Folgen
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As all psychologies and philosophies agree, love is the key to feeling fulfilled; it brings security and fuels our growth. Where there is no love, we will find disharmony, a result of not living in reality. Yet love cannot be a commandment. Itās a free, spontaneous soul-movement, not a duty. The more people try to love to be obedient or because their conscience demands it, the less they love; the vicious circle closes. Where love does exist though, there will be fulfillment. Said another way, when we experience a lack of fulfillment, itās a sure sign that our soul hasnāt yet learned to love. This is a simple equation that we often overlook.
Letās look more closely at this topic and see how we can obtain this greatest key to lifeānot by taking marching orders from our intellect telling us to follow artificial, superimposed commands, but by following our heart.
We need to be standing on the substantial soil of reality and courage for love to flower. So we need to be without fear, distrust or illusion, to be capable of it. Only then will we have successful relationships. Only when we are present with what isāin alignment with realityāwill we intuitively know when it is appropriate to trust and when it is not. We will be able to accept our loved ones as they are, adjusting our own feelings to whatever the reality is. We wonāt need to grope in the dark, half-trusting and half-distrusting, tossed about between our fears and our needs.
Where love is lacking, we are in confusion, and conversely, where weāre confused we arenāt able to love. Love, however, manages to smooth all conflicts. Weāll be able to walk solidly along the line between aggression and self-assertion. We wonāt be confused by the difference between submissiveness and willful domination.
We will assert our rights against unjustified demands, without resorting to hostility. And we will avoid compliance when it would be destructive but not be driven to stubborn rebelliousness. Concession wonāt need to seem humiliating or like caving in.
It is only through love that we can find just the right balance between the precariousness of opposite extremes. The loving heart knows how to do this, but when we strive to reach the golden mean by way of mere intellectual understanding, it eludes us. No matter how hard we try.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 19: Love: Not a Commandment
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #133 Love: Not a Commandment, But as Spontaneous Soul Movement of the Inner Self
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Notice though that our reluctance to deep loving communication goes beyond our fear of suffering and being hurt or disappointed. In fact, there are three further aspects we need to become aware of for why we say No to loving. Each of these three aspects that prevent loving can be found in most of us. But we may have a favorite that is more predominant. If none of them seem to apply to us, we need to look again and closely watch our emotional reactions. Weāre bound to find that one or the other or all three apply.
The first aspect is a fear that we will be forced to do something we donāt want to do. Weāre afraid weāll be asked to sacrifice something that we have no desire to give up, or to give in when itās inconvenient or of no advantage to us. We believe we must curb our natural feelings to safeguard against the excessive demands of the other. And thatās what cuts off feelings of love inside.
We have connected having-our-natural-loving-feelings with being-forced-to-give-in. And we see no other alternative. So we stop our feelings from growing organically by manipulating them in a destructive way. This has grave repercussions on our relationships with others. First, we will feel guilty for holding back, and second, weāll lack self-confidence and self-respect. To atone, weāll do more for the other than we would ordinarily do, and as a result, we really are taken advantage of. And since everything weāre doing now is lacking in loveāitās being done to make up for our withholdingāour guilt doesnāt go away.
So here we can see, once again, how our wrong conclusions lead to false steps that bring us directly into the very situation we were hoping to avoid. This is called a vicious circle. Any emotion that falls out of a misconception that our real feelings will get us into trouble, will create confusion. These include our guilt, our resentment for our behavior that is now compulsive instead of loving, and our lack of self-respect.
They all work like a wedge in our close relationships. We either end up constantly engaged in negative behaviors, or we withdraw and live in bitter isolation, which in turn breeds frustration. They also make great barriers to the well of wisdom, love and intuition within.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 18: Three Aspects that Prevent Loving
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #107 Three Aspects That Prevent Loving
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Fehlende Folgen?
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Itās a breeze to focus on outer actions; itās a bear to face everything within. Evasion is a wily coyote. But letās repeat: if weāre feeling stagnation, discouragement or depression because weāve come to believe self-knowledge isnāt worth bupkis, weāre skimming over something important in some corner of ourselves. In relation to this, there are two decidedly different emotions, sadness versus depression, that will be helpful to sort out because of the way they affect our ability to relate to others.
In the most clear-cut cases, the two look nothing alike. We probably know this from our own individual past experiences with each. But sometimes they drop in at the same time, intermingling and overlapping. Sadness can make us believe there is no depression present. Or we might believe that our feelings of sadness and pain are purely norma. But we overlook destructive elements lurking nearby. What we need to do is tease out any unproductive depressionāand why itās hereāin spite of the presence of reasonable and rational sadness.
So whatās the diff? In sadness, we accept a painful life situation as being something we donāt have the power to change. Thereās no self-pity and we know this too shall pass. It feels like a healthy growing pain thatās free from hopelessness. Weāre not superimposing emotions, nor hiding them or shifting them.
With depression, the outer situation might be the same, but the pain we feel bleeds beyond to other reasons. Perhaps we still canāt change things external to us, but we can change whatās going on inside us. To do that, weād need to look at some emotions that weād rather not have to face, like hurts, resentments, envies, or our reaction to injustices.
