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Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 255 (1996 Edition)
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Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 255
1996 Edition
November 15, 1978

THE BIRTHING PROCESS -- COSMIC PULSE

My dearly beloved friends, love and blessings go forth to all of you.  Your human struggle to find your way out of the mazes, your growth and expansion, is a golden light that illuminates the universe.  It is a powerful force, although you may not feel it at this moment because there is still so much disconnectedness in you.  You are gradually making the connections, until all flows together and there is no more puzzlement, no more fear, no more pain -- only peace and joy.  On a deep level of your being this state of bliss exists already, now, and in a hidden part in you you know this.  To make this knowledge available is the great task you have all undertaken.

In isolated moments you experience the hand of God in your life, the breath of God.  Such a moment may occur at any time and may be triggered by certain experiences either within or outside of you.  At such moments, inside and outside fuse and become one. It is then that you know God's reality.  There simply is no longer any doubt about it.  The peace and joy you experience at those times cannot be put into words.  You know that all the isolated goals you pray for converge on one central point, experiencing the reality of God.  When this happens, you are already pure -- at least in that moment -- for the purity of your uncluttered unobstructed spirit is freed through all the shells and layers.  You are pure, so you do not have to pray for purification.

In that instant, you know all you need to know -- so you do not have to pray for insight and enlightenment and understanding.  You understand, you know, you are enlightened.  In such a moment love flows through every vein of your body and soul -- so you do not have to pray for love.  In that moment you activate the greatest healing power there is -- so you do not have to pray for healing.  In such a moment you have strength, imagination, resourcefulness and creativity -- so you do not have to pray for success.  In such a moment you also have measure, so 

you know what is right and possible for your earthly existence at this juncture of your evolution.

When these rare moments occur, you are bathed in the grace of God.  All your prayers flow into one central point.  Through such an experience you come to understand that all you really need to pray for is to experience God's presence, God's hand in all of life, God's breath in your own existence.  But until such time, it may often be necessary to divide your prayers, for the sake of your deeper understanding of what is necessary at any given time in your life, when your soul has to be impressed with certain aspects that need focus.  This does not mean that you should now cease praying for the specific goals that fill out the total picture.  The time will come, however, when you simply pray that you can contact the power and presence of God without waiting for the special occasions which come only rarely at first and seem to depend on circumstances outside of yourself.  Eventually you will be so uncluttered, so freed, that the light will come more often.  At first it will be an indirect, apparently involuntary occurrence that seems unrelated to you in any way.  Yet it is a direct result of efforts, positive intentions, and commitment to God's will.  Cause and effect, however, are removed from one another on the level of appearance, because of time.  You have already experienced that with your spiritual growing, cause and effect move closer together until a direct link can be seen.  When this occurs in experiencing the power and presence of the Creator, you have attained self-realization.  You have purified and unified yourself.  Then you can be one with Him at will.  This is the outer will but here it is totally compatible with the will of the Highest.

This gradual growth process depends on your willingness to open your heart.  Opening your heart seems to require a special kind of courage.  You must be willing to risk the imaginary dangers of truly feeling with your heart, of feeling your self, your lovingness, your vulnerability, the beauty of creation, the endearingness of others who struggle in their attempt to find the light.  When you are willing, truly willing, the Christ spirit will take over and perform the "operation" of removing the tight lock -- that has existed for millennia -- from your heart.  The more your heart is open, the more God can enter it with His magnificent reality.  You will be touched by His breath more frequently, you will sense His hand in all things.

In this lecture I would like to discuss particularly a law of timing that applies to the development of every entity.  You surely must have sensed this law and may even know about it vaguely.  But it is important that you thoroughly understand it.  According to this law a certain necessary time sequence exists on an individual's path.  The time sequence is entirely different for every entity.  What for one person needs to be taken at the very beginning, because it is a fundamental key, without which nothing further can be genuinely accomplished, may follow only much later for another.  You know that you are working with different levels and layers.  You know about the spiral movement that seems to bring the same sequence up again and again.  There comes a point when a particular spiral has truly resolved itself.  An entirely "new" aspect is coming to the fore, an aspect so strange and unfamiliar that it seems at first somewhat frightening.  "Is that really me?" you ask.

