Pathwork Lecture #086: Self-Preservation and Procreation as Instincts in Mutual Conflict

Summary of Pathwork Lecture #086:
Self-Preservation and Procreation as Instincts in Mutual Conflict

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, consult the Lecture itself, available free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P086.PDF

Any distortion is the result of adopting and then rigidly adhering to an attitude. When we adopt a pseudo-solution to life’s difficulties and it (necessarily) doesn’t work, we respond by trying harder to force it to work, and this creates rigidity. Healing comes from replacing the pseudo-solution with truth, which is more flexible and which produces real security, in spite of the anxiety which letting go of the pseudo-solution initially engenders.

Of the three basic pseudo-solutions — striving for power, love and serenity — the distortion of the self-preservation instinct (which consists of enlisting it in a struggle to avoid the imagined danger of not being loved and admired), primarily leads to an aggressive striving for power. The distorted instinct of procreation leads to a submissive striving for love. A person will construct an idealized self image (ISI) in accordance with these tendencies. These are of course generalizations, and contradictory currents may exist on various levels of the personality. In any event, if these instincts are distorted, they will conflict with each other. To the extent that this conflict is unbearable, a person will develop the pseudo-solution of striving for serenity (withdrawal), which is designed to avoid the stress of this internal conflict. We would do well to FEEL the striving for power and the striving for love within us, rather than just appreciating these concepts theoretically.

To the extent that a person overemphasizes safety (self-preservation), the procreation instinct will be muted; however, playing it safe causes stagnation and a lack of fulfillment, which then leads to self-pity and beyond that to rebellion. To the extent that a person overemphasizes pleasure, there will be a tendency to seek love in submissive, masochistic ways which will actually endanger the soul through self-denial and self-estrangement.

Because of these conflicting currents, a person will seek compromise solutions, such as channeling the pleasure drive only in directions which seem “safe,” while holding back in other areas. Another attempted solution is using one instinct as a means of obtaining the goals of the other. But this is futile: one can not receive love by being domineering (which engenders fear and resentment), and one cannot find safety by ingratiating one’s self with others so that they will be protective (since this tactic engenders contempt and abuse, which engender resentment, which engenders rejection).

As an example, a submissive person may feel angry because the attempt to bargain for love by offering self-effacement does not work. This anger produces guilt because it is inconsistent with the person’s “loving” idealized self-image. There is also guilt because the demands for love, protection, etc. which underlie the attempt to bargain in this way are dishonestly kept out of consciousness. Whether one is aggressive or submissive on the surface, it is often the case that the opposite attitude predominates at the core and produces shame.

We would do well to FIND these pseudo-solutions within us, as they exist in the many layers of our personality, and to CONTEMPLATE how and why they are futile, how they affect ourselves and others, and what their original purpose was. The work, which progresses gradually, is about FEELING repressed childish attitudes and emotions, not just thinking about the concepts. By giving ourselves permission to feel whatever is really within us, we may encounter feelings which seem alien and contrary to who we are. Letting the energy of those feelings move will unblock our life force and free up our capacity to live life fully.

When we start doing this work, it is likely that we will encounter resentments. In many cases, we will find that they are unjustified because we are the ones who created the unfavorable conditions, albeit unconsciously. As for more justifiable resentments, we will learn to assert ourselves in a healthy way so as to avoid being taken advantage of. And we will learn to discriminate between real and unjustified resentments.

We would do well to cultivate the will to go through this process, and to face whatever is really within us, because this is the only way to stop suffering.

Questions and Answers:

When a person who predominantly relies on one pseudo-solution is thwarted, he or she may resort to another one as an alternative means of accomplishing the same goal.

The stronger a person’s inner conflicts, the stronger the difference between that person’s real self and his or her ISI. One source of clues to the nature of our ISI is our desire-life as expressed in daydreams. Expectations and rigid commands, as well as anxieties when they are not satisfied, are also a source of information about the ISI.

We incarnate with all of our baggage, so it is not the case that all children are born equally well-adjusted.

© 2007 — All rights reserved (see first post in general orientation category).

Pathwork Lecture #085: Distortions of the Instincts of Self-Preservation and Procreation

Summary of Pathwork Lecture #085:
Distortions of the Instincts of Self-Preservation and Procreation

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, consult the Lecture itself, available free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P085.PDF

The instincts of self-preservation and procreation perform important roles in their pure forms, but they become destructive when distorted.

