PATHWORK LECTURES FOR THIS SUMMER
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Greetings, my dearest friends. Blessings for all of you. Blessed be your efforts, your progress, and your life as a whole. May tonight’s lecture again help you advance a step forward on your path. Perhaps it may also encourage some new friends to enter this path. This lecture is primarily destined to reach inner areas ready to be uncovered in deep self-exploration.
Your every effort, even if at the moment you feel discouraged or hopeless, must be crowned with success if you persevere. What may now appear as defeat will soon prove to be victory, an absolutely necessary experience. Please remember, when you go through a difficult period, that the difficulty is not caused by this work, but by your unresolved problems that still exist. Remind yourself that awareness is the key — becoming aware of what is in you at the moment. My friends, you are not yet sufficiently conscious of what really bothers you. If you realize this, you will know how to proceed in the right direction. You will not be in despair, because you will see the missing link and cease to be confused and lost.
Tonight I should like to discuss two specific topics. At first they will seem unrelated, but they are not, and we shall establish their connection. The first topic is shame. This was discussed in the past in certain connections, such as the shame of the higher self, or shame of certain shortcomings. I now will focus on this topic from a very specific perspective.
When you pursue this path, you discover certain areas in yourself that you are ashamed to acknowledge, even to yourself. What you may be ashamed of may be faults, but not always and not necessarily. You may be as ashamed of very legitimate needs as you are of faults, or of assets, for that matter. First you are not even aware that such shames exist. It takes a considerable amount of time and effort before you become aware of those facets within yourself you are deeply ashamed to face. You cover these facets with a pretense that is the reverse of your specific shame.
Slowly but surely, as your pathwork progresses in the right direction, you learn to admit the shame to yourself, but are not yet able to reveal it to others. When this phase is reached, a certain amount of self-deception has been eliminated. Whatever your personal particular shame, and consequent pretense may be, varies. But whatever it is, when you come face to face with such an aspect, it takes a considerable amount of struggle and courage to admit what so far has been inadmissible. When the struggle is overcome, a significant amount of inner freedom and ease has been reached. Such a struggle rarely culminates in one ultimate victory. The process may have to be repeated because usually the psyche is not ready to face all its pretenses at once. To the degree you stop pretending to yourself, and face what you had regarded as too shameful to admit, you will feel emotional ease and comfort. Those who have reached the point of such self-admission can exactly pinpoint their shame, their pretense, their self-deception. They have indeed reached a major step in self-realization. They are way ahead compared to those who are as yet unaware of their own shame and pretense and who therefore believe they are not hiding anything.
But then there is a further step. This next step will give you a wonderful opportunity to measure your liberation. How freely can you discuss your shame with your helper? The degree of ease and emotional comfort with which you can do this indicates your inner freedom. This important mark on the path is often bypassed, and then you gradually forget the significance of what you had admitted to yourself. As long as the partial admission is not fully explored, the pretense continues toward the outer world, and even toward the self.
I should like to give specific advice in this respect. First of all, keep your attention alert in this direction. The first stage on this particular road within the path is to become aware of what you have so far hidden from yourself. When this is done to some degree, ask yourself if you have utilized such findings, or whether you have allowed them to become hazy again. True liberation cannot come in half-measures. Making the conscious recognition half-conscious again is due to the specific reason, my friends, that you may not yet be ready and free enough to express to another person — your helper — the shame that you have finally admitted to yourself. And because you cannot make yourself admit it, you becloud it again. The recognition becomes foggy again.
It would be much better and vastly more constructive for you to admit to yourself, “I can’t yet bring myself to reveal and discuss this or that aspect of my personality.” Do not force yourself, because then your anxiety will cause such a strong counter-current that the benefit may be lost and you would present the aspect you find shameful in a slightly distorted, untruthful, colored way. Hence the gain would be questionable. This would make you feel guilty and, in turn, breed new problems in the relationship between yourself and your helper. This is more harmful than the free admission, “I am not ready to reveal myself.” In this admission you are honest. You do not use too much force. Then you do not breed guilt and therefore resentment. This is infinitely better than speaking out of a dutiful and harried self-discipline, doing something you are not yet ready for.
Ascertain in your daily review, “This or that factor brings me embarrassment. I feel too uncomfortable to discuss it.” Come to terms with it, instead of neglecting to face the significance of your lack of freedom. Find out where you stand, how far you have come, what remains to be accomplished to gain your freedom from shame and pretense? Come to terms with your restraint and inhibition, and tell yourself that perhaps in a week, in a month, in a year, you may get to this point. But in the meantime observe yourself and perhaps, little by little, without forcing yourself, you will reveal more than you thought you could. At the beginning you will be uncomfortable and anxious, embarrassed and inhibited, but each time it will become easier. As you gain inner comfort while freely expressing what seemed to be so shameful, suddenly you will see that your entire shame was an illusion. This is your yardstick of liberation.
I advise all of you to think about this specific part of the path. Are you aware of what you are ashamed? If not, you will need to find it. If you are, to what degree do you tackle the issue? Take it into your self-confrontation, by yourself, and probe deeply, bringing out the issue that causes your shame. Do not try to find immediate reasons and answers, explanations and justifications. Simply admit those aspects that cause you shame. Write down in exact and precise terms what it is and why you feel you need to be ashamed. The usual answer is that your are afraid of appearing less in the eyes of others, less lovable and respectable, inviting belittlement and humiliation. Find how this general observation applies specifically to you. Then challenge yourself to confront the issue of discussing it openly. Observe the increase of inner freedom as you succeed, even if only to a small degree at a time. Maintain your awareness. Do not force your self-revelation unduly, though some courage may be necessary. If you decide to wait, do not forget the issue; continue to observe your daily reactions from this angle. You may be sure that your deep-rooted unresolved problems stand in direct relationship to your shame, your inhibitions and your daily disharmonious feelings.
Each private session gives you an opportunity to open this particular door a little further. Each time you will find it easier to discuss what was formerly inadmissible. After each session, note your reactions, how far have you come, compared to previous occasions, in revealing yourself, and how much you still falsify and present a different front, if ever so subtly? Perhaps a good way to begin would be to discuss with your helper how you still have restraints and feel that you are as yet unwilling or unable to give them up. In this way you touch upon the general area of your shame, without as yet going into details. This may prepare the way and create the proper climate. It goes without saying that what is “inadmissible” applies much less to certain facts in your past life than to an emotional pretense, a falsification of personality. The latter is infinitely more damaging.
You cannot begin to know how important this approach is for your progress and your inner health. I also advise those of my friends who are helpers to be aware of this factor, not only in themselves but also as an issue in those they are helping. They should remember that to the degree they are still unfree in this respect, they cannot expect the freedom of self-revelation from those whom they help. It is so important to remember not to whip yourself with self-condemnation if you do not succeed, but to quietly observe where you stand.
Those who claim that there is no area within themselves they cannot freely and comfortably discuss, have not found it yet. They do not see to what degree they still live in inhibition and self-deception. If you discover that you are not as far as you thought, this should not make you uneasy. If you go about your self-discovery in the way I advise, accepting your present state and working on it in a relaxed way, there need be no compulsion, no guilt, no impatience with yourself — only acknowledgement of your good will.
The second topic I wish to discuss is something we have looked at only in a fleeting way so far. For a long time, in this work to understand and resolve images, misconceptions, distorted unhealthy attitudes, in short, everything breeding problems in your life, we concentrated on unhappy, painful childhood events and conditions. We found that they were responsible for creating psychic conditions damaging to your self-unfoldment. Hurts and frustrations in childhood have been recognized as the cause for deeply embedded problems in the personality. Now I would like to shed light on the exact opposite. Apparently favorable and positive factors in childhood can be equally responsible for inner distortions.
Offhand, this may appear quite impossible, for it seems so much the opposite of what is currently believed. But let us look a little closer at this subject. You may note that I said apparently favorable conditions. Your evaluation of what is good or bad, constructive or destructive, right or wrong, is often tied in with what is momentarily pleasurable or unpleasurable, or with what conforms or is contrary to temporary, superimposed values. You may deem something constructive and good because it seems pleasant to you, but you may also say yes to something unpleasant because it conforms to the superimposed, arbitrary value system you often follow.
