The Text - Section 166
166. PERCEIVING, REACTING, EXPRESSING
Greetings, my friends. The universal love and power are part of you and you are part of them.
May you be able to mobilize more of them than usually, in this hour, so as to truly benefit from
these words, so as to make this evening a blessing for your future path on earth.
This lecture is an attempt to continue the current sequence for my friends who are actively
engaged in this particular pathwork, and also to reach the many new friends who have found their
way here. Hopefully, you can follow and benefit, even though much of the material may be out of
context for you.
Every living creature's aim is to free the eternal spirit. This aim may be unconscious in many,
but that does not alter the fact. The burden of the encrustations is heavy, and everyone feels the
heaviness. All of you long for the brightness and lightness of the spirit that dwells deep within the
encrustations, and long to come truly into your birthright. The Pathwork is actively concerned with
fulfilling this longing. After all the labor and search my friends have been doing, some of them are
about to approach two fundamental points of self-awareness. The causal connection between these
two points can be detected when you understand, feel, and experience what I say here. Then you
will indeed know that you are at a vital threshold.
The living spirit you are, which is perpetually waiting to unfold itself in creative and joyful
living and well-being, is contained and held back by condensed emotions -- by powerful feelings you
do not wish to experience. It is not the nature of those feelings themselves that creates the heavy
condensed crust, but the fact that you deny their temporary reality in you. This heavy mass is the
burden you carry around. It imprisons you to the exact degree that you fear letting out this mass
and letting it unfold. Only then can it dissolve. This fear must be overcome.
No human being born into this limited environment and into the conditions prevailing in this
sphere of existence is free from a conglomerate of strong negative feelings. There is hopeless agony,
there is violent rage, there is the feeling of absolute helplessness -- first toward the world that seems
to cause the agony and thus the rage, then toward the self because the ego does not know how to
cope with these feelings. The way out of this predicament seems to be to deny the existence of the
feelings. This seems the only alternative. But the more these feelings are denied, the greater their
power becomes. Because there is no way of letting in the fresh air of truth, all these threatening
feelings become more and more aggrandized, exaggerated and misunderstood. Then it seems indeed
as though one's feelings were leading one into a bottomless pit.
For anyone who is new on this path, this may sound incredible because he or she has not yet
encountered the violence of the feelings I speak about. But a number of my friends who are actively
engaged in this work have recently become acutely aware of such feelings. Some of the new
approaches have begun to have their very beneficial results, so that even those who were most cut
off -- perhaps even after years of hard work -- are suddenly approaching the threshold of this feared
area in themselves. This is indeed great and significant progress without which no genuine
experience of the universal self is possible. Some of you may not be conscious of these feelings yet,
but at least you begin to sense and suspect, and be apprehensive about, the existence of these
feelings. Some of you may not yet have mustered the courage to let them out as others have done.
Just as the result of letting the feelings out is an experience and a surge of new spiritual life, so
is the result of avoiding the feared area disastrous; it paralyzes your best faculties. If you avoid these
feelings, you cannot really live in the true unfoldment of the eternal, living, breathing spirit that you
are, from which unlimited good flows into your whole being, into your entire life. Your spirit-self
has all the power. The spirit-self cannot manifest when any part of the inner organism is feared,
denied expression, and tightly held together. Thus living becomes a poor imitation of what it could
be, and should be. Most human beings sense that; somehow they know that what they experience
cannot be all there is to life, but few have the courage to admit it to themselves and do something
about it.
When you approach the threshold where you meet the apparently uncontrollable agony, pain,
hopelessness and violent anger -- and where you also meet your fear of not being able to ever
exhaust these negative feelings, nor being able to handle them -- then you have to make a vital
decision: to bring your reason to bear on the entire question of whether to deny the existence of
these emotions or to meet and experience them -- to let them out into the open with the
constructive view of learning how to handle them from here on. This also requires a modicum of
trust in the world, of which you are a part, that there is no "bad" as such. If this is at all true, it must
also hold true of distorted, destructive emotions. And since it is true, you can only experience it
only as a reality when you give yourself the chance to do so.
