Falsified Impressions Of Parents, Their Cause And Cure

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest, dearest friends. God bless each one of you. Blessed are your works, blessed are your thoughts, blessed are your endeavors, blessed are your lives, and blessed are even your mistakes. For they, too, may become the great keys to freedom, to reality and to love.

Let us talk about love. Let us remember that without love man is withering away. It is not the love that you receive that is the most important thing. It is the love force in your heart that is the spiritual lifeblood you need. It is the driving force that gives meaning to life. Without this love capacity your life will be empty, meaningless, and shallow.

You all know -- and some of you may have become acutely aware of this fact -- that deep down in your soul you find a craving for being loved. When this craving reaches your awareness, then it is often confused with your capacity to love. However, these are two entirely different things. It is very possible that a human being is consciously aware of his need to be loved and yet his heart is devoid of loving. For, the greater the need to be loved, the more it is possible that you are still selfish, self-involved, withdrawn, fearful, anxious, bound, and therefore blind to the other person. The more you are in anxiety, in bondage, and in dependency, then the less will you be able to love. In other words, the less will you be able to open that inner channel through which the life force or the love force can flow and lubricate your soul, so to speak. Without this lubricating force, inner drought cannot be prevented. This inner dryness makes you feel as though your life is senseless, regardless of the worthiness of your activities. Only with this unclogged channel of love can you become free and thus fulfill your personal needs.

I have shown you many ways to unclog this channel. Some of you believe all these processes to be something other than spiritual development. It is what you call psychological search. Again and again you fall into the error of believing that these are two different things: the spiritual and the psychological. However, if you forget these terms, then you will see that without the so-called psychological problems resolved, you cannot be fully capable of loving.

Let us now approach your love capacity from still another angle, an angle we have gone into only in a cursory way in the past. I have given instruction and advice to some of my friends for their private work to investigate this angle. I believe that the group as a whole is now ready to approach their problems, their development, and their pathwork from this side.

We all know that the child's first impressions come from his first environment, in which the parents, or their substitutes or whoever else may play an important role in the child's life, predominate. The child's evaluation is limited. Therefore, the emotional experience gleaned from his parents is a very distorted one. In other words, in the crassest case, he may emotionally experience his parents as either good or bad, as either strong or weak, as either admirable or despicable. But even if the case is not that crass, he experiences certain aspects of them, certain tendencies only, while the rest of the personality is not perceived. These limited impressions falsify the picture. The image that you, often unconsciously, carry of them -- and which may be contrary to your intellectual view and opinion -- influences your actions and governs your reactions to life, to others, and to yourself. It also clogs up the love channel. This is the channel that makes you capable of loving, of experiencing others in their reality, and of being in the center of your world.

This fragmented impression is unreal and distorted, but it influences you and the way you later relate to others and to yourself. You can be sure that there is a deep connection between the area of your life in which you have the most acute problems and your perception of either one parent or both, or of someone else in your early surrounding. A certain impression has been stamped, imprinted upon your soul, and you go on right on reacting from this falsified imprint.

The remedy is first to become aware of what you really feel about all the people in your family, or about those who are most important for you. Investigate this impression and then compare it with your intellectual view. Then begin to consider whether you really experience them as living, dynamic human beings, or whether your impression is just one fragmented, limited aspect of a whole person.

When you feel hurt by or when you are angry either with one of them or with both of them, then in your anger do you perceive them as groping, vulnerable, blind, troubled humans, or do they take on, in your emotional life, an awesome, strange, fixed, and therefore almost inhuman form? In other words, something unalive, something robot-like, something of which the many sidedness of a human personality is left out? Think about the term "human being." What does it really mean? Doesn't it really mean a variety of often contradictory aspects? Doesn't it mean that a person can be good on one hand and bad on the other, if you must choose these terms? Can he not be reliable on the one hand, and unreliable on the other; selfish on the one hand and unselsifh on the other? But the child in you does not perceive that. For the child it is either this or that. Therefore you do not perceive the reality of this human being who was your parent. You may know perfectly well in your brain that people can be both good and bad, but emotionally you cannot experience this truth, particularly in regard to your parents. Your emotional experience is always either/or. Therefore, you are not in the reality of the living dynamics, the manifoldedness of the human being who was closest to you and of whom it is important for your own sake that your impression and your experience be as realistic as possible.

