Love, Power, Serenity as Divine Attributes and as Distortions -- Idealized Self Image Part Two

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless each one of you. Blessed be this lecture.

I would like to discuss three major divine attributes: love, power, and serenity and how they manifest in their distorted form. In the healthy person these three principles work side by side, in perfect harmony, alternating according to the specific need of a situation. They complement and strengthen one another. A flexibility is maintained, so that none of these three attributes can ever contradict or interfere with another.

However, in the distorted personality they mutually exclude one another. One is a contradiction to the other and so they create conflict. This is so because one of these attributes is unconsciosusly chosen to serve a major role in the solution to life and to life's problems.

You may remember that I discussed the attitudes of submissiveness, aggressiveness, and withdrawal. These are the distortions of love, power, and serenity. And now I should like to speak in greater detail as to how this works in the psyche, how this is supposed to be a solution and how the dominating attitude creates dogmatic, rigid standards which are then incorporated into the idealized self image.

As a child the human being encounters disappointment, helplessness, rejection -- both real and imagined. These create an insecurity and a lack of self-confidence which is sought to be overcome, but unfortunately often in the wrong way. In order to master the difficulties created not only in childhood, but also later because of the wrong solution, the person involves himself more and more in a vicious circle. Unaware that the very solution he undertakes brings problems and disappointments, he tries even more strenuously to follow through with that which he regards as the solution. The less he is able to do so, the more does he doubt himself. And the more he doubts in himself, the more does he stray into the wrong solution.

One of these pseudo-solutions is love. The feeling is: "If only I would be loved, then everything would be all right." In other words, love is supposed to solve all his problems. Needless to say, this is not so, especially when one considers the way this love is supposed to be given when, in reality, such a disturbed person is hardly able to experience love. In order to receive love such a person develops several typical personality trends and patterns of inner and outer behavior and reaction, and thereby makes himself weaker and more helpless than he actually is. He takes on more and more self-effacing characteristics in order to gain love and protection, which alone would seem to save him from annihilation. He complies with the real or imagined demands of others. He cringes and he craves, to the point of selling his soul, in order to receive approval, sympathy, help, and love. He unconsciously believes that by asserting himself, his wishes, his needs, he would forfeit the only value he sees in life: that of being cared for as a child -- not necessarily in financial matters, but emotionally. So he artificially, and in the last analysis dishonestly, claims an imperfection, a helplessness, a submissiveness which are not genuine. He uses them as a weapon and as a means to finally win over and master life.

In order to remain unaware of this falsity, these trends become incorporated in his idealized self image. He succeeds in believing that all these trends are signs of his goodness, of his holiness, of his unselfishness. When he sacrifices in order to finally possess a strong and loving protector, he is proud of his capacity to sacrifice unselfishly. He is proud of his modesty in never claiming knowledge, accomplishment, strength. He thereby hopes to force the other person to feel loving and protecting toward him. There are many aspects to this pseudo-solution. They have to be found painstakingly in the work you are doing. It is not easy to detect them since these attitudes are deeply ingrained. They seem to have become a part of your nature. Moreover, they can often be rationalized by seemingly real needs. Last, they are always thwarted by the very opposite trends of other pseudo-solutions, which are always present as well, although perhaps not as predominant. In the same way the other type will find aspects of this submissiveness in their psyche. It varies with each individual to what extent this pseudo-solution is predominant, and to what extent it is counteracted by the other solutions.

The person with the predominant submissive attitude will have a little harder time discovering the pride that prevails in these attitudes. The pride in the other types is quite on the surface. He may be proud of his pride; he may be proud of his aggressiveness; he may be proud of his cynicism. But once he sees it, then it cannot be covered up by love, by modesty, or by any other holy attitude. The submissive type will have to look with very discerning eyes at these trends in order to see how he idealized them. He may discover a reaction of aloof criticism and contempt for all people who assert themselves; not only aggressiveness out of the distortion of power, but even of healthy assertiveness. He may simultaneously also admire and envy what he still despises and what he feels superior to, in spiritual development or ethical standards. He may wishfully think or say "If only I could be like that, then I would get much further in life." But in doing so he stresses his own goodness which prevents him from having what "less good" people attain. So he feels proud of his self-sacrificing martyrdom, and only very truthful insight into the real nature of these motives will reveal the fundamental selfishness and egocentricity prevailing in this attitude, just as much as in the other attitudes. Pride, hypocrisy, and pretense are present in all those attitudes when incorporated in the idealized self image. The submissive type will have a harder time finding the pride, while the aggressive type will have a harder time finding the pretense. For he pretends an honesty in being ruthless, cynical, and out for his own advantage.