Your reason will also tell you, once you think about it, that what exists in you is by no means
annulled simply because you look away from it, because you act as though it did not exist and thus
live a life of strenuous pretense at the expense of all the vital energy and life force. Without this
energy the depth of experience you long for cannot ever be yours -- no matter what you pin your
hopes on. You may flock to this or that supposed panacea, this or that new spiritual approach,
always in the vague hope that it will open the gates to life -- the full and vital life you somehow
know you miss out on. All of these must let you down in the end, for they are evasions, born in the
hope that you will not have to dissolve the hard mass of tightly packed feelings of violence and pain.
The bottomlessness of the emotions you fear so much will prove to be an error only when
you emerge from the experience of them. Such an experience is threatening only before you enter
into it. Once you overcome the hesitation and reluctance and let yourself into this experience, no
matter what you feel, it will not at all be what you feared. You will find that you can control the
flood of feelings, just because you voluntarily choose to let them out. However, if they explode out
of you because they have been artificially denied and held back for too long, then you cannot control
them because their expression is involuntary. So, you need to express, to let out your feelings by
choice when and how long you desire, in the knowledge that this unburdening is your salvation.
Doing so will leave you refreshed and strengthened, more yourself than you ever were.
This threshold is essential on anyone's path of evolution. It proves to be a turning point in
your inner life, where you go from a limited existence of robotlike make-believe to real living, in
which you are increasingly in the full possession of the vital energy and creative wisdom of your
innermost being. As long as you lack the courage of experiencing all that is in you, whether or not
you wish to own up to it, you do not permit yourself the luxury of finding out your inner wealth and
resourcefulness, your inborn strength and richness of feeling. By owning up I do not mean merely
an intellectual admission, but the actual emotional experience and volitional expression of it. For if
you do not meet that in you which freezes and paralyzes the living spirit, it is impossible to be
moved and lived by the living spirit. Its life is squeezed out if you have to hold yourself back in any
form. I want to emphasize once again that this does not imply that you act out destructiveness any
which way. Choose in what manner to express it so that no one, including yourself, will be hurt by
the effect -- all the while knowing, without self-justification, the irrational and destructive nature of
what is flowing out.
Do not go away from that point where you say "I am afraid of these feelings." Rather remain
there until you gain the strength to let them come to the surface. This is so much better than
denying and going away again from this point of awareness where you know that you fear yourself.
For if you fear yourself and do not know it, it is infinitely worse than if you fear yourself and know
it. Fearing yourself and not knowing it makes you dead, makes you miss out on life. It makes you
attach this very fear of yourself to any number of other, outer facets which have nothing to do with
the fear itself as it exists in its original state.
When you have the courage to experience the pain, agony, anger, violence and helplessness,
you will truly come to see that it is not bottomless or endless, and that this is not all there is to your
inner life of feelings. You will see that there is an end. The end is when the living energy of all
those feelings you wish to avoid becomes a vital, living feeling of love, joy, and pleasure.
There is, however, the second point of awareness I mentioned, which must also be faced in
order to become completely capable of the courage necessary to plunge into those frightening
feelings. Without this second point of awareness it can, at best, be only a half-hearted attempt.
Some of my friends have lately begun to recognize, at least occasionally, this second point.
However, such awareness habitually slips back into the unconscious, from whence it must be
retrieved again and again. This second point is that, as a result of all the haplessness and agony, in
the rage that develops as a consequence, you have decided, deep inside of you, to turn away from
life, love, and the desire to contribute positively to life.
It is this kind of negativity that makes the courage to experience the destructive feelings so
perilous. For as long as it is a fact that you do not want to love -- to give the best of yourself, to
forgive and forget what harm life seems to have inflicted on you -- that you do not want to
generously risk giving of yourself on the deepest possible level where no deception can exist, there
can be no safety in anything you do. It will be as unsafe to hide from yourself as it will be to express
what is in you. The key to safety, security, and all the other resources of life is love. As long as you
refuse to forgive and wish to be resentful with life -- and therefore with people and events that come
to pass both from within yourself and also from outside -- you will close yourself to all the good that
wants to flow from you into the world and from the world into you.
