The Text - Section 56
56. CAPACITY TO WISH -- HEALTHY AND UNHEALTHY MOTIVES IN DESIRE
Greetings, God bless all of you, my dearest friends, blessed is this hour.
The creative life force or principle is all around you. It is all-powerful and all-good. If you
could but tune in on it, you on this earth plane could enjoy perfect happiness in every possible
respect. For the creative life force does not wish you anything but good -- if I may put it this way.
It is ready to give you joy, strength, vitality, and happiness. As far as the universe is concerned, there
need be no hardship or unhappiness.
I would like to discuss tonight the prerequisites that enable you to tune in on this force, and
the conditions that keep you away from it. One of these is the capacity to wish. Whenever your
capacity to wish is hindered, consciously or unconsciously, fulfillment cannot come to you. You
may desire this particular fulfillment with all your might, with all your outer will, yet some
unconscious factors within work against the fulfillment of this wish.
First of all, let us determine the difference between the healthy and unhealthy motives in
desires. We will not concern ourselves with the motives of desires which are obviously unhealthy
because they are destructive. Instead, we will delve into the deeper regions of the mind and soul
where the deviations are very subtle and unobtrusive.
You may have a perfectly legitimate desire, yet it may be unhealthy. Unhealthy and tense
desires are always linked with fear. In certain teachings you hear much about a state of
desirelessness, but on the plane where most of you are it is an impossibility. So here we can only try
to find the difference between what makes desires healthy and what makes them unhealthy.
One rule is that whenever you desire something for the sake of itself, the desire is healthy.
But when you desire something as a means to an end, it may be unhealthy. If this is the case, your
desire automatically becomes tense. It becomes a need, and therefore fear must follow in its wake.
Let me give you an example: If you desire financial security for the sake of enjoying that state,
there is nothing unhealthy about it, even though many of you may think this is a selfish desire. We
will discuss this separately a little later. But if you desire financial security for the sake of impressing
others, or to alleviate an inherent feeling of inferiority, then it is unhealthy: then it becomes a need
for something other than what financial security is in itself. The goal then is distorted to serve a
need other than that which the goal was supposed to fill in a healthy way. This circumstance may be
entirely unrecognized. You may feel only a pressing need. You may find abundant rational and
valid explanations as to why the desire is so pressing, while underneath the true motive remains
hidden. And the hidden motive always causes the fear that you might not get what you need. The
more unconscious the motive, the more unhealthy the desire, and the more it will stand in the way
of your fulfillment.
You may say, "Why, I know many people who certainly desire money for very unsavory
purposes and yet they are successful. They use their wealth for power over other people, to be
important, yet they seem to succeed." This may be so, my friends, but there are many reasons for it.
It may be that such a person has less of a conscience. The farther your development has progressed,
the stronger your conscience becomes, and it registers wrong motives very accurately. Thus the
conscience puts prohibitive currents in the way of fulfillment. With a person of lesser development,
this intervention of the conscience may be absent. In that case the wish-capacity can function even
though the motive may be impure. The mere fact that the impure and selfish motives are conscious
causes the wish capacity to function better. Because, as I said, the more unconscious the wrong
motives, the more powerful the prohibition is.
Or the person may be constituted so that the self-punishing and self-destructive forces, put in
motion by wrong motives, affect not so much the financial, but another area of the person's life.
However, you are not able to trace the connection between the two, and probably the person in
question cannot see it either.
The constructive life force has its counterpart in a negative force, emanating from confusion,
ignorance, and wrong motives. Your personality registers extremely accurately all desires,
tendencies, and motives. You may not be consciously aware of it registering, yet it is there in the
unconscious. If you have wrong and confused motives that are self-serving and cause detriment to
others -- may they be ever so subtle -- destructive currents result. These destructive currents either
prohibit the fulfillment of the particular conscious wish itself, or they may affect negatively another
area of fulfillment, the desire for which may or may not be conscious. But deep within yourself you
know there is something wrong with your wish and therefore you say to yourself -- though not in
conscious thought -- "I do not deserve that which I wish."
Humanity is very confused about what is selfish and what is unselfish. Suppose you desire
perfect health. In your praying for it, or simply in your awareness of desiring such a state, you may
have thoughts like this: "This is selfish. I have no right to desire something so strongly that benefits
just me. Who am I to deserve this?" Given these reservations, your wish capacity does not function
fully. In such reasoning -- unconscious as it may be -- there is much falsity and error, my friends.
