Main Image, Repressed Needs & Defenses Linked -- Conflicts Before Clarification

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless you. God bless this lecture. Many of my good friends find themselves in a state of inner struggle and crisis at this particular stage of their path and development. It is no coincidence that many of you experience this difficulty at this time. The proper development and the proper work brings the nucleus of the inner problem more and more to the surface. Before an overall understanding of the entire inner conflict is reached, just before you are about to grasp it -- provided you keep up the effort -- you are bound to suffer from depression and from confusion.

In the past you may have gathered a considerable amount of insight; you may have gotten some understanding about isolated areas, about parts of problems, details. But you have not as yet gained the full, overall, and concise understanding of your life: what is problematic about it and why. You still miss the main link between cause and effect. But before such understanding can be yours, you are bound to find a part in yourself that is putting up quite a struggle. Before your entire life, with its fulfillments and its frustrations, can take on a new meaningfulness, you cannot help but go through a renewed confusion, as it were. It is this confusion that is depressing. The first step towards alleviating it is to become aware of exactly what you are confused about, rather than feeling it only vaguely.

It is said, and it is often true indeed, that the child in you resists growth, desires to remain immature, and desire to remain burdened with the unworkable wrong conclusions and the destructive defense mechanisms. Without these pseudo-solutions and defenses a part in you believes itself lost, threatened, endangered. To let go of this protection -- or of that which seems as such to you -- causes your psyche to resist. Yet, such states as many of you are now going through are not due entirely to this resistance to growth and to change. In other words, to your fear of letting go of familiar, although defective, behavior patterns.

Even if this particular kind of resistance has disappeared to a considerable degree, you still find yourself in a state of fighting against change. If this is so, then it is due to discouragement with yourself, with your apparent relapses. And you do not understand why this occurs. This is part of the confusion I referred to earlier. These relapses occur not only because it takes considerable time until a new habit can form in your emotional reactions, but also because you cannot do so before you gain a fuller view and a deeper understanding regarding the totality of your conflicts. By this I do not mean a general, theoretical understanding, but a real inner, specific, and personal understanding. Such inner understanding comes only after a great deal of deep insight, and after growth and change regarding partial areas. All this is necessary before the nucleus can be affected.

In order to help you a little from the outside towards this inner understanding, so as to gain an overall picture about yourself, let me suggest to you an important link, which will then lead to the necessary insight, and ultimately to freedom. However, you must realize that any words spoken to you that come from the outside can give you only a theoretical understanding to begin with. You must not leave it at that. You must use these words as guiding directives, so as to gain a personal, emotional understanding from them. The link must be made with your own findings, with your own attitudes, with your own images.

Let us consider three major aspects of our work so far. To begin with, we were concerned with your images. There is always one main image. It concerns the most important unfulfillment in your life. As a result of it, you go through repeated disappointments. In connection with the images, we deal with the various wrong conclusions and pseudo solutions, which constitute a part of the main image.

The second aspect of our work deals with the repressed needs, and, in connection with them, the repressed emotions, both positive and negative.

The third aspect deals with the defense mechanism that you develop in order to obtain what seems to you a protection. In this category belong the attitudes of submissiveness, of aggressiveness, and of withdrawal. These three aspects, as well as the idealized self image, form a part of your defense. But it is more than all of this. The basic defense is a general inner climate that you have to come to feel. You have to recognize its presence in order to become fully aware of the damage it does for you. You have to acutely feel it, as though it were a foreign body, before you can convince yourself of its destructive influence, causing many unnecessary unfavorable results.

Let us now see how these three major aspects connect, how they are linked up with one another. Only if you have a full understanding of how this is so in your individual case will your confusion disappear and, with it, your depression and your discouragement. This understanding does not suffice to be general, theoretical, or in principle only; it must be specific, as it applies to you.

Let us consider how an image comes into existence. The childhood hurts and the frustrations that every child experiences, at least to some degree, cause unhappiness and discontent. The situation that brings this about leads the child to jump to the erroneous conclusion that every similar situation is bound to bring a similar result. Thus, what was once a reality now turns into an illusion, because it is untrue that such a generalization can be made. This generalization freezes into a rigid, preconceived idea. This is the image. The supposed remedy of the wrong conclusion is a part of the image. Since the image is unreal, so must be the remedy. Since the image is an inflexible, rigid mass in the soul substance -- that should be fluid and dynamic -- the remedy is also unrealistic, and therefore is disappointing. All the more disappointing is the fact that what happens in reality is the opposite of what the remedy was supposed to fulfill. It goes without saying that this entire process remains unconscious, until you have succeeded in bringing it into your consciousness.

