Pathwork Lecture #100: Meeting the Pain of Destructive Patterns

An Unofficial Summary of Pathwork Lecture #100:  Meeting the Pain of Destructive Patterns

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, consult the Lecture itself, available free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P100.PDF

As children, we suffer from our parents’ imperfect ability to love, and also from being treated as children rather than as individuals, which is equally destructive.  The climate of our upbringing is a continual, minor shock which can affect us even more than a sudden trauma.  We become used to this climate, accept it, and develop destructive defenses in a misguided effort to deal with it.

When the chosen pseudo-solution is withdrawal in order to avoid emotional hurt, we eventually come to understand through doing this work that we are better off feeling the pain.  However, when we work our way through our defenses, the pain we encounter will be unpleasant and will challenge our resolve.

When the chosen pseudo-solution is submissiveness, we become weak.  Moreover, we end up isolated because we are looking for a strong protector when there can be no such person in our lives, since we must protect ourselves.  Also, our weakness and dependency exerts pressure on others to enable us, and to remain strong for our sake.

All pseudo-solutions bring pain to ourselves and others.  The withdrawal solution rejects others, depriving us of the experience of loving them and depriving others of the experience of receiving our love.  The submissiveness solution similarly rejects the weaknesses and needs of others, thereby hurting them.  The aggressive solution also rejects and hurts others by its false superiority.  Whenever we hurt others, we hurt ourselves.

Our pseudo-solutions are part of our idealized self-image, which isolates us through its falsity and its self-aggrandizement, and brings us the very pain our pseudo-solutions were meant to avoid. Our perfectionism make it impossible for us to accept and deal with life, or to really live it.  We can BECOME AWARE of how all this works through sincere self-searching.  Merely observing these mechanisms begins an organic process of dissolution.  Then we are ready to cross over into a new way of life; however, initially this brings pain.  Constructive patterns will gradually emerge as we go through the work of experiencing that which we initially ran away from.  At first, however, we will continue to attract negative experiences based on our old patterns, although we will tend to respond to them in a more evolved way.

As we discover the ways in which we have misguidedly created our own unhappiness, we will discover our ability to create the fulfillment our soul is craving.  The harder we work on this path, in spite of our resistance, the sooner we will cultivate this strength and self-reliance.

More significant than the pain which caused us to institute our counterproductive defenses is the pain of all the unfulfillment we have experience ever since as a result of those defenses.  As we go through our pain, we will first feel ourselves trapped in our inability to achieve fulfillment, but then we will gradually develop the ability.

During the phase of unfulfillment, we will have the opportunity to become precisely aware of our real, basic needs.  We will become aware of our need to receive love.  As a result of having pushed this need into unconsciousness because of the pain of its unfulfillment, we inadvertently stunted our ability to give love, and this kept our need to receive love stuck in a childish phase of development.  As we go through our pain and become aware of the need to give love, we may also encounter frustration because we lack an outlet for this need.  The pressure of these unfulfilled needs is not something new — before we were aware of it, it may have expressed in sickness or other symptoms.  As we experience the pain, it will serve us to BECOME AWARE of our needs to give and receive love, the frustration, the pressure, the sense of helplessness and the temptation to evade the pain.  In the interim period of development, the inner pressure of unfulfillment may be keenly felt, and it will serve us well to REMEMBER that this phase is just a tunnel through which we have to pass.  If we persevere and resist the temptation to avoid, using our relapses as lessons, we will become more mature and versatile.

Questions & Answers:

Fear is often a defense to feeling pain.  It is healthier to face pain than to avoid it.  Running away makes us feel inadequate, and increases the unfulfillment and the pain we are trying to avoid.

Trying to “learn” to feel the need to give love is a self-manipulation.  To get to a place where we genuinely feel the need to give love, it is most productive to OBSERVE our immature emphasis on receiving.  We grow into the feeling intermittently, but our periods of being connected to it gradually get more frequent and longer-lasting.  It will serve us to approach this growth process with patience.

We tend to carry over from childhood the false beliefs that (1) reality is unpleasant and therefore pleasure must be sought in fantasy, and (2) happiness can be attained only through selfishness.