The need for protective love has a certain validity for the child. But if this attitude is maintained in adulthood, then it is no longer valid. In this search to be loved, apart from the craving for pleasure supreme, there is the element of: "I must be loved so that I can believe in my own worth. Then I may be willing to love in return." It is ultimately a self-centered, one-sided desire. The effects of this entire attitude are grave indeed.

In the first place, the need for such love and dependency actually makes a person helpless. He does not cultivate in himself the faculty of standing on his own feet. Instead, he uses his entire psychic strength in order to live up to this ideal of himself so as to force others to comply with his needs. In other words, he complies in order to have others comply with him; he submits in order to dominate, although such domination would always manifest in soft, weak helplessness.

It is no wonder that a person engulfed in this attitude becomes estranged from his real self. His real self has to be denied, for the assertion of it seems brash and aggressive. And this has to be avoided at all costs. But the indignity inflicted on the individuality by such self-denial has its effect in self-contempt and self-dislike. Since this is painful -- aside from being contradictory to the idealized self image which recommends self-effacement as the supreme virtue -- then it has to be projected onto others. Such emotions of contempt and resentment for others, in turn, contradict the standards of the idealized self. Consequently, they have to be hidden. This double hiding causes inversion and has serious repercussions on the personality, also manifesting in physical symptoms of all sorts. Anger, fury, shame, frustration, self-contempt, and self-hate come into existence for two reasons: firstly, because such a person denies his true self and has to face the indignity of being prevented from being himself. He then believes that the world prevents him, that the world abuses him and takes advantage of his goodness. This is projection. Secondly, because he is incapable of living up to the dictates of his particular idealized self, which are: he must never resent, he must never despise, he must never dislike, he must never blame, he must never find fault with others, etc. As a result, he is not as good as he ought to be.

In a very brief outline, this is the picture of a person who has chosen love -- with all its subdivisions of compassion, understanding, forgiveness, union, communication, brotherhood, and sacrifice -- as a rigid, one sided solution. This is a distortion of the divine attribute. The idealized self image of this type will have corresponding standards and dictates. He must always be in the background, he must never assert himself, he must always give in, he must never find fault with others, he must love everybody, he must never recognize his own true value and accomplishmenents, and so on and so forth. On the surface this looks indeed like a very holy picture; but, my friends, it is but a caricature of true love, of true understanding, of true forgiveness, of true compassion, and so on. The poison of the underlying motive distorts and destroys that which could be really genuine.

In the second category is the seeker for power. This person thinks that power and independence from others will solve all his problems. This type, just as the other, can present many variations and many subdivisions. It can be either predominant or subordinated by one or both of the other two attitudes. Here the growing child believes that the only way he can be safe is by becoming so strong, so invulnerable, so independent, and so emotionless that nothing and no one can touch him. So he proceeds to oust all human emotions. When they come to the fore nevertheless, then he feels deeply ashamed of any emotion and he considers it as weakness, whether it is an actual weakness or an imagined one. Love and goodness would also be considered as weakness and hypocrisy, not only in its distorted form, as in the submissive type, but also in the real and healthy form. Warmth, affection, communication, unselfishness, all that is despicable; and when an impulse of this sort is suspected in himself, then he feels just as ashamed as the submissive type is ashamed of his resentment and of his self-assertive qualities that smolder underneath.

There are many ways and many areas of life and of the personality in which this power drive and this aggressiveness can manifest. It may be directed mainly at accomplishments. The person with a power drive will compete and will try to be better than everyone else. Any competition is felt as an injury to the exalted, special position that he needs for his private solution. Or, it may be a more general and less defined attitude in all his human relations. He artificially cultivates a toughness that is no more real than the helpless softness of the submissive person. In this he is just as dishonest and just as hypocritical, because he, too, needs human warmth and affection. He, too, suffers by his isolation. In not admitting this suffering, then he is as dishonest as the other types. His idealized self image dictates standards of God-like perfection regarding independence and power. He believes that he does not need anyone, that he is entirely self-sufficient. Contrary to other mere human beings, he does not need love, he does not need friendship, he does not need help. The pride in this image is very obvious, but the dishonesty will be less easy to detect because such a type hides under the rationalization of how hypocritical the goody goody type is.

