The Text - Section 139
139. DEADENING OF THE LIVE CENTER THROUGH MISINTERPRETATION OF REALITY
Greetings, my dearest, dearest friends. Blessings for every one of you. Blessed be this
evening. May your understanding of this lecture open your mind and your vision so that you all
advance a further step in your self-realization.
One of the most difficult accomplishments is to fully understand the present situation, how it
is a direct creation of the individual. Just because this understanding could be immediate and near, it
seems distant. Just because the connection is so easily available, it seems that to obtain it would
require much effort and struggle. Once one discovers the knack of it, it becomes easy and natural,
and it is obvious that the connection has been there all along. Even those of my friends who have
been involved in the pathwork for a considerable time, still overlook what is most significant and fail
to see themselves as they are. They do not understand their present situation, what it means in
terms of their own innermost being, because the mechanism of escape is often so deeply
entrenched. This lecture, once again, is destined to shake you up, to make you more aware, to
awaken you to yourself and your immediate outer situation.
Whenever you find yourself in a situation that is not desirable, that leaves you unfulfilled in
any way, your usually vague discontent causes you to strive for another situation. A clear-cut goal-
directedness and precise concept of a better way of life can succeed only when the present situation,
with its lack, is totally understood. Striving toward a different situation when the present situation is
not fully understood must result in failure and frustration.
How can the present situation be fully understood, my friends? That can only happen by
becoming fully aware of what you really miss. You must put into words precisely what you would
want to be different in your life. This must be the first awareness. The second awareness must be
the extent to which you suffer from what you miss. For that, too, is often pushed aside and not
acknowledged. How much do you really miss what you miss? Do not glibly content yourself with a
vague, general acknowledgement. The full intensity of partly-repressed longings and frustrations
must be aired out. The third awareness, in this respect, must be a total comprehension of your
present situation. And that, of course, means -- after the above acknowledgements -- to ascertain
why you endure your present situation. It is essential that you profoundly understand how the
present situation is a direct outcome of who you are.
I have discussed this many times in the past. I repeat it now not only to connect it with the
lecture to follow, but also because I see among you, my friends -- despite your good progress -- that
this is still vastly overlooked. Therefore, I invite all of you to follow this simple formula and give
your total attention to what you feel and experience right now, and why this is so.
How is your outer situation a symbolic representation of your inner state of being? When you
finally connect with the fact that your outer state -- no matter how undesirable it may be -- is exactly
a result of what you are, think, feel, and want, you will immediately understand that your outer
situation cannot be any different. When you deeply know that it cannot be any different, then you
have totally exploited, assimilated and comprehended your present Now, your total situation. This
comprehension, this analyzing in depth results in knowing that any present situation must be a direct
link to the inner being. You will find that the present situation is an exact result of the sum total of
your personality. This includes, of course, the favorable circumstances. When you overlook and
neglect the enjoyment of all the good circumstances in your life, you must be commensurately
unaware of your values. As you learn in each moment to value, appreciate and enjoy what life offers
you, you must simultaneously become aware of the good in you, your values and assets. This will
give you greater strength to come out of vicious circles and self-generating negative attitudes and
will make the understanding of the undesirable situation more realistic as it relates to your inner
personality. You will gain a more rounded picture of your total person and of your life.
As long as you are vague and hazy about what you miss, and as long as you deny what you
miss, you cannot possibly understand your life. Understanding one's life in this fashion is the key to
changing it into a more desirable and fulfilling manifestation.
Most of you, my friends on this path, have occasionally understood your lives and yourselves
as one unit, in the way mentioned here. These moments are always deep experiences of the reality
of being, of vibrant aliveness, light and truth. To achieve this seems so difficult just because it is so
immediate and near. It seems so much easier to wish for something vaguely different, or even
precisely different -- in an attitude of discontent and tense struggle, in a mood of complaining,
resentment, and self-pity. Meanwhile, you ignore: a) the intensity of the real longing; b) the
presence of reservations to this real longing; c) their "reasons"; d) the consequent thoughts, feelings,
emanations, attitudes in inner and outer behavior; and e) how these must affect others, and thereby
create the present situation. You often overlook that the present situation is a result of many years
of deeply entrenched patterns of thinking, acting and feeling and cannot change instantly after some
recognitions have been made. The effect of these recognitions is diluted when they do not bring an
immediate result. To expect instant results is a childish demand from life, an angry refusal to
cooperate with life's laws, which are most certainly contained in the reasons for the unfulfillment
itself. This also causes you to overlook the good that is in your life and that you fail to enjoy and
appreciate.