You often believe something is selfish that in reality has nothing to do with selfishness. But
when, in your petty vanity, you place disproportionate importance on your own person, you haven't
an inkling that you are egocentric or selfish. To desire health because in your full strength, vigor,
and vitality you can fulfill more and can give more -- to others and to yourself -- is certainly not
selfish in the least, even though it seems to serve just you. But if you do not actually desire health in
order to benefit others directly but because you just want to enjoy it, even this wish need not be
selfish.
But should you desire health for the purpose of harming others, be it ever so subtly, then it
would be selfish. When I say harm, I do not mean it in the obvious sense. I mean, that, for
instance, the desire to impress others is also harmful. What happens when you set out to impress
others? You might trigger off envy -- and you may enjoy this envy. It makes you feel strong and
powerful at the expense of another person's smallness. Now, this may not often apply to health, but
this is the kind of thing that happens whenever you have the need to show off to others.
Thus we come back to the point we first raised; when the goal is not desired for its own sake,
but serves something else -- namely your need to impress others, to make yourself "bigger" and
"better," enviable in the eyes of others. You see, a wrong and harmful motive in a desire need not
be outright wicked, or a wish to inflict material disadvantage on another person. Your petty vanity,
your need to be above others, even if it exists only in a subtle way, suffices to twist your motives and
make them unhealthy. Hence your fulfillment is blocked, your wish capacity hampered.
In order to avoid all possible misunderstanding, let me emphasize again that not in all cases do
the self-punishing currents affect a conscious desire, even though this desire may contain unhealthy
motives in addition to healthy and conscious ones. Self-destructive and self-punishing forces,
brought forth by the psyche the moment a wrong motive is registered, may affect another wish-
fulfillment you cherish. It may even concern a fulfillment of a wish you are not conscious of.
You may be burdened with certain difficulties in your life which you take for granted,
although this does not preclude your resentment and rebellion against them. It just never occurs to
you to desire a different state of affairs in a constructive and positive way -- which includes seeking
and understanding the inner block and the prohibition you set up. Only then can you truly express a
wish that is free of hindrances stemming from your misconceptions.
You, who are on this path, will find it very useful to clarify what your true desires are. You
will then find quite often that what you consciously desire you do not desire completely, without
doubt and restriction, without misgivings and compromises. A part in you wants the fulfillment, but
another part does not. The purpose of this search is to become aware of the latter part and
investigate the reasons for the hesitation and the uncertainty.
Self-punishment for hidden wrong motives is only one reason that prohibits your wish-
capacity. There is, for instance, the further reason that whatever you desire requires a price.
Unconsciously you may not be completely ready to pay the price -- the true price, not the outer one.
The outer one is often overemphasized as a compensation for the inner disinclination to pay the
price in a deeper and real sense. Thus, the problem is twofold: outwardly and consciously you
tensely desire something, while inwardly and unconsciously you hesitate and do not wish a certain
part of it. The stronger this unconscious part is the tenser your outer straining becomes. You are
unaware that unconsciously you do not find the fulfillment worth having if you cannot have it
without paying the particular price it requires. The goal thus becomes of doubtful value.
Wherever you have such hidden reasoning in your unconscious, you are immature. You know
that very well by now. And the immature person wants the impossible. A child cannot have an
adult sense of responsibility which includes at all times the awareness that everything requires a
price. The immature part of your personality hopes against hope that perhaps after all it will be
possible to get what it wants without the necessity to pay the price. Until you become certain that
this cannot be, you postpone the wish-fulfillment by setting up blocks.
Find these inner, hidden reasonings, investigate them closer and come to terms with them on
the basis of your more mature intellect. Find specifically: What are your desires? Why do you
desire them? What would be the required price? Are you ready, completely, without reserve, to pay
this price? Do not force yourself to say, "Yes, I am ready," when emotionally you are not. As long
as you are not truly ready to pay the price without forcing yourself, it would not work anyway. But
at least you will now understand why you cannot have what you desire with only part of your
personality.