As long as this negativity exists, the courage to face, experience, and express the destructive
feelings cannot be completely mustered. Therefore, these two points of self-awareness must be
alternately, and at times simultaneously, worked through. The causal connection between these two
points must be clearly understood. As you become aware of and can acknowledge this resentful
negation in yourself, you will comprehend more deeply the causal connection between the two
points. You do not want to give anything of yourself on this deep and secret level of your inner
existence. Outwardly this may well be concealed by apparently quite opposite patterns. But the
false submission cannot ever be a substitute for real inner giving of self. In fact, real giving knows
no self-deprecation, no martyrdom, no unjust treatment from the world. I would even suggest that
such a pattern points the way to a crass lack of giving when it comes to real feelings. Oh, you may,
in principle, be willing to give something, but only when everything is exactly according to your
specifications. These specifications are often based on stark ignorance of the lawfulness involved in
human interchange, on ignorance of the existing conditions produced by yourself that make such
expectations of perfect relationships logically impossible. However, quite apart from such
ignorance, this tentative bargaining and petty, distrustful withholding of all the generous
spontaneous moves of the soul close the very door you hate to see closed.
Since you do not wish to give to life, how can life give to you? So you run around in circles,
and it becomes a vicious circle, because the less life gives you as a result of your not giving to it, the
more resentful you become, the more you refuse to give of yourself, the more drawn into yourself
you become, and the more violent your anger grows from this uninterrupted frustration. Then this
anger frightens you, so that you hold it back, and on and on it goes -- until the circle is broken.
In such a negative cycle, the vital glow of your energy and feelings becomes a tightly packed,
hardened mass behind which your spirit seems to wither. Of course it does not really do so. It
cannot, ever, since it is an eternal living force. But it cannot manifest to you, and you must remain
separated from it, as long as the negating attitude remains. You can connect with your spirit only
when you see the negation and become honest and humble enough to give voice to it as it truly
exists in you: "I do not want to give anything of myself. Whenever I feel threatened by rejection,
criticism, frustration of my immediate desires, I at once withdraw from life my vital energies, my
goodwill, my positive spirit of participation. I want to remain separated, keeping my anger and
resentment." When you can acknowledge this, you will instantly know that it is this attitude that
makes the facing of the rage and the agony perilous.
Rage and agony must indeed seem endless as long as you are unwilling to give up this negative
attitude toward life, in which you hug resentments and use dishonest games of suffering as weapons
against others in order to put the blame on them. But the moment you are truly willing to give the
best of yourself, if at first perhaps only in principle, even before being able to actually do so, the
Supreme Spirit will help you make it a reality and there will be no question of fearing bottomless
negativity and destructiveness.
This is possibly one of the reasons why on a path such as this no danger can ever exist,
because you learn, as you face the negative temporary truth, to also call upon the forces of the
infinite cosmic spirit in you. And you learn with its help to become giving and positive; to risk
investing yourself; to become generous and let yourself feel, even if you do not have a guarantee that
it will come out all right. For that is the only way your strength and resiliency can grow, so that
nothing can ever faze you.
The combination of these two points of awareness, my friends, is a key. Those of you who
are near this point, or have already made some recognitions in this respect, can now proceed. As
you meditate, say into yourself: "I invest the best I have into my life. I will not withhold anything
of myself. I want to contribute to the cosmic unfoldment and plan of evolution with all the faculties
I have -- those already manifest, but perhaps not used in this way, and those that are still dormant in
me. I want to contribute, and only as a thoroughly fulfilled and happy person can I do so -- not ever
as a suffering one.
Your negativity is a defense, my friends. It arises out of the tragic misunderstanding of
duality, the dichotomy that is rampant on this earth sphere, where it is so often a question of
either/or. In this case, you believe it to be a question of your happiness versus the happiness of the
other. You secretly feel that by giving to others you will be impoverished, put to some sort of
disadvantage, while by grabbing for what you want and by withholding yourself you add to your
advantage. This belief is always there, underneath, half-conscious or completely unconscious. It
creates a terrible conflict.