Because of our misconception that any form of rejection or withholding of love or admiration is a psychic “death,” we enlist our self-preservation instinct in the struggle against rejection. One of our tactics in this struggle is the establishment of the Idealized Self Image.

We often feel an exaggerated sense of threat about certain life situations, because we are feeling a lack of emotional security. Instead of building our own inner sense of security, we struggle to get others to provide it for us by feeling towards us the way we would like them to.

Another tactic resorted to for emotional “safety” is holding back expression of the life force, or emotional constipation, which leads to faults such as avarice, prejudice, rigidity and so on, which may express on various subtle levels of the personality.

In its healthy form, the instinct of procreation includes all sorts of creativity and reaching out to communicate and to experience pleasure supreme. In distortion, it leads to greed, craving, grasping and addiction. These energies have more destructive power when they are unconscious, as when one has superimposed a false serene detachment.

The distorted form of these two instincts are both self-centered, and thus they create frustration, anxiety, tension, and guilt. There is always the need to have others behave a certain way, and the fear that they may not. In truth, safety lies in not being self-centered, and in not depending on unworkable expectations and rules, but instead remaining flexibly able to adapt to whatever comes our way. Also, safety comes from being able to see other people emotionally, which we cannot do when we are self-centered. We would do well to FIND where these emotions live in us. Disharmony, including shyness and timidity, is a clue.

The self-centeredness of these distortions make us unable to accept any sort of defeat, whether major and conspicuous or insignificant and subtle. Our tactics for avoiding humiliation, such as embellishing situations when we describe them to others or blaming outside forces for our defeats, are indicators of how we really feel. However, dignity comes from the acceptance of defeat when we have suffered it.

An aggressive person hides defeat, sometimes by blaming others. A submissive person aggrandizes it to force others to protect them. An artificially serene person denies the very existence of the defeat. All these trends may exist in a single person. We would do well to ASK ourselves, “how, on a feeling level, do I really take defeat?” Defeat should be understood as including even minor, inconsequential setbacks and embarrassments. When we become aware of our reactions in this regard, we are freed from the false need to struggle against our defeats, and this liberates our energies and gives us dignity and self-respect.

Questions and Answers:

Superimposing the mature reaction we “ought to have,” and may in fact have to a partial extent, over our immature reactions interferes with full awareness. We would do well to become fully aware of our childish feelings, allowing them to come to the surface without judgment or censorship, although this does not mean that we should act on them. Then we will see the excessive demand for perfection we impose on ourselves and the way we pretend that if others were the way we would like them to be, we could be our idealized self image. This externalization of responsibility is blaming, and it holds us back from being the way we would like to be.

It is very important to understand that recognition of the emotions does not require one to act on them. We may refuse to see this distinction because underneath we are struggling against seeing the falsity of our idealized self image. Also, a person may have concluded that it is right to be hostile and hard-hearted. And a person who relies on intellect out of distrust of instincts and feelings may inhibit the feelings which would guide him or her in a positive direction. We would do well to RECOGNIZE the compulsive quality of negative feelings.

As we get in touch with our real selves, we are better able to connect to the real self in others.

Resistance to change is a manifestation of the distorted instinct of self-preservation and the glorification of the idealized self, along with the belief that the idealized self may yet prove to be the solution to the problem of life.

While spiritual growth may lead to a toning down of negative feelings, one should beware of false serenity which may be masking those emotions. We would do well to ADOPT a goal of awareness of our real selves, rather than striving to be emotionally leveled out and “there.”

© 2007 — All rights reserved (see first post in general orientation category).

Pathwork Lecture #084: Love, Power, Serenity, as Divine Attributes and as Distortions

Summary of Pathwork Lecture #084:
Love, Power, Serenity, as Divine Attributes and as Distortions

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, consult the Lecture itself, available free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P084.PDF

(Summarizer’s Note: This Lecture was originally published under the title, “Love, Power, Serenity, as Distorted by the Idealized Self-Image:”)

In the healthy person, the divine attributes of love, power and serenity work with each other in a flexible, complementary fashion. However, in the unhealthy person, these attributes conflict because one of them has unconsciously been chosen as the dominant “solution” to the problem of life. Unfortunately, the adoption of this pseudo-solution just brings about more of the trouble it was meant to avoid, thereby creating a vicious cycle of suffering, faulty remedial approach, and further suffering.

