The Text - Section 155
155. FEAR OF SELF -- GIVING AND RECEIVING
Greetings, my dearest friends. May this evening prove helpful and strengthening for all of
you, and thus become the blessing that further opens your path to self-realization.
In order to become what you truly are, the fundamental prerequisite is fearlessness.
Overcoming fear of self is the key. Every kind of fear amounts, in the last analysis, to fear of self;
for if there were no fear of your innermost self, you could not possibly fear anything in life. In fact,
you could not even fear death.
Before one embarks on any intensive path of self-confrontation, one does not know that one
really fears only one's own unknown depths. People project this real fear onto any number of other
fears. The displaced fears may be denied and covered up as well. A person may, for example, fear
any aspect of living. All the power of the hidden fear of self may converge on it. Or life itself may
be feared and thus avoided, just as the self is avoided to the degree it is feared. This general fear of
life may further be projected on the fear of death, since they are really one and the same. Whoever
fears the one must fear the other.
Only when your pathwork has become concentrated and your awareness has sufficiently
increased do you realize that you are really most afraid of yourself. You recognize this fear by the
constraint with which you encounter yourself, by all the more or less obvious forms of resisting, by
your terror of letting go of your defenses and allowing the expression of your natural feelings. The
degree of guardedness is not clear to begin with; these guards have become such second nature that
you do not even realize that they are unnatural and that you could be quite different if you would let
them go. Your inability to let involuntary forces guide you is a sign of how much you distrust your
innermost self.
I wish to stress again that people who constrict their natural soul movements do so because
they are afraid of them, afraid of where they will lead. Those who are aware of this fear have made a
substantial step toward self-liberation, for without being aware of the fear of self, it cannot be
overcome.
Fear of letting go means that the real self cannot manifest. The self can manifest only as a
spontaneous expression. Such spontaneity exists, for example, when knowledge manifests
intuitively from within yourself, not through a learning process introduced from outside. Only
people who do not fear themselves, at least to some degree, can even register the presence of the
self, let alone summon the courage to acknowledge and follow through such intuitive, spontaneous
manifestations of their inner being. The real artists and the great scientists make their important
discoveries through this process. In this respect, they must be unafraid of their inner self. In other
respects they, too, may block it out.
The manifestation of the real self is always a profoundly creative process, whether it surfaces
as intuitive knowing or as the fullness and depth of feelings that make the personality vibrantly alive
and joyous on all levels of being.
Fear of not conforming to the social environment is another aspect of the fear of self. The
inner reality may be at variance with the environment; the real values of the self may differ from the
values of society. Only those who do not fear their inner selves in this respect will refuse the ready-
made values handed down to them. Outer values, whether right or wrong, are still shackles if they
are not freely chosen.
One of the most important aspects of the fear of self is fear of pleasure. For humans are
created for the purpose of experiencing pleasure supreme, intense joy, though the majority of
individuals do not experience it at all. The truly healthy and fulfilled individuals, who function as
they are meant to according to their inborn capacities, can completely surrender to the life force
with its pleasure currents as it manifests in them. They will spontaneously express this powerful
force; they will not fear or reject it. This will enliven their entire system with beautiful strength,
energy, and delight.
Those who are caught in guardedness and defensiveness and who are constantly watching
themselves so that these forces cannot manifest, numb themselves. They become dead. The
prevalent manifestation in this world, today no more than at other times, is what may be called self-
alienation, or lack of aliveness, or disconnectedness. It is a deadness of feelings that also brings in
its wake a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness. It is deadness because the life force in its
vibrant flow is willfully interrupted and prohibited by an overly watchful, denying attitude of the
outer ego.
The average human being experiences some aliveness at least at certain times, but is so
inhibited compared to what he or she could be that the full aliveness, even if there were a way to
describe it in adequate words, would sound unbelievable. You do not even know how you could
function and what your life could be like. You have only a vague longing, a vague sense that life
could be different. Unfortunate are those who ascribe this longing to illusion, to lack of realism, and
who then resign themselves to a half-dead life on the assumption that this is the way it must be.