This predicament inevitably results in further negative chain reactions. The defense mechanism becomes stronger and stronger in every possible respect. The more this happens, the less it is possible to avoid the hurts that you have unconsciously labored so hard to forego. And as long as it is unconscious, then you have no way of stopping this destructive process, which is so entirely opposed to your best interests.

In connection with the original hurt that caused you to form your image, you begin to repress. Not only do you repress this hurt, so that you are no longer aware of it -- so that you experience it as a vague general climate -- but you also repress many of your needs. This is because the experience leading to your having formed your image was both so painful and so humiliating that you did not wish to face it. Moreover, this experience makes you believe that these needs cannot be fulfilled. Therefore, you believe that it is possible to tear out your needs simply by not acknowledging them.

Your pseudo solutions are supposed to bring you the fulfillment -- which you often simultaneously deny -- without the risk of being hurt again and without the risk of being humiliated again. Since this cannot be, your defenses become stronger, and thereby fulfillment becomes less possible. During this process, you go on repressing your needs, repressing your hurts, repressing your disappointments. Oh, you may experience them to a certain degree, but rarely with their full impact, and almost never with the understanding of what really hurts you and why.

This repeated pattern not only proves the image right, it also proves that your defense against it does not work. This increases the hurt of the original experience that brought your image into existence. This is all the more confusing because a part of the image works. The best way to explain this is by way of an example. Of course, the example can only be a simplified one, because we cannot go into the many side effects and details that are important in an entire human personality. We will consider it only from the standpoint of a discussion. But such an example may clarify what I mean a little better than a description in abstract terms.

Let us suppose that a male child has had a cruel mother. Or maybe she was not really cruel, but it seemed that way to the child because she was inhibited, undemonstrative, and conflicted. Therefore, she lacked understanding and imagination. The child experienced an acute lack of affection, an acute lack of warmth, and an acute lack of understanding. Therefore, he was frustrated. This was a reality situation. The following image will form: "Women are ungiving. Women do not give love. They only reject." When the child becomes an adult, then fear, apprehension, and anxiety will be felt toward all women. These may be not manifest outwardly, but if the emotions are examined deeply, then this fear will be found. Since the basic need for the opposite sex, the basic need for warmth, the basic need for love, and the basic need for affection cannot be torn out, then a remedy against this image will come into existence. As I said before, due to the unreal premise that all women are the way the mother was, the remedy must also be unreal. Therefore, it is not effective.

Let us further assume that the same mother was very demanding as far as work at school was concerned. She expected a high standard from the child. When the child was actually successful, then she approved. In other words, she was not witholding in her approval. On the contrary, she was liberal with praise. Thus, some kind of gratification could be had by the child, provided he struggled hard enough to be successful. This will add the following conclusion to the image: "Although women do not give the love and the comfort that my soul really craves for, I may get the next best thing: I may have some importance by being successful in my work."

Of course, such thoughts are never really uttered, not even unconsciously. For unconsciously there is no clear-cut distinction between receiving love and receiving approval. It is vaguely felt that something favorable came forth by being ambitious, while nothing favorable happened by needing to be loved. And even when the approval came, then there was no conscious lack of something. Rather, it was the inner climate that what one yearned for could be had to some degree if one made the effort in a certain direction. The real need for being loved was already repressed by the time the image came into existence.

Hence the main image in a case like this would be: "I have to be successful in order to be loved."And "approval for my professional work is one and the same as being loved." Images of this or similar sort are quite frequent. But let us now examine a little further, with our new understanding, what this means. Due to such an image -- provided there is no strong second image present counter-acting this one -- then such a person will actually be very successful. He will be ambitious, and he will use all his resources in order to satisfy the image-claim to receive approval and success. This image-claim will be granted. But the underlying claim -- namely that approval is tantamount to love -- cannot be granted because here lies the wrong conclusion. The actual image of striving for success is not in itself a wrong conclusion. It may be a waste of too much energy on one aspect of life, at the expense of other pursuits which may be more important for happiness and peace. But in itself there is no error, there is no untruth involved. There may be an imbalance when the entire life and its needs are considered, but in itself it is not based on a wrong assumption. Therefore it will work out. In other words, the claim for success will be fulfilled. Whether or not the overemphasis brings imbalance to the life of the person, in the claim itself there is no logical error. This will furnish you with the explanation for a question that constantly bothers some of my friends: why such and such a person who is so much less developed has this and that success which a more developed person lacks.

