Episodes
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The stronger and deeper our convictions, the more substantial are the forms that exist in our soul. Thereās one soul form worth talking about specifically, because it exists in each and every one of us to some degree. This form is shaped like an abyss and itās made completely out of illusion. The size of this abyss varies for everybody. But whether itās a crater or a dip, we have to look this threat right in the eye and not blink, taking full self-responsibility for itā¦
We might feel like weāve fallen into this abyss when we canāt accept that this is an imperfect world. Or when we canāt, for the life of us, let go of our self-centered self-willā¦When weāre caught in this abyss, we are really in fear of not getting our wayā¦
So letās say someone doesnāt like us. Or they donāt behave the way we want them to. This, in itself, is not a threatā¦Once we accept that we are in some way inadequate, or accept that the other is, weāll be able give up our self-will that demands perfection. But before this, it will feel like we are in grave danger if we yield, if we let go, if we give in to this apparent abyssā¦
It feels like we are trapped inside this abyss. And yet the only way out is by letting go and completely falling inā¦When we do, weāll discover that something amazing happens. We donāt crash. And we donāt perish. We floatā¦.
Itās wishful thinking to hope this abyss is going to disappear by itself. The only way for it to vanish is by taking the risk, little by little and then over and over, to plunge into it. Good news: it gets easier every time we do thisā¦Every time someone does something we donāt agree with. Every time someone shows up with a fault. Each time we feel fear about a frustration we can't rationalize away. All these threaten our world of Utopia. We feel our life is at stake if this is not a perfect worldā¦
So if Utopia were real, what would it look like?...Utopia means we get everything we want, how we want it and when we want it. We also want to have total freedomāwith no responsibilityā¦But alas, it is impossible. We canāt be both free and have no responsibility. To whatever extent we shift responsibility off ourselves and onto someone or something else, to that degree we curtail our own freedom. We enslave ourselves. Itās as simple as thatā¦
Weāve become so afraid, though, of taking self-responsibility, our fear of it has become a large part of our abyss. We fear that if we assume self-responsibility, we will fall right in and be swallowed up wholeā¦It seems like a huge danger to let go of our demand to always have our wayā¦We literally fear weāll be miserable if we have to give up our demand for Utopiaā¦
We can never be happy because buried in our unconscious is this mistaken concept that happiness requires utter perfection in all ways. But folks, none of this true. Itās all part of a grand illusionā¦We believe that harm can come to us through the arbitrariness of life, of fate or of the god-of-our-image, or through the ignorance and cruelty of othersā¦For if we donāt want to be responsible for our life, someone else must beā¦
We are only helpless because we make ourselves so when we shift responsibility away from ourselves. When we look at things this way, we begin to see the heavy price we pay for insisting on Utopia. We pay every day with our fearā¦As we do this work of self-discovery, when we find the corresponding note in ourselves that is vibrating due to provocation from another, weāll stop feeling like a victimā¦
Part and parcel of being a grown-up and making independent decisions is that we are bound to make mistakes. The child in us who still clings to Utopia, however, believes we must always be perfect. To make a mistake is to fall into the abyssā¦Life on planet Earth is not Utopia, and we arenāt perfect. This is not a tragedy.
Listen and learn more.
Read Bones, Chapter 19: The Giant Misunderstanding About Freedom and Self-Responsibility
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #60 The Abyss of Illusion ā Freedom & Self-Responsibility
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More whole is more happy. Our goal, then, is to use meditation to unify our whole selves, folding in the split off aspects of the Lower Self that remain in separation. Consider the truth that whatever is inside, no matter how painful it might be, cannot be avoided, but rather must be expressed and released. And that, friends, is what meaningful meditation is all about.
Our beings are steeped in a potent and highly creative substance, called our soul substanceā¦We can think of the soul substance like a giant receptor site. The more we are able to have a single-pointed conviction that is unconflicted and uncontaminated with hidden negativities that create secret doubts, the more deeply and clearly will we mold this substance with our imprintā¦
In a defenseless state, our soul substance is resilient and receptive, loose and freeā¦Conversely, when weāre holding onto distorted concepts that foster negative feelings and destructive attitudes, we are breaking divine laws. This makes us feel fearful and guilty, and that makes us feel we must defend ourselves. Itās our defenses that make the surface of our soul substance brittle and hard, which makes it much tougher to imprintā¦
Whenever a creative act takes place and something new manifests, it has come about through the fusion of two principles: the active and the receptiveā¦Which means that both of these principles must be part of our meditation, if we want to use it create good thingsā¦To use meditation in a creative way, it needs to include these four stages or phases: 1) Concept, 2) Impression, 3) Visualization, and 4) Faithā¦
Weāll start to see that these answers, and the enlightenment that comes with them, are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Little by little, they fit together to form a comprehensive picture. Eventually, weāll learn to rely on this process over anything elseā¦Real faith is a knowing, an inner experience thatās beyond the shadow of doubt. Reaching it requires we have the courage to take chances, to risk finding out the truthā¦
One of the most important laws, which we can also find in Scripture, states: According to your belief you shall experienceā¦So if we believe that we cannot change, that we live in a hostile universe, and that our ultimate fate is tragedy, guess what. We willāwe mustāexperience just thatā¦But if we believe in the truth that abundance and joy can be oursāthat we can change and grow out of our poverty, our misery and our despairāwe canāt help but do soā¦
There is no question, problem, conflict or darkness that we canāt bring into our meditation. We lose sight of how effective it can be for the biggest as well as the smallest issues of life. In reality, thereās no such thing as big or small. Everything is important. Our whole life mattersā¦Moreover, it wonāt work to split off and ignore the undesirable parts of ourselves, hoping we can enjoy Oneness when we are anything less than whole.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 18: How to Use Meditation to Create a Better Life
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #194 Meditation: Its Laws and Various Approaches ā A Summary (Meditation as Positive Life Creation)
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Missing episodes?
