The Text - Section 31
31. SHAME
Greetings in the Name of the Lord. I bring you blessings, my friends, to each one of you and
to all your dear ones.
When we spirits observe human beings, we can see how badly you need spiritual nourishment.
Your body is nourished, as is your intellect and even your emotional nature -- though the latter not
always with the best possible food. But when it comes to spiritual nourishment, most human beings
starve themselves. There is a great confusion about what spiritual nourishment really means. It
does not merely mean to read, hear, or learn about spiritual truth or law, about God and His
creation. It does not even mean prayer and meditation which, of course, if done in the right way, is
also a very important part of spiritual nourishment. However, the most important substance of
spiritual food is self-development. Your innermost self, your divine spark, is constantly crying out
for this food, but your conscious being refuses to hear the cry. When you are sad or depressed,
when you are dissatisfied with your life whether for actual and rational reasons or not, it is always
because your spirit is starved. Only that person can be truly happy and fulfilled who partakes of this
most important food: spiritual development. For there is no human being alive who has not the
opportunity to become happy. It is in your hands, my friends. But you so often turn the wrong
way; you seek happiness in the wrong direction; you blame others for your misfortunes; you blame
fate, you blame God; you blame the alleged injustice of the world. But you do not take the one and
only step that leads you to fulfillment through a deep sense of having lived your life the way your
Creator had it in mind for you in this particular incarnation. It varies, of course, with each
individual, for not everyone has to fulfill an incarnation in the same way. The same work or effort is
not expected of everyone. But the one thing you should keep in mind, my friends, is that if you are
not quite happy in spite of occasional outer difficulties, you have denied your spirit some of the
nourishment it craves -- most probably in the right way of self-development and self-recognition.
Anyone hearing or reading these words has sufficient means to acquire this food.
In my previous lectures I have mentioned several attitudes in the human soul which are what
you might call God-eclipsing. Last time I explained that pride, self-will, and fear underlie all faults
and are responsible for all unhappiness and all untruth that exists in the human soul. To continue
this series of lectures on self-development, I will discuss tonight a new subject: shame.
There is a right kind and a wrong kind of shame. The right kind of shame is true repentance.
Without this kind of shame, there could never be an incentive for self-development. Without it, no
one would ever undergo the noble fight, my friends, against one's lower self; no one would take the
path of purification if this shame did not exist within. True repentance is therefore constructive and
very positive. But there is also shame of the wrong kind. Human beings so often confuse the two
kinds of shame that now I want to devote some of our time together to this subject.
What is the wrong kind of shame? We might call it a guilt-complex which, of course, is
entirely destructive and negative. What do your emotions actually say -- even though you certainly
do not consciously think so -- when you have the wrong kind of shame? They say: "I am hopelessly
bad, and there is nothing that can be done about it." With this attitude you not only wallow in self-
pity, but express a sluggishness that prohibits your working actively on the elimination of that which
is wrong within you. Furthermore, this attitude becomes more and more unreasonable and unjust,
for you demand and expect respect and love from others although you do not respect and love
yourself. Mind you, this is not because of your shortcomings. In the deepest regions of your being
you cannot respect yourself because of the wrong attitude, the wrong kind of shame that makes you
passive where you should be active.
Thus, you find yourself in a vicious circle: the more you deny to yourself the experience of
the constructive shame that would make you lift yourself up and work on yourself with realistic self-
recognition -- the foundation of self-development -- the more you despise yourself. The more you
do that, the more you need to demand love and respect from others to make up for the lack of self-
respect. The blind, unconscious, and immature side of you believes that if you receive sufficient
appreciation from others, it will make up for the lack of self-respect you can never truly possess
unless you fulfill the basic spiritual laws within your own soul and unless you do the maximum of
what can be expected of you in self-development according to your overall spiritual development.
I know, my friends, that no one thinks these thoughts consciously, but if you would test your
emotions, examine their demands as to what they actually mean and express, this is what you would
find. Remember -- and this is very important -- your lack of self-respect is not due to your faults,
weaknesses, shortcomings, and sins -- no matter what they may be -- but it is due to your wrong
kind of shame. The moment you exchange the wrong shame for the right, I can promise you that in
the measure this change takes place, you must develop true and justified self-respect long before the
faults in you have disappeared. You do not have to be perfect in order to respect yourself. All you
have to do is to adopt a realistic and constructive attitude toward your imperfections. The more
your self-respect is established, the less you will crave for the respect of others, for you are then
resting secure within yourself. And this will so change your inner attitude and your emanations that
you will have a different effect on others; this will make it so much easier for the people around you
to actually give you the love and respect you desired in the first place.