When you ignore the oneness between your innermost self and your outer situation it is
always because you run away from yourself. You do not really and totally want to see yourself as
you are, but look at yourself only in a limited way and with reservations. Ask yourself, all of you, do
you truly wish to see yourself totally, as you are? Do you cultivate such an aim by expressing this
desire, particularly in moments of discontent and disharmony? Or are you quick to glibly furnish
rationalizations for your disharmony? Or do you actually admit that it must be in you -- because you
know enough about the truth of these matters -- but let it go at that, without the willingness to really
look? The simple formula of expressing the deep and full intention and desire to see the full truth
about oneself at all times is still not sufficiently used. So much greater liberation could exist if this
were followed through in more detail and with more attention of the self to the immediate situation.
The reasons for the strong tendency to escape from the self -- and therefore inevitably from
life, with all its good possibilities -- are manifold. In the course of these lectures we have discussed
many of the possible motives and reasons for escape. Let us now pay specific attention to one
aspect that I have only generally and vaguely touched upon, for the simple reason that none of my
friends were quite ready to face this aspect in themselves. It could only be discussed and
contemplated in very general terms. The last few months have brought considerable progress for a
number of my friends, and therefore many of you can now accept what I have to say.
The aspect that I want to discuss is not mere hostility. Hostility has become too vague a term,
almost meaningless in its repeated use. Let us deliberately be as crass as possible. In most human
beings -- in some more and in some less -- there exist elements of cruelty. This cruelty is hard to
face. But when you do face it, relief and liberation must follow, because nothing further bars the
way to being totally in truth with yourself. As long as the cruelty within yourself is not fully faced, as
long as you run away from it, you cannot be clear and comfortable, unafraid and relaxed about
yourself. You cannot be good friends with yourself. You can be good friends with yourself when
you accept, acknowledge, understand and work openly and candidly on the cruel aspects, even
before you can totally eliminate them. But as long as you still struggle against cruelty in the wrong,
self-defeating way -- namely by denial and hiding -- you must be in constant friction with yourself,
and therefore, inevitably, with life and with others. Since you cannot be comfortable in your own
skin, your life and living with yourself will feel wrong; problems will appear without solutions.
Solutions can appear on the horizon only in exact proportion to your facing in yourself what you
fear most -- and that is usually cruelty. You cannot think of anything worse, nothing more
frightening than this aspect of yourself.
A reliable gauge to determine whether there is still unrecognized cruelty within is the amount
of fear you have left. Consider your fear of other people -- generally or specifically -- fear of life,
fear of death, fear of the unknown. The more you are afraid -- of ruthlessness and separateness, of
rejection and humiliation, of physical and mental cruelty -- the more must these exact same aspects
slumber within yourself, as yet not fully acknowledged. As long as this is the case -- regardless of
how large or small the unrecognized aspects are -- you will be in conflict. You will run from those
areas in your life which appear difficult and uncomfortable. That they are unpleasant for you now is
a sign that they contain the very key you need. If only you stopped running and really looked at
yourself, you would see that you are avoiding certain outer and inner situations and why you do so.
These instances harbor the secret you are still unwilling to unveil, in spite of all your good efforts.
Yet, as long as you cannot meet yourself and others without reservations, you cannot possibly fulfill
yourself. It means that you want to continue deceiving yourself by avoiding these aspects. You may
vaguely feel something like this, but there is a great difference between that and really looking into
yourself.
Those who have begun to do so must already have overcome the worst. This is not
necessarily a question of time, of how long one has been in the pathwork -- not by any means.
Let us now discuss why cruelty exists. After having acknowledged its existence, what then?