Regarding the Guides’ statement in the previous Lecture that one person who gains inner truth has a greater influence on the entire cosmic development than millions who do not, this has to do with the fact that when we defend, we reject, and this builds up the defenses of others, whereas when we are open and undefended, we inspire others to adopt the same posture.

© 2009 — All rights reserved (see first post in general orientation category).

Pathwork Lecture #099: Falsified Impressions of Parents: Cause and Cure

An Unofficial Summary of Pathwork Lecture #099:  Falsified Impressions of Parents:  Cause and Cure

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, consult the Lecture itself, available free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P099.PDF

Our lives are empty without the capacity to love.  The capacity to love is not the same as a craving to receive love.  The more fearful, self-involved and dependent we are, the less able we are to let love flow through us, and the more meaningless our lives feel to us.  Freeing the capacity to love requires us to resolve our psychological problems.

As children, we focus only on a few aspects of our parents’ or caregivers’ personalities, remaining completely unaware of the remainder.  This simplified image of these people, which exists even if we know better intellectually, colors our experience of life and restricts the channel which permits to love and experience others in a real way.  It is certain that there is a connection between the most problematic area of our lives and an image we have of a parent or other significant person from our early childhood.

The remedy for the negative effects of this situation is to BECOME AWARE of how we really feel about our family members, and then to CONSIDER whether these feelings might not be related to fragmentary images of such persons.  We would do well to ASK whether we see our parents as complex, vulnerable human beings, capable of having contradictory aspects, or as one-dimensional, artificial and invulnerable robotic beings.    Having an unrealistic image of our parents, whether it is positive or negative, binds us to certain problems in our lives, and limits our power and our capacity to love, until we manage to correct the false perception.  Thus, it will serve us to CONSIDER who our parents really are, with detachment and objectivity, making an effort to see all of their facets — their childhood experiences, hurts, fears, frustrations and so on.

Giving up a glorified image of a parent may be difficult, especially when this parent was the only person we could depend upon in childhood for acceptance and love.  Giving up a hated image can also be difficult, as where accepting the humanity of that parent is felt as a justification of the harm which he or she inflicted.  Our resistance to seeing the truth about our parents is partly about losing the security we thought we had gained by creating a simple, static view of them.  It will serve us to ASK in meditation and prayer to see the truth about our parents.

We need to see the truth about ourselves in order to see the truth in others, but seeing the truth in others also helps us to see the truth about ourselves.

Even where there are practical obstacles to gaining information about our parents, as where they are deceased, there is a way.  For instance, it may by contacting someone else who knew them.  It may even be by nothing more than the sincere prayer to know, which will be answered in some way, as by a shift in perspective which makes one able to understand remembered events in a new and more informative light.

The first step is to DETERMINE whether we want to know the truth.  If we have resistance, simply ACKNOWLEDGING it and keeping the issue in consciousness will cause the resistance to fade organically over time.  If we hear ourselves saying, “I can’t find out,” it is important to ASK whether that really means, “I don’t want to find out.”

Questions & Answers:

Understanding why our parents may have been cruel brings us to an understanding that it was their problem — that they were doing the best they could at the time — and consequently we stop taking their behavior on as being about us.  This enables us to establish constructive patterns which will reinforce our feeling of self-worth.  Whether or not we believe this, or can see how gaining knowledge about our parents would be helpful, it will serve us to PRAY to see the truth in this respect.

The real meaning of the Fourth Commandment is not that we should compulsively superimpose false positive feelings for our parents over our true feelings, which is unhealthy, but that we should see them as they truly are, thereby respecting their humanity.

Spiritually, one person who gains inner truth has a greater influence on the entire cosmic development than millions who do not.

After an image has been dissolved without its root cause being found, the false need for protection may persist, contributing to the creation of a new image.

In the words of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” Earth refers to the outward material manifestations of our lives and Heaven refers to the inner psychological and spiritual levels.  Doing God’s will requires not only right actions, but an inner intention.

A balance of healthy activity and healthy passivity brings us into harmony with the state of being, which means heaven.

