Perfectionism Obstructs Happiness -- The Manipulation Of Emotions

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless each one of you. Blessed is this lecture. Blessed is your work.

Many people in all sincerity endeavor to find God. However, if they were asked exactly what they meant by it, how they imagined it to take place, then it would be difficult for them to give a meaningful answer. In such vague hopes and endeavors, man -- often unbeknownst to his conscious mind -- finds himself in an illusion, in a hazy imagination of something that he cannot even put his finger on. Yet there is such a thing as finding God. In reality this is a very concrete process. In other words, there is nothing hazy, unrealistic, or illusory about it. When they speak of finding God, then different people think of different things. Finding God really means finding youre real self. If you find yourself to some degree, then you are in comparative harmony. You perceive and understand the laws of the universe. You are capable of loving, you are capable of relating, and you are capable of experiencing joy. You are truly self-responsible. You have the integrity and the courage to be yourself, even at the expense of giving up approval. All of this signifies your having found God -- by whatever name this process may be designated. It might also be called your coming home from your self-alienation.

There are many spects indicative of man's selfhood. For instance, his capacity to experience and to give joy. If you are not a joyful person, then you cannot give joy to others.

How can this happen since man does live in an imperfect world? Man's conscious or unconscious concept of a joyful life is always connected with a perfect life. He cannot enjoy life if he is imperfect, if his neighbors are imperfect, if his life situation is imperfect, and if his relationships are imperfect. This is one of the great inner conflicts and confusions. Of course, intellectually you all know that there is no perfection. This is why you often repress your reactions to an imperfect situation -- and this repression causes the conflict and the confusion in this respect to increase rather than to decrease. It is one thing to profess to have a certain knowledge on the surface, and it is quite another when it comes to an emotional experience of the same professed knowledge. In the course of this work you have often come across discrepancies of this sort. However, in this respect you are still mostly unaware of your inner demand for perfection. I have discussed this in the past, but I consider it necessary to come back to this subject because it relates to the theme of self-alienation and its denial of joy in life through perfectionism. No matter how much progress you have made, none of you is aware to what an extent your need for perfectionism contradicts this outer knowledge and, at the same time, prohibits a joyful life. Not one hundred percent joy, no. But a life in which you live fully and you derive joy out of your experiences, out of of your growth, and out of your feelings to a much greater extent than you do now.

Strange as this may seem, the more you accept imperfection, the more joy you will give and the more joy you will receive. Your capacity to experience happiness depends on your capacity to accept imperfection. But not in words or in theories that you pronounce, but in your emotional experience. These are two entirely different matters. It takes a great deal of self-search, of systematic work, and the utter will to be candid with yourself, in order to first uncover this discrepancy and then to accept this for the moment.

Only in accepting, let us say, an imperfect relationship -- and this by no means implies the unhealthy submissiveness that is born out of the fear of loss or out of the fear of disapproval -- will you derive joy out of this relationship, and therefore give joy to the other in this relationship. Only in accepting your own imperfection can you begin to grow and experience the joy from your own individuality. All this is so because your demands are incompatible with reality as you know it.

However, since most of the time you are not even aware of what you miss, of that which in your own perception falls short of the perfection you look for and that you think you should or could have, that fact makes it impossible for you to grow sufficiently to be capable of accepting imperfection. You repress that which you miss -- your unfulfillments, your frustrations. In other words, you are not fully aware of them, even if you know some of them. You vaguely go over them, in the outer knowledge that perfection cannot be had. Therefore, you do not realize how you miss it; you do not realize how you rebel against it; and you do not realize what a great amount of destructive energy is generated in you by the very fact that you are not aware of your unfulfillment. This repression is not only harmful because in awareness you would see that many a frustration is unnecessary and therefore can be eliminated by changing your patterns that are responsible for such frustrations. But it is also harmful in that you cannot accept that which is impossible to change -- namely imperfections as such. Only in awareness can you be in a position of discriminating where you can change, and therefore increase fulfillment, and where you simply wish to accept because this alternative seems more favorable. Deep inside of you there is often the deviation of rebellion against that which is unchangeable in your world simply because no perfection can ever exist, while on the other hand you stagnate in your growing process -- because of your perfectionism -- so that you do not change inner patterns that would then bring you much more fulfillment than you now have.