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As we slowly but surely make progress on our path, we become more alive. And we're more honest in our feelings and ability to relate. We āsacrificeā old reactive patterns and discover that we have not given up anything good, and we have gained plenty. Itās hard to remain skeptical. Yet at some point in our journey, we are going to run into a wall. It's made of our previously concealed but now plenty-conscious negative intention.
In our whacky, mixed-up psyches, we unconsciously want whatever it is we fearā¦Further, whatever we experience, we also unconsciously want. All of these teachings rest upon these immutable facts. We need to keep this in mind when we come face-to-face with our basic attitude toward life that basically says Noā¦
So much of the resistance we encounterāin ourselves and our companionsāis due precisely to our not wanting to see that a senseless, destructive streak of negative intention is in usā¦Weād rather hold onto our spite and go on blaming some fate that has befallen "poor innocent me," than to move from our positionā¦When we do finally see it, it is not a tragedyāitās a huge blessingā¦
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 17: Overcoming our Negative Intention by Identifying with our Spiritual Self
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #195 Identification and Intentionality: Identification with the Spiritual Self to Overcome Negative Intentionality
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Self-perpetuating cycles of pain are what result from the conflict created when two creative forces go in opposing directions inside usā¦Naturally, everyoneās favorite direction is toward the lightā¦But in reality, this is a world in which there are forces that oppose the lightā¦
Take, for instance, the physical level. The entire physical being is striving for health and wholeness. When thereās a disturbance that pulls the other way, we feel painā¦If we were aware that in addition to our desire for health, we have a hidden desire for non-health, the struggle would go away. For weād be hard pressed to hang onto a desire to be unhealthy if we were consciously aware of itā¦
So whatās really clogging up the works is the stuff in our unconscious; this is what creates the seeming gap between cause and effectā¦The cause, then, is the hidden negative wish; the effect is that thereās a disturbance in our system. The end result? Self-perpetuating cycles of painā¦
There is another plane of existence, the spiritual planeā¦Since the spiritual plane is where the positive direction originates, this plane doesnāt contain a negative direction. It simply cannot. This is the plane of unityā¦When we are free from conflict and pain, we are in unityā¦
The kicker here is to remember that under every distortion, whatās realāwhatās infinitely positiveāstill existsā¦So then any time we have something negative in our make-up, itās never all of usā¦The part that sides with life is going in the direction of love. The anti-life side, on the other hand, is hell-bent on hating and isolating and staying in fearā¦
We step across a major threshold on our spiritual journey when we make the discovery that some part of us wishes for a negative outcomeā¦When we donāt know we have a deliberate dark streak, we suffer far greater. We feel singled out as a victim and donāt get that we have a stake in the pain weāve createdā¦We must see that negativity is only a temporary reality. It will eventually grind to a halt as it takes us to our kneesā¦
Whenever we are separated from others, weāre swimming in the sphere of negativity. So then regardless how much we want union and wholeness, there is another side doing the sidestroke of resistance. The more we deny this, the more it hurts. Donāt forget, itās not possible to want 100% isolation and separationā¦
The part of this drama that makes it so compelling is that we get a precarious pleasure from indulging in our destructive waysā¦We donāt want to give up our pleasureā¦We now hold the tools in our hands to make different choices. Perhaps we can now see a way forward to living a life that is free from pain.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 16: How Pleasure Gets Twisted into Self-Perpetuating Cycles of Pain
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #140 Conflict of Positive versus Negative Oriented Pleasure as the Origin of Pain
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We have both a conscious mind, the stuff we know, and an unconscious mind, the stuff we donāt know we know. The unconscious is by far the stronger of the twoā¦The unconscious should be credited with far more than it typically isā¦Itās what controls our fateā¦Fate is nothing other than the events that occur due to the governing forces of our unconscious. Itās the tiger and weāre the tailā¦
The black hole of our unconscious includes our petrified wrong conclusions about life, our destructive patterns of behavior, and our negative emotions caused by our unresolved problems. All this we have stuffed down in there and forgotten aboutā¦Our unconscious is a repository for the constructive building blocks of the universe tooāunending creativity, utter wisdom, divine truth and love. Yessiree Bob, itās all in thereā¦
Letās now learn how to go about interpreting the language of our unconscious in our daily livesā¦Knowing this particular language will do more for us than knowing a dozen foreign Earth-languagesā¦
The universe is made up of two main currents: a yes-current and a no-current. The yes-current contains all the good stuff; it aligns with truth and it breeds love and unity. The no-current deviates from truth and is destructive; it breeds hate and disunityā¦Of the two currents, we tend to spot the yes-current more readily because it is mostly conscious. But when we bump up once again against a persistent unfulfillment, we can be sure that there are both a yes-current and a no-current at work, effectively cancelling each other outā¦