This is not merely a question of going to a deeper level of the same problem.  The deeper level brings new material to the fore that could not have been handled before, and it may also bring a feeling of hopelessness about self-purification.  "Will it never end?"  I want to warn you about this feeling and tell you that it is a good sign of deep progress. 

In the life of the average human being who is far from pursuing any path of self-confrontation, who ignores even the possibility of inner growth and development, these previously concealed aspects are taken on as new tasks in a new incarnation.  Specific circumstances and surroundings are geared to bringing out the aspects that could not be brought to the fore in the previous incarnations where circumstances and surroundings had to activate other material.

With people who follow an intense path, such as you do, it might happen that what would have waited for a future incarnation under "normal" circumstances is released now.  The inner timetable has readied the soul for it now, since all the work intended for this life has been completed before physical life is terminated. 

Encountering additional tasks which you were not certain you could handle in this incarnation may seem too much.  You would rather leave them for a later time when you will have gathered new strength in your spiritual home.  Often this is true and you do not even attempt to undertake the new tasks.  But when you do attempt them, the benefit 

is immense.  It represents an immeasurable amount of "saving" for you.  Much energy, expenditure, time and creativity are saved that would otherwise have to be distributed over new incarnations, particularly destined for fulfilling these tasks.

Also, do not forget that when such additional new material comes to the fore, it is never without your full consent.  Sometimes you wish to undertake it and your spiritual advisers do not agree.  Often they encourage you and warn you of the difficulties.  But in a state of greater consciousness and vision you understand that it is truly worth undertaking an extra task in the same incarnation.

A long time ago I discussed some aspects of the processes of reincarnation.  You may remember me saying then that in the preparation before incarnation the life plan is exactly laid out and etched into the soul substance.  I say to you now that the soul substance contains much more than the life plan of the current incarnation.  There is an overall plan that shows what has been accomplished in the past, and there are the future tasks to fulfill, stacked in layers, as it were.  It is difficult to convey these spiritual facts in human terms.  They may sound oversimplified and therefore misleading.  Of course in our reality there is no such thing as up or down, below or above, or, for that matter, time.  So we cannot speak of past and future.  Yet there is a sequel, a rhythm that takes its natural course.  One step must logically follow the previous one.  Each step or phase has a meaning and cannot possibly be undertaken at the wrong juncture of the sequel.  So only in that sense is there past or future, layers above and layers below.

I often mentioned that occasionally some human beings experience a rebirth within the present incarnation.  When Jesus spoke about the necessity to be born again, he did not only refer to the reality of reincarnation.  He also meant that in order to experience the truth of the living God within, a rebirth must take place.  This is made possible by fully following the life plan for this incarnation and then freeing the plans that might have waited for a subsequent embodiment.

The process of birth is never, under any circumstances, a one-time phenomenon.  It is always gradual.  Even on the purely physical plane, a human being is not born complete.  The baby leaves the womb of the mother and first becomes merely a physically separate entity.  Even the physical separation is not complete right 

away.  It takes a while until mother and child are truly separate entities.  And I do not mean this in terms of independence and self-sufficiency, for obviously the child is not able to fend for himself for a long time.

If you think carefully, you will note that all the childhood years are part of the birth process.  The mind is gradually freed, released, born into the physical reality.  More gradually and much later, the person's spiritual nature and higher values may be born.  However, they may often remain unborn, waiting to be released in a future existence.  Talents often take time to be born, in most instances considerable time.  Accomplishments which the soul has acquired in previous lives need to be nurtured.  The technical skills learned in this body need to be assimilated so that the inner knowledge has an adequate instrument through which to express itself.

The time has come for you, my friends, to become more aware of these possibilities, of incarnatory processes reaching the surface only now -- or at a later period -- when sufficient groundwork has been done, when your current life plan has been fulfilled.  You need to listen sensitively into your entire pathwork process and occasionally gain sufficient distance from yourself to have an overview.  You will then sense the beginnings of a rebirthing process.  With some this may never be, not necessarily because they do not work as dedicatedly as others on their purification, but perhaps because the present task is so vast and all-encompassing that it suffices for this embodiment.  So do not expect this to happen in all instances.

Also, you need to be aware of too simple and quick assumptions in this respect.  Often a new phase on your path merely indicates another facet of the present life plan and not an additional task that may be undertaken now, or possibly left for a later incarnation.  I would not like to see this community rushing en masse into this explanation every time you enter another facet of your inner development.  A finely attuned sensitivity will give you a deeper understanding about these processes.  It will also make you realize that divine birth is never a onetime event.  It is always an extended birthing process.