Since this idealized self image dictates a power and an independence from feelings and human emotions such as no human being can possibly have, then it is constantly proven that the person cannot be his real self. This throws him into fits of depression and self-contempt which, again, have to be projected onto others in order to remain unaware of the pain of such self-castigation. The inability of being the idealized self always has this effect. When you closely analyze the dictates of any type of idealized self, then omnipotency, in one form or another, is always contained in it. But these emotional reactions are so subtle, so elusive, and so hidden by rational knowledge that it it is necessary to painstakingly look at occasions -- and at the the feelings or emotional reactions that result from them -- in order to gain awareness of all this. Only the work you are doing can show you how any of these attitudes exists in you. It is much easier to determine these attitudes in a type who is very dominant in one direction. But in most cases the attitudes are mixed, hidden, and conflicting, and therefore more difficult to spot.

A further symptom of the aggressive type, who thinks that power is the solution for him, is the artifically cultivated view: "How bad the world and people really are." For this he will receive plenty of confirmation. But he prides himself on his objectivity, on his lack of gullibility as the reason for not liking anyone. It is a part of his dictates that he must not love. If he does, or if at times his true nature would appear, then it is a crass violation of his idealized self image, and he is ashamed of it. Conversely, the submissive type prides himself on loving everybody, in considering all other human beings as good, for this is what he needs in order to follow through on his submissive attitude. In reality, he does not really care whether others are good or bad, as long as they love him, appreciate him, approve of him, and protect him. All evaluation of others hinges on that, no matter how well it can be explained. Since everyone possesses actual virtues and faults, either can be picked according to the prevailing attitude of the other person.

The seeker for power must never fail in anything. Contrary to the submissive type, who prides himself on his failure, thus proving his helplessness and thereby forcing others to love and protect him, the seeker for power prides himself on never failing in anything. (There may be certain areas of personality in which failure is allowed and permitted because there the prevailing attitude may be submissiveness; just as the submissive type may have certain areas of personality in which he resorts to power as the solution.) Both are equally rigid, unrealistic, and unrealizable. Therefore, either of these solutions is a constant source of pain and disillusionment regarding the self, and therefore brings on increased lack of self-respect.

There is always a mixture of all these solutions in a person, although one may be predominant. Hence, the person cannot do justice to his dictates. Even if it were possible never to fail, or to love everyone, or to be entirely independent of others, it becomes even more of an impossibility when the dictates of a person's idealized self image simultaneously demand of him to love and be loved by everyone and to conquer them. For such a goal he needs to be aggressive, and often even ruthless. An idealized self image may simultaneously demand of a person to be always unselfish, so as to gain love; to be always selfish so as to gain power; and to be completely indifferent and aloof from all human emotions so as not to be disturbed. Can you picture what a conflict this is in a soul? How torn such a soul must be! Whatever he does is wrong and induces guilt, shame, inadequacy, and therefore frustration and self-contempt.

Let us now consider the third attribute, serenity, chosen as a solution and being thereby distorted. Originally a person may have been so torn between the first two aspects that he seeks a way out by resorting to a withdrawal from his inner problems, and thereby from life as such. That is, underneath his withdrawal -- his false serenity -- he is still torn in half, only he is not aware of it. He has built such a strong facade of false serenity that as long as life's circumstances permit him, he believes himself truly serene. But let life's storms touch him, let the effects of the raging underlying conflict finally emerge, and it will be shown how false this serenity was. It will be borne out that it was indeed built on sand.

Both the withdrawn type and the seeker for power seem to have something in common, and that is aloofness from feelings and emotions, non-attachment to others, and a strong urge for independence. However much the underlying emotional motivations may be similar -- fear of getting hurt and disappointed, fear of being dependent on others and thereby feeling insecure -- the dictates of the idealized self image of these two types are very different. The seeker for power is proud of his hostility and of his aggressive fighting spirit. The withdrawn type is entirely unaware of such feelings in him, and whenever they come to the fore he is shocked by them because they violate his dictates. These dictates are: he looks benignly and detachedly at all human beings, knowing their weaknesses and good qualities, but without being bothered or affected by either. If it were true, then it would indeed be serenity. But no human being is ever that far. Hence such dictates are just as unrealistic and therefore unrealizable. They, too, include pride and hypocrisy; pride because he is not so God-like in his detachment, justice, and objectivity. In reality, his view may be just as colored by what the other person thinks of him as, for instance, the submissive type. But he is too proud to admit that he, the exalted one, can be touched by such human weakness. He considers himself above all that. And since this is not true at all, then he is just as dishonest. And since it is not true, and cannot ever be true as long as he is human, he must fall short of the standards and dictates of his idealized self image which makes him just as self-contemptuous, guilty, and frustrated as when the other two types fall short of their respective standards.