The more we squelch the no-current, thinking this will drive it out of existence, the more we simply drive it further underground where no logic can oppose it. This is how it becomes more powerful than the conscious yes-current. This also causes the yes-current to become more urgent and franticā¦The way to defuse all this is by surfacing the no-current, listening to its faulty premise, and gradually letting go of the mistaken belief that it needs to continueā¦
What we need to do is circle back to doing our Daily Review, doubling up on our efforts to detect the no-current. If we donāt do this, it may be almost too elusive to catchā¦Weāll start to see how we cringe slightly at the thought of having fulfillment within our graspā¦Maybe weāre not willing to pay the price for having it. Maybe we donāt feel we deserve happiness. The problem could be any combination of these thingsā¦
Simply becoming aware of the perpetual drip of our no-currentāeven before we understand what itās all aboutāwill deliver much-needed relief from the water torture of our hopelessnessā¦Weāll pinpoint where our hostility is smoldering, artfully camouflaged or explained away by the easy-to-blame provocations from others. These are the mechanisms we need to learn about, because they are the language of the unconscious. To successfully spot them is to successfully decipher the code of this ancient dialectā¦This is how we crack the no-currentā¦
We can start to look at frustrations and difficulties as helpful pot stirrers. For if nothing ever happened to stir the pot of our unconscious, obstructions would lay there like petrified woodā¦Once we start saying yes to finding our no, weāll establish a link with our unconscious mind, which includes the deeper, wiser part of usā¦When we observe ourselves in a calm and cool sort of way, without a lot of frantic hand waving, weāll be able to translate the language of the vaguely-felt unconscious into articulate wordsā¦We donāt need to go through crazy gyrations looking for unicorns.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 15: Learning to Speak the Language of the Unconscious
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #124 The Language of the Unconscious
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As children, we learned that the highest authorityāeven higher than Mom & Dadāis God. So itās not a surprise that we bundle up all our painful subjective experiences with the Ones-Who-Say-No, and dump them on God. Presto change-oāa God image has been createdā¦
As kids, authority figures were forever popping up everywhere. And when they stopped us from doing whatever it was we enjoyed most, we viewed them as hostileā¦To whatever degree we experienced fear and frustration, to that same degree weāll fear and be frustrated by Godā¦For many people, God is punishing and severe. We might also believe that God is unfair and unjustāa contrary force we must grapple with...
Before we know it, we will have grown an inner image of God that makes him out to be a monsterā¦Believing this to be true, we turn away from God altogether, wanting nothing to do with that monster in our mindsā¦This, folks, is often the real reason someone turns to atheismā¦
When doting parents give in to every whim, they donāt instill a sense of responsibility in the childā¦In such a personās eyes, God will let us get away with anything, so we can cheat life and skip out on responsibilities. Certainly, we might know less fear, but since life canāt be cheated, our wrong concept is going to take us down a road to conflictā¦
Our personal God-image will in some way be a combination of these two main categoriesā¦Because our God-image is so basic it taints all our other attitudes about life. It pushes us into hopelessness and despair, believing we live in an unfair and unjust universe, and also launches us into self-indulgent behavior where we reject self-responsibility because we expect God to pamper usā¦
These submerged ideas must get pried up from the muck of our unconscious thinkingā¦This is not a quick-fix processā¦We can give ourselves time to adjust, while we keep holding our own feet to the fire of truthā¦Emboldened by our Lower Self, our emotions will resist changingā¦So prayers will be importantā¦Our emotions will gradually grow up and out of previously erroneous reactionsā¦
If we want to know the truth but arenāt all that committed to overcoming our resistance to it, then at least we should realize that weāre the ones obstructing the light and our own freedom, not Godā¦The realization that cause and effect is on us, not an angry or indulgent God, is one of lifeās main breaking pointsā¦And itās that breaking point alone that could release us from this notion that weāre a victimā¦The laws of God donāt turn us into puppetsāquite the opposite, they make us whole and set us freeā¦
Clearly, talking about God is not easy. And yet, we must try. One major stumbling block for all of us is that we think about God as a personā¦God is; he (she, it, they) just isā¦Among other things, God is life. And God is also the force that enlivens lifeā¦Through us and all around us flows this powerful āelectric current;ā itās up to us how we want to use itā¦
The way spiritual laws work, the more we deviate from them, the more we live in a misery that causes us, at some point, to turn around and realize that we ourselves are the source of our misery, not God and his lawsā¦To love the laws is to love Godā¦Nestled in these loving laws is Godās willingness to let us deviate from divine laws, if we wishā¦No one is forcing us to live in light and bliss.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 14: Exposing the Mistaken Image we have About God
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #52 The God-Image
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There is one fundamental quality that is the core element of who we areā¦This means that each one of us have kept a kernel of perfectionāour original natureābasically intact in our core essence, although itās now covered by the Lower Self and layer upon layer of imperfections. So we have two missions. One is to sense what our basic light is, and the other is to realize how these three buzzkills of self will, pride and fear collude to cover it upā¦