Fortunate are those who have the courage to acknowledge this longing, no matter how late in life,
and then begin by allowing for the possibility that this longing is justified and means that much more
can be had in life. And more can be had out of life if you become alive. But you can become alive
only to the degree you overcome the fear of self.
Now let us consider this fear of self a little more closely, my friends. Why are people afraid
that if they are not guarded and constantly watchful with their will and mind, something dangerous
might happen? This dangerous something would manifest from the spontaneous depth of their
being. What is it? Fundamentally there are two possibilities. There is the possibility that something
negative and destructive would come out. And there is the possibility that something creative,
constructive, expanding, and pleasurable would come out. It is not true, as it might be believed
offhand, that only the former is feared. Fear of the negative is, of course, one very substantial
reason why the individual prohibits the free-flowing soul movements, the cosmic flow as it
manifests in each human being if it is unhampered. The destructive forces of hate, hostility,
resentment, anger, and cruelty that the individual fears may vary in every conceivable degree. They
exist in every human being. They exist to the degree that positive expressions have been prohibited,
first by the parents and the environment in the ignorant belief that they are harmful and may lead to
danger, and later by you yourself. This is very important to understand, my friends: You are not
constrained, once you are an adult, by your past. You constrain yourself when you continue to hold
back the constructive forces that were originally forbidden by others.
Here, again, is one of those famous vicious circles that result from every error instituted in
human living. Because positive forces are restricted, negative forces grow. Or, to put it more
accurately, the positive force is twisted, disturbed, converted, distorted, and thus becomes a negative
force. This is not a different force that comes newly into existence, as you know. The rage is not a
new emotion or energy current. It consists of the same original substance as love and can turn back
into love if it is allowed to do so. In fact, it is easy for the negative emotion to reconvert to its
original manifestation, for this is its natural form. For example, once rage is admitted and fully
experienced under the proper circumstances in a way that is not destructive to anyone, and at the
same time lets one fully identify with the emotion yet keep a sense of proportion about it, not
rejecting the total personality because of it, the rage will transform itself into warmth, pleasure, and
love. This transformation may occur directly or indirectly via a number of other emotions, such as
sadness, self-pity, pain, healthy aggression, and self-assertion. All negative energy currents must be
experienced and owned up to. They must be allowed to exist at the moment, as long as they
naturally exist. Then, and then only, will whatever is unnatural and destructive reconvert itself.
Now let us go back to the vicious circle, which perpetuates itself when a healthy procedure as
outlined here is avoided. The greater the rage, the worse the fear of it becomes; consequently, the
more you guard yourself. The more guarded you are, the less possible it is for you to be
spontaneous and thus to allow the destructive emotion to reconvert to its original pleasure current.
As I said, not only are the destructive forces feared, but often love and pleasure are feared as
much if not even more, because the child has been made to understand that they are wrong and
dangerous. They are feared because they require an unguardedness that trusts the spontaneous inner
nature. Love forces can remain alive only when the self is totally unafraid of itself. Giving up
guardedness seems like annihilation because then something other than the watchful ego cooperates
in the process of living. Without the cooperation of the spontaneous inner nature life becomes
impoverished. But the acceptance of this cooperation hinges on meeting what is feared. Thus in
the vicious circle the love forces are feared because they demand giving up the watchful, stilted,
premeditated attitudes that make all spontaneity impossible. Frustration and emptiness increase
anger and rage, thus fear of self grows, and so on.
Those who are unable to make the decisive step to overcome their resistances to meeting their
inner fears are caught in this cycle. Encounter with their fears is the one thing most people wish to
avoid like the plague. It does not suffice to acknowledge in a vague theoretical way the existence of
some negative feelings. It does not suffice to make abstractions about them. They must truly be
lived through and dynamically experienced. This is inevitable and necessary and constitutes the
facing of the self we are always talking about.
Once this is undertaken, it proves not as difficult or dangerous as first anticipated. In fact, the
relief and liberation, the coming to life is so real and wonderful that the hesitation seems foolish in
retrospect. Those who can bring themselves to make this step are blessed indeed, for life begins to
open up only then. It is necessary to let go and let what is there come out, whatever the feeling may
be.