But weāre powerless to change how we feel as long as we donāt fully understand what is going on. Depression, then, directly links with frustration and helplessness. Weird as it may seem, if we have a healthy attitude about a situation, we wonāt feel helpless even if weāre powerless to change it. Depression crops up when we have a demand that something needs to changeāpronto.
The log in our own eye that we fail to see is that there is always something we can change right now, which is our attitude. And thatās always, always, always an inside job. Whenever it doesnāt work to accept life on lifeās terms and feel our sadness, our line is snagging on something deeper. This is a biggie.
For example, when a loved one dies, we may of course be sadāand nothing else. Our feelings then are purely related to this loss. We know we canāt change things and that we will accept this eventually, despite our sorrow now. Even in the deepest depths of our pain, we know that our life will go on. Our bereavement doesnāt take anything away from us, no matter how much we loved the one who has departed. There wonāt be a scar because any genuine direct emotion that is felt in a healthy way and not shifted into something else is an enriching experience.
But when weāre depressed over a loss, weāve wandered into confusing, ambiguous and ambivalent emotions that we werenāt expecting. We are vaguely disturbed by them but we brush them off as being associated with the legitimate pain of our loss. So then weāve shifted our emotions. Weāve used a valid occurrence to cover something up that we donāt want to come to terms withāmaybe guilt, resentment or the like.
These may be connected with the loved one or we may have triggered off some festering, unresolved conflict. Matters not. Could even be a bit of both. Or maybe we identify with the one who died and it has perked up our own fear of death, or the fear that our life is passing before us and weāre not even paying attention. Since weāre living in unawareness we canāt cope, which causes us to feel depressed, not sad. Depression feels stifling, frustrating and distinctly unhealthy.
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Life may be many things, but more than anything else, life is relating. If we donāt relate, we donāt live. Itās all relative to our attitude, whether positive or negative. The minute we relate, we live. When we are in destructive relationships, we are heading for a climax that is ultimately going to do away with the destructiveness. Kaboom. Further down the scale is the lackluster relationship that fizzles under a guise of false serenity. So even someone who relates negatively is living more than one who relates little. And absolutely no one relates not at allāfor then they wouldnāt be alive.
We tend to only associate the word ārelationshipā with interactions with other human beings. But the word applies to absolutely everything, including ideas as well as inanimate objects. It also applies to our life circumstances, the world we live in, and our thoughts and attitudes. We can relate to lots of things, and to the degree we do so we will enjoy a sense of fulfillment rather than frustration.
Itās enormous, the scale of possibilities for relationship. Lowest on the totem pole is the mineral. You may think it canāt relate at all, but thatās not true. Since it lives, it relates. But because itās a mineral, it canāt relate very much. Its way of relating is confined to total passivity. A mineral can be admired. An animal, by contrast, has a lot more moxie. It actively responds to nature, to other animals and to people.
Humans are highest on the scale of able-to-relate, which is a wider scale than most of us realize. The bottom rung of the human scale starts with the completely insaneāthe one in solitary confinement or who is locked up behind bars. These two arenāt so very far apart. They are living lives in inner and outer isolation, hardly able to relate to other people. Since such people are living, they must somehow continue to relate, but it is mostly to things, their space, their food, their bodies and maybe some art, or ideas or nature. It can be helpful to think about life from this perspective.
On the highest rungs of the ladder are the folks who are able to relate beautifully. They arenāt afraid of becoming deeply involved with others and donāt protect themselves against experiences or feelings. Also, they are able to love. They let themselves love. And in the end, loving requires a willingness and readiness to do so.
At this level, people are willing to love regardless of risk. They can love abstractly or concretely, and generally or personally. This doesnāt make such people saints or holier than thou. They may well be far from perfect. They will have faults and be wrong at times. And they have those pesky negative emotions too. But on the whole, they love. They arenāt afraid to get involved. Freed from their defenses, they are able to ride through occasional setbacks and have full and fruitful relationships.
So what about the rest of us who are somewhere in the middleāthe average Jane or Joe?
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 16: Life is Relationship
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #106 Sadness versus Depression ā Relationship
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Love is the key to everything. It is the medicine we can use to heal all our sicknesses and all our sorrows. Love permeates all that is and is always available, although we often lose sight of this due to our boneheaded thinking. We could literally discuss the anatomy of love for an entire lifetimeāevery hour of every dayāand it would not be possible to cover it all. Love is that big. For now, weāll focus on a few key aspects of the anatomy of loveāthe ones we need most at this juncture.
So just what is this love everyone speaks of? Is it a force? Is it a feeling? Short answer: Yes, itās all that and more. But letās get more specific and look at how love applies to the three main personality types of Reason, Will and Emotion.
First off, itās obvious that love is a feeling. But maybe itās not so obvious that love results from an act of will thatās kicked off by our intelligence. So love then is intelligence. If we flop this idea over and view any issue with a wide-angle lens, we will see that wherever there is hatred, there is ignorance, no matter how covered up it may be with justification. Itās a lack of intelligence.