Perhaps it has not occurred to you that the wrong kind of shame comes from your pride and
furthers your pride even more. This may sound paradoxical at first. Let me explain it this way:
Your lower self with all its shortcomings is a factor to reckon with if you do not want to escape your
present reality. The more you try to escape the facts of your life, the sicker your soul must become.
By having the wrong kind of shame, you do escape reality, for what your emotions express is that
you will not accept yourself as you really are. The moment you hopelessly despair about the lower
side of your nature, you have not accepted yourself as you are. It means you are lacking the humility
of courageously facing everything about yourself -- and that is pride.
Let me stress once again: Intellectually you know that you are imperfect, but emotionally you
don't. Often there is a wide chasm between what you know and think consciously and what your
emotions claim and desire. It is not at all difficult to make the emotions conscious if only you are
willing to take the trouble to translate them into concise thoughts, but it needs a little effort. Your
emotions claim perfection before this perfection can be yours. You place yourself higher than the
efforts you have so far taken would warrant. At the same time, you do know, or at least feel, that
you are not there yet. Instead of consciously recognizing this fact and slowly working up to the
point where you want to be, you become angry at the world and at yourself for being what you are
and refuse to make the inner effort to become what you want to be. So the wrong kind of shame
means pride, laziness, injustice, and escape from your present reality. This is what makes you feel
guilty, my friends, and not the actual faults you may possess. These would never make you feel
guilty, provided you adopted the right kind of shame in which you accepted yourself in humility as
you are at present, not fleeing from your reality, and thus building up from there -- slowly, step by
step. It is the only realistic and constructive way to change and develop.
The wrong attitude brings further hazards, however. Because of your pride and your need for
respect and love from others, you begin to withdraw from what you really think and feel about
yourself and hide it behind a wall, so to speak. You dare not stand up for who you really are because
your emotions say that if you were yourself, you would be despised. As I said before, the more you
lack self-respect, the more important the respect of others becomes to you. So you create a mask
self. In some subtle way, you become a fake. And that, in turn, makes you even more despondent
and you despise yourself even more. The vicious circle continues in full force and carries you into
deeper emotional conflicts until you develop the courage and humility to break it. Please do not
confuse standing up for who you really are which includes your lower self, with giving in to the
impulses of your lower self in your deeds. There is a vast difference between that and a simple
recognition and acceptance of what you are, without building up a different personality for the
outside world to appear better. One often establishes a fake "real self" for the very reasons
explained here.
As long as you feel sad, bitter, defiant, or disharmonious in any way when you encounter your
faults, you have not yet accepted yourself as you are. Again you have to strive for the middle path.
Accepting does not mean wanting to stay in a state of imperfection. It means that you first have to
learn to accept your state of imperfection. You should also find out whether you desire to be
cherished for your shortcomings as a compensation for your imagined inability to change and thus
come to cherish yourself. When you have made such and other unreasonable emotions conscious, it
will be easy to direct them into proper channels.
When you are capable of really and truly accepting yourself as you are, not desiring to appear
better than you are, you have fulfilled the basic requirement to be on this path, my friends. Before
that, you are not on it as yet, but merely in a state of preparation for entering the gate leading to it.
In other words, as long as there is the wrong kind of shame in you, you cannot advance on this path;
you have to exchange it for the right kind of shame.
The wrong kind of shame will create a state of mind that is not only extremely unhealthy, as I
outlined just now, but will also make you feel more and more alone. Whenever you feel lonely and
not understood, please realize that, at least to some degree, the condition I have described must be
responsible for it and not other people's lack of love and understanding. No matter how incapable
of love the people around you may be, you would never feel lonely if this wrong attitude were not
somehow prevailing within you. So do not seek a remedy from without, but turn around within and
look at yourself from this point of view.
