death, or the many little everyday "dyings" I discussed recently. It would be dangerous to assume that one person can learn through the tragedy of another in this particular sense. It would be dangerous because it would make for a smugness, possibly even winding up in passive cruelty -- or eventually even in active cruelty. It might condone cruelty in an insidious and subtle way. Certain things one can learn only by going through them oneself. There are other ways by which one could, at least theoretically, learn through other people's experiences, if one is open to it. However, experience shows that most individuals have to learn their own lessons through their own mistakes, not by the mistakes that others make, and not by the experiences that others have. If in isolated cases this does occur, then all the better. But there is no general law that can proclaim one particular happening more conducive to serve as a lesson than others. Theoretically one could learn from any occurrence in life. Mostly, it is easier to learn a lesson from one's own insignificant disappointment than by another person's tragedy.

As to the second question, I cannot answer with a yes or no. It depends on the individual. A positive lesson could be learned by individuals, as well as by mankind in general, by recalling this era of destruction and cruelty. By the same token, a positive as well as a negative lesson could be learned by not revivying it. There is no yes or no. There is no pat answer to either of these two alternatives.

As long as mankind is governed mostly by vindictiveness, by hatred, and by revenge, and these emotions remain predominant, then there will be no lesson. If, on the other hand, the main motivations are truly and genuinely more constructive than destructive (not only proclaimed, but felt), then the lesson will be a positive one. On the other hand, not reviving it could also happen out of negative motives. Then this would also be a negative lesson. Not reviving it could also come out of the wisdom that comes from knowing that the laws of the divine world take care of everything. This certainly does not mean that criminals should not pay the consequences. But the approach of taking it upon oneself to punish another human being is a different one from the approach of making further cruelty impossible, while healing the criminal of his disease -- if he is at all willing to accept the necessary help.

QUESTION: To what extent should men take it upon themselves to punish a criminal?

ANSWER: It is not up to man to punish. His course of action should be, and one day will be, to take upon himself the responsibility that any crime can happen through wrong values, wrong systems, wrong education, and wrong attitudes. In that recognition, the weight will be shifted from punishment to healing. But the possibility of perpetrating further crimes by such a person should be strictly avoided by curtailing his outer freedom. This would feel like punishment anyway for the criminal, for the infringement of his personal freedom, as well as the painful process of healing his soul, may be every bit as difficult as death or life in prison, only it would be much more constructive. All this will come about one day.

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May all of you find truth and help and further enlightentment through the words I gave you here. However, you should understand that a theoretical understanding will avail you nothing. As long as these words remain theory, then you will not be helped by them. When you begin or continue to work in this direction and you allow yourself to feel and observe your emotional reactions as to this subject, then you will make substantial progress in your own liberation and your self-finding in the truest sense of the word.

Now, my dearest ones, receive our love, our strength, and our blessings. Be in peace, be in God.