I sometimes mention the difference between eternal values and to temporary values. Temporary values may remain the same for centuries, but that does not make them eternal; they are temporary if their essence is non-eternal. They come into being because of the needs of a particular civilization and remain because of humanity’s limited ability to grasp eternal values. The temporary needs are dictated by the conditions of a specific society. Social, economic, political factors play a role, as does geography, as well as the type of spirit predominantly incarnated in the society. For example, values differ drastically in a patriarchy from those in a matriarchy. They differ in a monarchy and in a democracy. Many other factors also contribute to determine the value system of a society. Due to people’s inclination to laziness, they blindly follow what is established, and retain values long past their temporary usefulness. People’s self-alienation and lack of independent thinking make them cling to what is handed to them.
This is why it is so important on this path to question everything you accept or reject and find your own reasons for doing so. This is the only way eternal values can be found. Each case, each incident, each issue must be tested and probed, questioned and sincerely answered from the depth of one’s own convictions. They must be deeply examined. Only then can divine attributes be found and accepted — not because everyone says so, not because societal standards, but because one finds it to be true oneself. The divine attributes and eternal values are unchangeable in themselves, but their application keeps changing. It is the exact opposite with temporary values. Temporary values often ignore the eternal ones, but even when they appear to be the same, their climate is very different.
Love, truth, wisdom, courage — what is good and constructive in the long run, and therefore for all concerned — are the sole criteria of eternal values. These values are not accessible through blind acceptance. Eternal values may seem pleasurable while going against the temporary value system, or they may be unpleasurable yet conform to the temporary value system. However, if you act according to true values only because they conform to the temporary value system and remain unaware of the eternal values, you will not be at peace with yourself. Any personal choice and decision, any action or emotional direction or attitude, is dependent on whether or not the decision derives from one or the other value system. There is no formula. You cannot come into selfhood by adhering to unexamined values, but by examining, feeling, and living according to your own perception. Then you can say, “This is the way it is.”
The treatment of children has undergone a drastic change in your society in recent times. Until a relatively short time ago, restriction and severity were generally accepted as the right way. The parents’ unresolved problems found an outlet in such rules and they acted out their pent-up hostility by following the existing value system. In recent times, the norm has been permissiveness, lack of discipline, indulgence. This does not mean that the parents’ pent-up hostility does not communicate itself to the child. They follow the new values by using indulgence and permissiveness to compensate for their latent hostility. Conforming to the new rules may outwardly appear as love. Real love may certainly exist as well, but to the degree it is diluted by guilt for the hostility which is not recognized, as well as by the guilt for not really conforming to present values, the pleasurable indulgence and permissiveness will create as many problematic conditions in the child’s psyche as hurts and frustrations do.
If parents are not sufficiently motivated by love and are not farsighted enough to restrict the child, if necessary, then their guilt, confusion and inability to cope with the problems that a child represents will create an inner disturbance. To atone for having common human failings, such as impatience or irritation, parents may overindulge and pamper their child. The child may experience this as favorable and pleasurable at the moment, but there may be a negative effect. It is not the act or its consequences alone that create the damage, but the guilt, confusion and conflict of the parents. The identical act may derive from overindulgence, or from a clear, unconfused psyche. The effect on the child depends on whether it is one or the other. Moreover, the child’s inborn health or its lack determines whether it is affected by the parents’ unresolved problems. This applies not only to inflicted hurt, but equally to pleasurable overindulgence. It too will have no adverse effect on the child’s psyche if no corresponding problems exist.
Now let us examine what the specific effects of apparently pleasurable circumstances, such as growing up in a permissive, pampering, indulgent environment, are. The psyche gets accustomed to it, and when life later prohibits similar gratification, the personality is driven to seek to duplicate the pleasurable state it once enjoyed. He or she seeks what was experienced as love during childhood, over and over again, but cannot find it because other people, not bound by guilt, will have no need to atone for it and therefore will not provide such pampering. The inability to repeat what one once had causes hurt, anger and hostility. The insistence on having the protection, and the real as well as pseudo-love enjoyed in childhood, is connected with the hurts and frustrations suffered. In other words, just as the parent may overindulge the child to substitute for feeling irritated, and unwilling to tackle the problems the child has, so may the child use the compulsive need for overindulgence to compensate for the negative currents in the parents that it unconsciously feels — and sometimes even consciously experiences.
It is time, my dear friends, to examine those aspects in your childhood which you experienced in a pleasurable way. It took considerable insight into yourself to uncover the hurts and frustrations. A child is apt to take for granted, and as a permanent condition, what it experiences. If the child is hurt, it may suffer from it, rebel against it, but a child cannot evaluate its life circumstances in objective terms. The same holds true with the pleasurable aspects. Both are part of the general climate the child does not question. Therefore you need considerable probing and self-examination to become specifically aware of these elements. The experience of the work that some of you have already done in the past, pertaining to the hurts and pain during childhood, will now prove useful in that it will be easier to become aware of the opposite, the pleasure. This will require attention, concentration, and self-examination.
When you make some headway in this respect, you will discover how important it is to understand the totality of your present personality, how much the past plays a role in your mental and emotional makeup. You will see how you strive to reproduce not only your feelings about what you did not have, but also about what you did have. In other words, you not only attempt to correct what you lacked in your childhood, but you also try to re-create what you did have then. This angle is vastly overlooked in the exploration of human psychic disturbances.
I again emphasize that conduct alone does not indicate whether the action taken is right and constructive. The inner conditions, motivations and the underlying unification of the psyche make all the difference. In one instance it may be right to be lenient, in another to restrict and even punish. Those who depend on outer rules to tell them what alternative to choose on what occasion, must be lost and confused, and their actions will prove unsuccessful. But those who know themselves and understand their inner problems will also know what choices to make, even long before their inner problems are completely resolved. One is then in a position to act and to be in accord with eternal values. This applies to the treatment of children as well as to any other human relationship or situation. Confusion always signals that knowledge about the self is missing.
So, my friends, examine this new angle. Be on the lookout for the following: to the degree you felt unloved, the conflicted feelings of love and guilt will have damaged you. Both play a role only because psychic unrealities were already in you before you were born into this life. You will see that a great deal of anger and resentment exist not only in connection to what you did not have, but also in respect to what you did have and wish to continue having.
Offhand, you may wonder what the connection between tonight’s two topics is, and why I have chosen to discuss them in one lecture. But once both subjects are more profoundly understood, the connection is quite evident. It may be constructive, my friends, if I now let you participate. Can any of you see a connecting link? Who has an idea?
PARTICIPANT: I think it would be a very shameful feeling not to be grateful for what was meant to be good, if you didn’t feel it was good, or if you were given something you did not want.
ANSWER: This may be quite true, but what I was actually referring to was not that you were given something you did not want, but something you very much enjoyed; however, you may be as unaware of the damage as of a hurt.
PARTICIPANT: If a girl loves her father very much she may ask for the same love in a man, later. The child may experience the love for the father, almost in a sexual way, and later she wants the same love from the man, but can’t get it, then she may have a shame in this respect.
GUIDE: This is a good example.
PARTICIPANT: If parents are neglectful in some ways and, through their guilt, are particularly indulgent toward a child when it is sick, the child will want the sickness in order to get the love. Later in life, when the person is sick, he will be disappointed and hurt when the love is not forthcoming. At the same time, he will be ashamed for using sickness to get love.
GUIDE: This is a good example, too.
PARTICIPANT: You may also be ashamed when you are told you are loved as a child, but don’t feel it.
GUIDE: Yes.
QUESTION: Shame is always connected with guilt, isn’t it?
ANSWER: Not always. It is also possible to feel shame without guilt, and guilt without shame.
PARTICIPANT: When the child receives an allowance and he feels guilty for keeping it, while not actually deserving it, he later feels shame for receiving a salary.
GUIDE: Such a case requires further understanding of why this guilt and shame for having received an allowance exists.