When you examine dispassionately the irrationality of your negation, of your destructive
insistence on remaining separate and ungiving, you will indeed come to see that this unrealistic
dichotomy is present in your attitude. When you bring it out you will be able to correct it. Little by
little, you will recondition your perceptions, your emotional reactions, your deep inner knowing of
the way life is. You will then know that the happier you are, the more you contribute to others.
In the process of removing unhealthy conditions that are a result of false beliefs in the deep
psyche, you will see that your fulfillment can never really infringe upon those of others -- even if at
first it may appear that way. When you go to the root of all things, there is no conflict between your
fulfillment and those of others -- quite the contrary. So you will not need to be ungiving, nor will
you need to feel guilty for wanting your own fulfillment and joy. With that understanding all
negativity must vanish -- even in the deepest regions and the most secret areas of your psyche. Then
the unfoldment can become complete, for you will be more and more freely and fearlessly yourself,
and you will expand into life, opening up to receiving life's gifts.
Very much related to what I said here is an important aspect of relationship. Relationship is
the very essence of life. No one is capable of living productively without warmth and love, without
sharing and mutual understanding. It is truly in the scheme of thing of the universal creative spirit.
There are certain very basic aspects of relationship that are important to understand. A threefold
principle exists that applies to all elements of any kind of relationship and determines its nature. It
is: perceiving, reacting, and expressing. When this threefold principle operates in health, truth,
harmony and reality, then relationship must be fruitful and joyful. When these three aspects of
relationship operate in a distorted, unrealistic, disharmonious way, relationship cannot possibly be
fruitful or joyful.
As I said to you many times, you cannot possibly have a good relationship with others unless
you first have a good relationship with yourself. Therefore these threefold aspects must first be
applied to yourself. How do you perceive yourself? How do you react to what you perceive in
yourself? And how do you express that which you perceive in yourself? If you are not at war with
yourself, your perception will be clear. If you are at war with yourself by demanding to be other
than you are now, you cannot perceive yourself correctly. For example, if you are unwilling, and
therefore apparently incapable of, shedding your idealized self-image, if you insist on living up to its
unreasonable demands, then your perception of yourself must be faulty and limited. If your
perception of yourself is faulty and limited, your reaction to what you are must be very disturbing.
Anyone of you who is now so close to the threshold of your inner destructiveness -- to the
fear and pain and rage, and also to the deliberate, although possibly unconscious, mean refusal to
give of yourself to life and others -- will have a negative reaction to all this only because your self-
perception has been faulty. You may also resist reconsidering this self-perception. You still battle
what is and insist on being the way you are not. Thus you do not perceive in truth, so that your
reaction to it when it indirectly manifests must be disharmonious and disturbing. You will go on
denying what tries to make itself known to you, and you will create more inner dissent and warfare.
One side, the spirit side, makes an attempt to reveal your unacceptable truth, the other side battles it.
In that battle your reaction becomes even more painful: greater dissension with yourself and even
more rage toward the world follow.
A great part of the rage, anger, and pain are not so much a question of the helpless conditions
of childhood, although those may have set it off in this life. Much of the painful reaction is
produced because you battle yourself as you are and do not succeed in becoming what you want to
be. Thus, what you perceive makes you more angry and pained. This is vastly responsible for the
apparently bottomless despair and rage we were talking about.
When you perceive yourself in the wrong way, and consequently react to what you perceive in
the wrong way, your expression of it must be equally distorted and destructive. You cannot express
the truth of what you perceive in yourself since you do not know it -- do not wish to know it. In
such confusion, helplessness increases, the thus mounting inner tension seeks an outlet. To look for
scapegoats who can be blamed for these unpleasant feelings and reactions is a very frequent way out.
Scapegoats can always be found if you look hard enough. Sometimes one does not even have to
look very hard, for the imperfection of the world lends itself well to attracting enraged and
threatened feelings. Thus the expression becomes one of hostility and rejection.
