Wishful Dreams

By The Pathwork Guide

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

Each step forward on this path brings you closer to a powerful element current in the universe. You may call it the life force, or you may call it an aspect of God, or you may call it pure reason, or pure love, or pure being. Each little victory may give you a glimpse of this great freedom, of this indescribable happiness.

Mankind is separated from this current due to all his obstructions. These are his selfishness, his egocentricity, his fearfulness, and his cowardice. But every time a particle of these obstructions is eliminated, removed only by a small recognition, then your experience of a sense of freedom, of renewal, and of meaningfulness is increased.

Man barricades himself behind a wall of separateness. This wall is a useless and illusory form of self-protection. In the last analysis, this so-called self-protection is nothing but the protection against happiness and against freedom. So, my friends, realize that the goal of this work of dissolving your obstructions is to enable you to get into this great flow. The ultimate reason for living is to make a meaningful experience out of it. However, without being merged into this current, then such a meaningful experience is not possible.

Many people feel that life is meaningful, whether or not such thoughts are conscious. Apart from the successful execution of this work of self-finding, there is another approach, another way to arrive at the point in which life takes on a new meaning. Here is a simple bit of advice. Question yourself as to whether your activities aim at your exclusive self-satisfaction or whether the purpose of doing what you do and of wanting what you want is either for the sake of other people or for the good of the activity itself. If you wish to find meaning in your life, then cultivate this thought: "I want to do something that is beneficial, not only for my shortsighted immediate goal, but something that also brings meaning to others, be it help, be it happiness, or be it whatever else is truly constructive and productive." If such thoughts are sincerely meant, then what better prayer could there be? What prayer of this sort would not be answered?

Often the inner person has cultivated such a desire without your being consciously aware of it. Then things begin to happen. In other instances, the inner person resists leaving the wall of separateness, although other goodwill may exist in a sort of lukewarm way. Then nothing happens. In other words, life continues to be meaningless. Living is constantly being postponed in such cases. When this is the case, then this means that somewhere within you are unwilling to face your separation and your inner isolationism. You are too fearful and too selfish -- too self-concerned in a negative way -- to break down the barriers so as to bring meaning both to yourself and to others. In other words, to be able to experience fully.

This new approach may be important for many of you. It may be a more direct way of dealing with some of your immediate life problems. If you cannot progress and gain sufficient new insights to relieve you from the dullness and the meaninglessness of your existence, then try this approach, along with your ordinary way of working and searching within. If at first you can verify your disinclination to give out or the fact that where you do give out you do so only dutifully at best, then the awareness of your ungiving state of mind will bring about a change in you and it will prepare you for the inner readiness to give up your inner isolationism.

Now I would like to discuss a new topic. Let us discuss wishful daydreaming. Let us understand the origin of these daydreams, their harm, and their benefit. For there is also a benefit, although often a precarious one.

There are two different kinds of wishful daydreams. One kind comes from thoughts and the thoughts come from drives. These drives are connected with your idealized self image. In other words, with your self-glorification, with your inadequacy, with your lack of self-confidence. There is no human being who does not -- even consciously at times -- indulge in daydreams. In them he sees himself in situations in which he proves his superiority and his greatness to those who may have slighted him. In such daydreams other people admire him instead. They are convinced that they were mistaken about him, and he experiences satisfaction and gratified pride. Thus he enjoys living in a way that is the very opposite of his deep-rooted feeling of inadequacy and of his equally deep-rooted feeling of inferiority. He corrects his undesirable reality by fantasies, as it were.

The harm lies in the fact that precious energy is being spent on fabricating such wishful daydreams. This same energy could -- and should -- be spent in the much more constructive pursuit of first finding the root of the inadequacy and then eliminating it. In living out such fantasies, a certain momentary relief is indeed experienced. But it is a relief that is purely illusory. It is not enough to say that daydreaming is escaping reality. This is true. But let us understand more precisely in what way this happens. If you resist finding the truth about yourself -- the truth of your errors and of your misconceptions -- then you cannot come to terms with yourself, you cannot come to terms with others, and you cannot come to terms with life as a whole. At least in all those aspects of you that are affected by your problems. So you try to whisk these inadequacies away by experiencing the opposite in your fantasies. It is true that this brings relief in a drab life. But the fact that this relief is available will hamper your efforts at finding cause and effect, at removing cause and effect, and then at instituting more constructive patterns.

However, there is also a benefit to this mechanism. One benefit is that because the realistic remedy is not sought, through the activity of correcting life in fantasy aggression and destructive impulses are often removed. Another beneficial factor is that these daydreams are a symptom. How can you ever find a sickness if there are no symptoms? If a physical disease is hidden in an inner organ and it doesn't produce any symptoms, then you are denied the opportunity of seeking and treating the origin before it is too late. The same mechanism exists when it comes to your soul life, to your inner life.

