Self-Alienation: The Way Back To The Real Self

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest, dearest friends. God bless every single one of you. Blessed are your efforts. Blessed is your valiant struggle to find yourself, and thus to find your own sense of living.

At this time, which represents for you a new year -- for us, of course, this fragmentation of being which you call "time" is not known -- I should like, once again, to give you an overall understanding of your current work from an approach that is adapted to your new insights. To do so, let us first understand the human struggle as such. The very state of being human is a problem. It is a problem because you find yourself in an in-between state.

You have awakened from a lower state, either the plant form or the animal form, where you were in a state of being -- and hence in harmony -- but without awareness. In your present state you have not yet reached a state of being with awareness -- hence you are not yet in harmony. This in-between state represents the human struggle as such. This struggle does not apply merely to those who are on any kind of path of attempting to find the self. It applies to every single human being, regardless of his state of development, regardless of what is character and his endeavors are. The only difference between those who actively work toward finding themselves and those who do not is that the former bring this struggle into their awareness, while the latter are unaware of it. Your fight is to find the state of being while in awareness, and with that awareness to reach a proper combination between activity and passivity, between action and inaction. In this there is often confusion.

Moreover, the human struggle manifests itself in trying to overcome the obstructions that come from unawareness. And unawareness means unreality, untruth. Untruth produces suffering. In another terminology, it might be expressed as the struggle between spirit and matter. For, matter is a result of unawareness, of unreality, of untruth. Mastery over matter has been attempted by mankind in many ways. But in the final analysis it must always mean mastery over untruth -- untruth in you personally. Only when you become aware of your own untruth, not of general untruth, can you finally overcome it.

Only as you discover your own unreality -- your wrong conclusions, your pseudo-solutions, and your evasion -- will you reach the core of your being. Slowly but surely, you will begin to act and to react from your core rather than from the superimpositions which are error and distortion. Only when you act and react from this core of your individuality will you reach and affect the core of others, regardless of whether or not they themselves work on such a path. This follows the law of attraction of similar substance and of repulsion of dissimilar substance, the law of affinity.

Again and again you search in vain for the real you, the core of your being. You are confused in that you take the superimpositions as the real you, simply because you have become so used to them. You may have discovered their destructiveness and their artificiality, but you are as yet unable to dispense with them. You have not yet gained the sense, the awareness, and the experience of the real you. You ask yourself: "Who am I? Where is my real self?"

My task is to guide you to this core of your nature, from various angles and through various approaches. I can help you with this, but you have to do the work of recognizing, of facing, of changing. In short, it is your struggle. If you want to become happy, if you want to lead a fruitful life, if you want to lead a rich life, then you have to be whole, undivided. This can only be if you are your real self. Therefore, it is logical and reasonable that if you wish to realize yourself, then both the struggle and the effort have to be yours.

The state of self-alienation -- not being one's real self -- is so predominant, so general that its symptoms do not stand out. There are many symptoms which pass you by unnoticed, simply because they are so general that they are assumed to be normal.

Let us look at self-alienation. We will see what it means, and give you some examples of how it manifests. Then I will tell you how it can be determined. We discussed this already, but I am always trying new approaches in order to help you undertand.

One way of determining your self-alienation is by finding in what areas of life you feel helpless. In other words, where you feel trapped in situations beyond your control. I have pointed out that where such a state of helplessness exists, then there must be an underlying problem, an unresolved conflict. To carry this a step further, I now say that such an unresolved conflict is the result of self-alienation, just as self-alienation is the result of an unresolved problem. It does not matter how you wish to formulate it -- helplessness, powerlessness, the paralysis of one's faculties is the result of your self-alienation. This is intimately connected with unresolved problems that exist in error.

It is easy to misinterpret these words, particularly if a person has reached the pseudo-solution of power. Not to be helpless does not mean that you always win, that you never suffer frustrations or unfulfillments, that things always go according to ideal plans. On the contrary, the person with such a pseudo-solution -- with the aim of power -- is more dependent than most on others and on life. He has to win! In other words, his immediate aim has to be fulfilled! If not, then he feels weakened and humiliated. Since the fulfillment of every wish -- such constant winning -- cannot possibly depend on him alone, then he is dependent. He invests his own inherent strength in others whom he, either consciously or unconsciously, pressures to do his bidding. That which exists in him -- his strength, his resourcefulness, his reason -- is put outside. Since it is directed to others, it is not used within. This is self-alienation. It leads to just as much helplessness as that which befalls the outrightly submissive, compliant, weak person.

