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.

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