The trouble is that most people enjoy the symptom. Therefore, they do not wish to recognize it for what it is. As a result, they do not benefit from it. But to simply repress, by some form of discipline, your desire to immerse yourself in daydreams will not serve any purpose. It will only create greater anxiety and different symptoms requiring different outlets. The proper approach is to take a detached view of this activity of producing corrections in your daily life by daydreaming fantasies. Observe their particular pattern. Keep a note of them. Realize their general characteristics, their common denominator, and their underlying goal. This will offer you invaluable material about the root of your problems. In other words, instead of either repressing daydreams or indulging in them without trying to first observe them and then understand them, make your daydreams the beneficial symptom which they are. In this way you will turn a destructive activity into a constructive one -- as long as this activity is a necessity for you. Your psyche will give it up to the degree that you learn to live in reality. Then the daydreams will simply cease by themselves. But this cessation must be a natural, organic process. However, before this dissolution comes about, you must learn to observe them and then to evaluate them.

The second category of wishful daydreaming is emotional in nature. It comes from needs as opposed to drives. We have gone into the subject of needs extensively. Your repressed -- and therefore unrecognized -- needs may create an even stronger force, just because they are repressed. This force must have an outlet. This often occurs through this other kind of daydreaming. If the healthy pursuit of need fulfillment is hindered through your pseudo-solutions, your unrealistic fears, and your erroneous images that paralyze your constructive energy and your resourcefulness, then an imaginary outlet is necessary. Then physical fulfillment, emotional fulfillment, mental fulfillment, and spiritual fulfillment is possible only in fantasies. This is a relief. So it is not enough to say that it is "merely" an escape from a drab reality.

When you are unwilling to leave your isolation, then your needs cannot be fulfilled. As you know from previous talks on the subject, then you either repress awareness of these needs or you displace them into indirect, superimposed needs that are not your genuine ones. All of this creates confusion, knots, and the paralysis of your spontaneity, of your capacity to feel, of your capacity to live, and of your capacity to experience in reality. This, in turn, creates many vicious circles. These then make it even more difficult to come out of this destructive pattern. Since your psyche refuses to let you cheat it out of living, the accumulated pressure makes it necessary to provide some outlet. So you may experience a limited fulfillment in your daydreams. Only by first observing and then evaluating your daydreams can you learn what category they belong to -- for it is likely that you produce both kinds -- and what unfulfilled needs may be contained in them.

The more satisfying your fantasy fulfillment is, then the less incentive you will have to resolve your problems so that real fulfillment can become a reality. Behind your wall of isolation you live a life of your own. It is a life in which you can direct everything as you choose, without any interference from others, without outer obstructions. This seems more favorable to you. The more you live in these daydreams, the less it will be possible to deal with your outer obstructions. Therefore, the greater their influence on you will become. In the end, it will seem to you that actual fulfillment is impossible because in reality you cannot direct everything as you choose. But this is untrue, since fulfillment is possible -- in spite of the fact that not everything happens exactly the way you want it and at the time you desire it. But this is possible only if you are flexible and only if you go with the stream of life. As a result of your unconscious conviction that fulfillment is impossible in reality you completely withdraw from living. Therefore, you no longer try. You believe that the precarious pseudo-fulfillment is at least something -- in other words, that it is better than nothing -- and that it is much more than you are capable of experiencing in reality at this stage of your development. Determine if this holds true for you and to what extent. This will be beneficial for you, it will be health-bringing.

Yet to a degree the existence of some daydreaming of this sort may even spur you on to seek fulfillment in reality. In that case, daydreams do have a beneficial effect. It depends on the level you produce them at and on what your attitude toward them is.

The more immature the person is, the more successful his daydreaming will be. Therefore, the less he will be capable of and willing to live his life now and in reality. As a result, he will feel the need for the complete control of circumstances through his daydreams. Conversely, the less he will be capable of experiencing fulfillment even while he is flexible and resilient to outer circumstances that are not entirely according to his plans and to his prescribed ideas. The discrepancy between his daydream situations -- in which he can make others behave as he wants them to behave, say what he wants them to say, feel what he wants them to feel, and react as he wants them to react -- and the reality situation, which is often different and which needs flexibility, patience, and the lack of a childish obstinacy, is too much for him. Thus he prefers living in his dreams. In other words, in a would-be situation in which he deceives himself into believing that all that will occur in the future. That is, he believes that although now he lives in fantasy, tomorrow he will live in reality. Of course, the morrow never comes. It goes on being deferred. Frustration is often caused by the fact that the reality situation never conforms to the fantasy situation, which has been laboriously prepared in daydreaming. The latter seems much more satisfying. But reality is infinitely more satisfying, provided courage and flexibility are adopted; provided one gives up the need to control everything; and provided one gives up the blueprint and lives spontaneously.