PARTICIPANT: I know a case of an adopted child where the parents gave the child too much leeway, continuously admiring it. This was probably due to lack of real love. Later, when the child was about eighteen years old, he became even more demanding and the parents could not gratify these demands. I think the child was ashamed of not having his real parents.
GUIDE: This may be so. These are partly good examples. Such participation will help you to assimilate my words better. Let me now show you, in principle, the connection between the damage of pleasurable childhood experience and shame.
If a human being wants to reproduce pleasurable childhood conditions in later life, it indicates a desire to remain a child. It indicates greed and lack of self-responsibility. This may be difficult for some to admit, particularly for those who pride themselves on being mature adults. Most people wish to be regarded as mature, while at the same time desiring the advantages of childhood. The desire to be a child, as well as anger for the frustration, must create shame. This tendency completely contradicts the ideal which is superimposed and is presented to the world and to the conscious self.
As you know, the idealized self-image denies all limitations. It pretends possessing all that the personality feels is lacking. The pretense of the idealized self is the crux of the matter. The pretense not only hides what the child felt to be missing in its life, but also what it did have and what it wants to continue having. If you examine your idealized self, this double pretense must be found. Underneath lies its opposite. To reveal it seems a dreadful admission. You cannot discover the shame if you do not envisage the exact opposite of your pretense. It is this opposite which creates the deep shame and which is also connected to both pleasant and unpleasant childhood conditions.
The consideration of the exact opposite of the idealized self-image should now be taken into this work by all of you. Look for the shame, and how it also connects to certain pleasurable circumstances in childhood. Perhaps you were praised for some real qualities you suspected you did not possess to the same degree your parents claimed. Or maybe you still think these qualities are absent, because they are diluted with your various self-doubts and distortions. Find what is specifically significant for you. If you study this lecture and work through it, I promise that your liberation and progress will be considerable. This will indeed be the crux of understanding what makes you suffer, of what alienates you from life and yourself, of what makes you puzzled and confused. With this approach you have a direct key, my dearest friends, each and every one of you, each in a different way. For some friends this exploration may be premature. Many other aspects may have to be explored first. It is not always a matter of the length of time, though. Occasionally, someone who has been on the path a shorter period may discover certain aspects another individual will come across only after more extended work. It all depends on the type of character and on psychic conditions, as well as on the attitude to one’s problems. Wherever you stand now, take this into consideration.
Are there any questions pertaining to this lecture?
QUESTION: If a child was a favorite and in a privileged position, is it that later he may unconsciously claim a similar privileged position? That he wants special consideration?
ANSWER: Yes, indeed. This may be absolutely unconscious, for it may be diametrically opposed to one’s idealized self. If the child held this special position because it was a good child, being good then becomes an integral part of the idealized self. Goodness means also self-sacrifice and unselfishness. Yet this contradicts the claim for special treatment. In this inner confusion so much is obscure and repressed. When all the various inner demands and attitudes are out in the open, the clarification, liberation and relief must be great. I tell you, my friend, you are on the way, you are almost there. With asking this question, and the light that flickered in now [sic], you are almost there. You will also understand your specific God-image.
Love streams to each one of you. It is a vibrant force of reality. May all of you who make such valiant efforts in self-confrontation realize how meaningful and significant these efforts are. Continue — all of you! Life will thank you for it, but I do not mean this in the sense of a rewarding or punishing God. The cosmic forces with which you come into harmony by truthful self-examination respond according to law, while self-deception and lack of awareness cannot bring you into harmony with the cosmic forces. Be blessed, every one of you, so that your continuous efforts will be strengthened, so as to become freer and happier. Be in peace, be in God!
Greetings in the name of the Lord. I bring you blessings, my dearest friends. Blessings for all of you.
My dear ones, we see with great joy that many of you are progressing very well on the road you have chosen, and that a few more have entered this path of liberation. Each soul who makes such a vital decision creates rejoicing in the spirit world, rejoicing you too must feel sooner or later in your own heart, be it only after the first few obstacles and resistances have been overcome. You can be sure that your final decision to walk on this path of self-development, as well as each victory on this path, creates a special blessing for you. Whether or not you can feel it at the moment, this blessing is a reality.
Many of my friends have prayed for help and strength on this path, but most of you do not recognize when your prayer is answered. The prayer is often answered in a form that seems unpleasant to you—a conflict, or a friction, or something that induces you to feel unjustly treated. You do not realize that the very event that causes you temporary pain is an answer to your own prayer—the prayer in which you ask for help to recognize yourself and your conflicts so that you can purify yourself.
How can you recognize your inner conflict unless it manifests outwardly? Only then can you become aware of the hidden part in you that deviates from divine law. Because the deviation is negative, it must materialize as something you feel in a disharmonious way. You often overlook this simple logic, and persistently take the frictions in your life as though they had nothing to do with you. So I beg of you, my dear friends, consider the outer conflicts that come to you as answers to your prayer. Turn in the other direction. Instead of becoming defiant and hurt, turn inside, turn around, no matter how wrong you think others may be. Ask yourself, ask God: “Isn’t there some grain of truth somewhere in this painful conflict? By recognizing it I will continue to learn and develop.” A wealth of further recognition must come to you that will cancel out all the disharmony, all the feeling of injustice or sadness, defiance or misery. Just turn your attention to your own inner reactions, my friends, when you feel unjustly treated or hurt, and you will see that your very own prayer was answered. When you see your inner error, all the friction between you and your brothers and sisters will disappear like snow in the sun. You will be able to unite with understanding and love.
We in the spirit world pray for this understanding and love to be given to you, our brothers and sisters in the body, who are courageous enough to do the one thing that matters: turning inside to recognize and purify yourselves. There is no other reason for life on earth than to follow the road you have chosen. The more wholeheartedly you go about it, the more sincerely you prove your goodwill, the more you will realize that you have not lived your life in vain. It is never too late to begin.
Many of you are filled with the sincere desire to unite with God, but before you can do so, you must find the many little opportunities to unite with your fellow human beings, to practice humility and love leaving out your pride and ego and proving that what you mean is serious. For only here and now, right where you stand, can you find God.
And now, my dear friends, we will continue to explore the inner wrong conclusions that have created so much trouble in your lives.
There are three basic types of human personality. The first type governs his or her life and reactions mainly with reason. The second type does so mainly with emotion, and the third does so with the will. In other words, the three personality types are dominated by reason, by emotion, and by will. In your self-search it will be useful for you to find out which type you are. A personality is never completely one-sided; every person is a mixture of types, but one is always predominant. In some cases, the predominance is obvious; in others, the mixture is more complicated, and therefore the predominant type is more difficult to detect.
In the ideal personality, each of the three aspects has a rightful place. The harmonious person functions with each aspect in a perfect way. Since there is no completely purified human being, however, the three trends are often directed into wrong channels, aside from imbalance or predominance. For instance, where reason should prevail, emotions do, or vice versa.
When, in your inner work, you penetrate your soul, your images, your wrong conclusions, the layers of your errors and whatever you may encounter, this approach will give you added understanding about who you are, what you are, how you are in reality.
Let us begin with the reason-type, the personality governed predominantly by reason. Those who conduct their lives mainly by the reasoning process are apt to neglect the emotions. They are afraid of emotions. They thwart and cripple them, and in doing so they cripple one of the most important instruments in life, namely, the intuition. Those who are afraid of emotion cannot trust their intuition, because intuition is blurred by their fear of it, by their distrust of its supposed intangibility. The reason-type often secretly looks down on the emotion-type. He or she is proud to be so steeped in the reasoning process. And the will, which is not necessarily self-will, is, in this type, used mainly to follow deductions made with the reasoning process, seldom paying attention to the emotions or intuitions, which also should be heeded.
Such a person of reason is often an intellectual, perhaps a scientist. He or she is often an agnostic or even an atheist, who tends to be materialistic. However, it would be a gross generalization to state that all, or even most, reason-types are spiritually less developed or aware than, for instance, emotion-types. This is not so. There are many highly developed and spiritually awakened reason-types, just as there are awakened emotion-types. They differ only in the approach.