These three major types are outlined very briefly, in a very general way. Many variations exist. The tyranny of the idealized self image will manifest according to the strength, the intensity, and the distribution of these solutions. All of this has to be found in the individual work. It must never be forgotten that such an attitude can hardly ever be complete and overall in a person. In other words, it may be present to a stronger degree in certain areas or facets of life and personality. The most important part of this work is to feel these emotions, to truly experience them. It is impossible to get rid of this life-prohibiting idealized self image if you merely look at it and observe what is in you in a detached way, with your intellect. You have to become acutely aware of all these often contradictory trends, and this will be painful. The pain that was always in you. But that existing pain was hidden -- and it was protected against by being unloaded on others, on life, and on fate. That pain will become -- nay, must become -- a conscious experience that you absolutely need to work with. At first sight this will appear as a relapse. In other words, you will believe that you are worse now than before you started with this work. But this is not true. Your progress made it possible for all these hitherto hidden emotions to become conscious so that you can use them for analysis. Otherwise you could not possibly dissolve the superstructure of your tyranny, of your idealized self image, with all the unnecessary harm it does to you. You are so conditioned by the emotional reactions you have become accustomed to -- in other words, you are so involved in them -- that you cannot see what is right before your eyes. You look past the seemingly unimportant emotional reactions to certain situations because they have become a part of you, while you watch for new and hidden recognitions. But these actual emotional reactions will furnish you the clue, once your attention is focused on them. This would be impossible if you were not disturbed. Therefore, the disturbance is bound to come into the open. And this is the moment when you can come to terms with it.

So, begin to see your emotions in this light. Then you will find what impossible demands your idealized self image makes on you. You will see that it is your idealized self image that demands all that, and not God, nor life, nor other people. You will also begin to see that because of these demands that you make on the self, you need other people to help you to put these demands through. Therefore, you unconsciously demand of others what they are incapable of giving. Thus you are much more dependent than you need to be, in spite of all your striving toward a distorted independence of either the aggressive type or the withdrawn type.

You also have to find the cause and effect of these conditions. You will see your life, as well as your past and present difficulties, with a new outlook. You will understand that you have created all these difficulties because of your solution.

It does not suffice to comprehend intellectually that the more you are involved in your pseudo-solutions, the less your real self can manifest. You also need to experience this. This must happen if you allow your emotions to come to the fore and you work with them. Only then will you begin to sense the intrinsic value of your real self. And only then will it become possible to let go of the false value of your idealized self. So it is a mutual process: by allowing yourself to see the false values, painful as this may be, your real values will gradually emerge, so that you will no longer need the false ones. Since the idealized self estranges you from your real self, you are unaware of your real values. You unconsciously concentrate throughout your life on those false values: either the values you lack but which you think you should have, and which you then pretend both to yourself and others you do have; or else you concentrate on values which are potentially there, but which have not yet been developed so that they could rightfully be called values. Since your idealized self does not admit that these values still need development, you do not develop them, and you claim them as though they were already fully ripe. Because you use all your efforts in concentraring on these false values, you do not see the real values. And because you cannot see them, you are frightened to let go of the false ones because then you seem to have nothing. Thus your real values do not count. They do not exist. This may be either because they contradict the demands of your idealized self, or because everything that comes naturally and without effort does not appear to you as something real.

You are so conditioned to straining for the impossible that it does not occur to you that what is actually valuable and already there does not need straining. But you do not utilize these values, so they often lie fallow. This is a great pity, because after all you established the idealized self image because you do not believe in your real worth and your real value. And because you build the idealized self and you try to be it, you cannot see what is actually worthy of accepting and of believing in inside yourself. At first it is painful to unroll this entire process because the emotions of anxiety, of frustration, of guilt, and of shame have to be acutely experienced. But as you proceed courageously, you will gain a different outlook on everything. At last you will begin to see your real self for the first time. You will see its limitations. At the beginning it will be a shock to have to accept these limitations, which are such a far cry from your idealized self. But as you learn to do so, you will begin to see values that you have never been truly aware of. And a feeling of strength and self-confidence will make you see both life and yourself in a very real and very different way.