It should be clear wherein lies the harm of such daydreaming: It may prevent you from living in reality.

Now, what is the benefit? Apart from the same benefit that applies to the other type of daydreaming, namely the fact that it presents symptoms from which much insight can be gained, there are still further benefits. One, already mentioned, is that daydreams may create an incentive to live fully. Your daydreams can also be like thermometers and show up the inner changes. For example, differences in the quality of your emotional daydreaming and differences in the kind of satisfaction that you derive in your fantasy may be an indication of your growth and an indication of the direction in which you are moving. Determining this is very beneficial.

Daydreaming of this kind also encourages your repressed needs to reach your awareness. By now you will appreciate how important this is. But it often happens that this conscious awareness of your needs exists in a rather half-hearted way. In other words, you are conscious of them, but without an evaluation of what your experience means. You allow your emotions to experience these needs only during the activity of your daydreaming. But the moment you step into real life, then you shut off this awareness and you live as though this other part of you had nothing to do with the rest of your life. This fragmentizes you and it causes a split that could be mended by a greater awareness of your real needs. But this must be an awareness that is retained so that it can be first evaluated and then fully understood. Therefore the harm of daydreams is the failure to take advantage of the benefit which they could be.

If you develop a greater awareness of all your daydreams, then you will derive much benefit. It is my advice to many of you who are on this path to develop a new approach whenever you find yourself engaged in this activity. Observe, watch, evaluate, note, weigh, and determine. But do so without strain, without compulsion, and without pressure. Do so calmly and quietly. Make your daydreams the useful symptoms they are meant to be by learning from them about yourself, about your real needs, about your drives, about your pseudo-fulfillment in them, about their goal.

Now, are there any questions on this subject?

QUESTION: I have many daydreams. When I stop, then my fears become active. When my fears recede, then I start daydreaming again. Why is that?

ANSWER: Because both have the same common denominator, the same root. They are both an expression of your self-alienation. You know from your recent findings that your conscious fears are not your real fears. They are displaced fears. They are the fears you want to have rather than the basic fear that you do not wish to face: the fear of being yourself. You are aware of this, are you not? (Oh, yes.) Therefore, since these are not your real fears, they take the same escape mechanism as your daydreams. You experience either substitute fears or substitute fulfillments. Since you do not face and tackle the problem of becoming yourself, then you cannot have the fulfillment that everyone inwardly strives for. Therefore, you create substitute fulfillments that you partially experience, but only in fantasy. It is as though your psyche says: "as long as I do not face my real fear, then I do not mind having other fears. But as long as I remain in this attitude, then I cannot be fulfilled. Therefore I need substitute fulfillments." The one is tied to the other. This is why you alternate between experiencing pseudo-fears and experiencing pseudo-fulfillment in daydreams. (I can't connnect my daydreams and my fears in a concrete way.) This is not necessary. If you proceed to face the reason why you fear to be yourself and you develop from that point, then these other questions will fall into place. But if you wish, you can observe the nature of your daydreams and the nature of your fears and you might discover the connection I just indicated.

QUESTION: What is the difference between drives and needs?

ANSWER: A need is a basic function of the human entity. A need is something real, unless it is displaced and then is superimposed with an unreal one. A drive comes from compulsions. These come into existence out of your misconceptions, out of your images, out of your lack of belief in yourself, out of your idealized self-image, and from resorting to pseudo-solutions. All these create drives, while the needs may be wants that are utterly healthy.

QUESTION: If a person does not daydream at all, is this a sign of lack of imagination or of maturity?

ANSWER: It could be a sign of maturity, but not always. It would be a hasty and oversimplified generalization to answer this question with an either/or. If a person does not consciously daydream, then it may indicate something else, but not necessarily a lack of imagination. This is a label that would not get us very far. For what is the lack of imagination? It may mean that your creative faculties are inhibited. Not having conscious daydreams may also indicate resignation, stagnation. This may sound paradoxical, because I just finished telling you that an overproduction of daydreams, at the expense of actual living, is unhealthy. Now I am telling you that not to daydream may also be unhealthy and a symptom of your unresolved problems. Nevertheless, this is often so in many respects. The presence of a symptom may indicate something that is similar to its absence. For example, the overproduction of daydreams at the expense of actual living may indicate that a part of the psyche is still not reconciled to not living. The underproduction of them may indicate an inner giving up. One would have to take into account the kind of daydreaming -- as well as many other considerations -- before one can accurately determine the reason for their underproduction.

The loss of consciousness of your desires, of your wishes, and of your goals -- or the hopelessness about them that is due to not daring to leave your isolation and your separateness -- may paralyze the life force so much that the person no longer strives in any direction, not even in fantasy. But there are many other factors, too. Therefore, it is impossible to give a pat answer.