You, whoever you are, may feel ashamed of something. Whether it be big or small, grave or
unimportant, is not the point. You cover it up; you hide it; you appear to be without that something
of which you are ashamed. This is the wall that separates you from others. But in this way you can
never be sure that you are really loved and appreciated. For this little voice in you keeps saying: "If
they only knew how I really am and what I have done, they would not love me." That makes you
feel alone, suffering, and cold. You think that all the affection given to you is destined for the
person you appear to be and not for the person you really are. Of course you are insecure and
lonely in that state. But only you can change it -- no one else.
It will be easy for you to see that the only remedy for this constant state of loneliness, of
insecurity, and of growing self-despisal is the one step that appears hardest to you, namely to break
down the shame and stand up for what you really are. The more you try the other way, the way of
subtle deception, the deeper your dilemma will be. You have seen that. So it is up to you to take
the one courageous step of becoming yourself and gaining true security and the true appreciation of
your friends. For they who are spiritually developed and capable of love will most certainly not love
you less; quite the contrary. And they who are immature and therefore incapable of love will not be
retracting their love for you since they never really gave it nor did you ever really own it. For such
people find themselves in exactly the same spot as you are in now: craving for affection, respect,
and love to assuage their own lack of self-respect, absent because they too do not have the courage
to be themselves. Their kind of love was an illusion in the first place. So the only way to build a
secure ground on which to stand is to stop the pretense you have laboriously cultivated all your life.
This seems a hard step at first, my friends.
Again, I want to stress that you are not expected to tell your secrets to everyone you meet.
Choose the right person to open up to; choose the person who can help you. Then choose the
people with whom you are really close and those who know you as you really are. Otherwise, you
can never be yourself. It is not a question of what you say, but rather of what you feel; a question of
your inner attitude. In order to adjust your emotions from the wrong kind of shame to the right
kind, all you have to do is delve into your emotions and, as I so often say, translate them into clear-
cut concise thoughts. Then, when you see the unreasonableness of the immature side of your soul,
you can readjust them. Only when you do that will you be able to take the next step. Only then will
you have security and self-respect. For as long as you hide behind a wall of falsity, you must despise
yourself -- much more than a brother or sister of yours who may have many more weaknesses but
who has the courage to live without pretense and act according to the real self. It is not how good
you are or how many weaknesses you still have that determines your self-respect. Self-respect -- and
as a result of it also the respect of others -- can only be measured by how true you are to yourself, or
how much you deceive and escape yourself, or how much you hide behind a wall of pretense. This
wall of pretense is not something easily recognizable from the outside. It is something subtle within
that only you yourself can find, by testing and probing your emotions and their meaning.
True repentance in the positive sense means to simply take stock of the self and to accept its
weaknesses in their present state, with the deep desire to change. At the same time you need to
acknowledge that the change can only come by again and again recognizing the deeply ingrained
faults and comparing the faulty reactions to the ideal state. Thus you learn humility.
The moment you do not wish to appear better or more than you are, even in your own eyes,
you will have taken yourself down from the high place in which you have put yourself. You can
start rebuilding only after you have torn down the false edifice. If you have the courage to stumble a
thousand times over the same faults and forever lift yourself up to try again, then you pay God the
debt you owe Him; then you are worthy of His grace; then you are truly on the path. Then you rid
yourself of pride and falsity long before you are perfect in all the details of your personality. Thus
you approach perfection much faster than you think, in spite of some of your stubborn
shortcomings that linger on. In that way you must win. But if every time after having stumbled
again over the same fault you become so despondent that you despair of yourself, wishing to give
up, and you consider self-acceptance to be senseless, then you have the destructive and weakening
kind of shame, which will never get you anywhere. For as long as you despair so easily, there is too
much pride in you, and then the healing, curative action of being able to observe your own
weaknesses in the true light of what they are, neither exaggerating nor diminishing them, will not be
able to affect your soul.
So, my friends, do not despair if you have no success for quite a while in overcoming your
weaknesses. You may perhaps understand now that here you have a great curative agent for
remedying something even more important than the actual weakness you are treating. You will learn
the right kind of shame and self-acceptance, which brings humility, overcomes pride, and shows you
how to live in your own reality. If you were soon very successful in overcoming your individual
faults, it might make you even prouder, and pride is more harmful than many other faults. Apart
from that, the faults you are battling against have been ingrained in you often for many incarnations,
so you cannot expect to get rid of them within a few years. However, if you are capable of facing
these weaknesses; if you meet them with open eyes and a healthy attitude and learn even while you
are still stumbling over them; if you have the humility to face yourself knowing where you really
belong -- not too low, nor too high -- then even though you are still imperfect, you are laying the
foundation to a very healthy and normal inner attitude.