This process will take place gradually, little by little. It will strengthen true independence, not the false kind, in that being appreciated by others will no longer be the yardstick for your own sense of value. So far, your evaluation by others is important to you only because you do not evaluate yourself, so that it becomes a substitute for your lack of self-evaluation. But as you begin to trust and like your own self, what other people think of you will not matter half as much. You will rest secure within and you will no longer need to build false values in pride and pretense. You will no longer rely on an idealized self, which cannot really be relied on, and which therefore weakens you. The freedom of shedding this burden cannot be described in words.

But this is a slow process. It does not come overnight. It comes by the steady self-search and the analysis of your problems, of your attitudes, and of your emotions. As you proceed in this way, then the real you -- with its real values and its real capacities -- will evolve in a natural process of inner growth. Then your individuality will become stronger and stronger. Your intuitive nature will manifest without inhibition, and with all the natural and reliable spontaneity. This will allow you to make the best of your life. Not faultlessly so, not being free of any failure, not excluding the possibility of making mistakes, but failures and mistakes will be made in a different way than before. You will increasingly combine the divine attitude of love, of power, and of serenity in the healthy way, as opposed to the distorted way.

Love will not be a means to an end. It will not be a need that saves you from annihilation. Therefore, it will cease to be self-centered. Your capacity to love will combine with power and with serenity. Or, to put it differently, you will communicate in love and understanding in healthy interdependence, but you will be truly independent because love, power, and serenity will not take the place of your missing self-respect. Then genuine -- not self-centered -- love will no longer interfere with healthy power. Not power out of pride and defiance, not power to triumph over others, but the power to master yourself and your difficulties without proving anything to anyone. When you seek mastery by distorting the attribute of power, then you do so for the sake of proving your superiority. When you gain mastery by healthy power, then you do so for the sake of growing. Not being able to have mastery in this or that area will not represent the threat it does while you are in distortion. It will not diminish your worth in your own eyes, and therefore in the eyes of others. You will grow with each life experience. You will learn and you will accomplish. Hence you will have real power, not the kind that is false. There will not be any distorted ambitiousness, compulsion, and haste.

Serenity in the healthy way will not cause you to hide from emotions, to hide from experience, to hide from life, and to hide from your own conflicts. Love and power in their healthy forms will give you a healthy detachment from yourself so that, as a result, you will truly become more objective. True serenity is not avoiding experience and emotions which may be painful at the moment, but which might yield an important key when the courage is mustered to go through them and to find what is behind them.

So love, power, and serenity can live hand in hand. In fact, when each is healthy, then they complement one another. But they can cause the greatest war within the self if they are distorted.

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QUESTION: When a child forces love through a temper tantrum and the adult later repeats this pattern -- not necessarily outwardly but with inner tantrums -- would that come out of the solution of power?

ANSWER: You cannot pinpoint it like this. As usual, all generalizations may be misleading, for each case is different. In one instance it may indeed be so. The power drive is frustrated because the person's idealized self requires him to always get his will. But it may also exist in the submissive type, who needs love as a solution for all his problems. He is so convinced that this will be the solution -- and therefore he is so dependent on it -- that when others do not obey this command, then he is outraged. The fury and the self-contempt are so strong that they have to be externalized. Then they are projected on the other person. This, in turn, creates guilt because it offends the edicts of the idealized self that one should never be angry with others.

It may be a combination of the search for power and of love. These two attitudes constantly war with one another. On the one hand, the need to be loved is very strong. But on the other side stands the superiority of the power type who feels particularly humiliated and exposed by this dependency; who craves for a show of invulnerability as much as he craves for being loved.

So it may be a combination. Each person has to find it separately and individually. It has to be applied to his own person, not only as far as the childhood situation is concerned when these solutions were unconsciously instituted, but also in the present predicaments and problems of life. He must find out how one trend may be more predominant in one situation, and the other trend in different circumstances.

QUESTION: You have shown us how the distortion of these attributes manifests. And also you have shown us how these attributes work hand in hand in the healthy way. But, in addition, I feel that not only can they be hand in hand in the divine way, but that actually they are byproducts of each other. Love in the form of strength, and strength coming through love, and both together producing serenity. Now my question is: is there a distortion of this unification itself, where one believes that one can combine them, but does so in a distorted way?

ANSWER: Again, a contradictory attitude exists. On the one hand, the person may at times believe that this can be combined. And you will find in this work that offhand a person may say: "But why not? Why can I not have this, and at the same time that?" Only upon closer analysis will it show that this is mutually exclusive because it is distorted. So a person is inwardly convinced that it can be combined. And he would be right if it were in the healthy way, but in the unhealthy way it cannot be done. Through seeing the cause and effect of each trend, you will see in your work exactly why and how these two trends oppose one another.