An important step in order to become yourself is to allow yourself the luxury of facing your desires, your unfulfillments, your longings, and your complaints against life or against fate or against others or against yourself. Find in what respect you feel shortchanged. You resent the fact that something is imperfect. In order to fully accept imperfection, you first have to become fully aware of your resentment against imperfection. And only when you fully realize your resentment against imperfection can you begin to accept it. And only as you accept imperfection can you lead a joyful life and can you derive enjoyment out of your relationships. But as long as you unconsciously strive for a perfection that does not exist on your earth, without being aware of doing so, then you cannot accept it, and therefore your life and your relationships will be spoiled. You cannot grow, and thus change that which is changeable and which therefore could be much better, even though not perfect.

Off hand it seems a paradox to be capable of joy only if you accept imperfection and to be capable of growth only if you accept your own imperfection. But if you really think about it, then you will see that this is so. It sounds easy, but it is not always easy, because you are so unaware of your reactions and of your feelings, and therefore there are so many subterfuges, so many hidden crevices that make the awareness of all this a process that demands your full attention and your real inner will. Yet, once you have made certain progress in this respect, then it will be the simplest thing in the world, because it is the truth.

Once again, it is a question of truth. The reality, or truth, of your world is imperfection. And the reality, or truth, of your personal state of soul and emotions is your complaint against imperfection. Only by facing the truth and coming to terms with it -- facing the reality of both factors -- will you have a sound foundation from which you can go on.

Even the steps on this pathwork are permeated with this perfectionistic attitude, be it ever so subtle: "I should have resolved my problems already. I cannot be happy as long as my problems are unresolved. Therefore I must be impatient, compulsive, and restless about it. I cannot live in the present, but I must somehow always look for and live in the morrow when I hope to be perfect so as to experience perfect happiness, perfect love, perfect relationships." This attitude is never conscious, it is never thought out in these terms, nevertheless if your emotions were translated, then they would often convey precisely that. Whenever it dawns upon you that you will never resolve all your problems in this life, then you have a tendency to be discouraged, or even to feel: "What's the use? Why should I face all these truths about myself?" Such a reaction indicates the attitude of perfectionism regarding your growing process. Your unconscious expectation is for complete perfection, not for step-by-step growth.

You do not have to be problem-less. You cannot be. In order to live fully, to increase your awareness, and to grow steadily through the capacity of full emotional experience, you do not have to be already perfect. All you have to do is to see into yourself and to evaluate what you see. Then you have to make inner choices, which entails the flexibility of changing. If this happens, then you become less imperfect, but only in accepting imperfection. For without doing so you can never really be flexible enough to change. Your haste and your shame for not being perfect creates a rigid wall that makes growth and change impossible.

The trouble is that man is so often hindered by the either/or attitude. He feels that either he must strive for immediate perfection and negate his still existing imperfection, or that he must give up striving for progress entirely. To accept imperfection then would mean for him to stagnate and to not even attempt any growth and any change. Only by letting go of both attitudes can the healthy, constructive, and productive attitude become an integral part of one's being.

In the wrong attitude of perfectionism there is another subtle deviation, namely that your emphasis is unconsciously geared to becoming perfect according to standards imposed upon you by the world, by religion, by rules -- in other words, by outer authority. This endeavor, be it ever so subtle, is the cause of and it leads to further self-alienation. The productive approach is to find what you feel, what you desire, and what you fear -- and then to find out what is your own innermost goal, the goal of your real self.

If you attempt growth rather than perfectionism, then you will live in the Now. You will dispense with superimposed values and you will find your own. You will dispense with subtle pretenses and superimpositions, with the subtle, hidden but nevertheless present attitude that you do what you do for appearence's sake rather than for being true to yourself. This leads to selfhood. This leads away from self-alienation. All this will bring you into a state of identifying with yourself, being anchored in yourself, rather than on the peripheral layers.