The following are descriptions of personality types based on the choice of distorted love (submissiveness), distorted power (aggressiveness) and distorted serenity (withdrawal) as the primary approach to life. They are archetypes, and it should be borne in mind that a mixture of these approaches exists in everyone to varying degrees. To the extent that the demands of contradictory approaches are incorporated into a person’s idealized self-image (ISI), he or she is subjected to profoundly conflicting internal demands and, no matter what he or she does, cannot avoid feelings of inadequacy and self-contempt.

Distorted love; submission: For those who rely on the pseudo-solution of distorted love, submissiveness and self-effacement are means of obtaining the primary goal of being emotionally cared for as though they were children. There is a false helplessness involved, which is “locked in” through incorporation into the ISI. Such people see themselves as virtuously modest and self-sacrificing, unaware of the manipulation involved in their submissiveness. Their conviction about their own “goodness”makes it difficult for them to uncover the pride inherent in their attitude towards themselves, and in their contempt for those who may be aggressive, or perhaps simply assertive in a healthy way. Moreover, their attachment to manipulating others into complying with their needs prevents them from developing self-reliance.

Because submissiveness runs counter to any healthy assertion of the self, it breeds estrangement from the self. Because of the indignities a submissive person suffers, it also breeds contempt for the self, which is projected onto others because it is painful, and because it contradicts the ISI’s postulate that self-effacement is a virtuous and effective approach to life. And since contempt for others runs counter to the ISI, it must be suppressed as well. Thus, in spite of what is really happening on various unconscious levels, submissive persons believe that they are innocent victims of a cruel world, suffering in spite of their goodness.

While the submissive person is proud of regarding others as “good,” the truth is that the only thing a submissive person really cares about in regard to another is whether he or she will tend to the submissive person’s needs for approval and protection.

Distorted power; aggression: The aggressive type has concluded that safety lies in power and independence. Such persons cut themselves off from their feelings and their compassion in order to avoid vulnerability, and feel shame when their emotions come to the fore. The drive for power may manifest as competitiveness (the aggressive person hates to fail at anything), or it may be more subtle and pervasive. In any event, the isolation which this approach to life engenders causes a suffering which the aggressive person will deny, and this pretense is difficult for the aggressive person to discover, because of the image such a person holds of “goody-goodies” as hypocrites.

Because aggressive persons cannot live up to the demands of their ISIs, they feel self-contempt, which is then projected onto others. Aggressive persons also cultivate a cynical outlook about the world and other people, taking pride in their “objectivity” about this.

Distorted serenity; withdrawal: When serenity is chosen as the pseudo-solution, it may be because the person was originally torn between the submission and aggressive alternatives, and retreated from this internal conflict. Such a person will be convinced of having attained true serenity until life circumstances bring the underlying internal conflict to the fore.

While the motivation of the withdrawn, artificially serene person is the same as that of the aggressive person, i.e., to remain detached from feelings in order to avoid being hurt, the ISI of the artificially serene person demands a benign detachment and acceptance of others’ imperfections. Inevitably, this type of person must fall short of the ISI’s demands and feel the same frustration and self-contempt as the other types feel.

In applying these archetypes in one’s personal work, it is important to bear in mind that all three may exist in varying degrees in various aspects of one’s personality and life. Moreover, the work requires us to FEEL the painful emotions underlying our false solutions, rather than merely intellectualizing about them. When we do have this feeling experience, it may seem like we are regressing, but the experience is exactly what we need for our growth. Rather than looking to discover hidden feelings, we would do well to FOCUS our attention on our habitual emotional reactions which have become so familiar that we take them for granted.

This work will make us aware of the tyranny of our ISIs and the dependency we have on other people, and will help us to understand how we have created the difficulties in our lives. It will also put us in touch with our real selves and our real values, as opposed to the values we think we ought to have, or the values which we claim but have not yet sufficiently matured to be able to fully own. The work will also help us to grow into our real selves and so to let go of our false need for the approval of others. Our connection to self will enable us to be spontaneous, and to trust our intuition. Our attributes of love, power and serenity will function in harmony with each other, so that we can love without giving ourselves away, enjoy the power of mastery over ourselves, and be in serenity without avoiding experiences and feelings.

Questions and Answers:

A temper tantrum in response to not being loved can come from a power solution or from frustration over the failure of the submission solution.