The reason-type finds it more difficult to experience the divine within. The emotion-type encounters other difficulties. Furthermore, the reason-type has great difficulty with intuitive judgment of others and of the self. The will, which is a necessity in life for all, is used onesidedly by both types. The reason-type uses will premeditatedly, often overcautiously, whereas the emotion-type is carried away by emotions and uses willpower unconsciously and erratically. The harmonious personality finds the healthy middle way and uses the will rationally or emotionally, depending on the situation. The will should be a servant both to reason and emotion.
It will be easy for you to see that the reason-type goes through life missing a great deal of experience, mostly out of fear and pride. This type fears that emotion might lead to an experience he or she will be unable to cope with. Emotional life necessarily carries uncertainty and risk, whereas the rational type tries to keep everything well ordered, “knowing” at all times where one stands, and avoiding the emotions, which leave one at sea.
The emotion-type is equally onesided. Predominantly emotional people often pride themselves that only they are capable of truly feeling. They secretly look down on people they derogatorily label “intellectuals.” Yet, the extreme of this type is not one iota less removed from harmony and divine law than is the extreme reason-type. It is true that the emotion-type tends to have a good intuition and is sometimes less afraid of feeling and inner experience than is the reason-type. However, the emotion-type, contrary to the reason-type who holds life’s reins too tightly, often loses his or her grip on life’s reins altogether. The overemotional person completely loses sight of the fact that reason also is God-given. Such people are just as arrogant as the reason-type who looks down on the emotion-type. They are often so carried away by uncontrolled feelings that they not only lose control over themselves but become blind to that which is often most important for their lives and development. Due to their overemphasis on the emotional side, they neglect the equally important reasoning functions of thinking, discriminating, selecting, and weighing. They must learn to use the intellect to curb the wild emotions that, without necessarily being impure, flow without purpose or direction. Only then can they use the will properly.
Uncontrolled emotions bring havoc into the extreme emotion-person’s life, as well as into his or her surroundings. The temptation to give in to the emotions is at first manageable, but the longer one gives in to them, the more difficult it becomes to resist the temptation, until one is simply carried away by the torrent of uncontrolled emotions, which destroy everything in their wake. Such a person cannot help being selfish and destructive, although this kind of selfishness is different from the selfishness of the reason-personality type.
The emotion-type person needs first to realize that what he or she has been so proud of has ceased to be an asset because of its extreme manifestation. This type must cultivate the faculty of selecting, deliberately thinking and planning. This selecting process is the beginning of wisdom.
The emotion-type also uses will, of course, for no one can exist without doing so. But the emotion-type uses will chaotically and impulsively, without planning or deliberation. Submerged in unchanneled instincts rather than constructive intuition, such a person loses balance in life, just as the reason-type does in the opposite way.
Both are subconsciously afraid of their opposite extremes, and therefore they remain in their own extreme. They thus act from a wrong conclusion. Led by the wrong conclusion, they feel or unconsciously think that their own extreme is a better solution to life than the opposite type’s. The reason-type, afraid of losing control, cuts out not only a major part of life’s necessary experience, but beauty and happiness as well. The emotion-type fears that curbing and disciplining his or her nature will eliminate something valuable in life. Both are wrong—for only the harmonious middle path leads to the complete solution.
Although there are obvious representatives of both types, there are many more who are not quite so clear-cut: a person may be overemotional or overintellectual in some aspects of their personality, yet be more balanced, or even tend to the opposite extreme, in other aspects. Or, the person’s true nature may be masked. For example, a basically emotional person chooses, because of fear and immature currents, a mask of intellectuality that is foreign to her or his true nature. Such a person may appear outwardly very calm and controlled, but inside is caught in a storm of emotions, unable to find peace until starting to work toward achieving a proper balance.
In the third category is the will-type who is altogether different. Will is supposed to be a servant, never a master. Ideally the will should serve equally the reasoning process and the emotional and intuitive faculties. The will-type makes a master of the servant. This brings the personality out of focus in a way that can become dangerous.
Like the other two types, such persons may unconsciously look down on both of the others. The will-type thinks or feels something to the effect of, “The reason-type is just an intellectual who talks well and has wonderful theories, but it is all in the abstract. Nothing is accomplished by that. Nothing is achieved. I am the achiever.” The emotion-type, who accomplishes even less, is even more despicable to the will-type. The judgment is right in both cases, as the other two types are right in their judgments about the other extremes. But all the types are wrong in believing that their own extreme is better than those extremes they look down upon.
The person of will, for whom the servant is the master, is out for achievement and tangible results. This focus tends to make such a person impatient and apt to forfeit the very result he or she seeks. It cripples the reasoning process, which, joined with the emotional nature, leads to wisdom. Without such wisdom, people either cannot accomplish what they set out to accomplish or, if they succeed, cannot benefit from the accomplishment in the right way and thus will lose it again. The will-type tends to lose sight not only of caution but also of many aspects and considerations of life that are essential in order to gain truth for the self, for others, as well as for any given situation.
The person of will also neglects the emotional side, fearing emotion as much as the reason-type does, but with a different purpose in mind, which is often unconscious. Emotions are acceptable to the will-type only so long as she or he remains master of them; otherwise, emotions might hinder this person’s aim. The will-type, like the reason-type, also misses an integral part of the life experience, of giving one’s self up to a feeling without knowing the outcome and the possible advantage of doing so.
These are three broad types, my friends; as I said, you do not always find a personality with characteristics so predominant that the type is easily recognizable. You all know many human beings, and since it is always easier to know the other than the self, you may form certain conclusions about your fellow creatures from the angle I have described. In most people two of the three faculties are predominant, whereas the third is crippled. In a great many others, all three faculties function, but each functions in a wrong channel, at least in some respects, while the proper functioning is insufficient and does not apply to the whole personality.
You may remember the lecture I gave about the active and the passive forces, in which I said that both currents are necessary for the healthy human soul. It would be just as wrong to be an entirely active person as to be an entirely passive one. Actually, such a person does not exist, although there may be a predominance of one trait in many a person. But what frequently happens is that the active current flows through the channel destined for the passive current, and vice versa. It is similar with reason, emotion, and will. Even when there is no outright predominance, emotion perhaps is used where reason should function, and vice versa; the will does not function where it should, yet often it functions where it should not.
This discussion, my dear ones, should help you, as you get deeper and deeper into your own souls, to find out where and how all these aspects or currents function—where one interferes with the other, instead of helping it along and thereby creating one harmonious whole.
Is there a question on this subject, my friends?
QUESTION: Does not this division correspond to the so-called Kretzschmar types: the cerebrotonics, the somatotonics, and the viscerotonics? In other words, the personality types are combined with the physical habitus of human beings?
ANSWER: Yes, of course. It applies to everything. No soul current is entirely independent of its physical manifestation. The physical body is an outpicturing of the soul currents, and this outpicturing can occur in many ways.
QUESTION: Is it possible to react predominantly with emotion to some people and with willpower toward others? I mean, can the same individual react in one way toward one person and in another way toward others?
ANSWER: Certainly. But there must be a reason for that. People on this path who observe this phenomenon in themselves should ask why they react toward a particular person differently than they usually react. All these things are very important for self-observation.
QUESTION: If one were to achieve purification completely, the three aspects would be pretty much equal, I presume?
ANSWER: Exactly.
QUESTION: Does everyone have the same potential for the development of each of these qualities?
ANSWER: No. There are basic types. Each divine spirit was created perfect in one way, yet each was a distinct being, a personality in his own right with different talents and characteristics. But there was no disharmony in the distribution of currents. The highest angel of the active forces is not disharmonious in his activity, as an unpurified human being would be with an overactive current. He is just perfect in his own way, a specialist in his activity, which excludes the possibility of a disharmonious overemphasis. It is the same with the highest representatives of the three aspects I discussed tonight. The perfection of the reason-personality would be the Angel of Wisdom. The perfection of the emotion-personality would be the Angel of Love. The perfection of the will-personality would be the Angel of Courage.
QUESTION: Wouldn’t it be ideal to have all three in balance?