When I say that being your real self will make you master of your life, it does not mean a power-driven compulsion to always win and to never do without that which you wish. It means that due to a minimum of inner problems, your own forces work constructively and productively. They are not paralyzed through your inner mismanagement. The richness of your spirit, of your human individuality, will unfold with all its strength. When you find yourself in a difficult situation, then you will use your strength to find both the inner solution and the outer solution -- for there is always a good solution, all you have to do is to be willing to see it.

When your experience of self, your experience of of others, and your experience of life is not distorted but is in accord with reality, then you will express all your benign forces. These are your reason, your love, your understanding, your insight, your strength, your resourcefulness, your resiliency, your flexibility, your adaptability, your self-assertion, your creativity -- and all the other qualities that your real self is endowed with. When your real self is free, then you will communicate with others, you will make yourself understood, and you will express yourself adequately. You will be in a position to discriminate, to make choices, and to make decisions because fear and anxiety are gone. In the process of making a proper and mature choice you will be able to distinguish between that which is real, valid, and constructive and that which is not. With all that, you will find a way out of any difficulty, and the difficulty itself will have been a stepping tone.

You can reach this stage only when non-fulfillment does not annihilate you. Why does it have this effect on you? Because your experience of self and your experience of others is so distorted that you feel any frustration as a personal rejection and as proof of your inadequacy. You can relinquish this attitude only after you fully understand that your worth, your value, and your lovability are not made questionable by non-fulfillment. For such non-fulfillment may be the result of your inhibited strength. That is your real self, but it has nothing to do with your real being. Your real being is simply inactivated by your distorted perception of certain factors of your life.

The self-estranged person experiences the pain of frustration of a wish or a goal much more than the unfulfillment itself. In other words, the pain of not having what he wants is much less than the additional factor of receiving proof, as it were, of his worthlessness, of his inadequacy, of his unlovability. In other words, of his being nothing. Of course, this is unconscious. In fact, you go to great pains not to be aware of this deduction. You cover it up with the exact opposite trends, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes.

There is a part of you in which you do perceive things in just such a way. This accounts for the often disproportionate pain of a failure, pain of a rejection, or pain of the lack of success in a particular field. Often it can be rationalized by a truly stringent reality-situation. Nevertheless, underneath you will find this connection between your worth and the outer situation. Only after you have become aware of this process -- of your unreasonable perception of existing conditions -- will you be you in a position (1) to perceive reality, and thus find your real self in this respect; and (2) to no longer be alienated from your real self. And only then will you also alter the outer situation.

As you go through this process and you gain insight into your distorted sense of reality, then your sense of reality will automatically be improved. The inevitable result of this is that you will ascribe less power to outside circumstances than you did before. When you are able to mobilize your own inherent strength and other faculties that lead to a rich life, then you will feel much less helpless. The demobilization of these faculties is a result of your self-estrangement. This, in turn, is a result of and is connected with your distorted experience of life and your distorted experience of self; with your inability to relinquish; and with your illusion of being crushed, annihilated, belittled, and worth nothing if certain wishes are not fulfilled according to schedule, so to speak.

Your fear of failure is not so acute because of the failure itself, but because it implies, for you at least, that you have failed because you are inferior. Your fear of responsibility is not so great because of laziness, but because the failure to fulfill your responsibilities implies the inferiority of your self. The fear of the frustration of pleasure is not so acute because you cannot live without it, but because it implies an inferiority. Once you see that this is so with you, and you really experience this distortion, then you will eventually grow out of it. As you do so, your ability to first perceive and then experience these factors in their reality will increase. Hence, you will have access to your real self. You will no longer have to live with a cover of pretense and thus alienate yourself from the core of your individuality. You will realize that in you which heretofore had been only a potential. This can happen only when you cease living on the periphery and you return to the center of your being.

As long as you live on the periphery, then you eject your own power outside of yourself. This may happen in the form of an authority that you invest with such power -- whether it be an individual or an institution. It may also happen that your inherent powers are projected onto life, unto fate, and unto unalterable circumstances as a whole. Then you await helplessly for fate's favor. And if it fails to come, then you blame the injustice and the arbitrariness of the world, not your own error in finding the answer. In other words, you are looking in the wrong direction. It does not occur to you to look where you might find many solutions. You prefer to remain helpless, thrusting all your own powers, all your forces, and all your faculties to the periphery. Thus, you are never able to solve anything.