It is also true that often a person is simultaneously -- because all this is unconscious -- convinced that it cannot be combined. Therefore, when he is submissive, then he hates himself because, on the other hand, he should be proud, aloof, independent. He does not see that he could be giving in while at the same time asserting himself in a healthy independence. Thus, it works both ways. On the one hand, he despises himself for not combining these attitudes, and on the other, he despairs because he unconsciously believes that he should make a decision either for one side or the other and he cannot do so.

QUESTION: I wonder, could a distorted attempt at unification, under the belief that one is flexible, always have the right judgment?

ANSWER: Yes, indeed, it often does.

QUESTION: Could you give us some insight into the reasons for compulsive acts. In particular, what is the general emotional basis for compulsive buying and eating? And how can these two particular acts be combated?

ANSWER: The only way to combat them is by going into this work and finding the underlying reasons. There must be a very personal, very particular reason, and this has to be found. If the attempt is made to force it away by discipline, then the best you can hope to achieve is to force the symptom away, while other symptoms will develop instead, and will produce an even greater anxiety.

Why these compulsions exist cannot be generalized. But as much as it can be generalized, I may say this: any compulsion comes from an unconscious conclusion that something must be had, that it must be attained, that it must be gotten. But by the time this reaches the outer personality, the goal may have been shifted to a substitute. For instance, the idealized self image dictates to live up to something, or to gain something, and the person is unable to do so. He is then compelled to seek other outlets. He is so frustrated about his inability to live up to what he believes he should and could achieve that he must substitute this. When analyzed as to its symbolic meaning, then a compulsion for buying things will show that it represents an acquisitiveness. This may come from a distortion of a power to have and to possess. It may come from a distortion of love: "If I cannot have love, then I want things instead." The compulsion to eat may have similar roots. It may also be a substitute for the frustration of not being able to receive the pleasure one yearns for. This wanting pleasure is the result of the wrong attempts to solve life. When the effects of these attempts and distorted attitudes are sufficiently analyzed, then it will be found that they prohibit the very thing that one wants to attain. Once this is seen, then the substitute, with its compelling nature, will lessen, to the degree that one understands the inner cause and effect.

Even if the general explanation and examples I cite should happen to apply to a person, it will not really help. The person has to find it by himself, and perhaps first experience this finding as though it were entirely different from the explanation given. Only then will it be beneficial.

QUESTION: What is the psychological explanation for a person becoming a dope addict?

ANSWER: I cannot go beyond a general explanation, for each case may be different. All I can say is that life becomes too difficult to cope with. But not because life is too difficult -- as so many people secretly feel -- but because of the inner problems tearing the person in half, that self-estrangement increases steadily and therefore reality becomes not only more ugly, but also more remote. The pain of the illusion becomes unbearable. All this produces measures of further deliberate escape, such as drug addiction, alcoholism, psychosis, or other measures. Also, addictions are often motivated by the strong craving for love, for pleasure, for ecstasy. So another one of these vicious circles exists: the more one is estranged from the real self, the less pleasure is possible, and therefore the greater the longing for it becomes. Then a shortcut is looked for in such addictions.

QUESTION: We are surrounded by thought forms of different quality and strength. In what way do they interplay with our different selves?

ANSWER: The negative or distorted thought forms and feeling forms emanating from others will affect the corresponding levels which also harbor distortions. The thought forms and the feeling forms emanating from the real self will affect the real self of the other person. Under no circumstances are you a prey to distorted forms of others. If you search within yourself, then such effects that others have on you will help you to bring out your own distortions so that you become aware of them and you learn to cope with them so as to solve your underlying problems.

As to the effect of your own thought forms and feeling forms on yourself. It would be misleading to say that they cause hardship for you. They are the product of your own conflicts and of the false solutions you seek. That these conflicts and wrong solutions produce corresponding forms is an incidental matter. You must not think that it is the thought forms which interfere. They exist. But the actual interference comes from the wrong attitude. Either your own distorted thought forms or the other person's distorted thought forms can only bring out your underlying problems, and this is good.

I bless each one of you. May these words give you food, not only for further thought, but for insight and for understanding. May you thus take a further step towards light and freedom: the light and freedom which can be yours if the tyranny of and the pride in your idealized self image are weakened by this work. Proceed on your path to happiness. Gain more and more strength, and let our blessings and our love help you and invigorate you. Be blessed, my dear ones. Be in peace. Be in God.

Ma, 1962