You participate keenly in your own birthing process by the work you are doing on this path.  Consider the entire purification work as a birthing process.  For you truly give birth to your unobstructed, unencumbered spirit in its full glory.  You eliminate, step by step, the enfolding layers.  

When your spirit is being born it always happens in stages.  One aspect was already born when you came into this plane.  Other parts shed the covers later, one by one.  Finally, at one point your spirit will stand free and unencumbered, without any covers, any obstructions, any layers that need to be removed.

I cannot stress emphatically enough that you are not to take this lightly.  This concept should not be bandied about.  Not every insight revealing a hitherto unfamiliar pattern, not every new phase, indicates the process of uncovering material that may have ordinarily waited for a future incarnation.

The information I give you here is not to be confused with the practice of many psychics, who tell a person where, when and in what form he or she has lived in previous periods of history.  Such information is usually -- with few exceptions -- pointless, and only serves sensationalism.  Only when traits and attitudes are under discussion is this of any value.  And even then, in most instances, the realization, if necessary, should come from yourself, through your own intuitive sensing.  Then such insight will complete a picture that has bearing on your present struggle, on your current task.

The process of birth is, as I said, always ongoing.  Perhaps it will help you to visualize the universe as a breathing entity.  Each breath is a pulsation that penetrates onward, that bleeds through previously inert mass -- the mass of the void.  Once the pulsation reaches this mass with sufficient intensity and frequency, the mass begins to soften.  The breath of life enters, and consciousness is being born where previously there was no life, no consciousness, no being.  Each breath consists of expansion, contraction, and the static moment in-between.  Each of these movements is designed to expand life, to spread it.  In this way the pulse of life surges on.  Each pulsation is another thrust of the life forces, penetrating matter and gradually infusing it with life.

Every incarnation on the earth plane represents a pulse beat, an outbreathing.  Each time life seems to die an inbreathing takes place.  The strength of the pulse beat is determined by the will to live on earth in a body, by the degree of fulfillment of the task the entity has come for.  If the task is negated because inner life and truth are denied, the will to live is usually weak, although the reverse is not necessarily true.  It is possible that the will to live is strong and yet the path negated.  In such instances, the spirit has 

justified hope that at least part of the task may still be accepted, may be allowed into surface consciousness.

Old age is a slow withdrawal of the personality that lives forever.  When you humans speak about dying, it seems absurd to us, from our vantage point.  There can never be death, there can only be a withdrawal of life from the outer encrustations, leaving them inanimate again.  When the entity builds a body, the body consists of material that is as yet lifeless, but that will be enlivened once the spirit, or the soul, or the person with all his traits and all the special combinations of attitudes that form his or her unique personality at this point of evolution, takes possession of this shell.

Each further incarnation represents a further thrust into the inanimate.  Very gradually the pulse beat of life, in this particular regard, will become so strong that matter is no longer matter, it no longer becomes inanimate.  It remains forever imbued with spirit.  It has become so refined, its vibratory frequency so high, that it can no longer decay.  It has been wholly made into spirit.  It has been absorbed by spirit, by life, by consciousness, so that it has become spirit, life, consciousness.

These are not idle speculations.  On your earth plane you can observe this truth by a very simple fact: the extension of life, of the average age, of the human being.  Not too long ago in your history, the average age was thirty years.  Now it is seventy.  In the not too distant future, even in your terms of time, the average age will be one hundred years and over.  The inner meaning of this fact is that matter is more strongly imbued with life.  Life can therefore have a greater staying power.  The forward thrust of the pulse beat can penetrate deeper.

Everything in creation exists in both the macrocosm and the microcosm.  It is repeated over and over in different proportions, to different degrees, in different ways.  So the breath of life, cycles of life, principles of life all exist in smallest and in largest measures, based on the same creative conditions and laws.  It will be helpful for you to visualize life as an ongoing breathing phenomenon, each incarnation representing a pulse beat, each withdrawal from matter not as a dying of life, but as a withdrawal from matter, an inbreathing.  In this vision you will strengthen yourself and open up new doors of understanding.