Self-estrangement may, and often does, exist also in the form of projecting one's own faculties and one's own powers on aspects of the self. You may say that this cannot be because if it is the self, then it is not estrangement from the self. It is estrangement from the self if faculties, authority, dependency, and strength are projected upon isolated fragments of the personality instead of upon its entirety. If you expect a good life, if you expect a rich life, and if you expect the solution of your problems and of your difficulties to come out of only one of your assets, instead of from a harmonious combination of the whole, then you become rigid in this over-emphasis. Thereby, you neglect your other faculties. Thus, you are alienated from your self, becauset an integral part of your entire self is left out of commission.

This holds true even more when you use your various pseudo-solutions. If you now re-read the lectures dealing with that topic and with the idealized self image, then you will understand what this means in terms of self-alienation. Your concentration is focused on something that is unreal and unreasonable and, as such, is foreign to the real self, whose nature is reality and reason. Moreover, the pseudo solutions and the idealized self are selfish and loveless in their nature and, as such, are foreign to the real self whose intrinsic nature is love. The pseudo solutions and the idealized self image are pretenses, while the real self is intrinsically genuine.

In the course of this work, most of you have become aware that in some situations you do not function as you do in other areas where you are free from such problems. In your problem areas, you are inhibited; you cannot express yourself; you cannot communicate and relate either to others or to yourself; you are confused; you are anxious; your faculties are paralyzed. This is so not because you are that way, and therefore you cannot help it, but because in the areas where your problems lie your real self does not function. You are alienated from it due to your unreality, to your pretense, and to your insistence on remaining at the periphery and seeking a solution from there.

The person who is not alienated from himself experiences the richness of his own individuality. He experiences his own power. He trusts in himself because he can relinquish and is thus free from compulsion and from anxiety. He relates to himself -- in other words, he is in touch with the core of his being -- and thus he can relate to others. Yet all this happens without overestimating himself. He does not have to be in glory and in perfection. And because of that, he utilizes the infinite richness of his being. It means: "I am strong. My possibilities are manifold. If outer difficulties come to me, then I can overcome them, first by facing them fully and then by my willingness to cope with them truthfully, not superficially, not for the sake of appearance. I do not have to be great. I do not have to be glorious. I do not have to be special. I am a simple human being like many others, but I know that I am endowed with great powers that as yet I have not realized. These powers cannot express unfold and express themselves because of my unreality, because of my distorted view. I know that they are in me, but they can become manifest only when my perception of reality becomes more truthful."

This is how the person who is not alienated from himself will experience himself. He is equipped to deal with all the situations that life brings him. He will experience himself in a realistic relationship to the world at large and to other individuals. The alienated person experiences himself as either too small or too big, always fluctuating between these two distortions. Other people will either make him feel worthless and dependent, or they will inflate his ego. This is so subtle that you cannot be aware of it right away. Intellectually you know better, but you are utterly unconscious of the fact that emotionally you do experience the effect that others have on you in just that way. It takes a considerable amount of self-accounting and of observation in this respect to become aware of what has been in you all along.

The person who functions from his real self will not experience himself as either less or more than others. He may observe their shortcomings, but this has nothing to do with feeling superior to them. He may observe in others qualities that he himself is lacking, but this has nothing to do with feeling inferior. The more you feel worthless and as nothing in some hidden crevice of your personality, then the more you will tend to overinflate your ego. The less impaired your real ego is, the less it will be necessary to inflate it. Your relationship to others depends both on how you perceive them and on how you regard yourself in relation to them.

In the fluctuation of being either more or less than you really are, you are alienated from yourself. If you do not experience yourself in your real situation, then you cannot experience others in their reality. You may experience certain facets of them, which you may over-emphasize due to their bringing out the typical lessening or heightening of your personality, as the case may be. In other words, if another person appears powerful, strong, and invulnerable, and you may particularly desire acceptance by him, then he takes for you on an aura that is out of proportion to reality. You are in tension and anxiety with such a person and you perceive him in a distorted way.

Although your intellectual evaluation may be accurate, your emotional experience is colored by your fears and your desires in connection with this person -- even if you have no other aim than to use him to heighten you, to pull you up and out from the inferiority feelings in which you are engulfed. In short, when self-alienation occurs, then others affect you according to your own problems: you do not experience them in their reality. Needless to say, you cannot possibly communicate in this condition; and such communication is often essential for eliminating an outer problem. In a crass way, a person may experience others as potential enemies or as potential slaves, just as he himself is alternately the one or the other.