But the unconscious aim and claim for gaining love through success cannot be granted because approval and love are not the same. To believe it, either consciously or unconsciously, is a logical error, a misconception. Therefore, it cannot work. By gaining the one you do not gain the other. If you gain both love and success, then it is due to a logically correct attitude towards both. This is where the image does not work. This is why the constantly frustrated needs grow and are repressed, because the personality is not willing to face (a) the longing, the pain of the unfulfillment, (b) the erroneous image conclusion. The unfulfilled need for love, the unfulfilled need for warmth, the unfulfilled need for companionship, and the unfulfilled need for union is contained in the unpronounced claim of the main image. Here you can see one link: between your main image and your repressed needs.

The repressed need for love is, in itself, a healthy and legitimate need. But the need for approval at the expense of gaining love is an unhealthy need. Now, why do I say "at the expense of?" Because if you concentrate on being successful, on impressing others, on receiving admiration -- all of which fall under the category of approval -- then you are bound to pursue the very behavior pattern that will push love away from you. Because of the wrong conclusion involved, you reject what you need most, even though you are unaware of it. But it is this need which originally caused you to produce your main image. If such a person is loved and if the motives of the love he receives are investigated, then it will become clear that the loving person does not love because of the traits that are imbedded in this image and which bring the success. The loving person loves because he senses another quality behind and apart from the traits that are meant to make the image work.

Now let us go to the next step with the example I have chosen. Such a person may be aware of a drive for success. But he is unaware of why this is so important, unaware of where it stems from, and unaware of what the frustration of the need behind it really mean. Therefore, each time he reaps success without the unpronounced inner claim for love not only is it a new frustration, it is the same hurt from childhood experienced all over again. But now with increased inner insecurity and inferiority. He had originally deduced that if only he were more lovable, then his mother would have given him more of the love that he needed. As a child, he could not evaluate that his mother might have been incapable either of feeling love or of demonstrating love. And now he is incapable of deducing that he himself forfeits love. But not because he is unworthy of it, but because his defense against being hurt is arrogant, rejecting, superior, and fearful. All these are feelings which certainly do not inspire love.

Only by unrolling this entire process can the painful inferiority feeling disappear. It is this inferiority -- this feeling of being unlovable -- that the soul resists to face. He fears that what he will find will be his image that says: "I am unlovable." So he represses. By doing so, he represses not only this painful factor, but he also represses the entire process of his image, of his needs, of his false claims, and of the destructive defense mechanisms, together with all the traits of his idealized self image, and the various pseudo solutions. Only by courageously going into and through this process will he find that actually he is not unlovable, as he unconsciously believes. Instead, he will realizet that he makes himself unlovable by using his defense mechanism. This realization is one of the most important ones on the Path. It holds true for everyone in some way, whatever the images are; whatever the idealized self image is; whatever the various pseudo solutions are. Even if the pseudo solution is submissiveness -- which seems opposed to the arrogance of the aggressive success-seeker and which is the pseudo solution which denies one's needs -- it will always be found that deep within this submissiveness lies just as much arrogance and just as much superiority as in the other pseudo solutions. It is clothed in a seemingly more acceptable cloak, but it contains just as hardened a defense structure as the extreme opposite. This defense structure is an invisible but very real wall that is unconsciously perceived by everyone. It prohibits love although it begs for it. Upon a close analysis of the various emotions and feelings contained in it, then it will become clear that the submitter rejects just as much as the aggressor.

The crisis and the struggle that precede this important breakthrough are also based on the still unconscious confusion that the means that are supposed to get love and acceptance actually do not bring it. Therefore the unconscious belief of one's own unworthiness increases. And this is even more difficult to face. If you go through it, then you will be relieved to see that it is not you who is unlovable, but the various devices that you use for your protection. This recognition is of untold value and it will give you incredible strength.

The search in this direction is not easy. There are so many factors, so many simultaneously contradictory aspects to unroll and to see. There may be a moment's insight, that only eludes you again. And when you try to feel it by memory, then it no longer works. It is no longer meaningful. It has to be found again, until it takes a stronger hold on you. Only by repeatedly observing this destructive defense -- how it feels in you, what it makes you do, what it makes you feel, what it makes you think, how it makes you react, and how this effects others -- will you see and truly understand. Only then will you gradually let go and become free of it. And only then will your true self, your undefended self manifest. Your real self may often act against your known outer rules, against your principles, and against the established patterns that you have become used to. It takes a great deal of struggle until you let your real self act unhampered by your outer levels, which are so unreliable -- as your life has shown you in your times of trouble, in your crises.

