Positivity And Negativity As One Energy Current -- Envy

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. May the blessings of Creative Intelligence, which exists all around you and within you, strengthen and enlighten you so these words find an echo and help you on your path to your real self.

These lectures are always addressed to the majority of my friends working on this path. Those of you who have not yet reached the point where you can apply the topic under discussion will nevertheless find it useful; you will be helped indirectly to reach this point a little sooner than you might otherwise. Do not feel discouraged if you cannot immediately apply or even understand these lectures when you first hear them. Know that your path will bring you to the issues discussed here.

Most of my friends by now have come face to face with their destructiveness. I am referring to more than a mere discovery of an emotion -- the acknowledgment of a momentary hostility, for example. I mean an overall, pervasive, basic, lingering destructiveness that has been dormant and covered up all along. It is quite a different experience to ascertain that this destructiveness exists in you, and to feel the condition you were in before it was repressed. You are now at a stage in which you can observe yourself thinking, feeling, and acting destructively, while before you were, at best, only theoretically aware of your destructiveness and could surmise its presence only by the unpleasant manifestations in your life. Now you are dealing with the problem of how to change this condition because you do not like it. You fully comprehend that destructiveness is totally useless and does not fulfill a single good purpose. Nevertheless, you find yourself unable to let it go. To be able to do so, you need to understand the nature of destructiveness much better than you do now. This subject is the main topic of tonight's lecture.

It is not easy to become aware of yourself thinking, feeling, and acting destructively. Even when you have this awareness, it is difficult to see that your destructiveness causes you misery. And even when you are aware of a relationship between your destructiveness and your misery, you are totally unable and unwilling to give up this way of being. Awareness of your destructiveness and its consequences is a major step in your development. But to let go of your destructiveness, which is the second part of this particular phase of your evolution, you must understand its nature. And to understand requires some repetitions so the subject can be grasped comprehensively.

The dualistic concept of life is closely related to the lack of comprehension about man's destructiveness. Mankind thinks of destructive forces and constructive forces as opposites. Even those of you who know theoretically that there is no such division wish that you had positive feelings in place of the negative feelings you discover. Or you think that after the negative emotions are dissipated a new set of feelings will follow, which consist of an entirely different energy or psychic material. When you speak of the two forces or two sets of feelings -- destructive and constructive -- you use a figure of speech, a way of expressing two different kinds of experiences. But this figure of speech is also an expression of the dualistic misconception in man's consciousness.

There is really only one power. This is very important to understand, my friends, particularly when you deal with your own destructiveness and negativity. There is one life force, which energizes every expression of life. This life force can flow in a constructive, positive, affirming way, or it can turn into a destructive, negating current. To understand the specific and personal way this process works, I will discuss it from the point of view of man in relation to his life. I will touch upon general spiritual principles here only when they are necessary to help you understand the entire topic.

First, I will repeat that the life force, when untampered with, is totally constructive, totally good, totally positive, and totally affirming. Therefore it produces total pleasure for any living, feeling, perceiving consciousness. The more fully this consciousness is developed, the fuller the pleasure it can experience from and through the pure life force, in whatever form the life force finds expression. The pure life force cannot be anything other than beauty. Every life organism -- a newborn baby, a plant, a cell -- naturally tends to realize this potential. When the natural flow of the life force is interfered with, the energy current which seeks expression is blocked and is thus stopped from flowing to its destiny. The natural flow is stopped by outer conditions, inner conditions, or a combination of both.

When a young child encounters conditions in his outer environment that prohibit the natural flow of his life force, the extent of the damage depends on how free he is from inner blockages. If inner blockages exist and lie dormant because they have not been eliminated in previous lives, then the outer negative conditions will create a severe blockage, freezing the flowing energy current and petrifying it into a hardened psychic mass. When no dormant blockages exist, the outer negative conditions will create only a temporary disturbance in the flow of the life force. The outer negative condition, therefore, can never be totally responsible for the condensation of energy, for the paralysis of the life stream. It can only be the final activating factor in bringing out the dormant negative inner condition. The positive life force turns into a destructive, non-life force when the outer negative condition activates the dormant inner condition. Love becomes fear and hostility; trust becomes distrust, etc. The negative force finally becomes so unbearable that it is totally numbed.

Man's persistent problems in life result from blocked energy. Unblocking can occur only when the relationship between the inner and outer negative conditions responsible for the block is thoroughly understood. Because children's ego faculties are immature, it is impossible for them to deal adequately with negative conditions. When a human being finds himself on a path such as this one, it is very important to understand that a negative emotion cannot be replaced by a different positive emotion. It must be reconverted to its original state. How do you do this, my friends? Each of your unpleasant, unpleasurable, problematic or anxiety-producing life manifestations is the result of a repetition. It repeats in this lifetime the situation in which the positive pleasure force was originally blocked, hindered, or prohibited, and therefore turned into unpleasure.