If your perception is thus beclouded, then you cannot enjoy life and rejoice in its richness. Only by being yourself are you capable of happiness. Now you can see this. It requires a great deal of self-observation on your part, on a new level of your emotions, to become aware of these conditions, of this limited outlook -- and the corresponding limited experience -- which is the prerequisite for changing your view, for changing your perception, and for changing your ability to experience both yourself and others in reality. It also requires a certain amount of progress on this Path before you can organically proceed to this stage. Entering this realm comes about gradually, as a consequence of previous progress. It is so subtle that at first you may not even realize that you have actually entered into such a phase.

But let me assure you that the moment you experience yourself in your unreality -- and you truly see how you do not relate to yourself and to others, how you are alienated from yourself in these particular respects -- then you actually approach reality faster than if you try to force yourself into it before you are ready. In other words, you first have to fully experience the distortion before you can come out of it. The fact that you are aware of your unreality is already an important step out of it. You cannot come in touch with your real self before you fully experience how you are not in touch with it as yet. The various ways I indicate by which to determine your self-alienation will help you to experience it.

Take one of your current problems and look at it from the point of view of how you feel yourself victimized. In other words, a prey to circumstances and to others. Then observe how you feel frustrated when expressing your wants and your ideas to others. Observe how uncertain and how confused you are about the issues and about what it is that you really want. Then consider where you can change things and where you cannot. Have you really explored all the possibilities at your disposal? Are you entirely open to new ideas and to new solutions? Is your inner will sufficiently active to receive new inspiration in order to change an old ill brought on by your own course? Or do you insist that the solution must be handed to you? This dependency will show you not only your self-alienation, but also your will to remain that way. Furthermore, observe your emotional reactions to others and how they affect you. Do they make you feel small or do they make you feel big? Do you experience people as many-faceted, complex beings with their own vulnerabilities and their own struggle, or are they for you -- at least emotionally -- better or worse than you are, more or less powerful than you are?

When you feel dissatisfied with life, then ask yourself if this is not due to your feeling that you have not realized all your potentials. If the answer is yes -- if it were otherwise, then you would never feel dissatisfied with your life, regardless of temporary storms -- then you are estranged from yourself. You have the power to change this, step by step, through the procedure of this pathwork.

The word "self-finding" that we use so often will now take on a new meaning for you. In the true sense of the word, it means the finding of the real self. No such self-finding can occur unless you actively change something in you. Basically this Path can be divided into two major phases. The first phase of recognizing and of becoming aware of the roots of your problems, your errors, and your unreality. Then understanding their full scope, their depth, their significance, their causes, their effects, their links and their connections. The second phase is change. This change can happen in various ways. It can be a gradual, automatic change that you are not even aware of at the moment. It happens through the insight into and the understanding of your unreality and of your distortions. The fuller your understanding, the more do you automatically change. Such change is based on the laws of evolution and organic growth.

But there is also another type of change that applies to certain facets of personality problems. This type requires a new and different way of action and of reaction after a sufficient amount of insight and understanding has been gained. This change is less gradual but it constitutes a new way of acting, whether outwardly or inwardly. It requires your determination to no longer follow your old pattern of behavior. It requires your will to institute a new pattern. However, this should never be done as long as you are not fully convinced of its value both for yourself and for others, and as long as the decision is not fully yours but is based on outside authority. But, once you have reached this point of conviction, then a certain self-discipline has to be used. This, too, is subtle and therefore can easily lead to misinterpretation.

If you use discipline and force without an independent decision and a full conviction, then it comes out of unhealthy motives, and therefore it will not yield constructive results. The motive may be that of obeying and of appeasing either others or your own idealized self image. The result will be anxiety and new destructive patterns. Nevertheless, there comes a point when repeated self-discpline and determination are necessary because otherwise, in spite of your own free will and understanding, old ingrained habits cannot be uptrooted. Whether or not you are ready for this more drastic change only you yourself can know. As long as your emotions still doubt the validity and the advantage of the new way, then you are not ready. As long as a great anxiety exists in you when trying to dispense with the old way, then you are not ready for a forceful relinquishing and for a drastic change. Therefore, your endeavors must go into the direction of bringing further hidden errors to light. If you truly want to find the answer, then ask yourself: "Why do I feel that way?" This will always yield results. As long as the goodness of the right course fills you with anxiety, then you are still under the false impression -- at least in this respect -- that goodness can be to your disadvantage. In reality this is not so. But you have to get to the point of applying this outer knowledge to your specific problem. Goodness means productive living.