You will realize that no one but you prohibits the fulfillment. This recognition will be healthy
and will help you avoid further wrong impressions about God, fate, and life. You will give yourself
time to grow into the necessary state of development, where to pay the price will not be something
difficult or seemingly disadvantageous. You will be able to work calmly on the reasons, now out in
the open, why it seems so hard to pay a particular price or to accept the principle in general.
When you investigate yourself along these lines, you will also find wrong, impure, selfish, and
unhealthy motives in your desires that are not directed toward the goal itself. By finding and facing
them squarely, you will automatically eliminate a certain degree of self-destructiveness.
I realize that those friends who are not active on this path of self-search will interpret what I
am saying on an outer level. Therefore it may seem repetitious to them, for I have often said similar
words. But those who are continuously working and are approaching the deeper levels of their souls
will find new meaning and value in them. So check your emotional reactions to specific desires. I
cannot stress emphatically enough how important this will be for you. Then you can go on from
there. You will not find relief until and unless you discover that in you which prohibits fulfillment.
Though there may be several additional reasons for it, feeling undeserving and disinclined to pay the
price are the two basic factors that stand in the way. All other obstacles -- directly or indirectly --
stem from these two.
Let us get back to the feeling of being undeserving, which is nothing but an inferiority feeling.
Such feelings are rarely based on what you consciously think of yourself. Often you do not even
know why you have such feelings of inferiority. They may not coincide at all with your conscious
opinion of yourself. Not knowing why you feel so inferior makes you feel so hopeless. If you only
knew why, you could adjust to it if it is something in you that you cannot change. Accepting it, you
would cease to have the gnawing feeling of inferiority. Or, if it can be altered, you could go about
changing it. But since you do not know what it is, you remain hopeless. No certainty is ever as hard
to bear as uncertainty.
Let me tell you, my friends, that you never have inferiority feelings because of something that
you cannot change. No matter how hard it may be, it does not in itself push you into the despair
triggered by inferiority feelings -- provided your attitude about it is healthy and without hidden
elements. Remember this. The real reasons for your inferiority feelings are the little deviations that
result from your trying to deceive yourself. These deviations are registered, but as long as the
registering takes place in the unconscious only, they manifest as a feeling of inferiority. That is why
one loses one's inferiority feelings as one finds one's unconscious deviations and comes to term with
them.
Let me return to the example of desiring financial security. Suppose you desire it to impress
those who have humbled you -- or who you think have. This wrong motive, which you may be
unaware of, will then cause inferiority feelings in you, even though the very goal of this desire is to
eliminate these feelings. In other words, you seek the wrong remedy in blindness, ignorance, and
immaturity.
You can be quite certain, my friends, that the only reason for inferiority feelings is self-
deception about your motives: why you want or do certain things. When you face squarely that
which is in you, imperfect as the desire, action, or attitude may be, the inferiority complex must
cease to the degree that you gain objective clarity about yourself. You will then no longer find it
necessary to desire things as a means to an end, in order to accomplish something else.
If you desire wealth because you want to be wealthy, it is not a means to an end. But if you
desire wealth so as to alleviate an inferiority complex, then you want wealth to fulfill something that
stands in no direct relationship to the goal itself. By so doing, you are running around in one of
those famous vicious circles: the wrong motive makes you feel even more inferior. Then, on the
next turn, in order to eliminate this feeling, you strengthen the wrong motive, believing that more of
the same might be the remedy. To break this hopeless running around in circles, begin to see clearly
your motives, your desires, and what you want them to do for you. Do this with clear vision and
with all the honesty you can muster.
You see, my friends, nothing needs to stand in your way to complete fulfillment, but the
deviations and self-deceptions do. If you could but clear that up, you could tune in on the great,
invigorating cosmic force at your disposal. It is all around you and within you. It exists
impersonally, as do all spiritual laws. The person who can tune into it can have access to it and
benefit from it. Those who have not found the means, the currents and the switches in themselves
which would enable them to tune in, will pass by this force without being able to be affected by it.
Can you see the implications of this? If you could truly understand what I am saying, you
would realize that these impersonal laws are kind and completely good. It is no unkindness that it is
left to your own free will to seek contact with them or to stagnate, remaining in the old blindness.