They are the fundamental blockers of our essential lightā¦We must see the role that each of them plays and not buy, for one minute, the notion that this trio applies to āeveryone but moiāā¦
Self will wants what it wants, when it wants it. It will strive to have its way, regardless of who or what it has to mow over to get it. It doesnāt even care if it brings hardship and imprisonment upon the self in the processā¦Self will, then, is both blind and immature, and it works in opposition to spiritual law as much as in violation of human laws. And it really doesnāt careā¦
How then does our self will connect with fear? Well, if weāre sheltering a truckload of self willāoften extra-powerful because it is lurking in our unconsciousāweāre going to live in perpetual fear that we wonāt get our wayā¦The problem isnāt that this is true; the problem is our warped perspective that this is necessaryā¦
Weāre snagged on pride when our ego thinks weāre more important than other people, so we want advantages for ourselvesā¦If we feel anotherās humiliation counts for less than our own, we have too much pride. And who among us hasnāt thrown someone else under the bus to save our own hide?...We need to not take ourselves so seriously. Our pride doesnāt matter half as much as our overly self-important little ego would have us believeā¦Only when weāre ready to stand on equal footing with others will we be free of fearā¦
Itās not hard to see then how self will and fear go hand-in-hand. Itās equally simple to see how pride and self will are birds of a featherā¦Weāre super-quick to blame the faults and imperfections of others, making them responsible for our own inner disharmony. But maybe one day, weāll realize there isnāt anyone else to blameā¦
For as long as weāre ensnared in self will, pride and fear, we can never be happy. Itās not possibleā¦In knowing this, we hold a treasure: we have the key to fixing all our problems.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 13: The Ubiquitous Faults of Self-Will, Pride and Fear
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #30 Self-Will, Pride and Fear
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If we apply these teachings to our lives, they will work for us in finding out the truth. There is nothing we must believeā¦If we want to become capable of experiencing genuine happiness, we must learn how to course-correct back into alignment with spiritual lawsā¦ None of this can happen by merely concentrating on our outer problems. We must look deeper and find the corresponding inner problems, which always, always, always are the cause of the outer onesā¦
Expressing our love for God in our beautiful prayers and profound meditations is a wonderful thing. But we must also do the work. And what is āthe work?ā Just this: to master the Lower Selfā¦As long as we donāt recognize how our Lower Self works, it will continue to rule the roost, hiding behind handy excuses and cloaking its devious waysā¦
We might perform a nice act and check the box on good-deeds-done-for-today, but if our actions arenāt supported by good, clean feelings, this doesnāt count for muchā¦We will need to learn to grapple with the unconscious mind, which is where the Lower Self operatesā¦
Every fault we harbor stands like a brick wall in the way of unfolding pure loving feelings or insight or understanding. Itās in this way that we do indeed do harm to others. All the livelong dayā¦Another equally impactful hindrance is our fears, which we generally donāt put in the same category as faultsā¦Our fears are like a wet blanket on our inner light of love and understanding; after all, when we are in fear, we are not in truth. So on this path of purification, we will not only come face to face with our faultsāour character weaknessesāwe will need to face all our fearsā¦
Asking another to tell us how they see us, especially our faults, is tricky businessā¦The best approach is to go with the one who knows us bestā¦We can ask for guidance in receiving unpleasant truths from others. So then their input can be used in a productive wayā¦If our wish to overcome our faults is sincere, we will have made the very best beginning one could imagineā¦
For certain, this path is a difficult one. But God is not the one making it so hardā¦We must never lose sight of this truth: everything we suffer from in life results fromādirectly or indirectlyāour shortcomings and our fears. If we had no shortcomings, we would have no fear. And our fear and insecurities are what make us so miserable. They spoil everything.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 12: Finding Out the Truth about Ourselves, Including Our Faults
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #26 Finding One's Faults
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Weāre here because planet Earth is a perfect match for the negativity remaining in us; it offers conditions compatible with our inner landscape, our inner splits. Weāre confused about reality and we have a headful of crazy conceptsā¦Where this prevails thereās always conflict. This is due to split concepts that divide the psyche and donāt arise from the truth ā¦So Earth is nothing more and nothing less than a classroom for people with splits.
Take a look around and we can see the opposites of duality everywhere. There is man and woman, day and night, life and death. This is one way Earth pairs up the halves of two-way splitsā¦
We can see evidence of our splits right there in the symbolism of having two parents. If our psyche is largely free and healthy, we will have a set of parents we think of as an asset. But for some, our negative involvement is still pegging the meter. Then our parents will each bring out one side of our splitā¦If we look at everything weāve managed to surface so far, including our main image and defenses, our conflicts and faults, they will reveal the basic inner attitude that is governing our life. And this attitude is always split down the middle. Meaning we fluctuate back and forth between two essentially opposite ways of reactingā¦When this realization starts to gel, weāll see that our parents represent our two fundamental attitudesā¦.