No real growth and no true happiness can exist unless a change in the personality takes place. I can read some of your thoughts. So do not say that change does not exist. It is so wrong. The universe -- and therefore everything in it -- changes constantly. In other words, it is constantly in flux. Even your body is not the same now as it was a few years ago. Everything changes, even in physical matter. You may not notice it, you may not be aware of it. If you are constantly together with a living, growing being, then you do not see the growth taking place. You notice it only retrospectively. The essence of life is change. Therefore, if there is no change, then there is no life. Nothing can remain static. If it does, then you are in a predicament. You are unhappy. You are not alive. To a large degree, the human struggle is because a part of you grows organically and healthily according to the laws of nature, while another part remains static.

You often ask this question: "Why do certain people who are obviously still in a low state of development live in a certain harmony, while much higher developed people are struggling, disharmonious, and unhappy?" The reason is that the former develop steadily according to their potentiality on an even keel. In other words, there is no discrepancy. While the latter often do not realize themselves according to their potential, in keeping with their inherent possibilities. They could do so much more precisely because they are further up on the scale. And yet they over-emphasize parts of their being which are already developed -- and which therefore do not need development at this point -- while they neglect those areas of their being which have remained static. There is no change in those areas because they are already free, while that which requires work lies barren. It is not only the discrepancy as such that causes the disharmony, but the fact that the person has the ability to accomplish more. He could bring to life what lies dead and static.

This factor is an essential part of the human struggle. If you find growth and change pleasurable because past development has already freed you of particular shackles in this area, then you are in constant flux. At the same time, your resistance to change and to grow where the hard work of facing yourself and then initiating change still has to take place causes you to remain frozen and rigid in that part of your personality. This lopsidedness is more painful to endure than if the entire personality were still asleep, so to speak. Once you have reached a certain stage, you cannot make yourself artificially asleep again. In other words, you cannot go back; you have to follow the rhythm of nature and of the cosmos. The only way to reach harmony is by a fuller awareness of reality, through growth, and through change on all levels of your being.

So do not say that change is impossible. On the contrary, it is the only thing that is possible. It is the only organic, natural process of creation -- and therefore is also within yourself. If you work properly on this Path, then you constantly thaw out the substance in your soul that heretofore was frozen. You put it into motion and thus you enable it to grow, so that eventually a real and noticeable change occurs.

One more thing about the real self, and a further hint as to how to find it. I want to show you a certain rhythm of development in a certan area which is appropriate at this time because many of you either are already in this phase or are about to approach it.

We recently discussed your needs. To begin with, you are not even aware of any particular needs. In theory you know that everyone has needs, physical and otherwise, but you do not emotionally experience any specific emotional needs. This unawareness does not apply merely to the person who just begins on such a path. Even after you have already progressed considerably in other ways, this particular lack of awareness may still linger. Only after focusing your attention on this subject will you become aware of even this superficial facet. This falsity, too, can be brought into your awareness, but only after considerable self-honesty and digging on your part. Now, my friends, if you have to remove layers of awareness in order to find your false needs before you find your the real needs, then isn't this another substantial proof of your self-alienation? If you were related to your real self -- in other words, if you were in contact with your reality -- then you would be in absolute awareness of your real needs, whether or not they are fulfilled.

As you proceed, you become aware of your real needs. These real needs can also be subdivided. First, you will become aware of your need to receive -- of your need to receive love, of your ned to receive understanding, of your need to receive the creative fulfillment of your talents. All this you strive for through an act of receiving. In your emotional awareness it seems to you that you need either someone or something that makes it possible for you to fulfill these needs by something, however subtle, that is given to you. (You know that all the needs I cited now can be either real or false.)