Your innermost self -- which knows so well and which will never lead you astray -- cannot function as long as it is encased in the hardened brittle structure of your defenses.

Another difficulty in your struggle to come through and see the light is the following confusion. Since everyone has a streak of submissiveness, you may confuse it with giving up your arrogance and your superiority, which forfeit love, just as you confuse healthy self-assertion with this superiority. The difference is subtle, difficult to put into words, but it is nevertheless a decided one. Yet, as long as you still find yourself involved in your problems, then it is hard to perceive which is which. You struggle between two alternatives, either of which could be healthy or distorted. You will find the answer only when you have found your point of relinquishing and only when you are utterly aware of the hardened mass of your defense mechanism.

Let us examine the difference between submissiveness, appeasement, and the unprotected, vulnerable real self which should be out in the open. And this does not mean more hurt but less, my friends. When you appease, when you submit, when you give in, or when you allow others to take advantage of you, then you do so only because you cannot relinquish the claims of your needs because you are unaware of them. That robs you of the dignity of your real self. Your real self can lose. It may be painful, but never as painful and as bitter as the struggle of straining towards the impossible.

You will not forfeit your dignity because you do not have to have. And you do not have to have if you can face your needs, and if you can face how you forfeit their fulfillment by the process I am describing here. The stronger your tendency to submit, the more self-contempt you beget, and therefore the stronger is the pull into the opposite direction of arrogant aggressiveness and superiority. Whether you manifest it outwardly, or whether it smolders hiddenly, it has its effect on others. It rejects! However, you confuse it with the dignity that is lacking in your tendency to submit. Your submissiveness is an outcome of your repressed needs; of your denial of them and of your shame for having them. Your aggressiveness is a defense, not so much against outer hurts, but against your submissiveness.

You find yourself ensnarled in this conflict. You cannot give up the defense that keeps you chained to both these tendencies. Or, if you are confused between these two ways, then you may resort to withdrawing from life, to withdrawing from love, to withdrawing from reaching out towards life and towards others. Again, it is not so much that you withdraw because you fear others, but because you cannot cope between these two artificially constructed attitudes that at one time seemed to be a solution to your unconscious unfulfillment or frustration.

All that I have told you now should not be mere words. As long as they are, then they will not do you any good. Therefore, it is necessary that you begin to link up these elements by considering once again what your main image is. Some of you have not even found it yet. If you have not, then consider your main problem, your unhappiness, your unfulfillment, and then proceed to find it. Now it will be much easier to do so with all the preliminary work that you have gone through.

When you see the main image, then determine the part that did work out because of its correct premise. Then consider the hidden claim and the fact that it did not work. Consider the needs involved in this image. Even before you feel them, you will know that these needs must be there once you realize the image, with each of its fulfilled and unfulfilled claims. This will enable you to set out feeling them, and you will become aware of them in due time. You will acutely feel both the real needs and the superimposed unreal needs. Train yourself to feel your defensive wall in yourself. Observe it in action. Feel its existence. It is there, if only you pay attention to it.

Last, begin to notice the difference in your behavior and in your reactions when you feel the defensive wall in you and when you do not. This will bring into clear focus the effect that you must have on others. Without the awareness of this difference, then you cannot know the effect of your defense. When you realize the effect that you have on others due to this defense mechanism, then you will be able to close the circle. You will see that this defensive wall breeds the very unfulfillment that you wanted to avoid through the erroneous image-conclusion. You all get what the image demands, as long as there is no logical error contained in it. After establishing these facts -- apart from the other part, the one that is based on a misconception -- you may change your inner weight and your inner focus because you will recognize that it does not bring you what you really want.

Those of you who are aware of your main image without the links that I showed in this lecture will not really benefit from this awareness. It will not be a live-knowledge that has an impact on you, that enables you to go through an inner change. In order to do that, you need the connecting links in your personal inner history.

If there is anything that is not quite clear, then please ask me about it.

QUESTION: I realize at this point of my path that I use my defense mechanism and I recognize it. I am aware of it. Instead of following through, I try not to act upon it. So I am going through a stage of holding my breath. I don't want to suppress it. I don't want to follow it out, and there I am, I can't go on. Can you give me a hint?