As long as you are in this unreality, then you cannot cut the tie that keeps you from freedom, from independence, from loving, and from finding yourself in your true strength. Oh, you may have managed very well in many ways, but where this tie is not dissolved by a perception of reality, there you must have problems that you can resolve only when this tie is dissolved.

Therefore, the first step necessary to gain awareness of your falsification is to ask yourself: "How do I experience my parents? Do I experience them as human beings in their contradictions, in their blindness, in their multiple, often conflicting, mixed components?" Does the person whom you may have feared and hated most when you were a child perhaps still exist in you as someone who cannot be hurt, who is invulnerable, simply because he hurt your vulnerability? This phantom wreaks havoc with your life. This is often so, my friends.

You can become a free human being only after making revisions that constitute the second step, which comes after having gained awareness of your falsification, of your image. But how does this revision take place? First begin by asking yourself: "What were they really like?" Try to understand them in the fullness of their being. Understand their lives, their inner and outer struggles, their childhood as much as you know about it, what made them as they were, what were their hurts, their fears, their frustrations. Seek to understand them as one mature human being tries to understand another person: with as much detachment and objectivity as possible, considering as many facets and factors as possible -- not just certain aspects that unfortunately have singularly affected you. Seeing only certain factors and leaving out others, because you were not affected by them, always dehumanizes a person. Even if you glorify a parent, he still becomes inhuman in this unrealistic over-glorification. The fixed, static view -- which is due to fragmentation -- becomes monstrous because it is not alive, it is not real. All the facts that you have experienced from these limited aspects in which you perceive the entire person may be correct in themselves. But the truth is missing. It lacks all the factors that make up a whole human being. Only through wholeness can you understand the facts that have hurt you, and therefore distorted you. Only in this understanding will the still-hidden hurt and anger dissolve and set you free and unclog the channel of love.

You often shy away from revising the image you have of your parents. You may feel disloyal and guilty for no longer glamorizing an adored and idolized parent. You feel that it is your duty as a child to continue. Non-glorification may often equate with disrepect, with contempt, with resentment, or with hate -- in your unconscious mind, of course. It may well be that under this glorification there exists a fear, and under the fear a hate. You may protect yourself against facing this hate by maintaining an exaggerated glorification. This may be due not only to what the world seems to demand of you, but also to the fact that you may need this parent -- symbolically and in a displaced way -- even now.

Another reason for maintaining your glorified image of a parent is that he may have been a substitute for the only love,the only acceptance, and the only security you have ever known. To your unconscious mind it seems that you have to give up this love, to give up this acceptance, and to give up this security when you give up the glorified image of the parent. By devaluating the parent, it seems as though you are robbed of the only value that you possess.

No wonder you resist revising your image of your parents. By the same token, you may have an equal interest in holding on to a hated image. Why would you want to do that? It may be your protection against yourself. If the parent remains bad in your eyes, then the slight and the hurt that he has inflicted on you becomes nullified, as it were. You fear -- erroneously of course -- that by seeing him as human then the hurt was justified, and your own value is thus diminished. Of course, there are other variants to this that have to be found and experienced by each one of you in your individual work.

Moreover, it is much easier for the child in you to have everything well ordered. To deal with reality -- which is flexible, contradictory, and for which there are no fixed rules -- is something that you would rather not cope with. So it may seem much easier to have your fixed impressions, where each person fits into a niche, where this is this and that is that. Each is a static image, and this gives you a certain unrealistic sense of order and security. You know where you are at, so to speak. However, the price you pay for this precarious order and security is something you cannot as yet evaluate.