Hatred, of course, comes in many textures and hues, many of which are not acknowledged as such; it also comes in varying degrees of intensity. When love is lacking, this may show up as separateness, hopelessness, lack of faith or depression. Love is in short supply when weāre wallowing in fear or feeling victimized; also when thereās resentment, blame, hostility and out-and-out hatred.
Love then is certainly present when there is pure intelligence and reason. When there is a deep understanding of whatās going on, our vision expands and we are closer to the truth. Then it will be less and less possible to feel hate. And the wheels of love go around.
Itās impossible to feel loving when our will is not moving us in the direction of a loving way of being. So if we donāt want to fully understand something, which is an expression of our desire to love, then letās face it, we do not wish to love. The result: we will not love. And then weāll scratch our heads and wonder why we donāt feel love.
Sometimes it works the other way around: the will to love may stimulate our will to fully understand. In that case, understanding grows from love. At other times, the understanding comes first and it awakens our will to love. Six of one, half-dozen of the other. Either way, love canāt make it unless itās paired with a nice dose of intelligence. Emotion, then, follows will as well as reason and intelligence.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 15: Aspects of the Anatomy of Love: Self-Love, Structure, Freedom
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #240 Aspects of the Anatomy of Love: Self-Love, Structure, Freedom
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In recent times, weāve made a giant leap forward in our understanding of the spiritual meaning of marriage. We are ready to shed old attitudes and create new conditions. We have set new standards and hold new moral values. Drastic changes are afoot. Womenās liberation, sexual freedom and a whole different approach to getting married are clear signs that a new consciousness is in the mix. If we view all this in the context of an overall evolutionary direction, we can grasp the inner meaning of these changes.
In all evolutionary movement, the pendulum swings over from one extreme to the other. This is usually inevitable and often even desirable, provided things donāt get too crazy. But if fanaticism and blindness send things swinging wide to the right, nothing has changed from when things tilted to the left.
Sexual freedom, for example, is a reaction to the shackles of the past. For a time, this movement was necessary until some new wisdom came along, arising from a more complete new consciousness. Then we would experience commitment to one mate as more freeing and more desirable than hopping from bed to bed. So the cycle moved forward from a forced monogamous commitmentāwith a corresponding restriction of personal growthāto the libertinism of polygamy. From there, the movement is freed up to proceed to a new groundedness in real freedom. Then a person chooses commitment to a single partner because it is infinitely more fulfilling.
One of the most wicked aspects of the old marriage model was that opportunistic, materialistic and exploitative ends polluted our needs for sex and companionship. Worse yet, we saw this pollution as desirable. But whenever one soul current is secretly put into the service of fulfilling a less-upstanding one, both sink to the level of the lowest one.
We had to break away from the mess we had created. So some kind of upheaval was needed if we want love, eros and sex to find their rightful places. Then our real needs to have material abundance and respect in our communities can function in a Higher-Self way. So bring on the sexual revolution. It needed to happen and has only been undesirable when seen outside the context of history.
Enter: the institution of marriage.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 14: The Evolution and Spiritual Meaning of Marriage
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #251 The Evolution and Spiritual Meaning of Marriage ā New Age Marriage
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Fulfillment rests on a true state of equality. The minute someone feels superior over the other, the heart-gate slams shut. Respect evaporates. And the moment one feels inferior to the other, fear and envy and resentment will bar the door to love.
The new woman is neither slave nor competitor. So she can love and her love will only enhance her creative self-expression. Then her creative contribution to life will expand her capacity for loving. And the wheel goes round and round.
The new man wonāt be shopping for a weaker mate. Heāll meet his own weakness squarely, facing it and regaining his real strength. Heāll see how his weakness comes from guilt and the way he rejects himself whenever he denies the best in himself. He doesnāt need anyone to slave over; he can feel good by activating his own integrity.
Heās not threatened by equality. He doesnāt need to be with someone who is inferior to convince himself of his own acceptabilityāwhich never worked anyways. Heāll face his weaknesses and gain so much more strength. Heāll value a relationship with a woman who is truly his equalāwho is as creative, morally strong and as intelligent as he is. When he stops needing to play the master, he will be able to open his heart and experience a fulfillment that was flat-out impossible before.
What before operated as vicious circles will now move in benign circles that build love. With nothing to fear, both the self-actualizing man and woman will be able open their channels of feelings and feel a sense of gratitude toward each other. Two equals, helping each other grow. This is what is possible in this new way of being in relationship.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 13: The New Man and the New Woman
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #229 Woman and Man in the New Age
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If we hope to fulfill our lives, we must fulfill ourselves. Full stop. We accomplish self-fulfillment or self-realization as a man or woman on many different levels and in many different areas of our lives. Job-one is going to be finding a primary vocationāone in which we can develop, growing in it and through it. We will want to cultivate this in every possible respect.
