From lecture 218, THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS:
The second law I wish to speak about is making connections. When connections are made, the process evolves in its full glory. When connections are not made, the process remains hidden and events take on an isolated and disquieting appearance. You have to make connections primarily between your outer experiences and the inner process, on the one hand, and, on the other, between inner attitudes that seem totally disconnected from one another. Let me briefly speak about both.
The first — connections between the outer life, your inner moods, reactions and the process — can be made only in the way I said before: first consider the possibility of such a connection, open yourself up to its realization. The moment you raise that question and open up to receiving the answer, the meaning will communicate itself to you, sooner or later. As the meanings become clear, as you begin to see all experiences as intrinsically meaningful events relating to your total inner reality and to your entire path, as well as every particle thereof, you will gain a totally new and infinitely more connected understanding of life.
The second category, making connections between inner aspects — problematic aspects, for example — is something you begin to experience as you progress on your path. But much more of that can and will happen. You discover, in the course of your path, apparently isolated problems — outer as well as inner — such as faults, shortcomings, impurities, conflicts, difficulties whose inner dynamics you as yet ignore — and they seem to have nothing to do with one another. And yet, as you go deeper, there is a direct connection between the apparently disconnected attitudes and aspects.
For example, what connection could there be between a difficulty in establishing fulfilling relationships and a blockage in your career? Or what connection could exist between a greedy and pushy attitude and, say, sexual dissatisfaction? Or between submissiveness, lack of self-assertion, on the one hand, and covert hostility on the other? I could name many more such examples. Seeing the connection between them will give you a wholesome sense of meaning and a new understanding. Suddenly things are no longer so fragmented and anxiety-producing.
First you may only sense overall connections, but little by little it will become a real and strong understanding in depth. The parts of the whole are all put together. There is nothing in you that does not connect with everything else, whether good, bad, or indifferent, positive or negative. Not only are various positive aspects that seem different in kind from one another connected, not only are different negative aspects connected, but positive and negative aspects are also directly linked on an inner level.
To establish the connections you can and should use your mental abilities to whatever degree you can in a spirit of exercising your mind. But the insights must primarily come from within. You must allow the intuitive faculties to provide you with the connections. Then everything will take on a new form, a new shape.
From lecture 249, THE PAIN OF INJUSTICE — COSMIC RECORDS OF ALL PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE EVENTS, DEEDS, EXPRESSIONS:
Try to perceive that behind resistance to face certain negative aspects lies an even greater resistance to see that these negative patterns create inevitably negative experiences and undesirable life circumstances. Once you can admit the resistance, it will be easier to go one layer deeper and become conscious of both a deep longing to make these connections and an equally strong painful fear that no connections exist, that all is arbitrary and senseless. Resistance to making connections between cause and effect covers the fear and pain that there are no such connections. Find the moments of relief in your past work when, after having overcome resistance, you realized the intrinsic fairness of life. Remember how, after seeing the connections, you always felt much more secure about life. With this insight into hitherto obscure and unnamed reactions, you will have made the pain of injustice conscious.
This is why a path such as the one you are choosing for your development and growth, one that goes into these depths and hidden crevices, brings a new and true security. It eliminates the pain of injustice because it establishes connections between cause and effect in your own soul life that remain inaccessible as long as strong resistances are not overcome. Love of and trust in your helpers are commensurate with your goodwill and intent to help them help you see what you most deeply long for. How can you trust and believe in and experience a just universe unless you see plainly how every one of your actions, thoughts, hidden intentionalities, feelings and attitudes — positive and negative — has definitive results and effects? Little by little the personal connections unroll and reveal larger processes, gradually leading into the macrocosmic events. At first, almost all earthly events seem disconnected from one another. Things happen as if arbitrarily, nonsensically. Only when the microcosmic connections are being made do macrocosmic events reveal their meaning and connections, their causes and effects — at least to a degree.
As long as you live in the shell of matter, encased in time, there are many connections you can never fully make. They remain invisible, although at times you can intuitively sense some links. To understand that main connections exist needs faith. But true faith is to some degree experiential. It comes exactly because your inner process moves toward an increasing uncovering of connecting links. This movement allays the fear of the pain of injustice and heals the wounds it causes.
Think of your reactions when you witness earthly events of cruelty whose perpetrators seem to remain unapprehended, or when good deeds and genuine love and giving seem to elicit undeserved negative effects, or at least fail to produce just rewards. On some occasions it is possible to go beyond the surface and see deeper connections that reveal the perfect justice of life. In some instances it is truly a question of time. The connections and justice are not immediately visible, but the unrolling of time, in your dimension, makes the connections obvious. Time brings them eventually to the surface.
But in how many instances, in small issues as well as in large ones, in personal issues as well as in general and universal ones, it is quite impossible to see the connections! The unrolling of time extends beyond the human vision. All spiritual scriptures speak about the reality of ultimate justice, often perceived and experienced only after your body is left behind and your vision becomes more extended. The concept of the “Last Judgment” or “Judgment Day” is an intimation of this fact. These terms convey that there is a “time” after death when all is revealed. Human beings usually react unfavorably to this concept because they think of it in terms of a punishing deity, a cruel, unmerciful ruler who would impose more injustice on them. This ancient concept confused God with cruel earthly leaders and fathers. But the true meaning of the “final judgment” is the revealing of connections that show the unutterable beauty of the faultless justice of spiritual laws.
To my teacher Marieke Mars who taught me self-honesty. To my courageous and loving pathwork helper Dottie Titus.