Pathwork Lecture #93: Main Image, Repressed Needs & Defenses Linked: Conflicts Before Clarification

Summary of Pathwork Lecture #93:
Main Image, Repressed Needs & Defenses Linked: Conflicts Before Clarification

For a deeper, more rewarding experience of these teachings, consult the Lecture itself, available free of charge at: http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/unedited/P093.PDF

 

As we work on the Path, we are bound to experience confusion and depression before we reach an overall understanding of our inner conflict. Our psyches are threatened and tend to resist when we grow towards letting go of our defense mechanisms. We also resist because of our discouragement about our relapses, which must necessarily continue to occur until we understand, on a personal, emotional level, the nucleus of the problem of our life.

In the work discussed in the previous Lectures, we encountered our images about life. There is always a single primary image relating to the main unfulfillment in our lives. We also have dealt with repressed needs, and with defense mechanisms such as aggression, submission and withdrawal. There is a basic defense within us which we have to come to FEEL, so that we may understand its destructive influence upon us. We also need to BECOME AWARE of the specific, personal connections between our images, needs and defenses.

An image is a rigidified over-generalization about life based on early painful experience. It incorporates an equally rigid pseudo-solution, which is ineffective because of its rigidity and actually tends to bring about that which it is meant to avoid. As the pseudo-solution brings more pain, we try harder to make the pseudo-solution work, and thus we create a vicious cycle. We also initially repressed the hurt we experienced in childhood, and because we want to avoid the memory of the humiliation and have concluded that our needs can not be met, we repress our needs as well.

As an example, a male child who experiences his mother as cruel will form the image that women are unloving and rejecting, and this image will cause him anxiety as an adult when it clashes with his desire for female affection. If this child’s mother also conspicuously approves of the child when he succeeds in school, he may relate to approval for his success as a second-best substitute for the love he isn’t getting. Thus, there may be an image that success brings approval and that approval is tantamount to love. As an adult, he may be successful, at the expense of balance in his life, but his need for love will not be met by his external strivings. Moreover, he will repress the need because he prefers to avoid his pain, and because he resists confronting the error of his underlying assumptions. Also, his unbalanced striving for success, and the underlying arrogance and fearfulness, will actually make it more difficult for him to receive the love he longs for. Such a man would do well to push through his fear of discovering that he is intrinsically unlovable and bring the whole unconscious mechanism to light, whereupon he would make the vitally important discovery discovery that it is his defense, rather than his essential nature, which operates to make him unlovable. It should be noted that even if a person’s preferred “solution” to the problem of life is submissiveness, there will be the same rigid arrogance at the core, with the same distancing influence on other people.

The process of bringing the underlying assumptions and the defense mechanisms to awareness is a gradual one, requiring us to OBSERVE ourselves persistently over time. As we do so, we will gradually let go of our superimposed defenses, and our true, undefended self will emerge. Letting our true self manifest will be a challenge, because it will run so counter to our lifelong habits of being. We will also have to grapple with the confusion between the healthy letting go of arrogance and an unhealthy drifting into submissiveness. Submission comes from our unconscious attachment to needs we are unwilling to relinquish — we give ourselves away in order to avoid the “defeat” of not having those needs be satisfied. This process of submission causes us to feel contempt for ourselves, and to compensate by moving towards arrogance and aggression. The uncomfortable conflict between our submissiveness and our aggressiveness may also lead us to withdraw from life, as a false solution to the conflict.

We would do well to CONTEMPLATE our main image, or if we have not yet found it, to consider our main problems in life and then to FIND it. From that starting point, it is productive to DETERMINE the part of the defense mechanism which did work for us, and the hidden claim which the defense failed to satisfy, as well as the needs involved with our image. We need to FEEL our real needs, our superimposed false needs, and the defensive wall in ourselves, and then NOTICE the difference in our behavior and reactions when we are feeling the defensive wall and when we aren’t. This will help us see the effect that our defense has on others, so we can understand how the defense only brings us more of the unfulfillment it was meant to avoid. When we understand that our defense doesn’t work, we will be willing to let it go.

Questions and Answers:

A person who is aware of his or her defense and stuck between not wanting to act on it and not wanting to suppress it knows that the defense is destructive but still has an unconscious belief that the defense is advantageous. When we get that the defense isn’t productive, then we can let it go, even though we may feel some anxiety around the feeling that we are defenseless and vulnerable. The process of letting the defense go is one of relaxing the energetic hardened mass within us, as opposed to straining to hold back the expression of the defense.

The fact that a defense mechanism may “work” for us on one level does not mean that it doesn’t also have all sorts of subtle destructive effects. If we FIND our unpronounced claim and desire, we will find our repressed and neglected need and see how the defense inhibits the full expression of who we are. Automatically, energy will shift away from the pursuit of the defense and towards fulfillment of our real needs.

© 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.

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

What If We Could Really End All Wars?

This is just me, but if I came across a post with a title like this one, my first reaction would be to scoff.  “Another silly do-gooder who refuses to ‘get’ that whatever is happening in their little corner of the Universe has no effect whatsoever on the larger forces that are invested in violence and destruction.  What a hippie!”

But here I am writing such a post.

Well, here’s the deal.  There an entity — you have to decide whether it’s a human being pretending to channel or a higher voice speaking through a human being — who says this:

If only 10 percent of the world’s population were to be rigorously honest with themselves about their suppressed feelings, thoughts and motivations, they would exert an influence on the overall “spiritual reservoir” which we human beings share which WOULD MAKE WAR IMPOSSIBLE.

In other words, we don’t have to change George Bush or Osama Bin Laden or McDonnell-Douglas or Jerry Springer  or any of those people and institutions.  We just need to start a snowball which eventually encompasses let’s say 700 million people.

Does that seem like a lot?  I don’t know.  Maybe it depends on how credible and attractive the voice of this particular messenger is to the people on the planet who actually care about things like integrity and  peace and so on, and who maybe understand themselves at least a little bit — or would like to.

That’s what I wonder about.  What would such people think if they read the words I’m talking about?  So I invite you to check them out.  First try the beginning of  http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P012.PDF

Then check out  http://www.pathwork.org/lectures/P014.PDF

I’d be curious to know what you think,

A friend of the Guide, and a brother of yours