Many of you will quickly say: "But I do not pretend, I do not do anything for appearance's sake." And, of course, I do not mean that in a crass outer way. But when it comes to the inner subtleties of your emotional strivings, then there is not one human being who is entirely free from this.

So accept imperfection, for only then can you grow. By not accepting it, you cannot grow. The very existence of your perfectionism stunts growth, it causes rigidity and inner extremism.

Man is ndoctrinated with the tendency to manipulate and influence his emotions, the free flow of his feelings, that it will take considerable time, observation, and attention on your part to gradually realize how you are actually doing so. It is again perfectionism leading you to do that. Since many emotions on the surface of your unconscious mind are imperfect, you try forcefully to impose ungenuine emotions over them. And when your emotional life cannot function naturally and organically, unhampered by superimposed commands, then how can you be your real self? The real self always dares to be spontaneous. Spontaneity is out of the question when emotions are hampered. This hampering can happen in many subtle ways. It can even happen by a forceful over-emotionalism which might tempt you to believe that you are not directing the free flow of your emotions at all. Over-dramatization, exaggeration, and talking oneself into stronger feelings than actually exist -- all this we have occasionally discussed before. Let us now look at this phenomenon in the light of self-alienation. Let us understand why this seemingly harmless process is actually so damaging.

But first let us look at another way of manipulating your emotions -- that of prohibiting their full force, of stultifying their intensity. Both these procedures tamper with the natural flow. In both instances the emotional life is not trusted to function and not is not encouraged to grow. In both instances a wrong kind of caution, an unrealistic fear, and a forceful will play a role in the unconscious motivations. Both ways can be, and most of the time are, adopted by the same person. When one particular way is resorted to and when another depends on many factors, such as the personality structure, the pseudo-solutions, the life problems, and others.

It becomes a task in itself -- and it will be possible only after much progress in this work -- to realize, to observe in yourself, how feelings are not allowed to function in their natural way.

The most determining factors for either of these two alternatives are fear and the forcing current. The latter is due to your strong repressed needs, which are all the more forceful because you are unaware of them, at least of their intensity. The moment you are fully aware of a need and understand it in all of its aspects, then the urgency recedes, as does the compulsiveness which, at least in part, is responsible for your tampering with your genuine emotions.

The urgency of unrecognized needs causes you to build up your emotions out of all proportion to their actual intensity. Unconsciously you thus say, as it were, "If my emotions are strong enough, then I will be gratified." Or, if you happen to be a more fearful and pessimistic character, then you will not admit their existence at all, let alone their urgency, and thus you will squeeze these emotions out of existence -- that is, out of your awareness. In both instances, you do not afford yourself the luxury of letting the emotions flow, of observing them, of learning from them, and of recognizing the true state of affairs within yourself. Making your emotions either stronger or weaker than they actually are is a forceful tampering, thereby crippling their functioning. As a result, your intuitive, creative, and spontaneous capacities cannot unfold. You substitute other faculties for the emotional ones, and thus a discrepancy and a disharmony come into existence. You live on the periphery, which is the shallow living I discussed earlier.

The full awareness of what you really feel and what you really want must be the first aim in this respect. Sit back, so to speak, and allow your feelings to reach the surface of your consciousness. This does not always mean to follow through in certain actions, but when these feelings show themselves in their natural intensity, or lack of intensity compared to what you thought you felt before, without building them either up or down, then you will get a very precise inkling of what it means to be your real self. It will also give you a very different outlook on certain problems in your life and in yourself.

You recurrently ask the question: "How can I tell what my real self is? I am so used to all these false levels, these superimposed defensive layers, that they have become second nature and therefore I can no longer tell which is the real me and which is a protective defense mechanism." By observing emotional exaggerations versus repression, you will finally see how the real self reacts, often in-between these two high or low points. And also how your real feelings, when they are not manipulated by needs of which you are unaware, will create a very different inner situation, and therefore eventually a different outer situation.