Masochism results from finding pleasure only in the pain of rejection, and giving up on ever finding anything better.  Many other aspects may be relevant to any individual person, and may require exploration, but this core is always present.

Where there is resistance coupled with an unwillingness to look at it, this is where we must focus attention in order to open the love channel within us and lead a meaningful life.

Rejection of pleasure may have its root in rejection of the self.

Sadism and masochism are the same current, directed outwardly in one case and inwardly in the other.  Ultimately they are the same, because we hurt ourselves when we hurt others, and if we hurt ourselves, we must eventually hurt someone else.

© 2009 — All rights reserved (see first post in general orientation category).

Pathwork Lecture #098: Wishful Daydreams

An Unofficial Summary of Pathwork Lecture #098:  Wishful Daydreams

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, consult the Lecture itself, available free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P098.PDF

The ultimate reason for living is to make one’s life meaningful, and this can be done only by merging with the universal life force, from which we keep ourselves separate, in a misguided attempt at self-protection, by our self-centeredness and our cowardice.  Apart from doing our work of self-finding, we can bring meaning into our lives by doing something which benefits others as well as ourselves.  If we PRAY sincerely to be involved in such an activity, the prayer will be answered.  When our lives continue to feel meaningless over time, this is a sign that we are stuck in our fearful isolationism.  GETTING IN TOUCH with our resistance to giving will help us grow beyond it.

Daydreams are symptoms.  Rather than suppressing our daydreams, which will just cause another type of symptom to emerge,  we would do well to OBSERVE and EVALUATE them for what they can tell us about ourselves.

One type of daydream is about gratifying pride.  In such a daydream, we convince those who have slighted us that we are superior.  This is a waste of energy, and the momentary relief it brings us removes our motivation to find our own negative contributions to our relationships with others.

Another kind of wishful daydreaming is about imaginary satisfaction of our unmet needs.  When our isolationism inhibits our ability to achieve satisfaction, we retreat into a fantasy world in which we are in complete control, and the longer we stay there, the less able we are to deal with the real world, and the more attractive the pseudo-fulfillment of our fantasy world consequently seems.  Thus, we remain removed from reality.  We would do well to ASSESS how true this is about us.

When we live in daydreams, we convince ourselves that they will eventually come true, but they never do.  While fantasy seems like it would be more satisfying, reality is far more satisfying when we give up the false need to be in complete control of it.

On the positive side, daydreams may provide an incentive to live fully.  They are also useful indicators of how far along we are.  Moreover, they potentially bring our unsatisfied needs into awareness.

Questions & Answers:

Our psyches may choose to have substitute fears, rather than face the fear of being ourselves.  To the extent that not facing ourselves prohibits our fulfillment, the psyche may choose the substitute satisfaction of daydreams instead.

While “needs” are real and healthy, “drives” come from compulsions which are rooted in misconceptions.

Not daydreaming could be a reflection of stifled creativity, or of hopelessness and passive resignation.  Sometimes we give up unrealistic daydreams as we get older, but sometimes we don’t.

Spiritual law is experienced more harshly by the less developed.  This is not divine retribution; rather, without such hardship, integration could not take place.

The “unconscious” includes everything we are unaware of, positive and negative.  Our whole life experience on Earth is geared towards bringing into awareness that which is already within us.  In sleep or deep relaxation, unconscious knowledge can surface and we can resolve certain previously intractable problems.  We can activate this process with a specific, constructive intention to solve a particular problem, and to solve it in the best possible way, even if this requires us to give up a selfish goal.

© 2009 — All rights reserved (see first post in general orientation category).

Pathwork Lecture #097: Perfectionism Obstructs Happiness; Manipulation of Emotions

An Unofficial Summary of Pathwork Lecture #097:  Perfectionism Obstructs Happiness; Manipulation of Emotions

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, consult the Lecture itself, available free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P097.PDF

We find God by finding ourselves — that is, by coming home from self-alienation.  One indication of a return to the real self is the capacity to experience and to give joy.