So when you begin to revise the people of your early environment and you want to see them with your mature outlook and to understand them in their reality, you may find a certain fear and resistance to do so. Note it. Become aware of it. Realize the significance of it. Understand that this is the very indication that therein lies a deep and important key to your life and to many problems that you probably never thought could have anything to do with it. Only after you come to terms with this resistance -- by strengthening and fortifying your will, by asking in prayer or meditation that you want to see the truth about them -- will the resistance gradually weaken. There is no better prayer than one of this kind. I always say: in your prayers use your current resistances and your current stumbling blocks on this path in a most specific way.

Psychological work is really finding out the truth both about yourself and about others. Often we have discussed the fact that you cannot see the truth in others if you do not see the truth in yourself. But sometimes, at certain stages on this Path, after a certain amount of truth about yourself has been brought to consciousness, it must also be tackled from the other side. That is, from the desire to see the truth about others -- your parents and your siblings, for instance -- in order to gain more truth about yourself. The desire to see the truth about them -- their lives as such, their personalities in their whole dimension -- will give you insight and understanding about your own life: what governed you, what paralyzed you, what brought you into conflict. This understanding is the prerequisite to the cessation of these unproductive patterns.

The next thought on your part may very well be: "This is easily said but is not easily done." Apart from your resistance, you may not have the necessary information and knowledge about them to revise your image. They may not be dead, but even if you can contact them and find out about them, there may be certain factors that you cannot possibly discuss with them. So how can you revise your image? If you truly wish to do so, then you will succeed. Of this you can be sure. You may find a way to learn more about them out of an entirely new attitude. You may seek out a contact that will reveal certain information about their lives, about other aspects of their personalities that you have never seen or known about, so that they become more human for you. Eventually, after you have freed yourself to some degree of the old tie, you may even bring yourself to communicate in a spirit of truth with a still living member of your family with whom you might never have dreamed of communicating. By trying to understand their problems, your own hurts are bound to diminish. But first you may have to become aware that a hurt does exist.

But what about a case where the parents are no longer alive? Often someone else may still be near you who might have a different slant on them, who might complete the picture for you, even by adding his own, though different, distortion to the whole picture; perhaps a sibling, a relative, or a friend. But apart from this and in addition to this, so as to be able to have the courage to take the necessary steps, you need still another approach. This aproach is the sincere wish, manifested in sincere prayer to which the answer will come. God's ways are wonderful. If you are but willing to understand what made them the way they were, what were their motivations for behaving or for reacting in a way that you could never fathom, then this understanding will come to you in the most miraculous way. Even if you have absolutely no one who knew them, incidents that you had never evaluated will occur to you in their true light. Perhaps you will remember certain aspects of their lives which had been related to you but which you had put away and not included in your perception of them. All of a sudden, these incidents or these factors will take on a new meaning, thus enabling you to evaluate their persons in a different way -- with the detachment and the objectivity of one uninvolved human being toward another. When this process is started, then your entire outlook will gradually be revised. This new picture will not eliminate the facts that you have experienced, but the experience will have a different meaning, and thus it will set you free.

Before all this can happen, you have to be aware of what you feel, of how you experience them, of how you have been hurt underneath a possible veneer of indifference. Then the desire to see the truth has to be cultivated. You have to determine whether or not you inwardly desire the truth in this respect. As long as you are unaware of the fact that you reject a truth -- any truth, this or any other -- you must be in bondage, in confusion, and in unreality. This knowledge will help you. You will not force the issue, but the resistance will wear out in an organic way, provided you do not push the matter away altogether. If you can acknowledge to yourself that you wish to maintain a falsified picture -- a distortion -- so that you do not wish the truth, then the rest will come by itself.

If you say, "I cannot find out," then ask yourself if this does not really mean, "I do not want to know." Even if you think you cannot, make yourself completely open for the desire to understand the truth. Without truth, there cannot be love. And without love, there cannot be truth.

Try this approach, and your life, your problems, and your relationships will take on a new meaning, my friends.

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Are there any questions regarding this subject?

QUESTION: When parents give the child an unreal, or perhaps real, feeling of rejection, the child feels unworthy of love and therefore establishes a pattern of self-rejection. How does one work through this, even if one sees one's parents in reality?