Before answering this question, I shall remind you of that innermost center of every human being
which activates all of you with all you need to live productively. This live center furnishes you with
energy, life force, wisdom, vision, solutions, love and harmony. It exists deep within every
individual. In a young person, a child, it manifests as a very vulnerable spot. Its very aliveness
comes forth from a tender and soft center. When children are hurt and puzzled -- when they
misunderstand the events around them -- they proceed to toughen this vulnerable spot to defend
themselves against its soft openness. By these various defense mechanisms, the live center becomes
more and more overlaid, hidden and covered by tough substances. Without an adult and realistic
understanding -- that is, a mature ego -- the child cannot handle this soft, malleable live center in
which the most powerful, creative and intelligent forces are contained. For its own protection, it
must separate the live center from its consciousness. However, when the child grows into an adult,
when the ego becomes mature, the separation becomes an unfortunate handicap. The individual
lives in a crippled way, leaving out the best and most reliable aspect of his or her whole being. only
when he or she proceeds to uncover it again and integrate it with the adult ego does the personality
become whole and equipped to handle life.
The existence of this bare, vulnerable live center can be determined not only by remembering
your childhood with its strong emotions and deep experiencing, both positive and negative, but by
truly observing yourself. You cannot fail to become conscious of moments when this vulnerable
spot is present. You can further observe how you then proceed to make it invulnerable. In other
words, you continue to use the process that was instituted in childhood, but which now operates
greatly to your detriment, for it is the wrong way to protect yourself and to cope best with life. The
means to inactivate the live center are various: separating and withdrawing, toughening yourself,
numbing your feelings, denying your real feelings and substituting counterfeit feelings, and also
becoming cruel. All these measures serve to make the vulnerable spot within you invulnerable,
because this seems the only "safe" way.
You overlook and ignore the fact that the vulnerability is the very material, as it were, with
which to govern your life in the most dynamic and fruitful way. For this vulnerable spot is the live
center out of which all energy and wisdom is derived. It is that in you which makes it possible to
fully experience and enjoy, to have and give pleasure. The potent energy deriving from the live
center can be utilized most constructively and meaningfully in the realization that the live center
must become a conscious aspect, to be integrated with the ego. If this integration is hindered due to
misunderstanding and ignorance, the energy will turn destructive. The result of the inverted power
must be chaos, separation, disintegration, confusion, suffering, and an inner division and numbness
that makes life appear difficult, ugly, removed and senseless.
The activation of your real self, or the divine center, is not something that you gain from the
outside -- or even from within yourself, as something faraway you have not yet experienced. There
are many occasions when you vaguely and hazily experience the real self, such as in natural,
unexaggerated sadness. But you make sure to deny the experience, because you do not know how
to cope with it, how to handle it. You flatten the experience, prohibiting the deeper, richer
dimensions that come from your innermost center.
As long as the inner center is still in the condition it was when you were a child, it is not yet in
a position to handle life. The inner wisdom contained in the live center begins to manifest only after
integration with the ego. In the child state, the inner center is just alive, full of feeling, energy, and
capacity for experience, for pleasure, as well as for yet unutilized potentials of creativity and
intelligence. What you must learn to do now is: 1) observe the existence of the live center, 2)
observe the mechanics by which you discourage its manifestations and toughen the vulnerable spot;
3) deliberately stop the mechanics of disengagement and allow the live center's unfoldment.
Through appropriate meditations, integration between the live center and the ego will take place, so
that its substance will become strong and resilient without losing its soft aliveness.
You find yourself in the predicament of possessing an adult ego with all its faculties intact, yet
separated from that vulnerable live center. The vulnerable live center is separated from your wakeful
consciousness -- that is your problem.
The more the live center is unrealistically and inadequately "defended" and blocked, denied
and covered up, the more do some aspects of the self come into being of which one will feel
ashamed and guilty. One of the severest forms is that of cruel impulses. Cruelty will truly cease to
exist in the depth of the human soul -- not only in action and conscious thoughts, but in the
unconscious emotions -- when the live center is not denied and hindered, but recognized, observed,
and allowed to function. The intense feelings of the live center can then be compared to reality, as it
unfolds. The ego-faculties will help in the process; reason and intelligence will adjust imbalances
and deviation from reality. But when reason is used to deny the depth, scope and richness of
feelings as they manifest from the live center, the human personality cripples itself and puts itself out
of balance. Bring together the manifestation of the live center, with its vulnerability and its strength
of feelings, with your adult understanding and ego-faculties.