Then you will become aware of the need to give. It may apply to the same needs as stated, but the emphasis in your emotions changes. You become more aware of your need to relate to others and to understand others, rather than to be understood by them. Here, too, you may not find the outlet. You are dependent on finding the subject, and as long as this is not the case, then your needs remain unfulfilled. The only difference between now and before is that now you are acutely aware both of your needs and of your unfulfillment, while before you were befogged and hazy, and therefore you experienced the unfulfillment in an indirect way. The stringent awareness of the unfulfilment may, in fact, have entirely different roots than the unfulfillment of the real needs. For, the latter will never create anxiety and urgency. Only when you shift real needs into false ones do they have this power. Thus the awareness of the real needs -- even long before fulfillment is possible and even while you consciously experience their unfulfillment -- is bound to bring relief, harmony, and peace because you have entered into a further stage of reality and truth. You run away from the awareness of your real needs not only because facing unfulfillment is painful, but more so because unfulfillment means proof of your inferiority.

Once you have gained the strength, the courage, the humility, the determination, and the reality to face your real needs -- both the need to receive and the need to give out -- and you can stand the temporary frustration, then you have reached a much greater area of your real self than you may think. For this is your real self, and your problem of unfulfillment recedes into the background, it decreases in importance, in comparison to the strength that you gain by finding home. The stranger finds home within the reality of the core of his being.

To reach this point necessitates many byroads and many detours, but once it is reached, then you will have to go through a certain period of emptiness, of the awareness of your unfulfilled need and longing. But as you look at it and you accept it -- not in false humility and weakness but in the strength of being able to endure it as long as necessary in consequence of the patterns that you had set in motion and whose effects have not yet worn off -- then you will not suffer the agonies which you suffered before you had such awareness. In other words, the unfulfillment will not weaken you. On the contrary, through gaining deeper and fuller insight, and thus coming closer to reality, you will slowly set forth different effects. The old negative effects do not dissolve as soon as you find the conditions or the causes that produced the negative effects. They are still in force. It will take some time before the new, constructive, positive causes can produce similar effects. This changeover does not happen overnight.

After a certain period of the conscious unfulfillment of your real needs -- as opposed to the previous unconscious unfulfillment of your real needs and the conscious unfulfillment of your false needs; while you learn, you search, and you gain a further hold of the reality of yourself -- a partial fulfillment will occur. Of course, there will be setbacks and occasional disappointments in which you have the opportunity to observe your inner relapse into the old patterns which might have occurred without your knowing it. Thus, the period of outer relapses. and therefore of disappontments, is necessary in order to strengthen the new way of life, to integrate it, to make it part of you until it becomes your first nature, as in essence it truly is.

At this point you have discovered the way home. You have made some tentative steps toward it, and therefore you occasionally reap the fruits. But you are still not firmly planted in this new ground. You still fluctuate away from it, tempted by the old habits. In this alternation between fulfillment and unfulfillment you have the opportunity to gain a firm hold on your home ground, if you wish to utilize this time in such a way. Thus you pave the way to set up an entirely new pattern, a new cause, in health, in reality, in productivity. The effects will not take place until the new cause has ripened.

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QUESTION: In disciplining yourself, when you reach the point of wanting to change a pattern because you have made certain recognitions, a battle begins. You may do it, but you do not feel good about it. Although you know you are unhappy in the old way and you want to change, yet in doing the right act you do not feel good either. I heard you say that in this stage you are not ready; but when are you going to discipline yourself?

ANSWER: In this stage, the discipline should take the form of finding out why you cannot feel right about it. What stands in the way of your understanding? There must be something in you that is not yet convinced -- in other words, that is doubtful that this new way is good or advantageous, or safer, or whatever. In short, there must be a part in you that still stands by the old destructive way, in spite of seeing that it is destructive. Therefore, do not force yourself or discipline yourself in action toward others, but rather use discipline in order to find out more about yourself.

QUESTION: When you suffer grief, when you are separated from someone and you know that this must be and you accept it, you still suffer deep pain, even more so when you are aware of your own feelings and you are aware of the depth of love you have. This is healthy, is it not? Doesn't it take time to heal?

ANSWER: I cannot answer the question by saying that it is either healthy or unhealthy. It depends entirely on how it is felt. It may be something utterly healthy. But it may also contain certain unhealthy currents. It is very hard to determine in a general answer. For it is completely individual. In order to determine whether or not it is healthy, my advice is that you ask yourself where there may also be feelings of helplessness, of weakness, of self-pity, and of being subjected to the misery of life. If your personality feels impoverished by such a separation, then there must be present an unhealthy grief, perhaps in addition to the healthy grief. But if the loss is felt as painful without a feeling of self-impoverishment, then it is purely healthy.