While we understand intellectually that there is no perfection in this life, emotionally we expect perfection and believe that our happiness is dependent upon it.  Often, our intellectual knowledge causes us to suppress our emotional reactions to imperfection, which only increases our conflict and confusion in this respect.  Thus, we are unaware of the extent to which our demand for perfection prohibits a joyful life.  Only by accepting imperfection, in a healthy way, can we be happy.

The demand for perfection impedes our growth by causing us to repress our frustration.  If we were more aware of our frustrations, we could see where we might be able to achieve fulfillment by changing our patterns, and where it might be necessary to come to terms with imperfection.  So a growthful step is to ACKNOWLEDGE where we feel shortchanged in life, and resentful.  Growth demands that we COME TO TERMS with the necessary imperfection of this life, and FACE our state of complaint against that imperfection.

We apply our perfectionistic attitudes to our own growth efforts, blocking our progress by bringing shame and compulsion to what needs to be a flexible process.  We tend to create a false polarity between being perfect already and giving up our striving for progress entirely.  Also, we all tend to strive to some extent towards perfection according to external standards.  When we find instead our own innermost goal, and attempt to grow towards it gradually, then we give up our subtle pretenses and poses, and we come home from self-alienation.

Perfectionism motivates us to superimpose artificial emotions over our imperfect ones.  This prohibits spontaneity.  In some cases, we may exaggerate certain emotions, while in others we may stifle them.  Either way, we are motivated by fear, and we apply a forcing current which is grounded in the pressure of our repressed, unfulfilled needs.  This tampering with the flow of our emotions stunts our intuitive, creative and spontaneous capacities.  Thus, it will serve us to BECOME AWARE, through uncensored self-observation, of what we really feel and want, as opposed to what comes from perfectionistic “shoulds” regarding ourselves or others.  Often when we exaggerate the intensity of our feelings, this reflects an attempt to force another to feel a certain way.  Exaggeration of feelings is connected to aggression, while stifling emotions is connected to withdrawal.  Either alternative leads to shallow, unreal experience.

Sometimes we become aware only after the fact that we have reacted emotionally to something.  While we may pridefully berate ourselves for not being conscious of our reaction earlier, a delayed awareness is better than none, and as we do our work on the Path, the interval between reaction and awareness will shorten.

Questions & Answers:

If, for example, we have an unwanted aggressive feeling towards someone in spite of our intellectual understanding that such person has their own issues and distortions, the way beyond our feeling is to ACCEPT it as a symptom of our own human limitations, rather than getting caught up in the perfectionistic judgment that “I shouldn’t feel this way.”  This acceptance will open the door to the feelings of hurt which lie underneath the aggressiveness we have superimposed out of shame and fear of our vulnerability.  Confronting the hurt will take us even further into genuine feelings which are closer to our real self.

Acceptance of imperfection is not resignation to stagnation.  Rather, it is only when we relaxedly admit our imperfections that we are open to growth.

Perfectionism involves the prideful need to be perfect, the engagement of self-will in the inauthentic effort to be perfect, and the fear (1) that one’s own imperfections or the imperfections of others will prohibit one’s happiness, and (2) that our pretense will be exposed.  Thus, we waste effort in trying to maintain the idealized self-image, which impoverishes our life.

So-called “secondary reactions” are the result of emotional manipulation.

We may relate to a personal failure in exaggerated terms, in which case it would be productive to INVESTIGATE our tendency to exaggerate, as well as both the motives which caused us to desire what we failed to attain and any motives which may have caused us to sabotage our success.

On Earth, there are persons not mature enough to do self-searching work, as well as a few persons who may achieve integration of the self through a path which looks different on the surface from this one.  However, for those in between, who may tend to focus excessively on the areas of their psyches which function smoothly, an organized method of self-searching and self-integration is necessary.  The attitude that “God demands it of me” is a distortion — a healthy approach springs from a personal desire for fulfillment and meaning.  Spiritual growth is inseparable from psychological process.

© 2009 — All rights reserved (see first post in general orientation category).

Pathwork Lecture #096: Laziness a Symptom of Self-Alienation — Questions and Answers

An Unofficial Summary of Pathwork Lecture #096:  Laziness a Symptom of Self-Alienation — 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/P096.PDF

The only way to become secure is to become one’s real self, through facing one’s distortions.