ANSWER: The ideal form is in balance, but that does not mean that they are distributed in equal measure. Balance and harmony do not always mean an equal measure of each current. Balance depends on the way the currents are distributed; on how the distribution works in cause and effect; on the way one current strengthens another instead of weakening it, as happens in the disharmonious, unpurified being.
If you reread the story of Creation I told you some time ago, you will see that God created each spirit perfect in its unique way. The idea was that these spirits would perfect themselves with the creative power that was given to them. In other words, they would perfect themselves in all ways, instead of remaining perfect in one special way, and thus would become godlike. Instead, many spirits used their power in the wrong way—causing the Fall. Had the Fall not happened, all spirits would have become truly divine in every conceivable respect, instead of being specialists in one particular aspect. This process of perfect creation will continue, after all the fallen spirits again reach their original perfection in one particular way, until the Plan of Salvation is successfully accomplished. Until then all pure spirits—those who did not participate in the Fall, as well as those who have already reached their original state—pool their resources to help in the Plan of Salvation, postponing their own further creation to some extent, although in an indirect way they work toward that end by helping in the great plan.
QUESTION: Aside from this triad—willing, thinking, and feeling—are there any other types?
ANSWER: Yes. Some I discussed already, others I will discuss in the future.
QUESTION: I don’t understand why the angel of courage is the perfection of will. I can’t understand this at all.
ANSWER: If you have courage, you need a great amount of will, in a positive sense. Isn’t that clear? Can you explain why you do not feel that courage and will go together?
QUESTIONER: Well, I know a lot of people who have no willpower but who are very courageous.
ANSWER: That has nothing to do with it. A person can be very emotional but the emotions may be all covered up so that this person appears to be quite cold. A person who has no willpower and yet has courage may summon this courage partly from the recesses of the soul where all perfect attributes slumber—partly in response to outside events, to prove to himself and others that he or she has willpower.
QUESTION: Is there also a certain courage that comes from fear?
ANSWER: Definitely. A positive attribute can originate in either a positive or a negative motive or current. That is the complication of the human soul. In addition to its pure background, any quality may be motivated by negative tendencies. The same applies to faults. But the natural and positive extension of will is courage. Both will and courage are active. In will there must be a strong active current. That will is often used negatively and self-destructively is something else again. And also, the fact that inborn courage, which is based on willpower, cannot function because of other deviations in the personality does not negate the principle. We are not discussing the many possibilities of mixed-up soul currents, where the will may be broken and then appears only in certain aspects of life. Will needs active pressure, either positive or negative. It needs activity. In the purified state, the will would manifest as courage. It may even manifest as courage in the unpurified state, although then the courage is used for wrong purposes. Courage cannot exist without activity; courage appears in a spirit of surging ahead, in a spirit of doing, rather than in a spirit of being, as would apply for instance to love.
QUESTION: In finding and purifying oneself, can a predominantly intellectual individual release more of the other two currents also?
ANSWER: They must, because that is the purification process. Often the person whose willpower is crippled, yet who displays courage in some instances, may be similar to a person who seems to be more the intellectual type but who is not really that at all. One who by nature is more emotional may fear emotion and thus assume a mask that does not correspond to his or her true nature. In the purification process, all these types must begin by finding and being true to their natures; only then can they resolve the disharmony in their souls. In other cases, the apparent reason-personality is really just that. The true reason-type will learn balance, so that reason will function properly in the self-search and purification which ultimately will eliminate the phantoms of fear that have blocked harmonious functioning. This person will remain a reason-type, but in a harmonious and perfect way, without interfering with the personality’s other faculties. The same applies to the other two true types. They will remain just what they truly are, but without crippling their other faculties and thereby shortchanging their lives.
And now, my dear ones, we will turn to your planned questions.
QUESTION: It says in the Greber book that the only means for spiritual growth is through mediumship or spirit communication in some other form. In other teachings it says that one can contact the divine part within oneself that contains all wisdom. Which is right and how would either one work?
ANSWER: Of course, the final aim is to find that which is divine in yourself. There is no doubt about it. But until you can get that far, you need help. Often, communication with the spirit world of God is the best means to get the help. Complicated and perilous as the establishment of such communication is, once it is established, it is best suited to help you remove all that obstructs your own divine spark. However, this is not the only way. Human teachers also can help you remove your inner obstructions. There have always been great teachers who have done just that.
In your time, there is a further means, the medicine of the soul that you call depth analysis. The fact that it is not always handled well no more disproves its value for freeing the soul—and that is its ultimate purpose, whether your doctors know it or not—than badly applied or arrested development in mediumship disproves the value of that. Communication with the spirit world ultimately has only one purpose, no matter in what stage of development the medium is. Learning about the facts of Creation, about God, and what happens in the universe and the various spheres is secondary, my friends. The sole purpose of telling you about such things is to help you understand the reason for life and the necessity of development, and to give you the incentive to overcome your resistance to taking the steps to reach your own divine spark. You should consider all teachings and all religions from that point of view.
The knowledge of universal facts is a help and an incentive and not the final aim. The final aim is self-finding and self-purification, for only through that can you make contact with your own divine spark. Otherwise it is blurred and unreliable and can easily be confused with unconscious desires that have nothing to do with the divine in the human being. Yet contact with the divine world is not the way for all human beings. Other ways may be better suited for some people. It depends on the personality and its stage of development, but the only reason for life on earth is purification and self-finding. There are many ways that can help you in that. If you have the grace and the privilege to communicate with God’s world, this method should be best suited to help you, because it would naturally be a little faster and more direct in showing you how to proceed on your path to find yourself. But it is not the only way.
QUESTION: What is the role of the Virgin Mary from the spiritual point of view?
ANSWER: The spirit of the woman you call the Virgin Mary is a very highly developed spirit, a spirit who has never belonged to the Fall. Jesus Christ could not have been born out of an impure spirit. And the purity of this spirit led to the misunderstanding of the meaning of the “immaculate conception,” which refers to her unfallen nature. I often say that each error in the various religions has some background that makes the error understandable. Through spirit communication humanity was told that Jesus’ mother was a pure spirit—which could not have been otherwise. From this communication arose the misunderstanding that purity means sexual purity and that the mother of Jesus gave birth as a virgin in the physical sense. That is the whole misunderstanding.
Many people on earth misdirect their sexual forces and therefore think that sexuality as such is impure. This is not so. The mother of Jesus was and is a pure spirit, but the conception took place like any other conception. God’s laws are perfect, regardless of whether humanity perverts some aspects of them or not. So there would be no need for God to override His laws. You see, my friends, as usual, the truth lies in the middle. Some, out of the mistaken idea that everything sexual is impure, say that the mother of Jesus Christ had to be a virgin and that denying this is sacrilege. Others go to the opposite extreme and deny not only the purity of the spirit of Jesus Christ’s mother but also that Christ was the inborn Son of God, merely because they cannot accept certain erroneous assertions. They cannot find the truth between these extremes.
QUESTION: If you break a divine law in good faith or if you break it knowingly, are the consequences the same in both cases?
ANSWER: No, of course not. When you break it in good faith, the evaluation is very different from when you know what you are doing. But, my dear friends, I would like to say this: Since all knowledge is contained within you, something of that truth gets through and that is why so many of you resist going on this path. Something in you says, “The more I know, the more responsible I am for changing myself. If I guard myself against knowing, I may stay as I am, which is more comfortable.” This accounts for much resistance. The motive for resistance, lack of self-honesty, unconscious or half-conscious as it may be, will be taken into account. For many the real reason would be quite obvious if they would but examine their resistances. They use all kinds of pretexts, which they rationalize, when in reality they simply do not want to change.
My dearest friends, receive the blessings of love and strength that permeate your heart, your soul, and your whole being at this moment. Know that you are in God, and God is in you. You need but lift your hands to Him who waits for you to take that first step out of spiritual childhood, toward becoming a strong and independent child of God, growing in spirit, strength, and love.
Love one another, my dear ones. Understand one another. Remove the walls of your fear of one another, for they stand without reason. You who fear the other, remember that the other is just as afraid of you. Remember this, when you want to settle differences, and God will be with you. So, proceed on this path. Consider that each step forward may, at times, bring you temporarily into a crisis, a difficulty, that is but the product of your own errors. View it that way and you will be victorious.