It is of the greatest importance for you to fully understand what constitutes the strength of the pulse, the breath of life that is a human life.  What determines the vigor of the pulse beat -- that single cosmic beat that is a human incarnation?

Before discussing this, I should like to add that not only human life fulfills this function.  The earth plane is particularly designed as an arena to serve the purpose of "breathing into the inanimate" -- or the void, if you will.  Every plant, every animal, every life form existing on this plane, breathes into matter and enlivens it.  The enlivening is at first only temporary, for after a while life withdraws again, only to reappear at intervals.  But the time will come when life can no longer withdraw, even from plant, mineral and animal life.  Vibrations of matter will be so refined that matter will become spirit.  Then the breath of life will continue in a way that life no longer pulls back.  The thrust will have become so strong that all is life, all is spirit.

The human course of development is constituted differently from other life forms on earth.  For humans, consciousness plays a major role.  After a certain degree of evolvement, consciousness can determine the strength, vigor, and length of the pulse-thrust.  This happens in several ways.

In the first place, the understanding of these cosmic processes is necessary.  This is why I give you this lecture.  Think and visualize life in these terms and you will sense the truth on an inner level.  Only in the rarest of instances is such a vision attained without outer help and stimulation.  Humanity has now reached a point in its overall development when it needs such help so as to accelerate the process.  

When you perceive life and death as a pulsating breath, when you experience the spirit as the constant that pushes into matter, your entire world picture is going to change.  If you permit this new consciousness to grow in you, to take hold of your being, you must experience life, death, and all happenings in a very different way.  This way is liberating and will eliminate the existential anger, rage and fear about life and death that we discussed in another recent lecture.  But to hear this and file it away as additional "spiritual information" is not enough.  You need to stretch your imagination, your inner senses, your deeper vision to make this knowledge gradually your own experience.

Another determining factor is, of course, your attitude.  When difficulties come, it is human to be discouraged.  When you are puzzled or in pain, when you are disappointed or unhappy about something, it is most normal to lose courage.  You cannot help it.  But with this inner consciousness growing in you, you will perhaps gradually learn that it is most essential to keep your vigor toward life intact, to not allow negative experiences weaken your inner pulse.  Your inner will directly affects the pulse beat of your life force.  Your choice to want to master the situation, make the best of it, learn from it, live it to the fullest, directly affects the vigor of the cosmic pulse beat that enlivens your personal existence.  In addition to the understanding of the cosmic processes, this requires goodwill, courage and faith, which you will have to the degree you truly want to fulfill your part in creation.

Every created being, without exception, plays such a part.  For every being is a direct expression of the Creator.  In every being a part of the Creator lives.  The entire Plan of Salvation is a conjoint effort to penetrate all with life, with consciousness, with the divine joy that is so exquisite that it cannot be conveyed in words.

I mentioned before that everything exists in microcosm and macrocosm, in many repetitions, for the principles of creation are perfect and can be adjusted to many different situations and conditions.  Let us now think of the phenomenon of the pulse beat.  In the human body the pulse beat indicates the vital signs, the functioning of the heart, the flow of blood in the arteries.  On a larger scale, each human life manifestation is a cosmic pulse beat.  The one pulse beat that constitutes an entire incarnation consists of many smaller pulse beats.  During a lifetime the cosmic pulse beat pumps the spiritual blood repeatedly into hardened, inanimate matter.  These beats vary in intensity.  At times the beat is vigorous, at other times it weakens.  

You can see how the same creative principle repeats itself and manifests in different ways.  I mentioned before that on isolated occasions a person may live his or her next incarnation, or at least part of it, in the same lifetime, if the life task has already been totally fulfilled.  Instead of life withdrawing, a new pulse beat sets in, heralding another set of conditions, another task -- often within the framework of the same overall task so that outer life circumstances need not necessarily change at all.  Sometimes, however, they may change drastically.  

The new pulse beat is often weak at first.  A break has occurred, even though the break is not as crass as the body dying and later being reborn under entirely new conditions.  But the break nevertheless exists.  It is often experienced as intense, sometimes prolonged crisis.  Since crisis is painful, it weakens the pulse beat.  Only as the new life is fully understood and embraced can a new continuity begin to evolve, and the new cosmic pulse beat in the entity can resume with renewed vigor.