I emphasize again, to avoid all possible misunderstanding, that this does not mean acting out
one's pent-up anger, which only comes back to the self in retaliation. What I mean is that these
emotions must be felt and expressed in certain circumstances, under therapeutic supervision, where
they can cause no harm. In fact, the more the destructive feelings are acknowledged and the
responsibility for them assumed, the less will you be driven against your will to act them out. Such
acting out is always explained away; also people often remain unaware of how much more strongly
they feel in a particular situation than is warranted. This inevitably affects others whether one
admits it or not. The acting out that happens daily in everyone's life may not take violent forms, but
it is all the more destructive indirectly. This phenomenon is very much underestimated.
All this can be avoided if the full strength of a destructive feeling is directly expressed and
lived through. The more totally this can be done, the more quickly the transformation into pleasure
will take place. What happens afterwards depends on the extent to which you are able to experience
pleasure. This again depends on several factors, some of which we shall discuss.
Some of the foregoing sheds a little more light on the process of fearing oneself. The fear
makes itself known in indirect ways, which you continue to rationalize. As long as fear of self exists,
freedom and fulfillment of one's life are impossible, my friends, absolutely impossible. It is so much
better to acknowledge the fear of self, to own up to it and say, "Here is where I am at this moment.
I cannot allow to let out whatever is in me, for whatever reason," than push it away and make
believe you do not have this fear.
From here, my friends, we go a step further and look at another topic that is directly
connected with this one. It will give you a new slant on your inner life. Psychology has postulated
for some time, and quite correctly so, that a human being's unfulfilled needs to receive create
damaging conditions in the psyche. Much emphasis has been given to this. Just as the body
becomes thwarted when its needs are not fulfilled and it is not given the proper sustenance, so the
human soul becomes thwarted when its needs are not fulfilled and it is deprived of sustenance on
which it thrives -- love, affection, warmth, acceptance of its own individuality. Both soul and body
require pleasure; without it you become crippled, your growth stunted.
It is true that the helpless child depends on receiving all its needs from others; however, far
too little emphasis has been put on the importance of giving out. The frustration resulting from not
sufficiently receiving has been overemphasized in the last decades, while the frustration of not
sufficiently giving has been very much neglected. It has been correctly postulated that those who
did not receive enough in childhood would find it difficult to give of themselves, but usually this is
as far as it goes. The healing of damage from insufficient receiving can be much better
accomplished when you realize that you are not helpless about your past, that you contain forces
that can establish a new balance; but this can be done only when you comprehend the far worse pain
caused by the frustration of not giving what you have.
The overemphasis of one psychological aspect has created a generation of self-pitying people
who go around in life moaning that they have been shortchanged, that they have not received
enough in their childhood, and that they have to continue as cripples. The ability to unfold and give
always exists, once it is contemplated, once it is taken into consideration.
So much more of the pain in your inner life is the pain of withholding what you have to give,
rather than of not having sufficiently received in the past. This is quite easy to understand when you
think about it dispassionately. If more and more of any substance, of any force, of anything
accumulates, the surfeit will create more tension. The overfullness exists, my friends, whether or not
you know it, whether or not you hold the overflow back in fear. Therefore many of you are pained
at least as much because you do not allow yourself to give whatever it is you bemoan not having
received and wish to receive from others.
The energy flow of these soul movements forms a continuum. The movements create an
ongoing process in which you must cooperate in order to be healthy and fulfilled, by allowing it to
function. By "function" I mean work according to the laws of life that prescribe that the positive
forces be passed on to others and that you receive from others what they let flow into you.
Religion has emphasized giving. It has preached for a long time that giving love is more
blessed than receiving it. It constantly stresses, in one form or another, the importance of loving --
that is, of giving love, mercy, understanding, and other gifts of the spirit. Here the distortion was,
and often still is, that love is a pious command that is fulfilled through sacrifice. Then the image
forms that to love means to impoverish oneself. Loving acquires the connotation of self-sacrificing
deprivation. If one does not suffer through loving and for the love of another by shortchanging
oneself in some fashion, it is not considered love.