There was no way for us to work this out before we got here. So our parents, who bring our unmended splits out into the open, couldnāt possibly be responsible for our problemsā¦This basic conflict is so deep, itās existence is the reason we have the human experience. But itās not inaccessibleā¦
We go through life, then, reacting to the person in front of us, not as them but as if they were our parentsā¦Whenever we are negatively involved with someone, we can be sure our split is a factor in the fireworksā¦We firmly believe in something that isnāt true. And then we reinforce our belief, so our split cracks open even widerā¦
Lack of awareness is truly a prison that makes life not worth living because we feel caught between a rock and a hard place. We adopted a certain way of reacting to our parents, and now we keep responding that way and getting the same poor resultsā¦The way out is through awareness that we are living in a tranceā¦Once we break this mold, new experiences can materialize.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 11: Our Habit of Transferring our Split onto Everyone
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #118 Duality Through Illusion ā Transference
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So letās talk about pain, and more importantly how to dissolve pain caused by old patternsā¦The climate we grew up in affected usāit was like perpetually receiving a minor shockā¦We suffered and believed our suffering was unchangable, which conditioned us to create defensesāhighly destructive defensesā¦We repressed the original frustration and pain we couldnāt deal with. And we put it out of our awareness, where it still smolders in the unconscious mindā¦Our defense mechanisms of aggression, submission and/or withdrawal fully developedā¦Our images are also a form of defense. They create by-now old patterns designed to fight against painful experiences. They do this by erecting a rigid wall constructed entirely from wrong conclusionsā¦
For those of us who have opted for the pseudo-solution of withdrawing, weāre defending ourselves against being hurtā¦Dollars to donuts, if our strategy is to make ourselves deliberately weak, we are actually wanting to lord ourselves over othersā¦Itās plain to see that being weak is hardly harmless; it doesnāt hurt anyone any less than being outrightly domineeringā¦In every case, we hurt others while also rubbing salt in our own woundsā¦
Thanks to the law of cause and effect, hurting others is not a zero-sum game; there will be consequences. So not only have we done nothing to mitigate the original pain, weāve invited more of it. Nice work, everyoneā¦
Rather than abandoning our limping pseudo-solutions and old patterns, we wrap them into our idealized self-image, whose agenda is to make us feel better than everyone elseā¦Since the nature of the idealized self is falseness and pretenseāwe act perfect since we canāt be perfectāwe feel alienated from ourselves, from others and from life. Another winner, if ever there was oneā¦Weāll come to realize that pain feels a whole lot better than being alienated from ourselves and feeling numbā¦
Once weāve gone through all this, emptying our inner well of what is old and immature, then constructive patterns can find a solid foundationā¦Whatever we must travel through is a growing pain that brings us to our final destination: a strong, self-reliant, full life. In the end, the payoff is actually worth all the effortā¦Once we learn to cope with mishaps and missteps, they wonāt have the power to break usā¦
But what hurts so much presently is really the pain of not feeling fulfilled now, which is a result of our unsuccessful destructive old patternsā¦Spoiler alert, hereās what weāre going to find: beneath all our various āprotectiveā layers is a pile of unmet needs that we donāt have a clue aboutā¦Realize, it is not childish or immature, per se, to need to be loved. Itās only so when we refuse to grow in our ability to give love that we lock out and cover up our real need to receive loveā¦We can now see that no unkind God is punishing us or neglecting us. We have brought our problems upon ourselves through our own unrealistic attempts at running away. So if we did that, we can do something different.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 10: Unpacking the Pain of our Old Destructive Patterns
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #100 Meeting the Pain of Destructive Patterns
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From practically the time we were born, we have been creating our own impressions about this thing we call life. The only problem is, most of the time our conclusions are wrongā¦They are based on a certain limited child logic, but they are nonetheless in error. As we grow up, these wrong conclusions and the attitudes they spawn sink out of our awareness where they set in and start molding how our life will lookā¦The word the Guide uses to refer to these wrong conclusions is an āimageāā¦
When we form conclusions about life that are free from error, our positive, healthy beliefs are flexible and relaxed; they flow harmoniously and adapt spontaneously to lifeās changes. An image, on the other hand, is stuck in the mud and congested; an image won't zig when life zagsā¦
Since images donāt entirely make sense, they canāt stay in our conscious mind. But the more hidden they are, the more potent they become, because then thereās absolutely nothing pushing back on them. They have free reignā¦The list of damages caused by an image is practically endlessā¦Ding, ding, dingāhereās another way to know an image is in the house: when thereās a repetition of incidents we didnāt ask for and donāt want. Images always form patternsā¦We draw people and events to us like bees to honey on account of our imagesā¦
Itās entirely possible to have a legitimate desire that we speak out into the world, but we have a polar-opposite image that blocks itā¦The spiritual aim of all personal self-development is purification, and we canāt become purified if we donāt understand and gain some control over our own unconsciousā¦We wonāt find our way through the maze of this inner landscape if we ājust try harderā.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 9: Images and the Deep, Deep Damage They Do
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Children have more than just a desire to be loved; they want to be loved exclusively, without any limits. In other words, every childās desire for love is unrealisticā¦Since they seldom receive an adequate amount of warmth and mature love, children remain hungry for it throughout their whole lifeā¦Essentially everyoneāeven the most diligent spiritual seekersāoverlooks just how strong the link is between the unfulfillment of our childhood longings and our present-day problems. This isnāt just a nice a theoryā¦
They may not have been as perfect as we thought and hoped theyād be back then. But thereās no reason to now reject them because they had their own immaturities and inner conflictsā¦Once weāre free of this repetitive cycle, weāll stop crying over the spilt milk of not getting love the way we wanted itā¦We need to release the pain we feel now, which is attaching to the hurt of then. Next weāll see how we thought we had to choose this situation or admit defeatā¦
We can turn our painful feelings into healthy growing pains whenever we become ready to rid ourselves of the bitterness and tension weāve been hidingā¦Forgetting and forgiving will become a real thing that we wonāt even have to think about doing. They will naturally occurā¦