This is not exactly the kind of work that you can do in your personal sessions. It may and will come up in discussion, but the awareness of this can be reached only by quiet observation when you are alone. The whole process of this work, both privately and in your groups, enables you to become more and more aware of what really goes on in you.

But the actual finding out of how you genuinely feel, as opposed to the heretofore manipulated emotions, will come by relaxing by yourself and allowing your true feelings to come up. When you review how you reacted to certain incidents, then you will be able to ask yourself: "Do I really feel that strongly about it?" Or to ask yourself: "Am I really that unconcerned with something that may hurt me after all?" You will ask yourself if your fears, if your desires, or if the ingrained principles that you think you have to adhere to, are not actually aresponsible for either over-playing or under-playing your emotions. Is one of your "shoulds," regarding either the other person or yourself, not responsible for tampering with the natural genuine feelings? What is the truth about your feelings cannot ever be answered by anyone else but yourself. But as you condition yourself to observe your real feelings, without manipulation one way or another, then a new strength and a new capacity will come out of you, because these real feelings -- unmanipulated -- come from your real self. But this comes only after you have gone through the maze of experiencing all sorts of other emotions which are superimposed by your pseudo solutions and defense mechanisms. If you do not dare to experience these painful emotions, perhaps because you shy away from this slight pain, or because you think that you should already be above all that in perfection, then how can you discover what is responsible for them and come to the greater depth of the reality of your being? How can you then convince yourself of the utter truth, namely that all these painful emotions -- whether they were exaggerated or repressed -- are illusion, are not true, and that you really do not feel that way at all, even if now you are in the throes of destructive, painful emotions? You have conditioned yourself into them, but this does not make them real.

The discovery of their unreality is a tremendous relief, but you cannot come to this relief if you are not willing to sit back and let your feelings come to the fore, and then ask yourself pertinent questions. Dare to feel what you feel, regardless of right or wrong, regardless of what you think you should feel, regardless of what you think you are expected to feel, or, if you over-dramatize, regardless of what you think another person should feel or should do. For this is usually the main reason for exaggerating the intensity of your feelings. It is a measure of forcing another.

So observe this, my friends. All of you have both of these ways of manipulating your emotions. The overdramatization is connected with the pseudo solution of power. The repression of feelings is connected with the pseudo solution of withdrawal, of false serenity, of escape from living and from experiencing. Off hand you may say that the one who overdramatizes into stronger feelings than he may actually have does, in fact, experience very acutely. But I say that everything that is not really genuine is conducive to and is a result of self-alienation, and therefore of shallowness. Even if it seems to thrive on emotionalism, this is not the real experience of your soul. You put on this over-emotionalism, perhaps because, quite unconsciously, you thus wish to bend life and to bend others according to your needs. It is, in the true sense, a manipulation.

As for withdrawal, which is connected with underplaying what you really feel, this is self-explanatory. This is very obvious from what I said about this subject about the pseudo solutions connected with the last lecture.

Do concentrate on this now, my friends. It will yield most important results. Ask yourself what you really and truly feel. Sometimes it may not be so easy to see because you may vaguely skip over an incident and not register any particular reaction, while in reality there is a reaction on your part. This process of skipping over your true reactions is such a universal phenomenon that it is the cause of diminished awareness of life and of self -- of self-alienation. Awareness of life and of others can come only as a result of self-awareness. And self-awareness is just this process of recognizing how you really and truly react. Perhaps you do not outwardly react any differently from your inner reaction, but you are simply dulled and unaware, and therefore in a state of half-sleep to any given experience. In order to wake up and to become acutely aware, it takes time, effort, concentration, and training in this respect. It does not come overnight.