A person may be unaware of the way the love and power energies within his or her personality contradict each other, and this false belief that the energies are unified could express as a belief that the person is flexible and that the person always has the right judgment. At the same time, there may be other levels at which that person perceives an incompatibility between the energies which doesn’t actually have to exist.

Compulsions cannot be overcome by discipline — at best, symptoms will just be shifted in a different direction. It is essential to discover the root cause. Often, compulsions reflect the unconscious shifting of a frustrated inner drive onto a substitute. Drug addiction is explained in part by the fact that as one becomes more and more self-estranged, pleasure becomes more and more difficult to obtain, so that the longing for it increases and a substitute or shortcut is sought.

We are not victims of the distorted thought forms of others, because the effect they have on us can help us to understand our own distortions.

© 2007 — All rights reserved (see first post in general orientation category).

Pathwork Lecture #083: The Idealized Self-Image

Summary of Pathwork Lecture #083:  The Idealized Self-Image

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, consult the Lecture itself, available free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P083.PDF

Our belief that if we are unhappy in the moment, we must always be unhappy, causes us to struggle against unhappiness (and death).  Because we experience pain at birth and thereafter, we constantly fear it.  A universal countermeasure we resort to, which always has counterproductive consequences, is the creation of the “idealized self image” (ISI), which expresses as the personal mask.

The goal of creating the ISI is to gain pleasure by compensating for one’s lack of self-confidence.  However, the artificiality of the ISI actually creates insecurity instead.  As children, we were punished with a withdrawal of affection when we were “bad.”  Thus, we felt pressure to be as “good” as possible, and to make ourselves into a “good” version of the self.  We are still engaged in trying to be this ISI, but the effort is inherently futile, and while we may have lost touch with or psychic efforts to manipulate ourselves in this way, we still feel guilt about the pretense.

It is easy to justify the effort to be “good,” but these rationalizations obscure the pride which fuels our efforts, as well as the fear of exposure and the shame which comes with not being in integrity.  The ISI often includes aspects of unrealistically strict moral standards and (contradictory) glorification of particular negative personality traits as supposed evidence of strength or superiority.  The impossibility of living up to one’s ISI results in the creation of an inner tyrant, and leads us to plunge into misery when we fail, often resorting to the externalization of blame onto others or onto life.  When we experience a sense of failure, frustration, compulsion and shame, this is evidence that the ISI is at work.  The solution lies in ACCEPTING ourselves for who we are, and being willing to take the consequences of the energy we put out.  Only in this way can we experience true self-confidence.

We would do well to OBSERVE the vicious cycle of insecurity, intensified inner demands to conform to the ISI, an intensified sense of the impossibility of ever doing so, and intensified insecurity, and to NOTE the all the subtle ways that the ISI manifests in our lives.

The more we invest in the ISI, the more estranged we are from our true self, which is the only part of us which can truly live and grow and be, and the more we impoverish and weaken it.  When we discover who we really are, we become able to trust our intuitions and feelings, because they will have the opportunity to mature.  And as we recognize the false reasoning behind the creation of the ISI, and get in touch with the damage it has caused us, we will let go of our attachment to it.

We would do well to CONSIDER that our feelings of anxiety and depression may cover threats to our ISI, and that our anger at others may be an externalization of our anger at our own inability to live up to our ISI — an anger which is too unbearable to keep within us.

The ISI is grounded in an impatient perfectionism, and while it desires many of the same things as the real self, its motivations are different.

A benefit of letting go of the demands of the ISI is that it will relax the overall energetic stance of inwardly “holding on” which the pressure of living up to the ISI creates within us, and this relaxation will manifest in an ability to let go of all sorts of negative attitudes.

Questions and Answers:

The lower and higher selves are not separate souls, but split-off parts of a single whole which will eventually integrate, provided that we are willing to accept the fact that we have a lower self.  The duality between life and death similarly disappears when we accept the reality of death.

It is more productive to focus on our own minor disappointments than to try to learn form the tragedies of others.  Generally, we need to experience things ourselves in order to learn.

Criminals should be restrained in order that they might not cause further harm, but the emphasis should be on healing them, not punishing them.

© 2007 — All rights reserved (see first post in general orientation category).