Think and meditate about this, my friends. It is not sufficient to just hear or read my words
once, for that will not be the kind of spiritual food that helps you to discover where your feelings
still deviate from the ideal state. Find the echo within you to direct you in your daily strivings and in
your daily spiritual work. When you do that, you will be giving yourself the food your spirit needs.
Perhaps you now begin to sense why it is so necessary to be able to talk openly about yourself
to a qualified person and then to the people you are really close to. For as long as you keep things
hidden within you, everything gets out of proportion. You may exaggerate one thing and
underestimate another. But a person who is detached from your problems and your inner struggles
may see things in the right light. As I have often said in private sessions, there is a spiritual law
which applies equally to psychoanalysis and confession. It is the law of brotherhood. The moment
you open up to another person, you risk an act of humility. At that moment with that person you
do not want to appear more perfect than you are. That is one of the most harmful human
tendencies, my friends. When you show yourself to one person as you are, you will instantly feel the
relief your spirit has cried for, even if that person does not give you a single piece of advice.
Your spirit suffers when you act against its laws. And you feel better all of a sudden when you
are able to humbly reveal yourself. The law of brotherhood is working. Something in you says, "At
this moment I do not want to appear better than I am. I want to show myself as I am; I do not
strive for respect and love that I think is not really due me because of the things of which I am
ashamed." Though you are wrong in that too, for love and respect are due every living creature. In
the distorted view you suffer loneliness and you go on pretending in some subtle way. The wrong
kind of shame also violates the law of brotherhood. Thus you may see once again how every inner
feeling can be right when it comes from the godself. However, the same can be distorted by
luciferic powers. It is so also with shame.
So I say to you, my friends, when you really and truly desire to develop along this path you
will find guidance at a certain point. You will be almost pushed into a corner where you will open
up for your own salvation. Of course, you always have your free will and this we spirits will respect
at all times and never violate it, even if we do know what may seem so difficult for you to express.
But you have to do the talking. We will not do it for you. You are always free, therefore, to refuse
and retire deeper into your corner and resent that you are being pushed in this direction. However,
you can also take the opportunity and step out of your hiding place, open your eyes, and see that
herein lies your salvation. It is up to you.
When guidance appears in the form of an unpleasant test, you cannot fully understand what is
happening. Yet it is there to help you do what is necessary. Such an opening up of your personality
is healing. You think of these experiences as hardships. Once you understand, however, why they
are necessary you will cease to see them in that way. You are like children; you do not know what is
good for you. And God's helpers who are all around you constantly -- particularly with the person
who is willing to take this path of purification -- manage to guide and inspire people to create
situations which afford you the opportunity. But you have to decide with your free will whether or
not you want to learn from them. You can either open your eyes to the significance of the situation,
or you can shirk from the issue and refuse to recognize the call, for it is a call! Decide, my friends.
Do you want to take your courage into your own hands, or do you think that you can advance on
this path without summoning the courage to follow the call?
I can promise you one thing. After you have made the decision to take this path, you will
already feel a foretaste of the spiritual rebirth that must come sooner or later when a certain phase is
reached. The greater the effort and the apparent difficulty of recognizing the call and following it,
the more relief, the more victory, the more happiness, the more self-respect, and the more inner joy
and peace will you feel after the test is over and you have fully understood how to go on from there.
This, my friends, I beg you to remember very well. Do not choose to forget these words, secretly
thinking that if you manage to evade the issue the situation will cease to exist. Read my words every
day, whenever you are faced with such a decision.
We deal not only with what you consciously know and hide. That is comparatively easy.
Once you are able to reveal consciously hidden thoughts and feelings, you need, with our help, to try
to find what unconscious currents lie behind them. That is then the work to be done. Of course,
you cannot do so alone; and you cannot do so unless you have displayed the courage to bring into
the open what you do know. Most people carry hidden unconscious factors equally active as the
conscious ones. Those are a little more complicated to find. The first prerequisite is to be free and
open enough to be able to talk about everything pertaining to your person. You can never reach the
hidden motives, currents, and emotions without that.