Once you have started in this particular aspect of your path, then you will often find that you become aware of a certain reaction on your part, perhaps only a few days after the occurrence. Your first impulse will be to be angry at yourself for only noticing so much later that of which you "should" have been aware of instantly. However, this is often progress because without this progress then you might never have become aware of your real reactions. In other words, you might have passed it by in utter blindness and unawareness. Delayed reaction is certainly progress when compared with no conscious reaction. Only if you accept your imperfection in this respect -- namely, that you cannot become perfectly aware all at once -- will you rejoice in this growing process and thus proceed to grow further and therefore shorten the interval between the incident and the awareness of your reaction. The synchronization of these two factors can come only after a step-by-step development in this particular respect. Only after you are fully aware that most of the time you are blind to your own reactions can the blindness gradually vanish. And as you become more aware of what is really going on in you then you can become aware of the unconscious still-existing perfectionism which makes it impossible for you to accept people, to accept yourself, to accept relationships, and to accept life for what they are. Therefore, you cannot cope with any of them and you are bound to make the worst of them. Thus you make it impossible for yourself to derive joy out of an imperfect situation, out of an imperfect relationship, out of an imperfect yourself, a joy which you otherwise could have.

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QUESTION: If you have an aggressive feeling and you don't like it, but it is very strong, your common sense is telling you that you "shouldn't" feel this way. You understand with your mind that perhaps the person who is doing this has problems himself, nevertheless you do not want this and you acknowledge this feeling. How do you handle this?

ANSWER: The first step is the realization that your emotions cannot as yet feel differently. Here, in a very distorted way, perfectionism comes in because something in you says: "I should not have these feelings of aggression. I should know better, because he acts out of his own unresolved problems." All this may be true, yet in this true consideration is contained the "I should not" of perfectionism. However, if you could say to yourself, "I cannot help feeling this way because I grope in the dark. As a human being, I often grope in the dark. I do not have many answers. I do not understand other people." But somehow you all feel: "I really should understand everyone. Everyone should understand me. I should know all the answers concerning my life and personal human relationships." It is this attitude that makes it so difficult. Only by accepting your human limitations will the aggressiveness and the hostility vanish because underneath you will first discover and then become aware of being hurt, of feeling rejected. Your shame and fear of these emotions makes you superimpose the hard and much more unpleasant feelings of aggressiveness. Once you become aware of the hurt, which is a more genuine factor, then it is easier to cope with -- and soon it, too, will dissolve and will make room for the more genuine feelings which are even closer to the real you. But first of all you have to accept your human limitations, you have to dispense with the expectation that you, as well as others, "should" always understand and "should" always know. If you can own up to the fact that you are groping in the dark, then you might be able to particularize in your mind what it is that you are unclear about. Accept the fact that this lack of clarity may remain -- and it may even clear up by itself, simply because your resistance against it has disappeared. Accept also your still-existing aggressiveness, asking yourself whether it is not distortion and hurt. Then own up to the hurt. In this way you may find an answer much sooner than in the cramped and compulsive driving that you already "should not" have aggressiveness. Do you understand? (Yes.)

QUESTION: Isn't this kind of joyful acceptance of the lack of perfection conducive to a loss of ambition for further development?

ANSWER: Not at all. I spoke about this, I believe, quite extensively in this lecture. When you re-read it, then you will understand. Let me repeat it. Distinguish between perfection and growing. If you wish to grow, and if you realize that you can only grow a step at a time, while still being far away from perfection, then you cannot stagnate. The acceptance of imperfection does not mean the wish to remain static. It only means that you know that you can never become perfect in this life, but that you wish with all your heart to grow and to change where this is possible. This is a decided difference. This is the only way you can grow. However, if you are perfectionistic, then it is such a strain, and it leads to such discouragement, to such rigidity, and to such pretense that growth actually becomes impossible. You already know this to some extent. Where you have found this idealized self image, with all its tyrannical demands upon you, with all the "shoulds" and the "musts," you will now see that exactly where it existed is where you have not grown. You have only grown where this idealized self did not govern you. Perfectionism makes for pretense and for rigidity -- and this excludes growth and development, as well as change. Only when you can be relaxed about your imperfections, when you can be at ease about them and you do not need pretense in order to hide them, only then do you grow. Only then is your soul conditioned to grow; only then is the soul open for growth.

QUESTION: May I ask about this subject, too? To differentiate between goal direction and compulsion, would you explain how it falls into the circle of pride, selfwill, and fear?