Pathwork Lecture #082: The Conquest of Duality Symbolized in the Life and Death of Jesus

Summary of Pathwork Lecture #082: The Conquest of Duality Symbolized in the Life and Death of Jesus

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, refer to the Lecture itself, obtainable free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P082.PDF

We can come to a true, organic understanding that there is no death only by confronting the little “deaths” of our daily lives, without cringing from the suffering they bring us. One cannot seek escape from death and suffering without inadvertently fleeing life and pleasure as well. If we observe ourselves, we can see the way we cringe from happiness when we get close to it.

Jesus said many things that were not recorded, sometimes because they were misunderstood as being inconsistent with the rest of His teachings. When Jesus said, “become ye as little children,” He was referring to the intensity with which children experience life. It is better for us to fully and intensely experience life, including its ups and downs, than to affect a false detachment and serenity which is in fact nothing more than an attempt to escape pain and suffering. Those who affect such false serenity often have contempt for those whose intense mood fluctuation do in fact reflect their continued involvement in the world of duality, but true detachment comes only after the acceptance of all aspects of life, including death. Courage and honesty are crucial to one’s spiritual development.

The healthy way to approach suffering is not to avoid it (or to seek it out), but to accept it with an openness to the experience and a willingness to learn from it. It is error to believe that God is responsible for our suffering. We do well to SEEK an understanding of how we have created our suffering, and to conduct this investigation actively, but in a calm and relaxed way. When we are perturbed, we would do well to EXAMINE what we want and what we fear on a deep level, below what we reflexively feel and tell ourselves. We can begin this process effectively by focusing on the little disharmonies in our lives, rather than the really big issues. Asking about our deepest wants and fears will bring us face to face with our desire for love, and with the way we reject love out of the fear of being hurt. Our tendency to deny our true desires deadens us and keeps us from getting what we could have and enjoy in this life, even if it is less wonderful than our ultimate desire. We can free ourselves by REALIZING that our self-protective rejection of love is a running away from suffering and death.

While Jesus faced His death in the proper spirit of openness, He did experience a moment of doubt and forgetting of what He knew, when He wondered whether God had forsaken Him. And, rather than cover it up, He expressed it. Being untruthful would have been letting his disciples down. His truthfulness reflected an innocence and purity which is part of what Jesus had been referring to when He said, “become ye as little children.”

The ultimate meaning of Christ’s reappearance on Earth after His ordeal is that if we go through our lives and our ordeals in the same spirit of openness and truthfulness, we will subsequently enjoy a fullness of life and joy while still in this incarnation. When we approach that which is inevitable in our lives with the proper spirit of self-examination, we can begin to understand the ways in which we unconsciously choose difficulties which are not inevitable.

Questions and Answers:

If we look back on things we have feared and then survived, we can see the illusory nature of our fear. But we can not get anywhere by using this knowledge to try to talk ourselves out of our fear. The proper approach is to ACKNOWLEDGE the fear and suffering and to RELAX into it, keeping ourselves intellectually aware without using our intellect to interfere with our feelings.

Being truthful is more complicated than just saying what may be true. The question to ask is whether one’s motives in expressing a particular truth are in harmony with the larger truth of the situation.

The belief that Jesus reappeared in His physical body is based on a fear of death. In truth, he reappeared in His spirit body, as a condensation of spiritual matter. His reappearance in human form was meant to symbolize that in reaching a higher state of life and awareness, we need not and ought not to reject our bodies and bodily pleasure. When the life force is unblocked, it must necessarily flow through the body. Greater creativity will also be a result of spiritual healing and leading a fuller life, although a person can also be creative in spite of being spiritually sick. Seeking immortality through leaving behind artistic creations or other works is just another form of trying to flee from death.

Sublimating out of a false belief that bodily desires are inherently evil is a self-deceptive flight from life. Sublimation out of a belief that acting out without restraint would be more pleasurable, but would lead to conflict with the prohibiting forces of society, fails to take into account that a mature soul’s satisfaction of the pleasure drive does not bring that soul into conflict with the environment. Only the limited and distorted soul has to choose between seeking pleasure in harmful ways and repressing the pleasure drive and channeling it into other aspects of the psyche.

© 2005, 2007 — All rights reserved (see first post in General Orientation category)

Pathwork Lecture #081: Conflicts in the World of Duality

Summary of Pathwork Lecture #81: Conflicts in the World of Duality

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, refer to the Lecture itself, obtainable free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P081.PDF

Below the level of the psyche where rigid misconceptions, or images, exist, is the level of duality, or of conflict between opposites, such as happiness and unhappiness, and love and selfishness. This conflict creates confusion, because attitudes which are meant to create a certain result often bring about the opposite, and because truth is often distorted into falsehood.