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 8: How and Why we Recreate Childhood Hurts
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #73 Compulsion to Recreate and Overcome Childhood Hurts
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There are three major divine attributesālove, power and serenityāthat in the healthy person work as a team. They maintain flexibility amongst themselves so one never drowns another outā¦But when they are in distortion, they step all over each other. Then love, power and serenity get distorted into their evil twins: submission, aggression and withdrawalā¦
In our efforts to master our difficulties, largely created in childhood and then perpetuated into adulthood through our wrong solution choices, we find ourselves increasingly bound up by the straightjacket of a vicious circleā¦It never occurs to us that our real problem is the solution we have chosenā¦
For a child, it is valid to need to receive protective love. But if such a need is carried over into adulthood, itās no longer validā¦When weāre so dependent on others for love, we become helpless; we wonāt stand on our own two feetā¦These attitudes become so ingrained in us, itās like theyāre part of our nature. But they are notā¦
When a person is inclined to choose love, or really submission, as their pseudo-solution, they have the basic feeling that āif only I were loved, then everything would be OKāā¦We cringe and we crawl, complying with others demandsāwhether real or imaginedāand selling our soul in an attempt to get the help, sympathy, approval and love we craveā¦We use a fake weakness as our weapon in the battle to finally master life and winā¦
To avoid getting caught, we hide all this falseness behind the mask of our idealized self-image: we put on a Love Maskā¦We submit as a way to dominateā¦Itās not hard to imagine that living this way will keep us estranged from our real selfā¦Our conclusion: the world takes advantage of our āgoodness,ā abusing us and stopping us from reaching self-realizationā¦Being submissive is a caricature of what real love looks likeā¦
In the second category is the pseudo-solution of seeking power through aggression. Here we think that the answer to all our problems lies in having power and being independentā¦We believe the only way to stay safe is by becoming so strong and invulnerable that no one and nothing will be able to touch us. Then we cut off all our feelingsā¦Warmth and affection, communication and caring for othersāall these are despicableā¦
The power type is just as dishonest and hypocritical as the submissive type, because in truth, everyone needs warmth and affection. Without these, we sufferā¦Power seekers are wired to never fail. Everā¦We will always be competing and trying to one-up everyone...
The Power Mask requires us to live more independently from feelings than a human being possibly can. So we constantly feel like a failure for not living up to our ideal selfā¦Our pride sticks out like a sore thumb. Heck, weāre proud of our prideā¦We, the power type, will take pride in how āobjectiveā we are, as opposed to being gullible. And that, we say, is why we donāt like anyoneā¦To show our true loving nature then is a crass violation of all we stand for, and doing so brings on deep shameā¦
We often choose the pseudo-solution of withdrawal when first two options have so torn us apart that we had to find a way outā¦Underneath our withdrawal is a false attempt at serenityā¦
Both the power type and the withdrawn type have something in common: aloofnessā¦Whereas the power seeker likes being hostile and glorifies their aggressive fighting spirit, the withdrawal type isnāt even aware of having such feelingsā¦
Our underlying conflicts rise up with a vengeance, showing just how artificial our serenity really was; turns out, we built the whole structure on sandā¦As always, we will fall woefully short of the dictates of our Serenity Mask, leading to self-contempt, guilt and frustrationā¦
If we start to view our problems and our emotions in this ligh
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Thereās a direct correlation between being unhappy and not believing in ourselves; our self-confidence takes a hit that is proportional to how badly we feel. Our idealized self-image is supposed to avoid all that by supplying the missing self-confidence. This, we think, by way of our unconscious reasoning, will lead us straight down the road to pleasure supremeā¦
We simply canāt be more than we really are in any given life situationā¦What we can do is have a genuine desire to better ourselves, which leads to accepting ourselves as we are right nowā¦Once weāve done a significant amount of personal work, weāll start to see the difference between feeling a genuine desire for gradual improvement, and the pretense of the idealized self that just wants to click some ruby slippers together now and look betterā¦
The very notion that, as human beings, we can be perfect is an illusionā¦Since our nutty standards are impossible to reachāand yet we never give up trying to uphold themāwe create an inner tyranny of the worst kind. We donāt realize just how impossible our demands are and we never stop whipping ourselves to meet them, so we feel like complete failures when we prove, once again, that we fall shortā¦Someone or something else must be to blame for our failureā¦
The idealized self is a phony, rigid face that we invest with our real being. But itās an artificial construction that will never come to life. The more we invest into it, the more strength we sap from the center of our beingā¦Only by seeing whatās going on can we color inside the lines of our being, and fill in our missing sense of selfā¦
Believe it or not, our feelings will become every bit as reliable as our intellect. This is what it means to find ourselvesā¦The idealized self wants to be perfect right now. The real self knows this isnāt possible, and this doesn't bother it one little bitā¦
From our real self, we function from our wholeness, instead of from āhole-nessāā¦When we learn that we can squander ourselves into life, the same way that nature squanders herself, we will then know the beauty of livingā¦ In reality, having genuine self-confidence gives us peace of mindā¦Remember that no one can do this work alone.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 6: The Origin and Outcome of the Idealized Self-Image
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #83 The Idealized Self-Image
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An important difference between our superficial intellect and our real self is that we can direct, manipulate and govern the intellect using our will; we canāt do this with the real self. Of the two, the real self is the more intelligent one. We are conditioned to put a laser-like focus on the use of our thinking ability and willpower. So we believe we can reach self-realization through an act of sheer will; we think we can use our minds to develop spirituallyā¦Itās our real self that connects with the living spirit of a word, whereas unfeeling repetition comes from our intellectā¦
If we boil it down, what obstructs the real self are our layers of confusion and error/ On top these sit our lack of awareness about our confusion and errorsā¦What intellect and will can be used for is cleaning up the errors and confusion that they themselves have createdā¦When we know we are confused, we are closer to our real self than when we are blind to our inner confusion, even if we donāt have any solutions to our problems...