Weāve also all been fundamentally endowed with a handful of general human potentials. We need to bring these up to snuff. On top of this, we need to find and develop our individual assets. We do so by building up and integrating the already-obstruction-free parts of ourselves into the rest of our personalities; and we have to clean up the bits that arenāt as-yet so shiny. Then we do the hokey-pokey and turn ourselves around. Because thatās basically what itās all about.
But wait, thereās more. The idea of self-fulfillment means something even more specific. Itās about that age-old boy-girl thing. Letās face it, humanity is made up of men and women. And none of us can reach self-fulfillment if we donāt fulfill our manhood or our womanhood. Everything else hinges on this primary endeavor. So letās explore what this means in more detail.
First, a few words about these teachings. When we embark on a path of self-discovery, new layers of our psyche come into awareness. We get access to new fertile ground to explore. These lectures are aimed directly at these layers as they come up. Without following an intensive path of self-development, weāre not going to readily reach these layers.
As we read these words, we may feel an inner echo as we gain an understanding that goes beyond intellectual and theoretical grasping of the material. Itās also possible these words will only resonate later on, when the layers weāre trying to reach become more accessible. The important thing to realize is that weāll make use of this material in an entirely different way if we are consciously working to free these deeper layersādoing the deep inner workāthan if we just read or listen to these words. The difference is real.
Without having an inner experience of truth, we will find these teachings to be merely self-evident, or maybe even far-fetched. But when we allow ourselves to be affected deep inside our beings, they will help us to transcend ourselves, to understand our problems in a more profound way.
However we go about it, no path of self-realization can work without bringing forward our attitudes towards ourselves as a man or woman. This necessarily will bring us to look at our attitude and approach to the opposite sex as well. Sometimes we will take the path that promises to skirt this issue entirely. We may find this whole topic unpleasant to look at. But as always, the greater our resistance, the more compelling is the case that there is something to see.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 12: Self-Fulfillment Through Self-Realization as a Man or a Woman
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #122 Self-Fulfillment Through Self-Realization as Man or Woman
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In our original form, as we were first created, male and female were all rolled up into one. And when all us fallen beings are finished with this fabulous mystery tour, men and women will be one once again. In the meantime, as a byproduct of the Fall, we are separated and split.
In general, the lower we are in our development, the more we are split into a greater number of parts. By the time we arrive here on planet Earth as human beings, our split is twofold. And so it is that we look around and find ourselves among two sexes: men and women.
The goal of spiritual development is to make our way back to the original unityāthe Oneness. So the pairing up of the sexesāthe union of men and womenāhas much deeper meaning than mere baby-making. Itās in the relationship between men and women that we can overcome so much. We can learn so much; our development can proceed better than from any other way. Love, when kindled by eros and the sexual impulse, can flower more readily than it can in any other relationships. And loveāwell, thatās always the ultimate aim.
And yet isnāt it true that relationships between men and women offer more hurdles and more friction that just about anything else? This is because our personal emotions are more involved. As a result, we lack objectivity and detachment. This is why marriage is, at once, the most difficult of all relationships and the most fruitful, the most important, and the most bliss-filled.
Ever since humans arrived on the scene, certain misconceptions and mass imagesācollective wrong beliefsāhave cropped up. For example, superficially, we seem to think there are so many differences between men and women. In reality, itās not nearly as much as we think. Because every man carries inside his soul the female component of his nature, and women carry the male side of theirs. Itās like we each contain an imprint of our other half which is wandering around somewhere in the universe.
This imprint isnāt just a picture or a reproduction; itās a real, living part of the nature of our personality. Itās the other side of the coin, but itās not completely hiding. So itās more like a disc that tilts more to one side occasionally, then to the other.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 11: Man and Woman
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #62 Man and Woman
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It stands to reason that we affect others in a particular way when we operate from our destructive levels. And of course, we are likewise being affected by others who operate from their destructiveness. This topic of affecting and being affected is extremely important.
If weāre being affected by anotherās negativity, you can bet weāre sitting on some self-doubt and guilt; we havenāt faced all our confusions and destructive impulses yet. Yes, we might have swept the whole room, but we missed a few spots. This is what keeps us coming back here to life on Earth. Weāre still locked in the battle with duality, wrestling with the opposites of pleasure and pain, life and death, good and evil. Only now we have the key for how to transcend these. We just have to use it.
What we often spend a lot of time working on is our walls. What is it we feel so vulnerable against and work so hard to repel? For the most part, itās the cruelty and hostility that people are wont to unload on us. They make unjustified demands on the world, which canāt help but splatter onto us. Thatās what weāre afraid of. Thatās why the walls. And the moat.
We build our impenetrable defenses with a plan to keep being affected by all that crap at bay. What we donāt bargain for is the way our walls ward off everything and anything that life gives with great abundance. The walls then become our downfall. They block the best from coming our way. And they lock down our own best from coming out. They stop that lovinā feeling.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 10: Affecting and Being Affected
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #188 Affecting and Being Affected
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Our soul substance is in constant motion; nothing that is living ever stands still. It moves and moves and moves. Then in comes an error in thinkingāa misconceptionāwhich breeds negativity which breeds more error. Soul substance that has gotten trapped in error and our negative will becomes temporarily fixed. It grows stagnant.