It is important to understand that pleasure is not totally absent in a state of unpleasure. When you find yourself stymied in your attempt to overcome negativity, you need to sense, deep within yourself, the pleasurable aspect of this negativity, even if you are consciously feeling a lot of pain. Your difficulty in ridding yourself of destructiveness also comes from attitudes you have already explored -- the desire to punish, the forcing current, or the unspoken words which say: "If I am sufficiently unhappy, then I prove that the world is wrong for not giving me what I want." But these reasons for your negativity are not the deepest problem you face in shedding it. Rather, the greatest problem is the dichotomy you feel between the simultaneous pleasure and unpleasure in your negativity. It is necessary for you to intuit and then very specifically feel this dichotomy.

The pleasure principle can never be completely absent even where it is distorted. Its basic ingredients must always remain, no matter how far gone the distortion is and how difficult to shed, precisely because the pleasurable aspect of it always exists. But negativity can be shed when you understand the fact that only the form of its expression must be changed, but that the identical life current is preserved. When it is understood that the painful aspects of the life current can be abandoned and that the pleasurable aspects will simultaneously increase, negativity can transform itself. When it is understood that the same current will manifest differently, rather than the negativity being replaced by a new set of emotions appearing out of nowhere, what now seems difficult will happen by itself. You can become aware of the pleasure attached to your destructiveness when you meditate for this awareness. Instead of feeling guilty about the pleasure, and consequently repressing it, you will be able to allow the current to unfold, express itself, and reconvert itself.

Mankind's attaching of pleasure to destructiveness has been instrumental in the widespread guilt about all experiences of pleasure. This guilt, in turn, is responsible for the numbing of all feelings.

How then can pleasure be liberated from destructiveness if both are considered equally wrong? Although you are not consciously aware of it, you cannot live without pleasure, for life and pleasure are one and the same. When pleasure is linked to destructiveness, destructiveness cannot be given up. Letting go of destructiveness then seems like letting go of life. This creates a situation in which on one level of your inner life you hold on to both pleasure and destructiveness, and then feel guilty for and afraid of these two forces. On a more conscious level, you are numb and feel little or nothing.

It is not enough to know all this conceptually; it must be related to your specific circumstances. What outer manifestation in your life is currently causing you continuous anguish? Look for problems in your life that you cannot come to terms with, rather than for a momentary experience caused by a condition that dissolves when new conditions arise. In order to resolve the deeply problematic conditions -- which are called images and which continually recreate similar conditions -- the blocked and paralyzed energy must be made fluid again. This can happen only when you take the first step in this particular phase of your development by identifying the pleasure in your destructiveness. You must actually feel the pleasure attached to the unpleasure of the problem.

Since the pleasure current in the life force manifests primarily as sexuality in your life, destructive, blocked energy contains blocked sexual energy. It follows that outer problems must be symbolic or representative of how sexual energy was first blocked by outer conditions. The pain of this blockage caused the destructiveness, which contains aspects of the pleasure principle. Every difficult situation in life symbolizes a sexual fixation in the innermost psyche, one which you fear and run away from. Because you do not face up to your fear and experience it, the outer condition becomes more and more disconnected from its inner cause where, in the sexual fixation, the pain and difficulty is enlivened by pleasure.

You on this path must therefore permit yourselves to feel the pleasure in your destructiveness. Then, and only then, will you truly comprehend the painful outer situation, which may seem to have nothing to do with your emotional life or with sexual problems. I have often mentioned that the secrets behind your conflicts, as well as the key to their resolution, lies in your secret sexual fantasies. When you find the parallel between the outer problem and the specific pleasure current in your sexuality, you will be able to make the frozen energy fluid again. The flowing energy will then enable you to dissolve the negativity and the destructiveness, and thus eliminate the outer problem.

Your inability to feel the pleasure in your unpleasure is the result of rejecting and judging yourself for this distortion. Consequently, you deny, repress, and further alienate yourself from your inner self, where the destructive conditions can be experienced and gradually altered.

Every problem must have a nucleus in which the original current has been blocked, and is therefore distorted, and in which the pleasure/unpleasure dichotomy produces an unconscious fixation. You chose a way out of this pattern, with the further consequence that outer problems form and repeat themselves. These problems cannot be overcome until their nucleus is experienced. This cause and effect applies to all stubborn problems, whether or not they seem related to sexuality.

My friends, the chain reaction I have explained must be personally understood and worked through. You must stop running away from the distortion in yourself. You must allow yourself to see it, to let it unfold, and to live it through within yourself. Then you will see the dichotomy between pleasure and unpleasure. You will understand and experience why and how destructiveness, in whatever shape or form is manifests in your life, seems so difficult to abandon. As you do this, the destructiveness will loosen up more easily and quickly than when you tried to force it away.

All this may sound very theoretical to those who cannot yet understand what I have described, but many of my friends are at the point where these words can be used for awareness and action. This will be a turning point in your inner, and, consequently, your outer, life, so that giving up your destructiveness will no longer be a problem. You cannot force change with the surface will, without a deep comprehension of the inner forces that make up your destructiveness. The outer will must be used, of course, but only to liberate the inner powers that then make development a natural, organic, harmonious process. Destructiveness doesn't dissolve itself by being deliberately dropped, like a cloak; nor are constructive feelings produced by a similar act of will. The transformation is an evolutionary process within yourself, happening right here and now.