ANSWER: It happens naturally and by itself. The moment you understand your parents, then the sense of rejection will disappear, even if they were cruel to you. In understanding what made them cruel, you will see it as their own problem and you will, perhaps for the first time in truth and reality, know that this had nothing to do with your own unworthiness. So far you know this in your intellect, but emotionally you will feel unworthy as long as a) you feel that your parents rejected you due to your unworthiness, and b) due to this sense of unworthiness, you are unable to establish constructive patterns that will give you reason to feel secure in yourself now. These patterns constantly confirm your unworthiness. Thus you are unable to get out of them until and unless this basic understanding exists.

In the child's perception the parents are somehow powerful super-creatures. It cannot occur to the child that these are human beings who grope with their own problems, who struggle with their own puzzlement of life. When the inner understanding of this truth occurs, then the sense of their rejection of you must disappear. It may have happened frequently in your life, even before you were on this Path, that you first felt rejected or slighted, and by a variety of circumstances you found out certain factors that you had previously ignored. The moment you realized this, then you no longer felt rejected. You understood that it had nothing to do with you, with your unworthiness. The act remained the same, but you no longer interpreted the act in the personal, self-diminishing way. The same happens with your parents. The moment you experience them as the living reality they were -- at fault, of course -- but you experience them in their dynamics, then both the impression and the reaction must change in you. This does not mean that you have to understand them completely and know everything about them. One never does, even with people one is close to. But I do not mean that. I mean that you destroy the limited, rigid, robot-like aspect in which you emotionally experience them. Then they will become alive. You will understand at least some of their problems. You will understand that they could not have acted any other way considering the way they were at the time, just as you could not have acted otherwise in the past, although now you may recognize the error of your way. The moment you have this understanding, then it will automatically cease to cause self-rejection.

Your question is an important one. The answer will prove that in the last analysis it is the only way, at one stage of your development, to lose this sense of self-rejection. Then you will know without a shadow of doubt that it was never you who were rejected. The hurt that was inflicted upon you -- due to blindness, to irresponsibility, and to undiscovered powerful currents of frustration and hurt on their part -- had absolutely nothing to do with you, but was a result of their groping, pathetic human struggle of living that is so valiant when viewed from the overall picture of human development. Do you understand?

QUESTION: I understand, but still when a child is set in this pattern of self-rejection and has lived his life in this way, the child is twisted and distorted and loves the rejection, rather than the love. The mere fact of recognizing one's parents will not resolve this kind of conflict.

ANSWER: I am not saying that this is the only answer. There is never just one cure-all. You have learned many other aspects of this Pathwork that are of equal importance, and they all have to be experienced. If self-rejection can be cured by other insights and the change of destructive patterns into constructive ones, then so much the better. I still say that the distortion of truth must affect you, and therefore ought to be remedied. However, just for the very problem you cite, the topic is a most essential one.

The moment you experience the important people of your early environment in their reality, then there will no longer be a need to love self-rejection. You love it only because the child in you believes that there is nothing else. But the moment you perceive that you were not rejected because you were unworthy, then you do not have to love your rejection anymore. Do you understand that? (I will try.) Yes, you have to try it. You see, there is often such a strong resistance to see the reality in this respect. Your saying "this would not help my problem" is one form of resistance and amounts to the same as saying, "I have no way of gaining understanding about my parents." Even if now you believe that it will not help you in this or that particular problem, just approach it in a spirit of truth, regardless of whether or not it helps you. In your prayer say: "Even if I do not understand why it will help me, I just want to see the truth as far as I am capable of seeing it." If you work toward that understanding and toward recognizing your resistance to the removal of this wall, then you will convince yourself of what it will do for you. You do not even have to understand it intellectually now, how this could influence your self-rejection. Just approach it from the spirit of truth, the truth about these people who happen to have been your parents.

QUESTION: Would you elaborate on the psychological background of the fourth commandment?

ANSWER: Yes. As usual, there are many levels of interpretation. I assume you brought this up in connection with our topic, did you not? (Yes, I also wanted to ask about the psychological background about the Seven Mortal Sins. But I assume we can't go into that now.) No, let us wait with that for some other time. For that we might need an entire lecture, and it may be a good topic indeed. We can also do it when we have a question and answer session, and you may then present each mortal sin as one question. I will go into detail about each one separately.