ANSWER: You are in this painful state because you still act upon obedience rather than upon recognition. You somehow know that the defense is destructive in general, and you obey this general understanding. But you have not seen yet why this defense is unnecessary, superfluous, and against your own interest in your particular case. Once you have gained this insight, then it will no longer be difficult to prevent yourself from acting it out, because then you will have no further need for it. The fact that you are suspended, so to speak, in the state you describe is due to your persisting inner conviction that you still need this defense. Therefore, now it becomes imperative for you to find out why you think that you need this defense. There is a tremendous anxiety in you that without it you will be either threatened or annihilated. Make conscious what it is that you fear will happen to you without this defense.

What happens now is that you no longer wish to use it. Therefore, you hold it back forcefully. But inwardly you are not convinced that you can dispose of it. So, you still hold on to it forcefully. You try to compromise between the old way and the new way. But you are not quite ready yet for the new way of life. Yet a part of you is eager for the new way of life -- and therefore is willing to experience it. This painful state is one that many of you are going through in one form or another now. The recognition of it not only will alleviate some of the pain, but it will give you a clear directive as to how to go on from here.

When you have found your need, then you will be able to relax inwardly. All this is difficult to explain in words because here we are dealing with soul movements. We are coming into a realm where words are insufficient. Try to follow these movements and to visualize them. What you did before the recent findings was to press under in a hard, cramped downward movement. When the pressure became too much, then you let it shoot it out, but still in a tense, cramped motion. Both movements are tense and cramped -- the one pressing down and the one shooting out. The third alternative -- after understanding how unnecessary and superfluous this protective measure is, apart from its destructiveness -- will be to relax this hardened mass that has either pressed down or struck out. Thus the hardened mass will dissolve. Then it will bring you relief and release that is constructive and meaningful. The striking out movement also brought a momentary relief, but in the long run it is of a destructive nature.

The first few times that you try to dispose of the hardened wall, of the cramped movement -- either down or out -- you may feel as though you were falling into an abyss. You will feel yourself defenseless. Before, your stronghold, your safe point, was the hardened mass of your defense, which necessitates either of the two hard movements. Without it, you felt vulnerable, attackable. If you realize that this is an error, then you will be capable of softening up this hard mass. Now you are trying to retain it with repression. But this is not yet what you should aim for. Instead of retaining it, you have to dissolve it by this relaxing, softening up process. In order to be able to do so, you have to ask yourself -- of your emotions, not of your brain -- this question: "What am I afraid of without this defense?" Find this answer. Then you will be able to go further.

QUESTION: I have many of the symptoms you have explained here. On the one hand, I am frightened, and on the other I feel an inner peace. So I don't know what to do. I feel both ways, often at the same time. I can translate my emotions very well, but I still need help in this respect. I think that one part of my problem is that there is too much passivity in me and that generates a certain fear too.

ANSWER: I can only repeat what I have said to you many times before. You have now reached a point where one part of you is finally beginning to want to give up childhood. But a part of you still holds on frantically to childhood because it fears adulthood, with its responsibility and what seems like activity to you. This struggle is now coming to the surface and to a head. Your protection and your defense is in retaining childhood. But, as I said, a part of you is afraid of giving up this protection. For you the key question at this point is this: "Why am I afraid of no longer being a child?" The inner peace is the result of your work, which makes you prepared to give up childhood -- at least partly.

QUESTION: You said some time ago that the result of the defense mechanism can be determined also by the effect it has on other people. I don't know whether I really understood that correctly, but occasionally I find that my defense mechanism is perfect, and that the effect it has on the other person is wonderful.

ANSWER: For what you really want, or for what you think you want?

QUESTION: For what I think I want. If I follow through with a defense to keep people from meddling with my affairs, then they are most happy, everyone else is happy. So it is not the other person who reacts badly to my defense mechanism.

ANSWER: You may be outwardly content with the result, but you overlook the byproducts of it that make you far from happy. And even if others do not seem to mind how a particular defense that you are acting out affects them, it has adverse effects for you, whether you realize it or not. Only increased self-understanding will make this clear to you. You may be thinking of one separated, isolated aspect of it, while I am talking about the entirety -- with all its results -- of which as yet you have no inkling. This is something that one becomes aware of gradually, after a great deal of work. You may be aware of some isolated aspects of it.