And so, my dear ones, be blessed, all of you. In the name of God, in the name of Jesus Christ, be in peace, be in the Lord.
Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless you. God bless this hour. Many of my good friends find themselves in a state of inner struggle and crisis at this particular stage of their path and development. It is no coincidence that this happens at this time, and to many of you. For, with the proper development and work, the nucleus of the inner problem is supposed to come to the surface more and more. Before overall understanding of the entire inner conflict is reached, you are bound to suffer from depression and confusion.
In the past, you may have gathered a considerable amount of partial insight into isolated problems. But you have not yet gained an overall and concise understanding of your life; what is problematic about it, and why. You still miss the main links of cause and effect. Before such understanding can be yours, you are bound to find a part of yourself putting up quite a struggle. Before your entire life, with its fulfillments and frustrations, can take on new meaning, you cannot help but go through renewed confusion, as it were. It is this confusion that is most depressing — and the first step toward alleviating it is to become aware of exactly what you are confused about, rather than feeling it only vaguely.
The child in you resists growth, desires to remain immature, and is burdened with unworkable wrong conclusions and destructive defense mechanisms. Without the pseudo-solutions and defenses, a part of you believes itself lost and endangered. To let go of that which seems to you the very protection you seek causes the psyche to resist. Yet such states of struggle are not due entirely to the resistance to growth and change and to the fear of letting go of familiar, although defective, behavior patterns.
If you still find yourself in a state which outwardly resembles the fight against change, this is due to discouragement with yourself, with your apparent relapses, for you do not understand why this occurs. The relapses occur not only because it takes considerable time for a new habit to form in your emotional reactions, but also because you cannot form new habits until you have gained a fuller view and understanding of the totality of your conflicts. By this I do not mean a general, theoretical understanding, but a real inner, specific, and personal understanding. Such inner understanding comes only after a great deal of deep insight, growth, and change in particular areas. All this is necessary before the nucleus can be affected.
In order to help you a little from the outside toward the inner understanding of the overall picture about yourself, let me suggest an important link which will lead to the necessary insight and freedom. However, you must realize that any words coming to you from the outside can give you only a theoretical understanding to begin with. It must not remain that. You must use these words as guiding directives, so as to gain personal, emotional understanding from them. The link must be made with your own findings, attitudes, and images.
Let us consider the three major directions of our work so far. At first, we were concerned with your images. As you know, there is always one main image which causes the most important unfulfillment in your life. Because of it you go through repeated disappointments. So we have to deal with the various wrong conclusions and pseudo-solutions which constitute the main image.
The second concern of our work is to deal with the repressed needs, and, in connection with them, repressed emotions, positive and negative.
In the third phase we investigate the defense mechanism you have developed in order to obtain what seemed to you a protection. In this category belong the attitudes of submissiveness, aggressiveness, and withdrawal. These three aspects, as well as the idealized self image, form a part of your defense. But your defense is more than all of this. The basic defense is a general inner climate that you yet have to come to feel. You have to recognize its presence in order to become fully aware of the damage it does to you. You have to acutely feel it, almost as though it were a foreign body, before you can convince yourself of its destructive influence, which causes many unnecessary and unfavorable results.
Let us now see how these three major inner mechanisms connect; how they are linked up with one another. Only if you have a full understanding of how all this applies to your own individual case will your confusion, and then your depression and discouragement, disappear.
Let us review in brief how an image comes into existence. The childhood hurts and frustrations, which every child experiences at least to some degree, cause unhappiness and discontent. The situation that brings this about leads the child to jump to the erroneous conclusion that every similar situation is bound to bring a similar result. Thus, what was once reality now turns into illusion, because no such generalization can be valid. The generalization freezes into a rigid, inflexible mass in the soul substance that should be fluid and dynamic throughout. This, then, is the image, which will later act as a preconceived idea. But the image also always contains the supposed remedy for the hurt. Since the image is unreal, so must be the remedy, which therefore never works. This is all the more disappointing because in reality the very opposite happens to what the “remedy” was supposed to accomplish. It goes without saying that the entire process is unconscious, until you have succeeded in making it conscious.
This predicament results in further negative chain reactions. The defense mechanisms become stronger and stronger in every possible respect. The more this is so, the less is it possible to avoid the hurts that you have unconsciously labored so hard to avoid. And, as long as it is unconscious, you have no way of stopping this destructive process, which is entirely opposed to your own best interests.
Very soon after its first impact, you begin to repress the original hurt that caused you to form an image. You not only repress the hurt, so that you are no longer aware of it and experience it only as a vague, general climate, but you also repress many of your needs. This happens because the experience leading to the formation of the image was so painful and so humiliating that you did not wish to face it. Also, the experience made you believe that these needs cannot be fulfilled, and therefore you believed that you could tear out your needs simply by not acknowledging them.
Your pseudo-solutions are supposed to bring you the fulfillment without having to take a risk of being hurt or humiliated again. Since this cannot happen, your defenses become stronger and fulfillment becomes even less likely. But you go on repressing your needs, your hurts, and your disappointments. Perhaps you experience them to a certain degree, but rarely with the full impact, and almost never with the understanding of what really hurts you and why.
The repeated pattern not only proves the image right, but it also proves that your defenses against it do not work. This increases the original hurt of the experience which brought the image into existence. This is all the more confusing, because a part of the image works. The best way to explain this is by way of an example. Of course, the example can only be a simplified one, as we cannot include the many side effects and details that are relevant for an individual human personality. But the example may clarify a little better what I mean than a description in abstract terms could.
Let us suppose a male child has had a cruel mother, or maybe not even really cruel, but it seemed that way to the child, because she might have been inhibited, undemonstrative, or conflicted, and she therefore lacked understanding and imagination. In any case, the child experienced an acute lack of affection, warmth, and understanding and was therefore frustrated. In a situation like this, the image will form that women are ungiving, rejecting, and do not give love. Therefore the child feels apprehension and anxiety toward women when he becomes an adult. This may outwardly be denied, but if the emotions are examined, the mistrust will be found. But since the basic need for the opposite sex, and for warmth, love, and affection cannot really be torn out, he will seek a remedy against the image. As I said before, due to the unreal premise that all women are the way the mother was, the remedy must also be false and ineffective.
Let us further assume that this same mother was quite demanding as far as work in school was concerned. She expected a high standard from the child. And when the child was actually successful, she approved of him and was liberal with her praises. Thus, the child could experience some kind of gratification, provided he struggled hard enough to be successful. This situation will add to the image the following conclusion: “Although women do not give the love and comfort my soul really craves for, I may get the next best thing; I may have some importance by being successful in my work.”
Needless to say, such thoughts are not really uttered, even unconsciously. For in the unconscious of the child there is no clear-cut distinction between receiving love and receiving approval. He has only a vague memory that something favorable came forth when he was ambitious, while nothing favorable happened otherwise. When the approval came, the boy was not consciously aware of something lacking. It was rather an inner climate telling him that what he yearned for he could have to some degree if he made efforts in certain directions. The real need for being loved was already repressed by the time the image came into existence.
The main image, in a case like this, would be: “I have to be successful in order to be loved.” And: “Approval for my professional work is one and the same as being loved.” Images of this sort are quite frequent. But let us now examine a little further, with our new understanding, what this means. Due to such an image — if there is no strong second image counteracting the main image — such a person will actually be very successful. He will be ambitious and will use all his resources to satisfy the image-claims to have success and receive approval. This image-claim will be granted. But the underlying claim, that approval is tantamount to love, cannot be granted, because here lies the wrong conclusion. Striving for success is not in itself wrong. It may be a waste of too much energy on one aspect of life at the expense of another, which might have been more important for happiness and peace. It may appear as an imbalance when the entire life and its needs are considered, but, in itself, it is not based on a wrong assumption. Therefore it will work out. The claim for success will be fulfilled and will bring approval. Whether or not the overemphasis brings an imbalance to the life of the person, in the claim for success itself there is no logical error.