At the core, we long for bliss, based not on our memory of life in the womb, but on our memory of an actual spiritual state of supreme pleasure. However, life on Earth prohibits bliss. The prohibition creates the world of duality, and at the same time, the world of duality creates the prohibition. The origin of the creation of duality is our fear of death, which seems to be opposed to life and therefore to bliss. For these purposes, “death” includes loss, change, and movement into the unknown. The healthier our attitude towards death, the more we can allow the life force to flow through us.

The two major strategies for coping with death are (1) superimposing faith over our deeper attitude of fear, which only causes us to despise ourselves because we know we’re faking it; and (2) self-destructively negating life and bliss in order to “get it over with” since death is inevitable. Both of these are fear-based solutions. The only answer to the problem of death is to face it squarely.

We would do well to BECOME AWARE of our struggle against death, our longing for bliss, our artificial coping mechanisms, and our false belief that acceptance of death means annihilation. “The task is learning the strength to die, for only the person who knows how to die knows how to live.” Knowing how to live is knowing how to reconcile the opposites in our souls in order to free the life force to flow through us.

Facing the superimposed and artificial aspect of our faith and the fear underneath will help us to make a grounded connection to spiritual truth, free up our life force, and make room for the experience of bliss in our lifetimes.

The collective reality we have created tends to impose an undesirable reality principle upon us, so that we often have to compromise our happiness in order to survive. By facing our individual inner problems, we not only enhance our ability to deal with the current mass reality, but we exert a positive influence upon it.

Our childish craving for love has its roots in unfulfilled childish needs as well as in the spiritual memory of a prior perfect state of bliss. Gratifying this craving may simultaneously prove damaging to another person. We do well to REALIZE that a true experience of bliss at the expense of another is impossible. It is also an aspect of maturity to REFLECT on the element of time as it applies to the law of cause and effect, to appreciate the illusory nature of time, and to GIVE UP the false need for immediate gratification without abandoning the wish itself. This amounts to an experience of dying, which brings an awareness of the illusory nature of death and a healthy form of strength.

Questions and Answers:

Doing the work of this lecture leads us organically to sensing a dimension behind time.

We learn to face death in our lives by GETTING IN TOUCH with our desire for pleasure supreme, and by OBSERVING our moods, emotions and fears, all of which represent a form of physical death. We do well to PAY ATTENTION to everything from which we cringe, without repressing the fear. This will lead us to an awareness that partly, we fear change and the unknown. We do well to ACCEPT ourselves as beings who fear death at this stage in our development, and to extend this acceptance to all of our resistance to the negative aspects of life. Strength will come from courage, an honest facing of the self, and a relaxed energetic posture.

Asceticism is often a self-deceptive denial of life.

A healthy attitude towards death cannot be superimposed. One must go through one’s distorted terror of death before one can realize that life and death, as well as pain and pleasure, are one.

© 2005, 2007 — All rights reserved (see first post in General Orientation category)

Pathwork Lecture #080: Cooperation; Communication; Union

Summary of Pathwork Lecture #080:

Cooperation; Communication; Union

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, consult the Lecture itself, available free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P080.PDF

Union is the highest and most desirable state of all. It simply IS, and is indescribable. Cooperation and communication are preliminary stages which lead to union, cooperation being a superficial form of communication.

Obstacles to the free flow of the energies of cooperation and communication impede progress towards union and need to be removed. Over-eager communication, with its element of demand based on imaginary need, provokes withdrawal in others, as a restoration of energetic balance. There’s ultimately nothing personal about it, and no reason to withdraw from others to protect one’s self against this type of “rejection.” In fact, when we fluctuate between over-eagerness and withdrawal, or even pursue both approaches simultaneously, we exhaust and deprive ourselves. Understanding all of this theoretically is not enough; we need to DISCOVER these distorted energies within ourselves, CONNECT them to our unresolved childhood disappointments, and UNDERSTAND the way they cause unpleasant events and circumstances in our lives. Then we will get what we want organically, without inadvertently sabotaging it. We will progress from relationships of dependency and need to relationships of communication.

We would do well to OBSERVE the way we hide our over-eagerness from ourselves and others out of shame, and affect a false independence. We would also do well to OBSERVE the ways that we use submissiveness (often disguised as love), aggression and withdrawal to try to get what we want, and the way we over-dramatize our lives. Any one of these methods will sabotage our getting the connection we want, and when we go further and simultaneously pursue mutually exclusive alternatives, we make a tangled mess of ourselves.