So what, we should turn off our brains? Not at all. To do the arduous work of following a spiritual path, we want to use our intellect to understand our errors and confusion, and to see how we have misdirected our will. Doing this will indirectly birth our real self, with all its spontaneity and creativity, into our realityā¦We have to understand our current situation if we ever hope to grow out of it. We canāt struggle our way out by covering up what we donāt want to see...
Trying to reach the mountaintop of the higher state of being by using intellect and willpower causes us to construct imagesāwrong conclusionsāof how we think we should be and of how life should be, according to our limited past experiencesā¦We canāt force ourselves to love. We might think we can, but in reality we canāt. Which doesnāt mean we donāt loveā¦
So we canāt just make up our minds that weāre going to be good people who love and have compassion and humility. We can, however, make up our minds to figure out whatās causing us to not be all thatā¦What we donāt realize is that if we were to see ourselves as we really are, we would see that thereās nothing to fear. We need to realize that hanging on for dear life wonāt bring us to the doorstep of the real self. We simply cannot find ourselves that wayā¦
In truth, we always self-produce our misery. No matter what we may think or how much we want it to be otherwise, itās always an inside job. And so too is finding the solutionā¦The problem isnāt one of moralsā¦
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 5: Intellect and Will as Tools or Hindrances to Self-Realization
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #104 Intellect and Will as Tools or Hindrances to Self-Realization
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Our spiritual work, which comes in answer to our prayers, arrives in the form of a conflict or a friction which then activates some combination of the three personality types in us. Something happens that makes us feel weāre being treated unjustly, so we will have a chance to recognize our inner errors and purify our soulsā¦The moment we say a prayer asking for help and strength, all hell is going to break loose. Thatās when we know our prayers are being answeredā¦Yet we think the frictions in our lives have nothing to do with usā¦
Any prayer to know the truth will always be answeredāif we knock, the door will be openedāand the newly arriving recognitions will cancel out the disharmony, our feelings of injustice, and our misery and defiance. Frictions with our brothers and sisters will then melt like snow in the sun; we will unite with understanding and with love. There is no other reason for life on Earth than to do this, and itās never too late to beginā¦
If we are the Reason Type, we govern our lives primarily using the reasoning process, making us prone to neglecting our emotions. Frankly, weāre afraid of our feelings so we thwart them. In doing so, though, we cripple one of our most important faculties: intuitionā¦The Reason Type tends to miss out on a lot of life experiences due to fear and pride. Because we basically fear any emotions that might lead to an experience we donāt think weāll be able to handleā¦We, the Reason Type, like to keep everything in shipshape order, always āknowingā where we stand. But avoiding emotions leaves us adrift from our coreā¦
The Emotion Type is equally one-sided. We pride ourselves in being capable of truly feeling, so while we may find it easier to connect with inner divinity, we easily become carried away by our emotionsā¦As Emotion Types, we secretly look down on Reason Types, perhaps derogatorily labeling them āintellectualsā and losing sight of the fact that reason is as God-given as emotionsā¦If weāre an extreme Emotion Type, we will impact our surroundings with our uncontrolled emotionsā¦
None of us can exist without the use of our will, and the Emotion Type uses will in a chaotic and impulsive way, without careful considerationā¦Our will should always be the servant and never the master. So ideally, our will should equally serve our emotional, intuitive faculties and our reasoning processes. But the Will Type makes a master out of the servant, which pulls us out of focus in a dangerous wayā¦If weāre a Will Type, we will tend to throw caution to the wind, losing sight of the many essential considerations needed to discover the truth in any situationā¦
In their highest state of perfection, the Reason Type is the Angel of Wisdom, the Emotion Type is the Angel of Love and the Will Type is the Angel of Courage. These three basic personality types are all aspects of divinity that each of us can develop, and which can all work together in harmonyā¦For most of us, weāll see how two of three faculties dominate and a third is crippledā¦Weāre wrong in thinking that our extreme is better than the other extremes. Extreme is extreme, and itās never in the middle of the road, which is where we want to be.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 4: Three Basic Personality Types: Reason, Will and Emotion
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #43 Three Basic Personality Types: Reason, Will, Emotion
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One of the subtle bodies in every living person is the Higher Self, or divine spark. The higher oneās spiritual development, the faster these vibrations will beā¦Ever since the Fall of the Angels, our Higher Self has gradually wrapped itself in various invisible layers of more dense matter that is somewhere in between the density of the physical body and the Higher Self. Say āhelloā to the Lower Selfā¦
The Lower Self, which also varies from soul to soul, is made up of our faults and weakness, along with laziness and ignorance. The last thing it wants to do is change and rise above itself. It always wants to have its own way, without having to pay any price for thisā¦
There is another layer that is quite significant but often overlooked, that we could call the Mask Self. We create this false covering because we realize weāll likely bump into trouble with our surroundings if and when we give in to our Lower Selfā¦Our mask is not our divine spark, although weāre hoping others will believe that it is, and itās not our Lower Self, although weāre hoping it will work to cover up our shadow side. Itās phony. And itās fake. Itās not realā¦