The command of love became more of an abstraction and contained the threat of forcing
upon individuals certain actions that went against their interests. To this day, many people's
unconscious concept of love is exactly this. No wonder people fear loving; it is represented as a
pleasureless, sacrificial, and depriving act that impoverishes the self for the sake of being "good" and
of pleasing an authoritarian god. No wonder love is rejected, since the pleasurable feelings it causes
in the body are denied and accused as being sinful. One must then fear love doubly: either one
gives in to its spontaneous manifestation, then it becomes "wicked," or one cuts out the very feeling
that makes up its force, then it becomes an unpleasant duty.
Humanity fluctuates between these two extremes: either to remain the greedy, selfish child,
demanding to receive exclusively and not being disposed to giving in the least, or straining for the
false concept of love I just described. Since each of the two alternatives proves undesirable, people
usually switch back and forth, although the tendency to one extreme may be stronger.
Only when you look at yourself with great honesty and a great deal of discernment will you
find both these distortions within yourself. Now, how can a healthy flow of giving and receiving be
created when such faulty attitudes bar the way? The fear of self must exist in both instances, for the
natural impulse, the spontaneous urge, is to give abundantly -- as abundantly and generously as all of
nature does! This applies on the most outer material level as well as on the most subtle level. The
greater the natural, generous giving is, the less masochistic, suffering, and self-depriving the
personality becomes. The more the false giving by self-impoverishment and lack of self-assertion
takes over, the less real generosity and spontaneous outflow exist.
There are innumerable occasions in people's daily life when they stand at a point of decision
whether to hold back the self or give. The issue itself may not be important, but the underlying
attitude is. The question may be whether to hold on to one's old grudges, one's old ways, which
exclude others in resentment or censorship, or to allow a new spontaneous attitude to come forth
from the depth of the self. The latter happens naturally, not by force; it includes seeing new realities
about the other person that make the holding of a grudge meaningless; it sees no shame or
humiliation in giving up arrogant pride; it sees no "lack of character" in understanding and forgiving.
Many such "little" incidents loosen up the block of withholding that causes more pain than any lack
of receiving. From there it becomes easier and more and more natural to allow feelings of warmth
to flow. But at one point the self must make this choice: to stick with the old, excluding, restricting
way, or to allow for a new strength from within and follow it.
Needless to say, the point of decision must be noticed. It is never unconscious the way
certain truly unconscious material is. It is quite on the surface, only most people prefer to gloss over
it and do not allow themselves to acknowledge the tiny points of decision about so many issues in
daily living.
When this point is acknowledged and truly faced, it may appear like a precipice. The new way
may appear to be risky, and the old, cold, separating way to be safe, although you all know that this
cannot be true, that it does not make sense. Giving yourself to this apparently new inner force
seems like going with a great, unknown wave. You may even sense the joy and liberation of it, but it
still makes you fear its further implications. If you can let go and give up the destructive attitude,
whatever it may be, no matter how covertly it manifests outwardly, you institute an entirely new way
of inner living. It is the healing you have sought and hoped for. This is the way it comes about --
no other way.
Even after you come to this point of observation, you will not be able to take the step
immediately. You will dwell a while in this teetering position and observe quite clearly how you
exclude yourself, how, by holding on, you restrict the cosmic forces within your soul and constrict
the outgoing flow. When you observe yourself at this cusp, you become aware of the implications
of both alternatives -- the old constricting way, with all its rigid formulations and pat ways, as well as
the new vistas that open up. When you observe yourself for some time at this cusp, at this point of
decision, and then do not pressure yourself but simply observe fully and remember what each way
means, you will finally become capable of letting go of the old way that refuses life, love, feelings,
happiness, unfoldment, giving forth of what you have to give. At this moment you may not yet
have the strong feelings, but you will have a new understanding that includes others.
The new way increases steadily, provided you do not stop the flow. The flowing movement is
so beautiful that it cannot be adequately described. It contains a wonderful self-regulating
mechanism that can be utterly trusted. To the degree you let go and give up a self-centered, selfish,
self-pitying, or self-destructive attitude, fear of self automatically decreases. Something new begins
to happen from within. The creative powers begin to function. Thus, you will no longer thwart
yourself. You will no longer inflict frustration and therefore pain upon yourself, because the
immense pleasure of following the natural movement will fill your being. The pleasure of giving and
receiving will become possible.