However, the unconscious aim and claim for gaining love through success cannot be granted because approval and love are not the same. To believe so, consciously or unconsciously, is a logical error, a misconception, and therefore it cannot work. By gaining the one, you do not gain the other. If you do gain love and success, it is due to a logically correct attitude toward both. So this is where the image does not work. Therefore the constantly frustrated needs grow and are again and again repressed, because the personality is not willing to face either the longing and the pain of the unfulfillment, or the erroneous image-conclusion. The unfulfilled need for love, warmth, companionship, union, is contained in the unexpressed claim contained in the main image. Here you can clearly see one link between the main image and the repressed needs.
The repressed need for love is, in itself, a healthy and legitimate need. But the need for approval, at the expense of gaining love, is an unhealthy need. Now, why do I say “at the expense of?” Because, if you concentrate on being successful, on impressing others, on receiving admiration — which all fall under the category of approval — you are bound to pursue the very behavior pattern that will push love away from you. What you need most, but what you are unaware of, what originally caused you to produce your main image, you now reject because of the wrong conclusion you have formed. If the man in the example is loved anyway, a little investigation would prove that the loving person does not love him for the traits that are embedded in the image and that bring him success. She will love him because she senses another quality behind and apart from the traits that are meant to make the image work.
Now let us go on to the next step, continuing with the same example. Such a person may be aware of his drive for success. But he is unaware of why this is so important, where it stems from, and what the frustration and need behind it really mean. Therefore each time he reaps success without the unexpressed inner claim for love being met, it is not only a new frustration; it is the same hurt from childhood experienced all over again, but it increases his inner insecurity and inferiority. He originally deduced that if he had been more lovable, his mother would have given him more of what he needed. As a child, he could not evaluate that his mother might have been incapable of feeling or demonstrating love. Now he is incapable of deducing that he himself forfeits love, not because he is unworthy of it, but because his defense against being hurt is to be arrogant, rejecting, superior, and fearful. All these are traits which do not inspire love.
Only by unraveling this entire process can the painful inferiority feeling disappear. It is the feeling of being unlovable that the soul resists facing. He fears that what he will find will indeed be that he is unlovable, and so he represses. While doing so, he not only represses the painful fear, but he also represses the entire process of image-formation, the needs, false claims, destructive defense mechanisms, together with all the traits of the idealized self-image, and the various pseudo-solutions. Only by courageously going through this process will he find out that he is actually not at all unlovable, except as he makes himself so by his defense-mechanism. This realization is one of the most important on the path. It holds true for everyone, in some way, whatever the images are, whatever the idealized self-image is, and whatever the various pseudo-solutions are. Even if the pseudo-solution is submissiveness, which seems so opposite to the arrogance of the aggressive success-seeker who denies needs, underneath the submissiveness as much arrogance and superiority will be found as in the other pseudo-solutions. It is clothed in a seemingly more acceptable cloak, but it contains as hardened a defense structure as the extreme opposite. The defense structure is an invisible wall, unconsciously perceived by everyone, which prohibits love at the same time as it begs for it. Only upon close analysis of the various emotions and feelings will it become clear that the submitter rejects as much as the aggressor.
The struggle preceding this important breakthrough is very hard because the very means that are supposed to get love and acceptance actually do not bring it. Therefore the unconscious belief in one’s own unworthiness increases, which is even more difficult to face. If you go through the pain of making the confusion and the belief in your unworthiness conscious, you will be relieved to find that it is not you who are unlovable, but the various devices you use for your protection. This recognition is of untold value and will give you incredible strength.
The search in this direction is not easy. There are so many factors, so many simultaneously contradictory aspects to unravel and to recognize. A moment’s insight may only elude you again. Remembering a feeling will not recapture it. It is no longer meaningful. The experience of the insight has to be felt again, until its meaning makes a stronger impact on you. Only by repeatedly observing how your destructive defense feels in you, what it makes you do, feel, think, and how it makes you react, and how this affects others, will you see and truly understand. Only then will you gradually let go and become free of it, and only then will your true “undefended self” manifest. This real self may often act completely against your known outer rules, your principles, your established patterns that you have become so used to. It takes a great deal of struggle before you let your real self act, unhampered by your outer levels which are so unreliable, as your life has shown it to you in your troubles. Your innermost self, which knows so well, which will never lead you astray, cannot function as long as it is encased in the hardened, brittle structure of your defenses.
Another difficulty in your struggle to come through and see the light results from the following confusion: Since everyone has a streak of submissiveness, you may confuse submissiveness with giving up your false superiority, just as you will confuse healthy self-assertion with this very same arrogance and superiority. The difference is subtle, but very distinct. While you still find yourself so involved with your problems, it is hard to perceive it correctly. You struggle between two alternatives, either of which could be healthy or distorted. You will find the answer only when you have found your point of relinquishing and are completely aware of the hardened mass of your defense mechanism.
Let us examine for a moment the difference between submissiveness, appeasement, and the unprotected, vulnerable real self which should be out in the open. This does not mean more hurt, but less, my friends. When you appease or submit, when you give up or allow others to take advantage of you, you do so only because you cannot relinquish your needs, and because you are still unaware of them. You bow down to your inability to give in, to lose. That robs you of the dignity of your real self. Your real self can lose. It may be painful, but that is never as painful and bitter as the struggle of straining toward the impossible.
You will not forfeit your dignity when you no longer want to fulfill those needs through a pseudo-solution. You do not have to take recourse to that if you can face those needs and see how you have forfeited their fulfillment by the very process I am describing. The stronger your tendency to submit, the more self-contempt you beget, and therefore the stronger is the pull into the opposite direction of arrogant aggressiveness and superiority. Whether you manifest it outwardly, or whether it smolders hidden, your aggressiveness has its effect on others. However, you confuse submissiveness with the dignity that is lacking in you. Your submissiveness is the result of your repressed needs and of your denial and shame of them. Your aggressiveness is a defense, not so much against outer hurts, but against your own submissiveness.
You find yourself ensnarled in this conflict. You cannot give up the defense that keeps you chained to both tendencies. Or, if you are too confused between the two ways, you may resort to withdrawing from life, from love, from reaching out toward life and toward others. Again, it is not so much that you withdraw because you fear others, but because you cannot cope, caught between the two artificially constructed attitudes that unconsciously seemed to be the solution at one time.
What I have told you now should not be mere words to you. As long as they are, they will not do you any good. It is necessary that you begin to link up these elements by reconsidering, once again, what your main image is. Some of you have not even found it yet. If you have not, consider your main problem, your unhappiness, unfulfillment, and then proceed to find it. It will now be much easier to do so with all the preliminary work you have done.
Once you see the main image, determine the part that worked out because of its in itself correct premise. Then consider the hidden claim, which did not work. Look at the needs involved with this image. Once you recognize the image with both the fulfilled and unfulfilled claims, you will know that the needs must be there even before you feel them. It will enable you to become aware of them. In due time you will acutely feel the real, as well as the superimposed unreal needs. Simultaneously, train yourself to feel your defensive wall. Observe it in action. Feel its existence. It is there, if only you pay attention to it.
Last, but not least, begin to notice the difference in your behavior and reaction when you feel the defensive wall in you, and when you do not. This will bring into clear focus the effect you have on others. Without the awareness of the difference you cannot know the effect of your defense. When you realize the effect you have on others due to a defense mechanism, you will be able to close the circle and recognize that this defensive wall brings the very unfulfillment you wanted to avoid through the erroneous image conclusion.
Even if you know your main image, you will not really benefit from this awareness without the links I have now shown you. You need the impact of live knowledge which enables you to go through an inner change. In order to do that, you need to see the connecting links in your personal inner history.
If anything is not quite clear, please ask about it.
QUESTION: I realize that at this point on my path I use my defense mechanism and am aware of it. I try not to act upon it. So I am going through a stage of holding my breath. I don’t know how to go on. Can you give me a hint?