If you fulfill the necessary requirements, help will be given to you -- that you can be sure of.
The help you need is the grace of God. Without it you cannot reach your unconscious and
stubbornly hidden shames blocking the way. But if you wait for the grace of God in defiance and
anger, saying to yourself, "Why can't I have it? Why someone else and not me? I have suffered so
much. I am due for it now; I have tried so hard," then you push away the time for grace, because
your attitude is not humble. You take it upon yourself to judge, and you cannot judge. You have no
way of judging how much you have suffered, and when the grace is due, and how hard you have
tried, especially in comparison with others. You lack comparison; you even lack complete self-
recognition, for as long as you cannot delve into what your unconscious hides, you do not know
yourself. And how can you dare to judge and compare if you don't even know yourself?
When you nurse a spirit of true humility and patience, then the grace, my dear ones, will be
much nearer. If you have difficulties, try to concentrate on this. If you cannot advance, although
you are working and doing your best -- and many do not advance because they are not working the
way they could, so it is not the lack of grace -- and if there are blocks you cannot seem to penetrate,
ask yourself, "How humble is my attitude?" Nurse these words instead of turning away from God
the moment things become difficult for you. This is my advice for my dear, beloved friends.
I should like to discuss one more subject before we turn to your questions. I have already
mentioned that you are ashamed of your faults. Most of them you wish you did not have.
However, there is also another category, and it will be important to look at your faults from this new
point of view, namely, that you have some faults which you are in love with. This explains why you
do not get ahead in some particular respect of your development. You do not admit it, but you are
actually quite proud of some of your faults. Of course, as long as this is true, you cannot possibly
overcome them. Find out how this applies to you. Once you are aware that you are emotionally
attached to some of your faults, pray that God may help you to recognize why this is so and what
lies behind it. Pray that you may be able to see this attitude in an objective light, so as to develop the
right kind of shame about it.
Check all your faults and your emotional reactions to them in all honesty. As you go through
your list, you will see that there are some faults you really do not like and others you cherish in some
way. Then, when you feel that attachment, ask yourself: "How would I react if another person were
to display the same fault either in the same way or perhaps in a slightly different way?" You are
actually often quite irritated when another human being displays the same fault you are somewhat
proud of in yourself. Once you approach the fault from this point of view, you will lose the pride
you take in it. As long as the pride persists, however, you cannot possibly overcome the fault.
I will be very happy to let you present to me any fault you choose for analysis. I will show you
how every one of them is connected with pride, self-will, and fear. I will show you how to analyze
the fault, how it leads to other faults, and what is connected with it -- and in this way help you to
better self-understanding. I will show you how to meditate on it and proceed, in this particular way,
with the spiritual work on your path. I will also show you how every single fault, weakness, or
imperfection is a direct hindrance to love -- and therefore to God. I will also point out what the
underlying good quality behind each fault is, for there is no fault that is not a distortion of
something good and pure. Try this as an exercise yourself; apply it to your faults, for your spiritual
work is useless if it is abstract and impersonal. Where you are unable to do so, bring the faults here.
Now are there any questions in connection with this subject before we turn to your other
questions?
QUESTION: You stressed the point that one should open up to a qualified person. Could
you elaborate on the problem of a person who has the desire to open up and to be humble, but does
so indiscriminately and therefore no good is coming from it -- only harm and repercussions?
ANSWER: Yes, you see that this is, of course, the opposite extreme, and you know that all
extremes are wrong. Such a person has a deep need for which the spirit cries. The real need is not
recognized and therefore the wrong satisfaction is sought. However, the case you mention is not as
much of an extreme as you think. Often a human being opens up about many little things, and even
exposes actual shortcomings, so as to keep the real issue hidden.
QUESTION: But what if that same person masks the true faults and invents artificial guilts
to divulge?
ANSWER: That happens. You see, it will not do any good to tell such a person to choose to
open up to the right people, because he will never know who the right people are. The intuition is
lacking, as well as the sound intellectual judgment. Neither faculty can function well as long as one
rationalizes and covers up the true reasons. Such a person has to be brought to first recognize this
fact. That, of course, can only be done very slowly. And it cannot be done at all if the desire is not
there. But the desire can grow.
Be blessed, all of you. Be in God.