As to the fourth commandment, it is often misunderstood, and so much harm has come from these misunderstandings and superficial interpretations. In this case, the force and the guilt make love and honor into something compulsive that destroys real understanding and, subsequently, real love and real honor. In blindness, you cannot respect and love when practically all you see may be undeserving of such love and respect. When you squash these impressions, and you superimpose superficial, compulsive love and honor, then you are even further removed from true love and true respect. However, the real meaning is exactly what I have said. See the truth. For, if you do so, then you respect the basic human being in everyone, regardless of how many aberrations and blindnesses may exist.

QUESTION; How long will it take for humanity to derive the real meaning of the Fourth Commandment? We usually have to learn for a whole lifetime in order to correct such mistakes, such distortions?

ANSWER: How long will it take for humanity to correct all the distortions of truth? Not only about this particular Commandment, but of any other divine truth that has reached mankind. Any truth can be distorted. When mankind has progressed sufficiently in its development, then this will no longer happen. In order to get to this development, the error has to be gone through and dissolved. Self-awareness has to be raised -- and then, little by little, these distortions will vanish. Often you seem to believe that the distortions have to disappear before you can develop. The truth is just the opposite. The distortions exist because of your relatively low level of awareness of reality. As such, the distortions themselves are the remedy, for without them you could not come to perceive the truth. I have said this so often, and I say it again.

From a spiritual point of view, from our vantage point, one single person gaining truth within, in the sense of this Pathwork, has an infinitely greater influence on the entire cosmic development than millions of people in error. This may sound like an incredible statement, yet it is utter truth, my friends.

QUESTION: Just a comment in connection with our friend's question of how long it will take. It happens that I have lived with children in neighborhoods where I saw delinquent parents, parents who were fallen, or drunkards, yet the children had reverence for them through their acceptance and understanding. And I have seen children from well-kept homes who were pampered, yet did not know the meaning of it.

ANSWER: Of course this is possible. An otherwise delinquent person may have a special quality for the child and give up something he needs. Also, the child may have been born free in this respect, so that organically and naturally truth is perceived in this respect. No distortion exists here. But it is also possible that such reverence is unhealthy and false. If it comes out of fear, out of guilt, and out of appeasement so as to be protected, then it has nothing to do with the real understanding we are talking about.

Do not begin by trying to love and honor what seems impossible for you now. Begin by simply wanting to understand. The result will take care of itself. Such understanding can often come only much later in life. The string of fear, of resentment, of self-negation, and of self-rejection will vanish after this understanding has been gained. And that is the real honor and the real love that one human being can have for another, no matter how erring this other person may be or may have been.

QUESTION: I have a question from a friend who is absent. The need for pseudo-protections originates in the creation of an image. Can this need still persist after the image has been dissolved and thereby contribute to the creation of a new image?

ANSWER: Of course this can happen. Unfortunately this is what often happens in faulty or insufficient psychological treatment. Certain levels are reached, certain patterns are dissolved, but one does not go deeper. One stops half way. Therefore, since the root remains imbedded, it may create another destructive pattern, or another image. So it is always a question of the right procedure, and that is to slowly but surely get to the level where the root is. Then this process will be stopped and prevented altogether. Only then can a constructive, realistic pattern be established. Then the love channel is open. Then there is no more need for defenses. As a result, the individual is open to life, open to living, and open to loving.

QUESTION: Could you comment on the Lord's Prayer, particularly about the word, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven?" Could you tell us what "on earth" and "in heaven" mean?

ANSWER: A long time ago I presented an interpretation on the Lord's Prayer, but since this was not done in the English language, and also since my friends have progressed considerably since that time, I may come back to it some time and give a whole interpretation of it on a deeper level now that your understanding is a deeper one.