When you hear these words, you may fear such an occurrence.  You may think it preferable to progress in slower stages.  I say to you that, quite apart from the tremendous value for your personal evolvement and your overall task in the great plan, it is erroneous to think that the transition into a new incarnation within the same body is more traumatic than the greater break of dying and being reborn.  For many human beings fear of death makes dying traumatic.  The threat of extinction prevents the entity from experiencing the sweetness of the transition.  In many instances this can be experienced only much later, after the real has been severed from the temporary.

Birth is always traumatic and painful.  I spoke about this before in another context.  The personality needs to squeeze into a very tight structure, and this is experienced as painful.  When you see the baby's struggle and resistance, it is not difficult to perceive this.  It is also traumatic for the entity, before the birthing process into matter begins, to temporarily abdicate full consciousness and to await it to slowly reawaken by stages.  This seems very risky.  Will all that you know as unencumbered spirit reach the brain through the matter and through the dimmed experiences of earth life?  Is it not much preferable to stay in the continuity you have gained through your growth and development?  The break in consciousness can be avoided in that way.

This is not always possible, but sometimes development proceeds very fast and well when this opportunity arises.  However, as I said before, do not assume anything too quickly and too glibly.  Let it rather be a question within you that may or may not find an answer.  If it is necessary and important for you to know, if you are open without any preconceived ideas one way or another, you will know.  Most certainly you should not ask me whether or not this is so.

There is a general acceleration in the process of evolution which is manifesting in various ways.  One 

manifestation is that knowledge of the inner realities has become accessible to the general public.  This is unprecedented in your history.  It has never happened before.  In former times, there were only an elect few who could join a secret esoteric society, or what might be called a mystery school, in which knowledge about inner truths, real values and purification processes was disseminated.  Nowadays it is open and available to all, although many souls reaching the earth plane do not make use of this possibility.  Some lack the development and therefore the understanding.  Others have the capacity to understand but do not move out of their resistance and apathy to do so.  They do not fulfill their potential.

Another manifestation of the acceleration in development is exactly what I explained in this lecture:  the possibility to uncover layers of the soul that would ordinarily await a future embodiment.

In this ever-increasing acceleration of the movement of divine life, the penetration of life into the void becomes ever deeper and stronger with each embodiment.  This movement comes even to those who do not fulfill all their potential, or who are still on a much lower scale of consciousness.  Even trees, plants, birds, participate.  Their life span is not longer in your terms, but the general movement causes their real, eternal being to penetrate deeper into matter, so that matter is altered after their life is withdrawn.  The entire process is heightening and quickening.

The result is a particular phenomenon that, seen from the outside and out of context, may seem to contradict what I say.  In your era, there is a new balance between developed and undeveloped souls.  As there are highly developed spirits coming into this plane in ever greater numbers, so is an increasing number of undeveloped souls reaching this plane.  In former times these differences were much less acute.  There was a greater leveling.  Less-highly-developed souls made the primitive incarnations less noticeable.  Now the differences are striking.

For you, who work on this path, it is important to be aware of these general cosmic processes and to incorporate them into your understanding about the world and yourself.  At certain stages such knowledge would not help you at all and would not be relevant to what you are called upon to deal with.  But the time comes when this is important, not just for some of you individually, but for the Pathwork 

entity as a whole.  For what occurs to you individually repeats itself on a larger scale -- always.  So your individuality is a cell of the Pathwork entity.  The Pathwork entity  is a cell of the Earth-plane entity.  The healthier each cell becomes, the better can the total organism function.  And health includes knowledge and understanding.

Your Pathwork entity has been reborn several times already.  It will continue to do so, if you give your best to your own truth and development and to the task of which you are a blessed part.  I say this to you now because at this very period you, as a community, are going through such a process.  By understanding this fact, it will be much easier for you to grope and search, to struggle and stretch to find new ways of being, to make changes that, in the end, if you allow divine inspiration to reach you, can only become a blessing for every individual joining this venture, on all levels.  Be fearless in your trust and faith that you are involved in something infinitely bigger than your personal little concerns to which you sometimes assign such disproportionate importance.

The Christ spirit is with you, at all times, in all things.  God's blessings enable your most mundane undertakings, for they are put into the service of the divine cause.  Let your inner joy reach your consciousness, for there is only cause for rejoicing!

Edited by Judith and John Saly

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