Cruelty can exist only as a result of a separation between the live center and the ego. To put it
in more practical terms, cruelty exists because reality is misinterpreted, which causes the individual to
further inactivate the live center. It is not only the child who misinterprets what happens around it.
Where the child has done that is precisely where the adult continues to do so, right now -- unless
and until all this has been found and corrected. All of you, in the areas of your difficulties, go on
misinterpreting reality. You do not perceive what goes on around you. You do not see things the
way they really are, but misunderstand them.
How can you discover such misunderstanding? Only by first acknowledging to yourself what
it is that you actually believe, then interpreting what that means. This applies to anything that makes
you feel disharmonious. Ask yourself how you interpret what others feel and think about you.
Let us take a practical example to make this more understandable. You feel slighted,
discriminated against, rejected. As a rule you admit this only vaguely. You may say the words, but
you do not fully acknowledge to what extent you feel this, nor why you feel this, or what makes you
believe that your feelings are justified and appropriate. You can go to the next step and ask yourself:
"Is this real, or do I just believe it? Could it be otherwise?" Even when you do admit to feeling
rejected, you usually let it go at that and you live in a fog, a haze, in which you do not fully examine
whether or not it is real. You may verbally acknowledge that perhaps it is not real, but then there is
another level on which you do believe it is real. This level is not totally faced and examined.
Cruelty is the greatest stumbling block to self-facing, to living in the dynamic, adventurous
beauty of each Now. It is also the greatest factor in running away from yourself, and is ultimately a
result of misinterpreting reality. You cannot interpret reality accurately as long as you do not clearly
and precisely formulate what it is that you believe -- how you interpret events which seem to call for
the hurt and defenses -- and as long as you do not consider the possibility that the reality could be
different.
I have discussed here several points which must be combined in your work:
Point 1: An undesirable situation -- a lack of fulfillment, an emptiness -- cannot be eliminated
and changed into a more desirable condition unless you understand that the present situation cannot
be different. You fully recognize that the cause is in yourself.
Point 2: Let us separate the admission of the lack, which is the first point, from the second
point -- the recognition of what in you caused the lack, so that you deeply experience the oneness
between your self and your life situation.
Point 3: The cruel aspects in you represent the main reasons for all resistance and fear of self-
facing. Often, these cruel aspects can be found only when one acknowledges one's fear. Do not
forget the important correlation between fear of others, or any outer facet of life, and the fear of
your unrecognized cruelty. If you are free from cruelty, you cannot ever fear others.
Point 4: Establish in what moments the live center is bare -- as in the vulnerable state of a
child, who has not yet integrated these energies and feelings with the ego-faculties.
When this integration takes place, the vulnerable live center is no longer vulnerable in a
negative, dangerous or debilitating way, but in a positive, wonderful way. It is flexible, alive, vibrant
and full of the strong feelings without which pleasure, joy, and happiness cannot exist. The
tremendous strength and intelligence contained in this vulnerable spot will govern all your actions
and attitudes. It will cause thoughts and emotions which must bear fruit all around you. It will
induce you to be totally constructive in all you do. You will want to give your best and total
attention to everything you experience, to all your undertakings. Nothing will be done half-
heartedly, with half-attention or divided motives. Therefore, the outcome will be more and more
desirable and fulfilling. There is no strain in this attention. You will be carried by a sweeping,
marvelous strength. Instead of covering up the vulnerable spot, you will bring it out. Instead of
shying away from the feelings in this vulnerable spot, you will widen the area of aliveness. You will
strengthen it with a new resiliency, which comes from understanding reality and correctly
interpreting what goes on in you, and in others.