QUESTION: Isn't it often the case that when one is younger one daydreams, but that when one gets older and knows that these goals are not reachable anymore one gives up daydreaming entirely?

ANSWER: Of course it is possible. But it is also very often the case that daydreams have not been given up. They merely take on a different form or manifestation.

QUESTION: I'm confused about harmony and happiness. I always thought they were the same. Also, it is said that the universal laws are harmonious, yet many manifestations of nature are not harmonious at all.

ANSWER: You see only fragments of these laws. If you see the fragment of a whole, then you cannot perceive the meaning. Therefore, you cannot understand the harmony. In fact, if you see only a fragment of the whole, then it may appear as the opposite of the whole. However, in a higher state of being harmony and happiness are the same, just as love, truth, wisdom, as well as any other divine manifestation, are all one whole. The lower the state of development, the more they appear as not being the same. On the earth sphere all divine manifestations may or may not appear as being the same. In fact, they often seem to contradict one another. For instance, a truth may hurt, at least temporarily. To the extent that the person develops, to that degree even the most unpleasant truth will have a liberating effect. As a result, it will no longer be contradictory to love. Conversely, the less developed the person is, the more he will experience an unpleasant truth as harsh, and therefore as unloving. Separateness of concepts exists where imperfection exists, where separateness of the soul exists.

The unification of these concepts -- when they all become one -- comes with development. And with development the awareness of reality grows. The more you are in reality, the more your outlook grows and the more do all the many little fragments make up one whole. This is perceived both in the individual and in the universe. Every universe in creation conforms to the average state of the entities inhabiting that particular universe, or cosmic sphere. Therefore, the harmony in the universal laws sometimes must dwell in their apparent hardship. Without this hardship, then unification could not take place. This does not mean that this is a punishment by an arbitrary God. It is inherent in the laws that they work according to their environmental conditions. In other words, the same law will work differently under different conditions. For example, an electric current will manifest differently in a wet environment than in a dry one. The potent forces of these universal laws are determined by the existing climate at any given moment. In other words, what you do with the laws -- your attitude towared them -- determines their manifestation, whether on the conscious plane or the unconscious plane makes no difference. Thus at times they may have a benign effect and at other times a momentarily hostile one. But even the latter is geared to establishing balance eventually.

QUESTION: Sometimes when we have an unsolved problem and we go to sleep relaxed and intending to have the problem solved, it may happen that we wake up with the solution. Then one's unconscious mind has solved it.

ANSWER: Terms are often confused by people. And the terms are really not important, as long as we understand what is meant. There is really only one thing important to know about the meaning of the unconscious, whatever name you give to it, and that is the lack of awareness. When you are unconscious, then you are not aware. Of course, there are degrees of awareness. My friends, do not imagine that your unconscious mind is either a perfect and wise superstructure or a monstrous animal. Many people have both extreme attitudes toward their unconscious. It is neither. The unconscious mind does not necessarily have anything to do with your real self, with the higher self; nor with the lower self, that part in you that you negate. Both sides of your nature can be conscious in part and unconscious in part. As far as both sides are concerned, you may have different levels of awareness. For instance, you may be conscious of certain factors in yourself or conscious of certain general concepts, but you may not be conscious of their entire significance. Then your awareness is neither completely absent nor is it completely present. There exists a degree of awareness.

The reason one is able to resolve certain problems during sleep by, for example, instructing one's unconscious mind to do so, is due to the fact that knowledge exists in you of which you are not aware. In certain states of relaxation and concentration -- for instance, concentrating on the desire to solve a problem before going to sleep -- this unconscious knowledge can reach surface awareness. Your entire striving on this earth sphere is to increase your awareness of that which is already stored in you. In such a state of relaxation it is also possible for spirit helpers to aid you in bringing your inner knowledge to the surface. In other words, it is a combination of the spirit world working together with your own real self. What is necessary for such awareness -- and it does not matter to what degree spirits help your real self to come to the surface -- is the constructive functioning of your inner will. Let us say that a person if facing a confusion or a problem. Before he goes to sleep he should express the wholehearted desire to resolve it in the best possible way, even if this means parting from a selfish aim. Such a person creates a state of inner openness where these productive universal forces of truth and constructiveness can get to work in him. But most of the time a conscious effort has to be made by him. Sometimes it happens that an unconscious desire exists of which the person is unaware.

I give each and every one of you blessings. May you derive benefit from these words, may they help you to a new approach to your problems, to a new approach to yourselves, to a new approach to life, to a new approach to your life experience. Be blessed, every one of you. Blessed are your wonderful efforts. Rejoice in the knowledge that whatever you do in life, every sincere step of finding yourself, has great meaning, even if you are as yet unaware of the effect it must have, not only upon yourself but upon many others, upon your universe at large. Be in peace, be in God.

February 16, 1962