The challenge is to make that fixedness fluid once more. This stuff that has gotten stuck is made up of a combo of energy and consciousness. No atom on the planet doesnāt also contain consciousness. This energy/consciousness cocktail permeates the whole universe. Theyāre not separate entities hanging out side-by-side. They are one. Energy is consciousness and consciousness is energy.
So energy/consciousness now stuck in negative will needs to move again. The fixed substance must become fluid again. It must wake up out of its own stagnation. It needs a tire iron to loosen up the bolts. The awakening, however, needs to happen from within the dormant part, but free flowing energy/consciousness is repulsed by this fixed state. This means itās not easy for fluid energy/consciousness to break up the fixed parts.
As a result, the mind gets lost in its own maze. Somehow, the stagnant energy/consciousness of negative will has to find a way to let go of itself. Until that happens, the soul substance remains stationery. Stuck. The battleship wonāt budge.
It takes a lot of patience to find and influence our stuck areas of negative will. Yet, if enlightened consciousness and fluid energy didnāt act upon our frozen soul substance, it would stay stuck forever. Eventually, free-flowing energy/consciousness prevails. Life wins.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 9: A Venture in Mutuality: Changing our Negative Will
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #186 Venture in Mutuality: Healing Force to Change Negative Inner Will
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Nothing can be created unless there is mutuality. This is a spiritual law. It means that two apparently different entities come together to form one whole. They open toward each other, cooperating and affecting each other in such a way that something new is created. It is mutuality that bridges the gap between duality and unity. Itās the movement that eliminates separation.
Make no mistake, this applies to every-stinking-thing, without exception. Whether weāre creating a work of art, composing a symphony, painting a picture, writing a story, cooking a meal, discovering a scientific breakthrough, healing an illness, building a relationship, or developing ourselves on a path of self-realization, the law of mutuality is in play.
For any self-expression, the self merges with something beyond the self and something new comes into being. First there must be creative inspiration and imagination. The mind extends itself beyond what it previously knew existed and a plan forms. Then this creative aspect cooperates with the second aspect of mutuality, which is execution. Implied in step two are effort, perseverance and self-discipline.
So the creative idea and these more mechanical, ego-driven activities must work together in harmony for some type of creation to take place. We must follow step one with step two in order to ease on down this road. This is true even though these two steps seem alien to each other. Creativity is free flowing and spontaneous. Execution comes from determination, which is under the direction of the egoās will; itās laborious and needs consistent effort. Not the same mojo as the effortless influx of creative ideas.
When people struggle with creativity, they either lack the self-discipline they need to follow through on their ideas. Or their contraction is too great for them to open their creative channels. In the former case, the person childishly refuses to be bothered by the trials and errors of the creative process. In the latter, they lack inspiration.
When we do the work of personal development, resolving our inner conflicts, we can bring this lopsidedness into balance. By restoring health, we open up to finding personal creative outlets that yield deep satisfaction.
An imbalance in these two aspects of creation is especially striking when it comes to couples. The spontaneous and effortless experience of attraction and love that brings two people together is not uncommon. In fact, it happens all the time. But rarely is this connection maintained. We have lots of excuses and explanations, but mostly what happens is that people neglect doing the work of dealing with the inner dissensions that arise.
There is often a childish notion that we shouldnāt have to work at it and that once the initial fireworks go off, weāre powerless to determine the course of the relationship. We treat it like a stand-alone entity that for better or worse is going to run its own course.
In fact, mutuality is a steppingstone on the path to unity, but it is not yet unification itself. So while weāre on the bridge to unity, weāre going to have some work to do. There will need to be a harmonious interplay between effortless creative imagination and executionāwhich means labor, investment, commitment and self-discipline. We need this forward-moving, effortful aspect of mutuality to get across the bridge to unity.
For there to be mutuality between two people, there must be an expansive movement flowing from each toward the other. There must be both giving and receiving, and mutual cooperation. Two Yes-currents must move toward each other, nice and slow. This allows us to gradually increase our ability to accept, bear and sustain pleasure. Believe it or not, this is one of the hardest things for us to do. It depends directly on how whole and integrated we are. It depends on our ability to say Yes when a Yes is offered.
Listen and learn...
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Everything we do, whether it comes from our innate, natural Godself or from our less-than-perfect humanity, has a deep spiritual significance. In fact, all of our experiences have a symbolic aspect in which there is a wider, deeper, fuller meaning. And so it is with spiritual significance of sexuality.
So whatās the deeper meaning of the sexual experience? What does the urge to unite physically with another signify? Sure, thereās the need to propagate the species. And yeah, thereās a genuine need for pleasure. But these are only partial answers, and fairly superficial at that.
When we are attracted to someone, there is a yearning to know the other. There is a desire to reveal oneself to the otherāto let ourselves be known and found. And we want to find the true being of the other. It is this revealing of ourselves that allows us to enter the full dimension of the other personās self, who is also seeking to know us. There is an involuntary force that energizes this mutual desire and creates an electrifying blissful feeling and longing.