As you begin to integrate the vulnerable spot with the ego, you are accomplishing the goal of
your evolutionary process in this particular respect. You have to go through the four points I
indicated in order to connect your fears with your unacknowledged cruelty. Discover how the
cruelty is a result of misinterpretation. Question closely why you have these cruel impulses. As you
do so, acknowledge what hurts you; what you would want to be different; what you believe others
do to you, what life does to you. After putting this into precise words, take the next step: ask
yourself whether you are in reality, whether what you believe is true or not.
Now, my friends, this lecture must not remain a theoretical study. To the extent you use it for
yourself, you will make what I say a reality. Some of you have begun to do so in your personal
pathwork. Others have not yet begun this particular phase. I do expect -- if not tonight, then in the
next question and answer period -- that you will present me with such problems. You may begin by
expressing exactly what hurts you and why. You will come to certain recognitions. Then ask your
questions, and I will help you further. Let us consider together whether or not the hurt is justified.
Is it really the way you feel it to be? The moment you can question the reality of your experiencing
slight and hurt, you have a firm foundation from which to proceed. As long as you cannot ask
yourself this question because you do not yet know that you feel it, you have to seek the proper way
in your momentary phase of the pathwork.
Some of you may be aware of the cruelty, even if only vaguely. You can proceed from there.
Some may be very much aware of their fears, but are separated from the other side of the coin --
namely, the cruel impulses in themselves. Others may be acutely aware of their unfulfillment --
which can be any type of undesirable present situation -- but have not yet connected this lack with
their own innermost causes. Still others may have accomplished this to some degree, but overlook
the rare instances when their true vulnerable spot comes to the fore. They have not yet observed
how they manage to get away from it, how they cover it up, harden or numb it in one fashion or
another.
All these possibilities exist now for your further work. Some of you are aware of one or
another of these aspects, but not of the others; none of you are aware of all these aspects. May all of
you bring these points together, not just intellectually, but as deeply felt experience. This, indeed,
will give you courage and liberation. None of these aspects are equally strong in everyone. For
example, with some of my friends the area of their illusion and misinterpretation of reality is
relatively small. They are rational and see reality in many areas. Their misinterpretation of reality
applies only to certain areas, which may be so hidden and vague, so subtle and elusive, that it is
difficult to ascertain. Just because they are apparently so much in reality, it is easy to overlook where
they are not and to what extent they are not. In a certain way, these friends have a more difficult
time resolving this problem than those who overtly and obviously demonstrate that they are, even
on the intellectual level, in illusion or delusion. The latter may suffer more acutely until they reach
the point of questioning their interpretation of events and other people's reactions. Then there are
those who believe that they are reasonable, rational and realistic, yet are deluded even about that.
The material I have given you can indeed be a major tool for all of you. Now, do you have
any questions regarding this topic?
QUESTION: I have found this cruelty in me in connection with revenge. I also feel my
cruelty when I withdraw and punish others with my isolation. Now, in spite of having found this, I
feel that I cannot give it up. I must hang on to it. Can you help me to go on from here?
ANSWER: Actually, what I said in this lecture is an answer. Your particular key now is to ask
yourself why you feel cruel. What do you believe is done to you? What do you expect might be
done to you? What do you expect of the other person? Why do you believe the other person is
acting -- or has acted, or might act -- in the way that induces cruel impulses in you? Acknowledge
precisely what it is that you believe. Then the next step must be to ask: Is it real, or do I only
believe it to be so?
QUESTION: To me it seems real....
ANSWER: Of course. That is exactly what I mean. Because it does seem real, you seem to
need cruelty. You have always assumed that it is real. Now you must open yourself to the
possibility that it might not be as you believe. That must be your next step in this respect. As long
as you let it go at that, in a vague attitude of "perhaps it is not so, but to me it seems real," without
considering the consequences, you will remain stuck. When you want to see the truth above all and
reach for it, it will come to you. As long as you remain in a hazy climate, you must hold on to the
cruelty. The cruelty will be your precarious pleasure. The pleasure will cease when you understand
the true facts. The understanding can only happen when you want it and are ready to consider new
horizons and possibilities that you had never thought of. Specifically, ask yourself the question:
"Do the circumstances, the desires of the other person and the facts bear out what I feel, or might I
be mistaken? If the reality is different from the way I think and feel it, I would like to see that
reality. I open myself up to that reality. I do not commit or obligate myself to anything except that
I want to see the truth." Then truth must come, and truth must remove conflict and suffering. That
is the way.