ANSWER: Where there is perfectionism, which prohibits growth rather than encourages it, there are all three -- pride, selfwill, and fear. There is the pride of wanting to be perfect, of needing to be perfect. And since a part of you knows that you are not perfect, then you pretend it. Again I emphasize: This does not concern the whole of you. There may be many sides to your being where you are quite relaxed and free, and where you do not pretend. But there are other areas in which, emotionally if not intellectually, you feel that you cannot admit certain things. What may appear as an imperfection to you may not appear as that to another person, and vice versa. You may be ashamed of not always winning in certain areas of life, and therefore pretend, while not so in others. This pretense is not a crass outer one, but a much more subtle inner strain. Or rejection, or failure may subjectively constitute imperfection of which you are ashamed -- and where there is such shame then there must be pretense. All this contains a fierce pride.

The selfwill says: "I have to be perfect already." Since one knows quite well that this is not true, then one tries to adhere to at least a superficial perfection. Again this is pretense. Both pride and selfwill lead to pretense. Or, to put it in other words, they lead away from truth. All this is so subtle that it is almost impossible to understand if you do not live in this Pathwork, if you have not come across the areas of your emotions -- being hidden from sight and awareness -- where you do not make it your goal to uncover them. If you are not involved in this process of self-finding, then these will be merely words which will not mean very much. Or if they do, then they may mean something at the moment, but they wil be forgotten in no time. This happens even to those who work on this Path.

The fear must exist in a double way. One the one hand, it exists because you fear: "If I am not perfect, then I will be unhappy, or I will be disapproved of, or I will not be loved." Or because you fear: "If the other person is imperfect, then he will prohibit my happiness." This is the constant fear that you try to push out of your way by selfwill and by the pride of pretense. Then there is the second fear, which is a particularly poisonous one, and that is the fear of exposure, the fear that you are not as perfect as you think you should be; the fear that your pretense may show up. In order to guard against this exposure, you invest valuable energies and soul forces into the superstructure, which then impoverishes your life, which impoverishes your capacity to experience real feelings, and which necessitates repression and self-deception.

QUESTION: In a previous lecture you mentioned secondary reactions and primary reactions. Am I correct in assuming that secondary reactions are the ones that come from manipulating emotions, while primary reactions are from the real self?

ANSWER: Yes, you are quite right. But it is not quite the same in that we are now much deeper. Secondary reactions are a result of what we discussed here. They are the effect of the cause now under discussion. We have now reached the level in our work where we begin to see causes, while in the past we dealt much more with effects. But you are quite right in seeing a connection. You see, secondary reactions, or the lack of primary ones, are due to inhibition, to the lack of spontaneity -- and this is due to manipulation.

QUESTION: It is a very subtle thing I want to ask and it is very hard to explain. I had gone through a long time of deep depression and then I found that I failed in everything I wanted. After I realized that, and also what you were talking about -- my complex of perfectionism -- I finally accepted my mistakes. It took me a long time, but I now faced my failure and at first was very unhappy about it. Some days later I accepted these failures, my mistakes, and everything. I felt a wonderful revelation and relief. This kept on somehow, but I don't know. Sometimes I have the feeling that my heart is still crying about all I have lost. And then I don't know whether I cover it up with this, or whether this is real or not.

ANSWER: Yes, you have made an important step forward, but you have not continued. You have remained there and therefore you have not seen what follows. I hope that you will see it, because even if I tell you, as you know from previous experience, this will not help you very much, unless you then discover it for yourself. However, I will tell you. You see, the failures are exaggerated because you tend very much toward the category of building up emotions out of all proportion. It would be important for you to investigate this and to become aware that this is indeed so, as well as why it is so. For there is a great exaggeration about such complete failure of everything you wanted. There are things which you did want and which you did attain, so that you are not a failure there. You see only what you wanted and did not get, and you forget that you also wanted what you now have.