If this attraction stops short at the physical level without the other levels coming into play, at least to some degree, the sexual experience is going to fall short. So disappointing. It will only be an itty-bitty fraction of what the soul truly longs for, but is too blind or immature to go after. Because full union with another soul requires doing some personal housework to clean up distortions and unify split-off aspects.
Instead, what usually happens is that we grope in the dark, not attracted to the other actual person but to a fabricated image in our minds of what the other should be in order to make us happy. The real person then is totally ignored and blindly denied. To top this off, we get angry when the illusion doesnāt come true. Usually, both parties are equally adept at playing this game. But they donāt know it.
We can use our measure of fulfillment as a good gauge of how much we are seeking the real person. No bliss? Probably not so real. Weāre likely superimposing another person, such as one of our parents, over the real person. But if the attraction is genuine and real, weāll want to reveal ourselves in the most intimate and real way. Weāll desire the closest connection we can get.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 7: The Spiritual Symbolism and Significance of Sexuality
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #207 The Spiritual Symbolism and Significance of Sexuality
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People may be confused about a lot of different things, but most of us are somewhat confused about love. And sex. And then thereās that erotic spark. What gives? The forces of love, eros and sex are actually three distinct forces, or principles. And they show up, or donāt, differently on all the various levels. Letās see if we can sort them out.
When it comes to bang for the buck, the erotic force is the most potent. Itās got momentum on its side and it creates impact. If we have done a lot of spiritual development work already, the erotic force will carry us from the short-lived erotic experience into the mighty and permanent state of pure love. So itās to be the bridge that takes us from sex to love. But it rarely does. After all, eros can only do so much.
Its momentum will carry a soul just so far and no further. Itās up to the personality to learn how to love. Without this, eros is destined to dissolve. But if one has learned to love, then voilĆ , the spark of the erotic force lives on. Left all on its own, however, without love to keep it company, it will burn itself out. Pffft. So goes the way of so many marriages.
In many ways, eros looks a lot like love. It conjures up impulses in people that might not surface otherwise. Bursts of unselfishness and affection surge into existence that were unrealized before. So we get confused. Isnāt this love? But eros also looks a lot like the great urge of the sex instinct. Yet itās not quite the same thing.
Letās dig a little deeper into the purpose and spiritual meaning of the erotic force. For surely, without eros, many of us would not get a taste of the marvelous feeling and beauty contained in real love. Fear would trump desire and down weād go in flames.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 6: The Forces of Love, Eros and Sex
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #44 The Forces of Love, Eros, and Sex
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In truth, as long as we believe that our substitutes are all the pleasure there is, weāre not able to believe the full pleasure of life is for real. Living a decent life implies living a life of sacrifice. Yuck. But weāve got this all wrong, because we've got our wires crossed. We can take in genuine pleasure only to the degree we give up all the distorted habitual ways we have found to activate our life force. And for many of us is through negative pleasure. To the extent we cling to these false ways of living, we canāt bear real pleasure.
The vicious circle we're in looks something like this. The less we want to give up our destructive ways, the less we can accept and believe in pleasure. Then the less we believe in real pleasure, the less we want to give up our favorite āpleasure". And the less we want to give up whatever obstructs us from genuine pleasure, the less commitment we have to experience real pleasure. In the end, weāre stuck trying to wring the best life possible from our favorite bad habitsāour life-destroying patterns.
If thereās no by-product of pleasure, then being mature, self-responsible people who accept reality as it is, is going to be a tough sell. But then, how much fun is it really to insist on being an irresponsible child? On being someone who makes others pay for our actions or inactions, and who secretly wants to cheat life? The lack of integrity wound up in this is simply never going to feel good.
And if, in our guts, we donāt feel good about ourselves, weāre a far cry from feeling pleasure. Weāre just too busy roiling in negative inner energies. But by the same token, if we get a whiff of self-responsibility by way of some self-respect once weāre no longer trying to cheat life, to that same degree we become capable of experiencing pleasure.
If we can start to look forward to a full and pleasurable existence, it wonāt be so hard to give up some of our destructive patterns. Weāll be able to stand on our own feet and accept lifeās unavoidable frustrations. This equation must always come out even. Without an understanding of this basic truth, weāll continue to hunt for pleasure in an unhealthy way. We'll look for a reward for the āgood childā from some authority we depend on for good feelings.
We need to discover for ourselves the pleasure of self-autonomy, in the best sense of the word, which we have to work for. Once the notion that adulthood is a hardship eases up, weāll feel less threatened by what self-responsibility entails. Weāll open to its rewards and its inherent pleasure.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 5: Pleasure: The Full Pulsation of Life
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #177 Pleasure ā The Full Pulsation of Life
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On this human plane of existence, individual units of consciousness exist and sometimes we all get along. Just as often though, conflicts arise creating friction and crisis. What's the spiritual significance of our relationships with others?