The mask can be sickeningly sweet. For an artist, it would be the difference between a good, genuine color and artificial coloring. Itās like the word we use to describe bad art: kitschā¦
When a thought or intention emanates from the Higher Self, it often gets polluted by tendencies from the Lower Selfā¦Whenever the right act is not supported by purified feelings, there is a war going on withinā¦Self-deception is one of the hallmarks of being a humanā¦
We are alienated from ourselvesāweāve lost our connection to the truth of who we areā¦We convince ourselves that weāre not really selfish, fooling ourselves about what we really feel and our twisted motives, not wanting to see whatās what. After a while, this mess sinks down out of our awareness and starts to fermentā¦We actually convince ourselves that we need to be selfish, which is not in alignment with our true nature. So weāre living a lieā¦Being true to ourselves, though, doesnāt mean we give in to our Lower Self. Rather, we need to become aware of itā¦
It will be far easier to face our Lower Self if we realize that underneath it lives our Higher Self. Thatās the absolute reality of who we truly are and ultimately we are going to reach this part of ourselvesā¦We have to fight for enlightenment. If weāre not willing to do this, letās at least not deceive ourselves.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 3: The Higher Self, the Lower Self, and the Mask Self
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #14 The Higher Self, the Lower Self, and the Mask
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Our defenses work by blocking access to our emotions, so they choke off our ability to get to our feelings. Weāre going to need to lower our weaponsā¦Every tear not shed is a block. Every protest not spoken sits like a lump in our throat, causing us to lash out inappropriately. These emotions feel like bottomless pits...
Feelings, which are moving energy currents, will change and transform as long as the energy is flowing. But freezing our emotions stops the movement and therefore stops life, making us feel lazyā¦When we stagnate, becoming lazy, passive and inert, we desire to do nothing, and then often confuse this state with the natural, spiritual state of just being. But thereās a big differenceā¦We have to feel the fear thatās under the spell of the poppies of our laziness...
No matter how undesirable an emotion is, we compound our pain when we wonāt feel it, and that secondary pain is all bitter with no sweetā¦We must commit to go in and through, and not around. Humans, by and large, have a strong preference for going around...
We can ask for extra help and guidance, which goes a long way toward loosening up some of that stagnant matter. Itās like a rototiller for the soulā¦It may seem counterintuitive, but weāre more in touch with ourselves when we admit our fear than when we deny itā¦We wonāt realize that the fear is not realāitās truly an illusionāuntil we feel it and go through it...
We'll find our strength by feeling our weakness; we find pleasure and joy by feeling our pain; we find true and justified hope by feeling our hopelessness; and we find fulfillment right now by accepting the lacks of our childhood. If we walk through these gateways, weāll step into lifeā¦Any spiritual path that encourages us to reach the Holy Grail without going through the weeds is full of wishful thinking.
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 2: The Importance of Feeling All Our Feelings, Including Fear
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #190 Importance of Experiencing All Feelings, Including Fear ā The Dynamic State of Laziness
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To be in harmony, we have to walk straight in three areas: physically, mentally and emotionally. All three sides of our nature must work together, like two people running a three-legged race, for a human personality to find unity through growth. Having any one area underdeveloped will have a crippling effect; it will take the entire personality down. Our feelings are often left in the dustā¦
In every childās life, there will be circumstances that are unhappy; disappointment and pain are the human common denominatorā¦We each draw a similar conclusion: āIf I donāt feel, I wonāt be unhappyāā¦This is one of the most basic wrong conclusions that people draw about lifeā¦
We bury our feelings in the backyard of our awareness where they stay stuck, destructive and inadequate, even though we have long-ago forgotten we even hid themā¦But if we donāt let these experiences be felt and moved along, they will stagnate and create a dull climate of vague unhappiness that weāll be hard pressed to later put our finger onā¦We shut down the factory of our feelings and along went our intuition and creativity. From there, we limped along on a fraction of our potential, and often, we still donāt realize how big a hit we tookā¦
We grabbed a wrong solution like it was scissorsāhoping to cut out what hurtāand we ranā¦This blocking action doesnāt prevent us from feeling the painful feelings foreverāit just defers themā¦So as we grow up, the unhappiness we seemed to have avoided will come to us in a different, indirect way that is much more painful. We will suffer the bitter hurt of isolation and lonelinessā¦We fail to see how we willingly choose our current painful isolation when we chose to defend ourselves this wayā¦
If we numb ourselves to any pain, can we truly love? Isnāt love, first and foremost, a feeling?...In the end, we canāt have it both ways, both feeling love and not feeling anythingā¦Whatever blocks us from looking at the negative in ourselves is the exact same thing thatās blocking the loveā¦.
Thereās nothing inside us we need to run fromā¦Once we move through that first painful release of what weāve been sitting on all these years, it will feel like a poison has left our systemā¦Old unfelt immature emotions are like a stopper holding back genuine good feelingsā¦
We need our feelings to guide usāthatās what well-functioning, mature people doā¦With strong, mature emotions, we will be able to trust ourselves and find a security beyond what weāve ever dreamed ofā¦
Listen and learn more.
Bones, Chapter 1: Emotional Growth and Its Function
Read Original PathworkĀ® Lecture: #89 Emotional Growth and Its Function