I have shown you again how important it is to know yourself in the deepest regions of your
being. Superficial knowledge is not enough. Yes, there is also personal spiritual help, such as we are
allowed to give. It is for all those who truly manifest a desire to grow and change. They receive the
personal help without which they cannot attain the necessary tools to remove that which stands in
their way. With this personal help, they will one day be capable to partake of the impersonal benign
forces available to all beings in the universe. Cosmic principles, forces, and laws exist impersonally
for all alike. If you would but realize the significance of this, the terrible God-image people generally
have would automatically vanish.
Whenever you are in a difficult situation, in hopelessness and longing, in despair and
depression, as long as a false God-image exists in you, you keep blaming God, perhaps
unconsciously. You believe that somehow it was He who has punished you. Or you think, at best,
that He has considered it necessary as a test for you. This is only partly true. You can say a
hardship is a test in the sense that your errors can be your medicine if you have the proper attitude
toward life and want self-responsibility. Otherwise, hardship will not even be a test. One day,
however, you will come to the point when you begin to search for the answer within yourself and
not outwardly. Then your past experience will take on new meaning. It will become retroactive
medicine, and in this way, a test. But it will not be medicine until you reach the point of complete
understanding of what self-responsibility means.
There is so much misunderstanding about self-responsibility. We always struggle to save you
from your misunderstandings. We have to try to prevent a truth from being used by your
unconscious, immature, and unhealthy reactions. For if you use it so it will no longer be a truth. In
the case of self-responsibility, such distortion can happen by associating this concept with unhealthy
self-blame, guilt, and inferiority feelings. In other words, the opposite happens of what should
happen. You might use the word self-responsibility to nourish your guilt and your inferiority
feelings. You might say to yourself, "Since I am responsible for myself, I am even more guilty."
This is most destructive; it is very wrong, my friends. It is a complete misunderstanding.
I know this may sound contradictory and confusing to some of you. But those who have
followed me so far will know the subtle and fine difference. Declaring yourself responsible for your
life and seeking the remedy for past erroneous attitudes and concepts is an utterly constructive and
strengthening activity. But feeling that because you are responsible for your life you are all the more
guilty and inferior, and therefore becoming more hopeless than ever, is destructive and weakening.
My dear friends, let these words give you renewed incentive and understanding. Although you
will certainly not be able to tune in on the great universal force in all aspects of your life right away,
slowly and gradually, little by little, you will begin to eliminate that which prevents you from
connecting with it. You will approach the necessary contact to partake of this wonderful force, so
that you will be inside it, instead of outside.
You will not experience this as a sudden change. But as many of you will confirm, you
approach the life force and invigoration by the mere fact of being utterly honest with yourself in a
constructive way. Most of you have experienced this occasionally. You know what a wonderful
feeling it is. The greater the resistance you have to face from the material which is ready to come to
the surface, the greater your relief will be when it finally surfaces. Although you will have to say to
yourself, "Yes, these motives or attitudes are wrong," in further honesty you will know that you are
as yet incapable of feeling differently. But this self-honesty will give you strength, security, and self-
respect. It requires not only the honesty to see that there are wrong motives and attitudes in you,
but also the additional honesty of knowing that you cannot change them at once. This is the most
constructive inner action you can possibly adopt.
After you have made a recognition of importance, beware of the attitude of believing that you
can immediately change your emotions simply because now you can see and evaluate them clearly.
Have the further honesty and wisdom to realize that growth occurs slowly. Use and cherish the
recognition and wait for your emotions to mature. By "using and cherishing" your findings I mean
not letting them slip back into hiding, for then the work has to be done all over again. It may then
be easier than for the first time, but it is still a waste of time that can be avoided if you remain aware
of your findings without haste or pressure, simply cultivating the awareness. You need this constant
reminder because discoveries slip out of awareness so fast.
Neither should you imagine that you can jump over the period of growth by forcing your
emotions and being impatient with yourself. Remain aware of your recognitions and use them in
your daily observation of your reactions. Be aware that they cannot change at once. Growth occurs
through self-observation from different angles. If you can follow this through, becoming aware of
imperfect reactions or selfish emotions will not depress you.