On the innermost levels of our being, we have some bits governing our thinking, feeling, willing and acting that are quite nicely developed, thank you very much. Then again, there are other parts still in a lower state of development. And they like to have their say in things, tooā¦We are all, each and every one of us, living in a house divided. Which always creates tension, anxiety and pain. In short, thatās why weāve got problemsā¦
So some aspects of our personalities are already in truth. Others, not so muchā¦This results in confusion that leads to disturbances in the force fields of our lives. And what do we usually do about that? We look the other wayāaway from the dirty laundry and towards the parts that are already tidied upā¦
This pushing aside of one part of ourselves and identifying ourselves with another, is notāsurprise, surpriseāa path that leads to unification. Nope. Instead, it widens the gap. So how do we sew up this split? We have to be willing to bring out the deviating side and face itā¦To the degree we move our feet in the direction of inner unification, to that exact same degree we will know outer peaceā¦
The dissension with others, it turns out, has nothing to do with actual differences, per se. Rather, it's about the differences in our levels of development. Just as within each individualā¦Relationships, as you may have noticed, create a great challenge for most folks. Hereās why: only in relationship to others do our own as-yet-unresolved problems get activated. And what do we typically do then? We back off. This helps tremendously in maintaining the illusion that the problem lies with the other personā¦
This is why relationships are, at one and the same time: a fulfillment, a challenge, and an accurate gauge to whatās going in oneās own inner stateā¦If we take the weenie way out, shrinking from this challenge and giving up on intimate contact, many of our inner problems wonāt get called into play. Ah, safeā¦
We need to look at our level of contentment and fulfillment in relationships like a yardstick. They measure our own inner state. And they help point us in the direction we need to go for our own self-developmentā¦
When two people interact who are on different levels of spiritual development, the more highly developed one is responsible for the relationshipā¦The more developed a person is, the more they will be willing to search for their own involvement whenever they feel negatively affected. It doesnāt matter how at-fault the other may be. A lesser-developed person always lays the blame at someone elseās feet. This is true whether weāre talking about loving partners, parents and children, friends or business associatesā¦
Itās only through the doorway of self-responsibility that we begin to look for our part in our own problems. Our willingness to change then becomes the passageway to freedom. Relationships then become both fruitful and fulfilling. And that is their deeper spiritual significanceā¦
The bottom line is this. No matter what the other does wrong, if it disturbs us, there is something in ourselves that we overlookā¦
The blame game is so ubiquitous, we often donāt realize weāre playing it. We're essentially telling the world, āYou are doing it to me,ā or āYouāre making me feel this wayāā¦One person blames another, one country blames another, one political party blames the otherā¦
So why do we do this? Because we get pleasure from expressing our hostility while whitewashing ourselvesā¦This is a lose-lose game that harms all of the players. And we are often not aware of our blind involvement in itā¦
Without a doubt, intimate sexual relationships ar...
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Each human soul has a center from which the soul forces flow, and to which others are constantly responding. This is the command center governing the laws of communication and, on a lower level, our ability to cooperate and get alongā¦Let's explore the importance of how we communicate.
So in what ways do we break these universal laws? Turns out, itās not that hard to do. Itās what happens whenever we are overeager and overanxiousāwhen we donāt just desire communication, we crave it. Then our soul forces get pushy, automatically becoming harsh, pointed and rigid. Their movement is jerky; their impact is too strong. The other personās soul center will feel like itās being punchedā¦
If someone communicates in an aggressive way, the other is going to withdrawā¦Nothing slams the door quicker on another soul than when they catch wind of our unconscious monster cravings. Seeing this can take the sting out of what seemed a personal rejection. Their unconscious soul forces merely did what they needed to do to reestablish a little balanceā¦
This has happened to all of us at one time or another, when we either were on the end of having an exaggerated need, or we felt sucker-punched by someone elseās. Ironically, even if we want to respond with loving communication, we canāt help but repulse such a forward-surging motion...A childish, exaggerated craving is not in the same ballpark with healthy love. Further, the former is the actual reason that we keep striking out when we go to bat for the real thing...
We often waffle back and forth between the extremes of exaggerated need and withdrawal. Oddly, we sometimes try to pursue both alternatives at the same time. Just, you know, to be on the safe side. No wonder we feel torn in two, with our strength sapped. No wonder weāre not walking on sunshineā¦
We blame outer events for our hopeless situations, when they are the natural result of our inner state which we ourselves have put into playā¦Weāve got to ferret all this out personally, seeing how weāre the ones who are disrupting benign laws that seek nothing more than to keep us walking in a straight lineā¦
We can follow the breadcrumbs of our inner wounds to see how they originated in this lifetime from early disappointments. Itās because we havenāt come to terms with them that we are still trying to overcome themā¦Once we see and understand all these puzzle pieces, weāll be able to let go of the exaggerated need. Weāll find that it was an illusion all alongā¦
Learning this is a game-changer. It repositions us from being dependent and needy, to be being ones who begin to genuinely communicate.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 3: The Importance of How we Communicate
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #80 Cooperation, Communication, Union
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There is a feature in the human personality related to the pull that we tend to trot out on Opposite Day: itās called frustrationā¦Neither of the frustrating alternatives of denouncing happiness or intensely making rigid demands is going to ring the winning bellā¦
Letās link up frustration with the pleasure principle, that innate inner desire we all have to strive towards life, pleasure and wholenessā¦Babies are hardwired to strive for pleasure. But they arenāt capable of tolerating any frustrationāwhich is what humans experience when gratification is delayedābecause they have zero awareness that there is a futureā¦
If the baby psyche doesnāt mature, it will get stuck in this frustrating attitude of āI want it now.ā From here we enter into an apparent contradiction: the less we can endure frustration, the less we can have pleasureā¦
The fact of the matter is this: for us to feel real pleasure, weāve got to have a relaxed inner stateā¦But if we rebel against any delay in gratification, weāll end up angry, tense and stubbornāreal doggie downers for tapping into lifeās pleasure streamā¦
Hereās the great error in all of this: we believe that what we want is more important and more capable of giving us pleasure than having a peaceful state of mindā¦Insisting on pleasure with a do-or-die attitude that canāt tolerate even a wee bit of frustration is out-and-out erroneous...