As to your question now, I will gladly answer it at this time. Both earth and heaven are not geographical descriptions of life here and now, nor of life in the hereafter, after your physical death. It means levels of your personality, which automatically includes any state of life, the physical as well as the non-physical. The symbol for earth might be interepreted in many ways, but just to give a few examples: earth may be your outer life, the material life, physical life, physical actions, your deeds, outer facts and factors; in short, everything visible. For earth is visible for you, while heaven is invisible. The symbol for heaven, therefore, is all that which cannot be seen or perceived with the outer senses. It means your inner actions, your reactions, your thoughts, your feelings, and your motivations. It means your soul and your spirit. It means the psychological, the emotional, and the spiritual levels of your being. In other words, that which cannot be seen. You may act in the right way outwardly, but inwardly the motivations may be selfish, vain, unloving, and cowardly. A person may conform to all the rules and the regulations of church, of society, of public opinion, and therefore be faultless in his conduct, but that which may go on in his soul may be the very opposite of divine law. And that is heaven, the kingdom within that Christ has spoken of. If you are inwardly pure, if you inwardly let go, if you inwardly fulfill the will of God -- perhaps sometimes at the expense of outer disapproval from society -- by being true to yourself, by having the integrity, the courage, and the humility to stand up for what you really believe, then you do the will of God. If you ask for this in your prayer, fully aware that this may be His answer, then you do the will of God in heaven, and automatically also on earth.

QUESTION: In this connection, is it not rather significant that the in Hebrew first seven words of Genesis contain the words heaven and earth just as in the Lord's Prayer. An interpretation is given of the word heaven, Hashomayim, as being composed of the words which mean fire and water. Can you tie this together?

ANSWER: Yes. Primitive humanity always took, and still takes, everything literally. Only through development will you see the deeper meaning, which will then make much more sense to you. The symbols of fire are: the fire of life, living, loving, enthusiasm, healthy activity, spiritual endeavor, courage, convictions that one stands up for, and strength that makes life a meaningful adventure. Water represents the emotions -- the flow, the state of being, a healthy passivity. Both healthy activity, fire, and healthy passivity, water, are processes of purification. Both fire and water can be cleansing processes, and both kinds are needed for an integrated, healthy life. Both are forces in the universe which you can tap if you tune yourself into them by establishing truth in your soul. The combination of these two forces brings you into harmony with the state of being, which would mean heaven.

QUESTION: Could you talk about so-called masochism?

ANSWER: A lot of this has been discussed in all the lectures, in all our work. If the entirety of these lectures is understood and the method of the work is gone through, then you will automatically gain understanding about so-called masochism, this tendency of self-rejection. In order to recapitulate briefly, I would say that the self-rejection we discussed here, and many times before, may, in some personality structures, create a more active process of masochism. Self-rejection in itself is masochistic. But here it is a question of degree. As I have said before, if the sense of one's own unworthiness is stronger than the corresponding healthy forces, then the only pleasure derived from living is found in pain. I still do not mean physical masochism; the same may hold true on a psychic level, and may never manifest physically at all. When it does manifest physically, then it is in a very advanced state. Since this seems the only certain thing that one can rely on -- pain through rejection -- then one hugs it, one does not want to give it up. Healthy pleasure seems hopelessly unattainable. In other words, masochism is a giving up. It is a resignation to the worst, which one tries to make the best of. If the ego is too weak to prove the world wrong -- to assert the person's right to live, the person's right to love, and the person's right to have pleasure -- then masochism is the result. The world seems to deny your right to selfhood, and you give in, agreeing with the world, and making a pleasure out of the pain -- but in a wrong, unhealthy, self-defeating, and life-defeating way. Both giving in and going with the stream, as well as fighting, are healthy processes. And both can be distorted.

Of course, there are also other factors involved, too numerous for me to go into now. However, this core can always be found on the deepest level. But until this can be experienced through extensive self-finding rather than by being read as mere words from the outside, many other levels have to be gone through. On more superficial levels, you will find self-punishment due to guilt. You will find the self-destructiveness deriving out of a certain inability to cope with problems, or the inner desire not to cope with them. All the processes of the images we have discussed and found are really processes of masochism. Because the images, with their patterns, embrace a negative tenet which must produce a painful result, and are therefore self-destroying. If this is enjoyed on some level of the psyche, no matter how unaware of this enjoyment or satisfaction one may be, then we are dealing with masochism.