QUESTION: If a human being finds two conflicting currents within, if one recognizes the falsity of one current and then the second current kicks in, how and where does the discipline come in?

ANSWER: As I said before, the discipline, if we can call it that -- for the use of this word might lead to misunderstanding -- would have to be used in a different way. It may lead to repression, to suppression, to a forceful, superimposed action that cannot be genuine growth. Your concentration and your determination should go in the direction of further understanding why this current exists. The outer answers may be obvious, and yet there must also be an inner answer that has little to do with the outer one. This current may be some sort of pseudo protection. It may fulfill a certain false need. Find this meaning and you will know how to go on from there. The first answer that you find deep within may still not be the final answer. It may still contain a further "why." The stage which you describe indicates that the phase of search in this area has not been finished and therefore change, with its necessary discipline, is premature. In other words, full awareness here has not yet been reached. At the same time, in another area a state of change may already have occurred, but not in this respect. I repeat, change takes place constantly in your emotional organism, in your mental organism mental, in your spiritual organism, and even in your physical organism by concentrated search, by the fact that you face yourself in utter candor. That, too, produces change. But this is the first type of change that I discussed and not the second, which requires a more direct form of discipline. In this stage discipline must also exist, but with the emphasis on further self-facing in order to determine what you really feel and why.

QUESTION: I see. So, as long as two conflicting currents exist, there is still a need to go deeper?

ANSWER: Oh, yes. (Thank you)

QUESTION: I hesitate to ask any questions owing to the recent stir that my questions brought. It seems that they are not considered exactly intelligent. Before I ask my questions, I would like to ask you frankly if you higher developed souls are employing a reason that I am not capable of understanding, because unless we are talking on a common ground, then I am afraid that we have no means of communication with one another.

ANSWER: My dear friend, in the first place, I do not think that anyone can say that if someone does not understand, then it indicates a lack of intelligence. Even the most intelligent person is blocked where he has a problem. The intelligence that exists does not function where there is a mental block. That happens to every single person -- to some more obviously than to others. There is no human being entirely free of this. I have never yet seen a human being in whom there is not somewhere a tightness, somewhere a prejudice, somewhere a blind spot, somewhere a fear of relinquishing a preconceived idea. This is due to the defense mechanism that chooses a particular view as necessary and as safe. However, this is only one possible explanation. It does not do away with the fact as such. In such a case the person will not understand. He will misinterpret. He will be either anxious and conflicted about the issue, or he will hear the opposite of what is being said. Only the degree differs. No one should judge because he may have the same condition to a lesser or to a less noticeable degree, perhaps concerning a different issue. So you are in very good company. You may perhaps put your questions in a more belligerent way, but I do not mind this and I encourage you to ask these questions, as long as you are sincere and in good faith, regardless of what some of our human friends may say. It is necessary. It is good for you. And it is good for everyone.

As to different kinds of reason, there is only one reason. There are not several kinds. It is only a question of degree. The difference is that the human being -- still finding himself in the human struggle -- has his reason impaired. His intelligence may not be impaired, but his reason is, because reason comes from the real self and does not function to a proportionate degree of a person's self-alienation. The real self is pure reason and pure love. You might also call it wisdom. One is not thinkable without the other. There cannot be reason, or wisdom, without love, and there cannot be love without reason.

So we all have the same organs to communicate with. If one being is more developed in this sense than the other, perhaps due to struggles already overcome, then it does not mean that communication is impossible. If the willingness to understand and to make oneself understood is present, then half the battle is overcome. I do not think that any of you ever found me difficult to communicate with.

My dearest friends, may all of you be blessed in spirit, in soul, and in body. May these words actively help you to continue your self-realization: to bring out all the wondrous strength, the reason, the love, the creativity, the resourcefulness, the joy, and the capacity for happiness that exist in you already. In other words, you do not have to grab for it outside. It lies, as a treasure, within you. You have to free it from error, from evasion, and from the fear of facing the truth about yourself. Desist from living superficially -- in the sense of satisfying the world rather than your own standards. Do not live for the sake of appearance in any area of your life. Live in truth and reality. Face every issue in its entirety. Look at it with objective eyes. Do not hasten over it. Do all this and you will find the way home to your real self.

Be blessed. Rejoice in all that is waiting in you to be liberated. You have nothing but joy to look forward to. You may soon reach the point where your human struggle will be a source of joy and where each step onward will mean the further realization of growth and of happiness. Be in peace. Be in God.

January, 1961