For you cannot receive as long as you remain in the old position of refusal and isolation. As
long as you fail to let go of the self-imposed restrictions, you not only make your giving impossible,
you make receiving equally impossible. A vessel that is closed cannot be filled any more than it can
be emptied. When you hold yourself tight and guarded, you not only fail to protect yourself from
danger, but you close yourself to all the healthy universal forces -- those that could and should
stream out of you, and that could and should stream into you.
Because guardedness impoverishes and deprives, you inevitably become enraged. Most
people find themselves in the preposterous predicament of holding themselves tight and restricted,
guarded and overwatchful, unable to be spontaneous, always determining with the mind and the will,
never allowing the creative processes to manifest. Therefore they frustrate their tremendous need to
be part of the creative process. They frustrate themselves by withholding from themselves the
intense delight and pleasure of being in the flow of giving and receiving. It is not an esoteric,
otherworldly pleasure, disconnected from the body. It involves physical pleasure as well. The irony
then is that these same people resent the world for not giving to them. The world wants to give to
them, and yet they can never see what is given. They do not even know quite what they are not
getting. They resent most those who really want to give to them and whose giving they reject, thus
depriving themselves even more of whatever wants to flow into them. Allowing this to happen
would help them to give, to become part of the creative process again. In other words, they
disconnect themselves from the cosmic, creative flow of giving and receiving, of the constant
turnover, the constant movement that takes place in the life process.
Now, my friends, what I am saying is not impractical philosophy, beautiful perhaps, but not
realizable in one's daily life. These words express the most practical reality, applicable at any
moment you choose. The truth of this applies to all levels of your being -- physical, mental,
emotional, and spiritual -- that is, your total being.
Your impoverishment is self-inflicted because you cannot face that "moment" I spoke of
when you refuse both what is given to you and what wants to flow out of you. The new outflow
wants to eliminate, once and for all, the constricted, resentful, destructive, enraged, rigid place in you
from which you do not want to budge. Those of you who can find this place in yourselves and
observe yourselves on the cusp have the best chances. Your goodwill to heal, to become free, can
make you reach for the inner strength and resources to make and follow through the decision to
adopt the new way. All fear of self will eventually vanish as you express your negativity under the
proper circumstances, and as this fear vanishes, the new fears can be tackled: the fear of pleasure, of
happiness, of fulfillment, the fear of being in the stream without constriction. You will then see that
acclimatizing to happiness and pleasure is not as difficult as it first seems when you wish to give
what is in you. It is unbearable only as long as you want to receive but not to give.
Those who are still hooked, consciously or unconsciously, on receiving will fear fulfillment
and pleasure. Because they are unaware of the ramifications and total significance of their
predicament, such people complain that the world leaves them unfulfilled. Their complaints and
resentments may take as many forms as there are human personalities. Many people are not even
aware of making such a general complaint against life. This, too, may be rationalized. It is part of
your pathwork to discover it within yourself, to discover how resentful you become and how you
refuse to budge from the negative position because you feel deprived.
You must feel deprived because you make it impossible to give out of your wealth and are
therefore afraid of receiving. You are doubly frustrated. Your refusal to let go of the negativity and
the refusal to give of yourself makes you unable to receive pleasure, delight, happiness -- often even
material success, which does not involve the emotions. Although you sense the existence of great
joyousness, it must remain unattainable to you. You cannot tolerate it; it frightens you precisely
because you are stuck in that spot where you simply want to soak in from others. It cannot work
that way. All efforts to attain liberation and well-being require equal attention to the frustration of
not giving and not being able to receive.
My dearest friends, may these words open up the way for you that makes possible the
transition you seek so ardently with one part of your nature but still deny yourself with another part.
Perhaps they kindle a spark in you so that you can see and decide, little by little, to relinquish
everything that bars the way to your destination. This destination is complete fulfillment and
pleasure supreme.
Be blessed, be in peace, be in God.