Healthy interdependence in a relationship can exist only when we are free from false and distorted need and urgency.

Questions and Answers:

Exaggerated need is based on a neurotic belief that one’s life depends on the need’s satisfaction. Relationships based on need and dependency are based on emotional bargaining, and on the interplay of domineering and submissive attitudes. In a healthy, spontaneous relationship, mutuality happens organically.

Behind every disharmonious feeling there is an original frustrated wish, which we would do well to DISCOVER. The intensity of our frustration and anxiety is a clue to where we have work to do, but our feelings may also be covered up by a false harmony, which also needs to be detected.

Union is made difficult by our unwillingness to look at how we cling to our preconceptions for safety.

A myth is a deep universal truth conveyed in a symbolic form akin to the picture language of the spirit world.

When a clairvoyant appears to be making contact with a spirit, it is possible that the spirit is in fact actually there.

Electroshock therapy is damaging and provides only a pseudo-cure.

Dreams are highly personal, and no formula for interpreting them can be given.

If we really want to know about our innermost selves, we will guided to someone who can help us.

© 2007 — All rights reserved (see first post in general orientation category).

Pathwork Lecture #79: Questions and Answers

Summary of Pathwork Lecture #79: Questions and Answers

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, consult the Lecture itself, available free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P079.PDF

The cross, symbolizes man’s twofold nature, — the conflict between construction, connection and creativity on the one hand and destruction, isolation and stagnation on the other. Until these opposites are harmonized, pain and suffering are inevitable. As Jesus demonstrated, when we integrate the opposites through love and sacrifice, we are resurrected. This is in harmony with Eastern teachings.

Images do not dissolve suddenly. After the initial conceptual breakthrough, one should be prepared for old habits to reassert themselves, perhaps subtly, and should continue to observe one’s self carefully.

Real, permanent strength can come only from completely understanding the negative emotions and motivations which live within us, sometimes camouflaged by more positive material. It is important to REMEMBER that no matter what the circumstances, where there is unhappiness, there must be a misunderstanding of reality. We would do well to look beneath our surface motivations and EXAMINE the often inconsistent motivations which lie below. Unfortunately, our compulsions, drives and motivations are largely the result of pretense. We superimpose not only positive emotions, but all negative emotions, because we are under a false impression that feeling certain destructive, inauthentic feelings will get us what we want (i.e., love and acceptance), when in fact the strategy is futile. When we let go of this way of being, we free our intuitive capacities to function properly. When we get in touch with the deep motivations which cause us to superimpose certain attitudes, we understand that even if this strategy were to work, it wouldn’t be worth it.

Compulsion is the result of a false belief that certain feelings will achieve particular results, as well as of impatience based on the misconception that immediate gratification is necessary. All of this estranges us from our selves and makes us weaker. Real strength is also compromised by the attempt to superimpose artificial strength.

Outer physical deformities are less important than inner spiritual deformities.

There is a limit to how much one can accomplish on this path alone. While each step we take may be a small one, it is tremendously important as part of the whole. Impatience is a symptom of inner distortions and it obstructs our progress. there is no problem so firmly bound up that it couldn’t be dissolved in a lifetime with a commitment to doing inner work. But when we have unrealistic and distorted motivations for progressing, these create frustration and impatience which impedes the process of growth.

It is possible to do image work with children.

When we are in relationship difficulty and we are unaware of where we have been hurt, we will remain stuck. We may remain unaware of our true pain because we unconsciously consider it inadmissible and therefore exaggerate other hurts to justify our resentments.

“Thou shalt not kill” refers not only to physical killing but also to directing destructive emotions, not only towards others but also towards one’s self. We “kill” others, in a way destructive to ourselves, when we automatically despise those whom we believe are despised by persons whose approval we crave. Even when we hide this attitude, it causes damage. The only salvation is love and truth, and we can get there only through utter self-honesty.

Among other reasons, a person might have shied away from asking the Guide questions out of stagnation, or out of fear that the answer might somehow lead to the uncovering of inner material which the person was afraid to face.

A phobia can be understood by looking first for the common denominator in the person’s life problems. The phobia will then be understandable as a symbol. Permanent relief comes only from understanding the whole picture.

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