But there is also something else that is responsible for your present uncertainty. Investigate the motivations, both healthy and unhealthy, as to why you desired what you failed in. Superficially this may seem obvious, yet it is not that simple. You will find a curious mixture of the healthy and the unhealthy. You will find that your motivations in something that in itself was perfectly all right were partly governed by superimposed, immature reasons, by crutches, rather than the reality of your own being. On the other hand, you will find that the healthy motivations which you did not allow to function were put aside due to your perfectionism. You prohibited your own creative unfoldment because of your perfectionism, so that both the healthy and the unhealthy motivations contributed to the unfulfillment -- to the failure. You chose the goal out of partly unhealthy motives and you prohibited yourselff from reaching the goal entirely out of unhealthy motives. This may appear like a paradox, but do you follow what I mean? (A hundred percent. It is so right.) Now, if you investigate and analyze that fully, then you will come across a new insight in which you will find that, contrary to your present emotions, there is no "too late." The same factors, if now transposed into healthy currents, can still give you fulfillment, perhaps not exactly in the same way, but not any less. You now know that in your intellect, but emotionally you cannot accept it. You will not be able to accept it until and unless you completely understand what I am indicating here. (Yes, I understand that entirely.)

QUESTION: You were speaking about our true self and our fulfillment, our closeness to God. Is there a word about an individual who makes progress along this Path by doing the work that is his to do? The village blacksmith -- I don't know how deep he has to probe. He makes good horseshoes. He has unhappiness in his life. He seems to be quiet. Brother Lawrence in the kitchen. The surgeon may come home and say, "I slipped a stitch." But he saved a man's life. He did good surgery. Is it necessary for a person to proceed in this rather deep and involved complex of the subconscious when he feels that he is doing God's work and has fulfillment on that level?

ANSWER: The human entity is a very deep, involved, and complex being. Therefore, in order to be undivided and unified, then all these levels eventually have to be reached by some process or method. It is entirely possible that someone is fulfilled in one way, while another aspect of his being waits for unfoldment and growth that may be impossible to reach merely by doing good work. Yet there are a number of people on this earth who may not be spiritually mature enough for such deep probing. In their lifework and by meeting their daily problems as best as they can -- without the awareness of their deeper feelings -- they do the most that they can. On the other hand, there are isolated beings who are spiritually and emotionally so mature that in their own way they follow such a Path, even though it may appear different in method and organization, but the end result is the same. But for those who are somewhere in-between on the scale it is necessary to become aware of what goes on in the deep, involved, and complex levels of their own soul in order to derive the maximum out of their own development in all areas of their personality, not only in one or two aspects of life. For this, a certain help is necessary, some sort of organized method, for alone one is often too involved to see. Often the overemphasis on those aspects of the personality that function smoothly may lead the person to overlook what is not yet in order, and what could be brought out and corrected.

However, this should never be approached in a spirit of "God demands it of me." For then it would be compulsive and it would indicate -- somewhere in the psyche -- a wrong approach to God, a wrong approach to universal law, and a wrong approach to the self. It should not be done in a spirit of fulfilling a superimposed and demanded duty. But the more you grow into life and into yourself, the more you will realize that you wish to do it in order to live a fuller and happier life, and thus give more happiness. You will wish to override your resistance to facing that which you suspect is there but which you wish were not. It is not so much a question of necessity. It is a question of making the best, the fullest, and the most meaningful experience out of your life -- in every possible respect, not just in work alone. Getting to know one's unconscious mind is not something entirely unconnected with the soul, with the being. Quite on the contrary. In the last analysis, it is not possible to grow spiritually to the fullest without psychoanalysis, or by any other name. There is no separation between spiritual living and psychological processes, if you consider it from the point of view of seeing the truth in yourself. This is so simple, even though certainly not easy. Good actions are fine, but there comes a point in man's development when more than good, kind, helpful actions and fine execution of one's work is at stake. (Thank you.)

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Be blessed, all of you. Continue in your work, in your step-by-step growth that is the glory of your life. It is not to fulfill a duty, but to make yourself more capable of being in joy, and thus capable of giving it in your now imperfect life, with your imperfect relationships. Be blessed, my dear friends. Be in peace. Be in God.

January, 1962