To recapitulate briefly: Wrong perception of self leads to wrong, destructive reaction and,
further, to destructive expression out into the world. This, in turn, must affect all relationships.
This is so self-evident, it hardly needs further elaboration. Since you blame others, they must
respond in kind. Since you are unwilling to be positive and giving, and do not wish to admit this in
order to protect your self-image, others will reflect this negativity. Your reaction to that reflection
must also be faulty, since you choose not to admit your negativity, which makes you feel unjustly
treated. How then can what you express to others be anything but negative and destructive?
Moreover, how can your perception of others be accurate when your self-perception closes its vision
to what is in you and seeks others as scapegoats? How can your perception of anything be accurate
if you are unwilling to perceive yourself correctly?
The triad of perception, reaction, expression works quite differently in truth and creative
living. If perception is truthful the entire picture changes. You do not have to already be a perfect
specimen if you use this in a positive way. Your truthful perception of what is far from perfect in
you will make you capable of acknowledging this without losing balance within yourself, without
losing sight of the fact that you are a divine spirit with all its faculties intact. As you perceive
yourself accurately, your reaction automatically becomes favorable. For then you will want to get rid
of the negativity and will seek the fruitful way that does not deny what is, but bases all further steps
on clear perception of the Now. In that spirit, what expresses itself must be infinitely positive. In
that attitude, you see everything as it is and where it really belongs. You see the good and the bad in
yourself. You see the truth in yourself and you accept it. Therefore your expression will be a
truthful one. This will make the unfoldment of highly creative feelings, currents, and knowledge
more and more possible.
With such a unified relationship toward the self, rather than a divided one, relationship to
others must become equally positive and fruitful. It cannot help being so. I repeat once more, my
friends: Whenever you find yourself in strife, there is something in your relationship to yourself that
is not according to the positive aspect of this threefold principle. My advice is to acknowledge this
fact and let go, then ask for the truth within you. It will come to you. The answers always come if
you are sincere in wanting to know and thus properly receptive.
Then, and then only, will you be able to develop the same threefold principle toward the
divine spirit within yourself. You will perceive it more and more. You will react to it, but not with
the old fear. For as long as you fear the indwelling negativity, you must also fear the indwelling
power for positive experience and unfoldment. You will no longer react with fear to the greatest
power in the universe, which is right in you. You will be receptive to it. You will then express this
power, for you are a living part of it and become more and more so.
I recapitulate the gist of all this: The necessity to reach the point of recognition that there is a
bottomless fear in you of violent, uncontrollable emotions which you do not wish to deal with; and
the necessity to reach the point of awareness that you wish -- at least in certain areas -- to remain
negative toward life and others. As you give up the wish to remain negative and exchange it for a
wish to be outgoing, positive and giving, the fear of self will vanish. Then the threefold principle
governing relationships will change from the negative to the positive. You will perceive yourself
correctly, you will react productively to what you perceive, and you will express it in a meaningful
way.
Little by little, this will change your entire life. Wherever life is now disharmonious, limited,
frustrating and withholding, it will open up gradually and in its unfolding will give to you richly.
Needless to say, this is not an easy formula to apply. Although its truth is simple enough, to put it
into practice requires the maximum of investment and commitment on your part to the truth within,
to the truth of your life, to the living spirit of perpetual growth. It demands time, perseverance and
wise, mature insight into the dynamics of growth. It requires a continuous groping for the right
balance of letting the destructive, ignorant, irrational child in you express itself, without falling into
the trap of believing its truth is the truth, so that an intelligent dialogue can be established with the
life-resisting part of your personality.
May these words lift you in hope, courage and renewed stamina to proceed further on this
path, so that you can break through the wall of your fear of self. You must emerge triumphantly,
cleansed, stronger and better, for the life of the spirit in its undifferentiated goodness and fulfillment
will become more and more a reality of your life. Be blessed, be in peace, be what you really truly
are -- the living spirit, the Universal Living Spirit!