The previous Lecture discussed various symptoms of self-alienation, such as relating to illusory versions of one’s self and others, or relying on public opinion or on habitual defense mechanisms.  Laziness, rather than being a simple “fault,” is also a symptom of self-alienation.  When we are connected to our real selves, we are in the energetic flow of life, and our life energy is constantly being renewed.  “Old age,” and the loss of energy that goes with it, is ultimately the result of self-alienation.  Compulsive over-activity is simply a superimposed countermeasure to overcome this laziness.  The work we do on the Path will eventually lead us to a joyful state of constant energetic renewal.  Only by FINDING our subtle pretenses and CONNECTING them to self-alienation can we discover our true selves.

Questions & Answers:

When our incentive to develop spiritually is grounded in fear (which stems from an unwillingness to accept aspects of God’s Creation), this is not a productive foundation for growth.  For a person whose growth process is motivated by fear, the essential step in his or her spiritual development is to accept reality as it is — to cease rebelling against it.

The way to the real self requires us to BECOME AWARE of our subtle pretenses, not only in the way we present ourselves to others, but also in the very way we approach life and living, and to risk LETTING GO of these pretenses, as well the rewards we believe these pretenses help us obtain, thereby stepping into an apparent void.  Doing this will relieve us of the sense of helplessness which is a sign of self-alienation.  Whenever we GIVE UP our resistance to taking responsibility for our negative creations — letting go of the effort to prove that our particular situation is different somehow, and not subject to the principle of self-responsibility — we come back to the real self.

Pseudo-solutions and the idealized self-image are based on pretense.  It will help us to DEFINE this pretense clearly.  Using a truth to avoid facing something is one form of pretense.

One can be held back in one’s growth by a fear that if one gives up childish helplessness, one will no longer be protected from pain.

It is counterproductive to stop processing something one has the urge to process merely because one judges that too much time has bent spent on it already.

Sometimes the best homework is to review recent work sessions and OBSERVE and TRANSLATE one’s emotions.

A mature person accepts life’s uncertainties.  However, as we find our real self, we experience a certainty about who we are.  Until we get to that point, rather than trying to figure out intellectually what aspects of us are real, it is more productive to ASK: “Why do I feel this way?”  “What are the productive and destructive consequences of my feelings?”  “What are my motivations?”

When a person is very uneven in his or her development, the inner tension needs to find an outlet, and this may even express as criminality.

Members of a family may be at very different levels of development.

Sickness and sin are the same thing; however, people are more prone to react to a “sinner” with contempt.

Dreams always contain an instructive message about one’s self from one’s own soul, even if there is also, in rare cases, a message from the spirit world.  In dream interpretation, the focus should be on finding the message from one’s own soul, being careful to look for subjective meanings rather than generalizing about dream symbols.  We would do well to resist the temptation to ignore dreams, belittle them, or impute a flattering meaning to them.  Often, we need qualified help in interpreting our dreams, until we develop the ability to do so ourselves.

Impatience with those who are not as far along may come from: (1) a distortion of the desire to help into a forcing current; (2) a need to convince others to allay one’s own doubts; (3) an unconscious belief that one can be happy only if others are evolved; (4) feelings of inadequacy around not being able to reach and persuade others; and/or (5) impatience with ourselves and with the necessarily gradual process of spiritual growth.  It will serve us to OBSERVE the pressure we sometimes feel, and to ANALYZE why we feel impatient in some situations and not in others.

The more real we become, the more effectively we communicate, depending less on words and more on an overall emotional connection with others.  Also, the more connected we are to our real self, the easier it is to evaluate intuitively what the proper balance of activity and passivity should be in any given situation.  Nevertheless, even a mature person feels unhappy at times.  However, this unhappiness is much more bearable when it doesn’t get entangled with one’s self-esteem — when frustration is not longer experienced as proof of inadequacy.  Sadness is healthy (and ought to be experienced fully), whereas depression, self-pity and boredom are not.  If we live life fully, we will become strong and whole.

© 2009 — All rights reserved (see first post in general orientation category).