ANSWER: You are in a painful state because you still act out of obedience, rather than recognition. You somehow know that the defense is destructive in general, and you obey this general understanding. But you have not yet seen why the defense is unnecessary and against your own interest. Once you have gained this insight, it will no longer be difficult to prevent yourself from acting out your defense, because you will have no further need for it. The fact that you are suspended, so to speak, in the state you describe, is due to your persistent inner conviction that you still need the defense. Therefore, it now becomes imperative for you to find out why you think that you need it. There is a tremendous anxiety in you that without it you would somehow be threatened or annihilated. Make conscious what it is you fear would happen to you without this defense.
What happens now is that because you no longer wish to use it, you hold it back forcefully. But you are inwardly not yet convinced that you can dispense with it, therefore you still hold on to it. You try to compromise between the old and the new, feeling not quite ready for the new; yet another part of you is eager for the new life. This painful state is one that many of you are now going through in one form or another. Its clear recognition will not only alleviate some of the pain, but will give you a clear directive as to how to go on from here.
Once you have found the need, you will be able to relax inwardly. All this is difficult to explain in words because we deal here with soul movements. Try to follow these soul movements, to visualize them. What you did before the recent findings was to press the energy under in a hard, cramped, downward movement. Then, when the pressure became too much, you let it shoot out, but still in a tense, cramped motion. Both movements were tense and cramped, one pressing down, the other shooting out. The third alternative — after understanding how superfluous this protective measure is apart from its destructiveness — will be to relax the hardened mass of energy. Thus it will dissolve, and the relaxation will then bring the relief and release that is constructive and meaningful. The striking-out movement also brought momentary relief, but in the long run it was destructive.
The first few times you try to dispense with the hardened wall, the cramped movement, either pressing down or pushing out, you may feel as though you were falling into an abyss. You will feel yourself defenseless, while before your stronghold, your safe point, was the hardened mass of your defense, which necessitates either of the two hard movements. Without it, you felt vulnerable, exposed to attack. If you realize that this is an error, you will be capable of softening up the hard mass. You are now trying to retain it without repression. But instead of retaining it, you have to dissolve it by this relaxing, softening-up process. In order to be able to do so, you have to ask yourself — your emotions, not your brain — the question: “What am I afraid of without the defense?” Find the answer. From there on, you will go further.
QUESTION: I have many of the symptoms you have explained here. On the one hand, I am frightened, and on the other I feel an inner peace. So I don’t know what to do. I feel both ways, often at the same time. I can translate my emotions very well, but I still need help in this respect. I think one part of my problem is that there is too much passivity in me and that generates a certain fear, too.
ANSWER: I could really only repeat what I said to you many times before. You have now reached a point where, finally, one part of you is beginning to want to give up childhood. When this movement is predominant, you feel the peace you describe. On the other hand, a part of you still holds on frantically to childhood and fears adulthood with its responsibilities and what seems like activity to you. The struggle is now coming to a head. Your protection and defense lies in retaining childhood and, as I said, a part of you is afraid of giving up the protection. For you, the key question at this point is: “Why am I afraid of no longer being a child?” The inner peace is the result of your work which makes you, at least partly, prepared to give up childhood.
QUESTION: You said some time ago that the result of the defense mechanism can be determined by the effect it has on other people. I don’t know whether I understand that correctly, but occasionally I find that my defense mechanism is perfect, and that the effect it has on the other person is wonderful.
ANSWER: The effect is wonderful for what you really want, or for what you think you want?
QUESTION: For what I think I want. If I follow through with a defense to keep people from meddling in my affairs, they are most happy, everyone is happy, so it is not the other person who reacts badly to my defense-mechanism.
ANSWER: In the first place, outwardly you may be content with the result, but you overlook the inevitable byproducts that make you far from happy. And even if others do not seem to mind how the particular defense you are thinking of affects them, it has adverse results for you, whether you realize it now or not. Only increased self-understanding will make this clear to you. You may be thinking of one separated, isolated aspect, while I talk about the entirety, with all its results, of which you have no inkling as yet. This is something one becomes aware of gradually, after a great deal of work.
Moreover, what may happen here is just what I discussed in this lecture. You are aware of a part of your image-claim which is fulfillable because in itself it is not based on an erroneous assumption. But you are still unaware of the underlying claim which leaves you unfulfilled. Find the unpronounced claim and desire, the repressed need that you have neglected, and you will see how your defense-mechanism prohibits the attainment of your deepest goals and desires. You will understand how you inhibit yourself from bringing out all that is still dormant in you, all your potential that cannot unfold with the defense mechanism that you think works so well for you.
QUESTION: Would you also give an example of how to relinquish a need, as you indicated so clearly by the example of how to get the real needs fulfilled?
ANSWER: Let us take the case I used tonight. The real need of this person is to be loved and to love; to have a real, meaningful relationship. He is unaware of this need. The childhood experiences with their effect on this particular man have prohibited the unfoldment of the personality which would bring about fulfillment. He has repressed the knowledge of this need. Instead, he pursues success, approval, impressing others. This then has become a superimposed, false need, covering up the real need.
To begin with, he would not be fully aware of his need for approval. But let us assume such a person follows a path of this sort. He will first become conscious of the tremendous drive for success, surpassing his rational explanation for it. He will slowly realize that a stronger force urges him on and on. At first he will not understand it, but as he is more willing to examine his emotions, he will see that the need for approval exists. To stop at this point will not yield relief and liberation. It is only a part of the way. But by going on, he will ask himself why he needs success so badly. The answer will be that approval is very important for him. Why is it so important? By consulting his emotions very honestly, and without resistance, he will finally see that his need for love has been denied as a child, and that he has gone on denying it himself by way of the image, with all its byproducts.
The awareness of the real need, once it is truly felt and experienced in its full impact, will automatically diminish the drive for ambition, success, approval, impressing others, being glorious, special, and so on. He will do what he really wants and will distribute his forces and resources in a more harmonious way. This does not by any means imply that he will, all of a sudden, neglect a healthy interest in his work. But harmony will gradually establish itself, and the inner aim will be directed toward that which he had neglected for so long. He will come to see how he sabotaged the fulfillment of his real need by the pursuit of the false need. He will clearly see the behavior pattern caused by the false need and how it damaged the real need. Therefore he will begin to change in that respect.
This is relinquishing in the real sense. One grows into it by insight, by full understanding of all the angles. This leads to the awareness that one no longer has to hold on to the false needs and the destructive defenses. But the change can never happen by an act of will. If you find yourself beginning to recognize that similar trends exist in you, and try forcefully to relinquish the need, it will do you no good. You will either not succeed, or the anxiety may be so great that you produce other destructive trends and remain unaware of them. But if you go through the slow process just described, organic growth occurs and the relinquishing happens in a natural way.
QUESTION: Now, let us say, a person has a number of real needs, as everybody does, and a number of artificial, or false needs. They may not even be very strong. But how to go about it in a particular direction?
ANSWER: This has been answered tonight already. But let me add this: When you observe your emotions with their inner, unpronounced claims, and see the resulting behavior pattern; when you observe your reactions to others and how you affect them, notice which of your needs are fulfilled and which remain unfulfilled. You will gain a clearer picture about the process we discussed. Become aware of your emotions, your needs, and your defenses — how they make you behave inwardly, and therefore also outwardly. You will come to see the answer, be it ever so subtle.
However, for this a great deal of inner awareness has to be cultivated. This is best done by working on the path I advocate and along which I steadily lead you. Allow your emotions to come to the surface and learn to cope with them. Understand their deeper meaning and their origin. Use also the group work in which, among other benefits, you get more understanding of how you affect others and how others affect you. When your defense comes up in one instance, and not in another, you will learn the difference between functioning with, or without the defense. This will reveal your inner life to you. It will help you to relinquish false needs and replace them with constructive behavior patterns that fulfill your real needs.
My dearest friends, may these words find an echo in all of you, if not immediately, then after you have surged on a little further. Be blessed, each one of you. Rejoice on this path to freedom. Do not let yourself be discouraged when you temporarily find yourself in a seeming impasse, where the path is thorny and involved and it takes all your effort to work yourself out of the thick shrubbery and see the light again. The light will come. It is bound to come. Receive our warmth and our love and our blessings. Be in peace. Be in God!