So whatās the way out? Weāve got to learn to let goā¦Letting go and relaxing is not the same as relinquishing foreverā¦We want to keep on seeking fulfillment, but without hanging onto it for dear lifeā¦
Ego, are you listening? Youāve got a job to do here. Yes, the ego must make it its business to constructively let goā¦Once the ego gets the ball rolling, itās all downhill from there. The ego will get carried along by the inner forces it activates through the letting-go processā¦
Tension and resignation are two sides of the same coin. Look for one, realize the other is also there, and then consciously reach for the soothing balm of letting goā¦Itās just like relaxing into the pleasure of giving up separation. Yet we fight, tooth and nail, in not wanting to give this up, frustrating ourselves on the most important level of living. We are fighting against our own best interest on thisā¦
But love can only grow where there is no fear. So if we fear coming into contact with others, we put up defenses that produce hurt and anger. Now contact feels like painā¦When we fear something, we block it. So then we flip over to fearing not getting it. Then we canāt stand the feeling of emptiness, so we battle against feeling frustrated. We pitch a hissy fit and demand instant gratificationā¦
Donāt forget: the pull is always stronger than our pushback. Eventually, pleasure is going to win. This whole thing is riggedāin our favor.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 2: The Counter-Pull: Frustration
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #149 Cosmic Pull Toward Union ā Frustration
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There is a great cosmic pull in this worldā¦The aim of this pull is to move us toward unionā¦But if union is being looked at as a mental process or as a venture with an intangible God, then sorry to say, thatās not genuine union at all. No, thereās got to be real live actual contactā¦
In truth, life and pleasure are one. Said another way, we canāt live without pleasureā¦The cosmic plan rolls all this up into one goal: life, pleasure, contact and oneness. Because theyāre all one and the same thing. So when pleasure through relationships is missing, there is a disturbance in our life force that comes from being in opposition to the cosmic planā¦
We, each of us, oppose this pull out of the wrong thinking that giving into it means weāll be swallowed wholeā¦But by fearing and opposing this pull, weāre bucking the natural flowā¦To whatever degree we equate the life force with annihilation, weāre going to have a struggle on our handsā¦
This is the reason people hang onto the dualistic divide of the body and the spirit. We stamp the body bad, and then claim the denial of our very nature is right and good. Good griefā¦
When we canāt fully harness this powerful force, part of us moves towards others, accepting our bodily instincts and our basic nature. But another part backpedals, leading to deprivation, emptiness, meaninglessness and a sense of wasteā¦the stronger our resistance to the pull, the more pain and problems we will have. Itās like somehow saying our own basic nature is in opposition to the divine evolutionary plan. What a colossal errorā¦
But although we might block and oppose the pull, we canāt avoid it. Itās a master winch that just keeps on tuggingā¦Usually thereās a slug of opposition, throwing a wrench into the works. Painful contact then ensues. Whatās happening here is that the pleasure principle at one timeāway back in childhoodāgot attached to a negative situation. Now, every experience of pleasure is accompanied by the activation of this unwanted negativity. This creates a pull toward contactāOnward!ācoupled with fear of the truckload of crap that will come with it. Wait, reverse!...
Itās that last part that carries the stinger. It creates one of two fundamental reactions: either the desire to hurt, or the desire to be hurtā¦Remember, thereās no eliminating pleasure. But pleasure can be morphed into negative pleasure. Then the pleasure of contact will be associated with hurting or being hurt. Cripesā¦
We must not get caught thinking that this is who we are, that this is our deepest nature, that this is life. No, this is not the ultimate reality of our instinctual selves. It just may be where we are on the wheel right nowā¦
We need to find the courage and honesty to face what needs facing. Then we can unwind our personal attitudes back to their constructive and trustworthy natureā¦Finding peace between the body and the soul is a natural by-product of self-realization.
Listen and learn more.
The Pull, Chapter 1: The Cosmic Pull Toward Union
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #149 Cosmic Pull Toward Union ā Frustration