I assure you that if a negative recognition about yourself depresses you, there must be
something wrong in your attitude. Then bring the problem to me or to your image sessions. The
emphasis will then have to be shifted from the significance of the recognition itself to your attitude
to negative findings in yourself. I repeat, if you have the proper attitude, the more
"disadvantageous" the recognition, the more relief and liberation it will cause you. If this does not
happen, you have to look into the reason why not and find out where and how your attitude is
faulty. In this search you may find chain reactions which, at first, can seem to lead you away from
the original subject. But it is of the utmost importance to discover and face them. When this
obstacle is cleared up, recognitions about your lower nature will become a joyful event.
Now just one more word of advice concerning your work in self-search. Many of you believe
that to find yourself, to explore the unconscious, you have to dig for knowledge so completely out
of reach that you do not know where to begin to look for anything. This may leave you at a loss.
Also, you expect to find something staggering. Yes, this may happen once in a while, although in a
slightly different way than you think.
Do not approach the search with the idea of finding something you have had no inkling of.
The task is much simpler than that. You will find the answers by observing your everyday reactions
and emotions in the most mundane matters. You are so conditioned not to pay any attention to
how you react to people, or how you feel in certain situations of your life, that much passes you by
that could be of the greatest value in your work. Learn instead to investigate these reactions, and ask
yourself what they mean and what further significance they may have. What do they imply? What
lies behind the emotions you register in the most casual incidents of your life? What is the emotion
you register first and what is behind it? You are not expected to look for something far away and
deeply hidden. This will come too, but begin with that which actually is on the surface and not at all
unconscious. You merely did not pay any attention to it so far. Begin to pay attention to it now.
From there on, you will gradually proceed to what is hidden on deeper levels. The exploration of
the unconscious happens just as gradually as growth. It is no sudden plunge.
And now, my friends, I am ready for your questions.
QUESTION: I wondered if you could explain about the different new movements that claim
that a shortcut is possible to partake of the Life Force by simply exchanging a truth for an untruth.
ANSWER: Unfortunately, it is not as simple as all that, for the human personality is a very
involved and complicated machinery, if I may use this word. If it were merely a question of
substituting a truth for an untruth, that would be fine. But do you realize what truth is at all times?
You have to find truth. And before you can find the great universal truth, you have to find your
own truth. That is the only way you can get to universal truth. You cannot get it outwardly by
learning things, or by performing certain rites, or whatever it may be. You can only get it by looking
at and into yourself. And I hardly need to say -- you will all readily agree with me -- that it is not an
easy matter to find your own truth, your distorted and temporary "truth." What may appear true to
you today -- and it may even be true on a certain level as a half-truth or a quarter-truth -- may no
longer hold true tomorrow, when you have gained additional knowledge, not only generally
speaking, but also about yourself. Only after you have removed all the layers of falsity and half-
truth, of distortion and confusion, can the great Universal Truth, as well as the Life Force have
access to your soul.
I do not say that many of these new movements do not bring some good. I will now explain
when such shortcut methods are successful. No human being is in untruth and deviation or
imperfection in all areas of his personality. Complete imperfection in a human being exists no more
than complete perfection. This earth plane incarnates only those in whom there is a mixture. You
all have some healthy elements in you. If a person joins a movement such as you describe and
learns certain practices, in areas where he was healthy anyway and where he may just need a little
"outer push," he will respond. But he cannot respond where his problems lie in uncleared areas.
There is no shortcut. I would say that this path is a shortcut. It is the shortest "cut" there is! Time
is relative. The years you need to learn to know yourself and gain a firm stronghold on life count as
very little time indeed.
The movements you describe may have their good points and their truths. They may also be
beneficial in waking people up to wider awareness. They may also be helpful wherever people have
a healthy element within to begin with, which for lack of incentive and because of intellectual
ignorance could not unfold. But where deviations, complications, and confusion reign in the soul,
there is no other way than the labor of the search and the pains of growth. It is good that way, it
could not be any other way. If you think objectively, you will surely see that this is so.
Let me bless all of you with the particular strength that helps you to unfold your wish capacity
and gives you the strength to purify it. Receive this strength so that you can tune in on the great,
universal force at your disposal if you but learn how to use it. Be blessed with this strength, my
friends, so that, little by little, you will all enjoy the glory that life can be, even on this earth sphere.
Learn to enjoy the serious and honest labor too that leads to it. Do not seek for miracles, tricks, and
shortcuts to happiness. It cannot be. Be blessed, be in peace, be in God!