The real answer can never be found in words, no matter how true. Such words may be helpful indicators to open the way so that you may experience the truth yourself, but this is all they can be. That is why it so often happens that when questions of this sort are asked, then there is a feeling of let-down and disappointment with the answer. One expects liberation from the answer -- and no answer can ever give inner liberation. Inner liberation can come only and exclusively from experiencing these words as truth -- and this can happen only as a result of the step-by-step breaking through of your inner resistance. Your Path will always lead you exactly to where you resist the most. If you have the courage to face this and cope with it, then you can indeed shorten the Path. But if you shy away from it, then you are bound to take detours and to come back to this point of resistence at a later period. Perhaps by then it will have thinned out because the unnecessary pain you encounter due to not removing your soul problems will finally weaken your resistance.

So, I say to you, my friends, check yourself where you do find a resistance, which is always accompanied by the desire to look away from it. That is the very point, the very threshold that you must go through at one time or another in order to become free, in order to unclog the love channel, and in order to live a productive life -- one in which you feel useful, in which you feel that you fulfill a meaningful part. Only by tackling that which you most want to shy away from will you find the door behind which lies the answer. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough.

QUESTION: In connection with this, I have found that I have always shied away from sex. And I have discovered that it is a crime in my emotions. As I thought further, in reality sex is pleasure. So I found that pleasure is a crime. And so, all along the line I have sabotaged pleasure and joy. Now, although I see this, I know this, but I don't know what to do about it. Can you give me a hint?

ANSWER: Yes, my dear. I believe the next step will lead you to the answer as to why you have rejected pleasure. Then you will find that you reject pleasure because you reject yourself. Again I repeat that the words will never suffice. This has to be experienced in your emotions, and the continuation of this work will finally bring you this awareness. Now, why do you reject pleasure? The answer to this will derive partly from the recognitions you have already made and which you will then tie up with this, and partly from new recognitions. Your rejection of happiness, of joy, of pleasure, of life, and of love in reality is nothing but a rejection of yourself. The understanding of this factor will be found exactly in what I discussed here. Begin to investigate what kind of human beings your parents were, as well as others in your family.

QUESTION: In seeking to communicate we must resort to words, and unless we get to the meaning of them, they are lost. The word masochism is used. Along with it comes the opposite term of sadism. Modern schools of psychology prefer to use the word "algalania" to refer to both sadism and masochism, calling one positive, the other negative. How do you regard this?

ANSWER: This is perfectly true. There cannot be the one without the other. Both are one current of inflicting pain. The so-called sadistic person inflicts pain on others as a protection against the self -- a pseudo-protection of course. While at times the very same person may find it against his interest to do so. Then he may come into conflict with his surroundings; or he may find it to his disadvantage because he fears losing the person he needs whose love and protection he wants. So he will invert this force that exists in him due to unresolved negative forces. He cannot simply dispense with it at will, something has to happen with it -- either it goes out to another person, or he directs it to himself. Only the dissolution of this force will stop either the sadistic current or the masochistic current -- or both.

So these forces are really one and the same. The only difference lies in the direction. In what direction they are used makes very little difference in the last analysis, because if you hurt someone else, then you must eventually hurt yourself. And if you hurt yourself, then you must eventually hurt someone else. This is so because it must make you blind, since this current derives from lack of understanding. The only difference is in the timing -- who is affected first. The secondary reaction is then a delayed one.

Psychology has termed it in certain words. Spiritually this is absolutely true. There is this current of cruelty, of inflicting pain. No matter toward whom it is directed in the first place, it eventually takes its toll on all concerned. It is very shortsighted to believe that masochism indicates a better character trend than sadism.

*****

I bless each and everyone of you, and all my friends everywhere. May you receive, deep in your heart, deep in your understanding, what I said to you here, and may it give you courage and strength to pass through the closed door within yourself, so as to gain light, safety, freedom, and a productive life. It is right here for the asking, so much closer than you think. All you have to do is to extend your hand and relinquish your pseudo-safeties. Be in peace. Be in God.

Match 2, 1962