QUESTION: I am extremely aware of cruelty and vulnerability in myself. My feelings are so
strong when I feel slighted that I feel the desire to kill those who seem to slight me. Yet, I also
sense that my reactions may be exaggerated. What should I do about this now that I have become
aware of it?
ANSWER: Again, an exact answer can be found in this lecture. But I also wish to answer
you personally. I said before that with some people the area of their unrealistic understanding is
relatively small, while with others it is much more obvious. You belong undoubtedly to the latter
category. This is a two-edged thing because -- due to this unreality, to your unreal perceptions --
you suffer more while you are in it. On the other hand, it is so crass that you will have an easier
time discovering the unreality and finding your way out of the illusion. Here you have an exact
example of what I demonstrated in this lecture. It is wonderful that it is so open and that, in the
short time of your work, it has come out so strongly. Your vulnerability is also still relatively
accessible. You think you defend it by separating it from your ego and trying to numb it by cruelty.
On the other hand, cruelty is also generated by your misinterpretation of reality. This is extremely
strong and obvious, therefore rather easy to determine once you begin to question it and consider
the possibility in a serious way. What you believe people feel and think and what they actually feel
and think, what you believe they are and what they actually are, is very, very different.
Think every day, my friend, about where you feel you were insulted, slighted, rejected, or
discriminated against. Put it down in writing, every single instance. I want you to do this every day.
After a few weeks, or even a few days, you will see to what extent -- actually almost all the time you
are in contact with people -- you at least anticipate rejection and discrimination, slight and
disapproval. Very often you think it already has happened, while in reality nothing could be further
from the truth. When you begin to ask yourself whether your feelings are true and commensurate
with what actually takes place -- and when you want to see what is true, as possibly opposed to what
you heretofore believed -- you must begin to experience genuine and lasting relief.
I want you to work along these lines by yourself and also in your group. Ask yourself what
you believe the other group members feel about you. When you bring it out, compare it with their
actual reactions to you. Then also learn what is behind their reactions and why they feel what they
feel. Your entire aim must now be to discover what actually is and how it differs from what you
think is true. Then you will not need to toughen the vulnerable spot, which is the essence of the real
live center, without which you cannot successfully live. When you formulate precisely what you
think others feel about you -- and when you then, with equal precision, formulate the possibility that
you might be mistaken and contemplate other alternatives -- a new world will open for you. It will
be a free world in which you can live without fear, a world of light in which you need not be
isolated.
Now you feel the whole world is against you. Since you feel the whole world is against you,
out to harm and slight you, to reject and humiliate you, you must toughen yourself. Cruelty is
almost the only weapon with which to defend yourself against such a world. Therefore you must
hang on to it. But when you begin to see that this is not so, you will not need the cruelty, you will
be relaxed and light, because the world will no longer be your enemy. Other people will no longer
be your enemies. For instance, when you pass people in the street, observe the subtle, and yet
distinct, feeling of how you perceive the strangers around you, how you perceive that they are all
your enemies. Then ask yourself, "Is this true? Are they really my enemies, or might it be different?
Might they feel similar to the way I feel -- frightened and lost? And when they are angry, maybe they
hit out as I do at the idea that everyone else is their enemy?" Millions of people pass each other by,
day in and day out, each feeling they are being singled out to be persecuted. This is often a subtle,
not even detectable, feeling, which, nevertheless, is there. Once this feeling is brought into
awareness, you can begin to question the accuracy of your perception. You can thus find the way
back to reality, hence to truth and light, into a world which is wonderful, not frightening.
My dearest friends, may this lecture bring forth in you all that is healthy, creative, constructive
and real. You will find it immediately "behind" that vulnerable live center, once you allow the first
manifestations of its initially disquieting emotions to reach your surface awareness. Go through this
and see what will then manifest, especially when your consciousness reaches for this possibility. The
constant blessings given to you combine with this power within you and fill you from within
yourself. Be in peace. Be in God!