Moreover, what may happen here is just what I discussed in this lecture. You are aware of a part of your image-claim -- which is fulfillable because in itself it is not based on an erroneous assumption. But you are still unaware of the underlying claim which leaves you unfulfilled. Find the unpronounced claim and desire -- the heretofore repressed need that you have neglected -- and you will see how your defense mechanism prohibits your deepest goal and desire. Then you will understand how you inhibit yourself from bringing out all that is still dormant in you, all your potentials that cannot be unfolded with the defense mechanism that you think works so well for you.

QUESTION: Would you give us an example of how to relinquish a need, as you indicated so clearly by the example of how to get the real needs fulfilled?

ANSWER: Let us take the case I used here as a hypothesis. The real need of this person is to love and to be loved. In other words, to have a meaningful relationship. He is unaware of this need. The painful childhood experiences -- with their effects on this particular personality -- have prohibited the unfoldment of the personality, which would have brought about the fulfillment. He has repressed the knowledge of this need. Instead, he pursues success, approval, impressing others. Then this has become a false need. It is superimposed over the real need, and therefore it covers up the real need. To begin with, he is not fully aware of his need for approval. But let us assume that such a person follows a path such as this. First he will become aware of his tremendous drive for success, surpassing his rational explanation for it. Then he will slowly realize that a force that is stronger than he urges him on and on. At first he will not understand it. But if he is willing to examine his emotions, then he will see that his need for approval does exist. To stop at this point will not yield relief and liberation. It is only a part of the way. But by going on, he will ask himself why he needs success so badly. The answer will be that approval is very important for him. Why is it so important? By consulting his emotions honestly -- without resistance -- he will finally see that his need for love has been denied as a child. And he has gone on denying it to himself because of his image, with all its byproducts. The awareness of this real need -- once it is truly felt and experienced with its full impact -- will automatically diminish his drive for ambition, for success, for approval, for impressing others, for being glorious, for being special, and so on. He will do what he really wants and he will distribute his forces and his resources in a more harmonious way. This does not imply that all of a sudden he will neglect a healthy interest in his work. But harmony will gradually establish itself. Then the inner aim will be directed towards that which he had neglected for so long. He will come to see how he himself has sabotaged the fulfillment of his real need by his pursuit of the false need. Now he will clearly see the behavior pattern of the false need and how it damaged the real need. Therefore, he will begin to change in that respect.

This is relinquishing in the real sense. One grows into it by insight, by a full understanding of all the factors involved, and then by no longer holding on to the false needs and to the destructive defenses. But this can never be done by an action of the will. If you find yourself beginning to recognize that similar trends exist and you try to relinquish this need forcefully, then it will do you no good. Either you will not succed, or the anxiety may be so great that you will produce other destructive trends of which you are unaware. But by going through the slow process described in this lecture, the growth occurs organically, and the relinquishing happens in a natural way.

QUESTION: Let us say that a person has a number of real needs, as everyone has, and a number of artificial or false needs. They may not even be very strong. But how to go about it in a particular direction?

ANSWER: Well, I think this has been answered already, not only in the answer just given, but also by this lecture. But let me add this. Observe your emotions, with their inner, unpronounced claims, and the behavior pattern resulting from this. Then observe your reactions to others. Consider how you affect them by the way you act and by the way you react. Then observe which of your needs are fulfilled and which remain unfulfilled. When you have done all this, then you will gain a clearer picture about the process under discussion here. Become aware of your emotions, of your needs, and of your defense -- of how they make you behave inwardly, and therefore also outwardly. Then you will see the answer clearly. In order to do so a great deal of inner awareness has to be cultivated. This is best done by the Path I advocate and that I steadily lead you on. Allow your emotions to come to the surface and then learn to cope with them. Understand their deeper meaning and their reason for being. In the group work among other benefits you will get a greater understanding of how you affect others and of how others affect you. In other words, you will feel when your defense is coming up and when it does not come up. You will see the difference in your perception, in your experience, and in your ability to communicate with this defense and without it. All this will reveal your inner life to you. It will help you to relinquish your false needs and to replace them with constructive behavior patterns, which will then fulfill your real needs.

My dearest friends, may these words find an echo in all of you. If not immediately, then after you have surged on a little further. Be blessed, each one of you. Rejoice in this Path towards freedom. When you find yourself temporarily in a seeming impasse -- where the path is thorny and involved and it takes all your efforts to work yourself out of the thick shrubbery and see the light again -- then do not let yourself be discouraged. Know that the light will come. It is bound to come. Receive our warmth, our love, and our blessings. Be in peace. Be in God.

November 24, 1961