Man's connection to envy is another area in which he finds himself extremely blocked, hindered, and impatient with his own development. This is a much more important topic than most of you realize. Here, again, a number of my friends have begun to see that envy exists wherever their life is problematic, and that they are free of envy wherever their life is free of problems. As with destructiveness, envy gives rise to self-hatred. You run away from the point within the envy which has to be transcended in order to fully emerge from the envy current and reconvert it to its original nature.

The cause of envy is the dualistic concept which expresses life in terms of either/or. "Either I have or the other has," is the statement that envy makes. This indicates the limited way in which man experiences the universe. The universe is infinite in its abundance. Really knowing this makes envy impossible, for you then realize that whatever the other person owns or is has not been taken away from you. Whatever you have was never taken away from someone else. The either/or misconception presents innumerable problems. In addition to creating envy, it creates guilt. Believing the either/or misconception paralyzes your relaxed and powerful reach toward all the good things that can be yours. It makes you see problems in a distorted fashion. And it produces guilt for wanting and, at the same time, it creates envy of what others have.

This distorted perception of life's conditions is also responsible for the competitive attitude that afflicts mankind. Competitiveness is particularly strong in certain civilizations at particular periods of their history. Understanding the truth about life makes it impossible for one person to measure himself against another. Comparison between two people is totally unrealistic: it measures factors that cannot be measured. The person who is no longer caught in this error is relieved of a specific strain. When you comprehend the uniting principle, which states that good is never divisible, a number of problems will be eliminated. You will not be envious, therefore you will not feel guilty. Nor will you be faced with the apparent necessity of giving something up to someone else, because you will know that what is yours is yours and what is the other person's is his. That very fact will make impossible the selfishness and dishonesty which exist in the childish nature, where the tendency to cheat life always prevails. You will not have to try to get away with anything. Nor, once you really comprehend the unitive principle, will you have to feel special when you compare yourself with others.

The need to be special comes from a confusion about the rightful inner need for full self-realization. What is this confusion? Full self-realization always enhances the uniqueness of the individual. It does not diminish individuality, nor does it imply mediocrity. Quite the contrary is true. Why, then, do people believe that giving up being special means experiencing the loss of individuality or becoming mediocre? The answer is because the need to be special contains a desire to triumph over others; it indicates an attitude of hostility to others. Wanting to be special then implies that self-enhancement can exist only at the expense of others. This is the either/or, which must always be destructive, that results from the erroneous concept of duality. Needing to be special, you actually destroy the other's value. A further consequence is that the deep-seated, self-regulating process of conscience says No to you self-enhancement and stops the outgoing energy current. This current then becomes either negative or is numbed, with the result that you are either passive, paralyzed, and hold back, or you are ruthless, with the inevitable guilt and other consequences.

The truth and the solution to this confusion can be found only when you distinguish between two totally different ways of measuring or evaluating -- or, let us say, two totally different goals. When you want to be special in order to triumph over others, when your uniqueness exists at the expense of others, and measures itself by others, then this uniqueness is destructive, and therefore must lead to problems. But when you realize that your own specialness can be unlocked without measuring yourself against others, then that specialness will not create any problems. You will be free to unblock and unfold the best in yourself without infringing upon other people's rights or needs. Instead, your best will contribute to others, rather than take away from them, and you will express the best in you without the need to cheat, to get by, or to get more than you give. The freed power will activate more power, and there will be no need to put brakes on this power. Envy, guilt, dishonesty, and belittling others create the need to put brakes on one's most constructive outgoing power current. When you are ignorant of the fact that you have within yourself the possibility of self-fulfillment, then the only way you can conceive of expressing yourself is by measuring and comparing yourself with others. When you know that you have your own quota to fulfill for your own sake, you will not be conflicted about your specialness.

You should always express your best, of course. But if your best is secretly designed to lord it over others, or to get away with special unfair privileges, or to obtain something for nothing, you will get yourself in trouble. Then individuality cannot unfold because ego, vanity, and ruthlessness have replaced it. These qualities automatically hinder the positive power and convert it into a destructive power.

When you feel envy or, conversely, the need to impress others or be better than them, try to feel the constructive power behind this need. For the need to be the best is merely a distortion of the inborn urge to realize the best in you. When you do this, you will no longer find yourself blocked and paralyzed.

Are there any questions?

QUESTION: What makes the perception of pleasure so unique and specific in relation to unpleasure?

ANSWER: This is a very important question; the answer may not seem to be a direct one, but it is. It is known that man fears pleasure when he is still full of conflicts and problems whose nature he does not understand. Anyone on this path who goes deeply enough to probe his reactions discovers the startling fact that he is more afraid of pleasure than he is of pain. Those who have not verified this fact in themselves may find it unbelievable, for they consciously resent the unpleasure and wish it away. To a degree it is true that unpleasure is not really wanted. But man cannot rid himself of the dichotomy between pleasure and unpleasure when he does not go deeply enough into his psychic processes to feel the pleasure in the unpleasure. Total pleasure is feared for a very important reason: the pleasure supreme of the cosmic energy current must seem unbearable -- too much, frightening, almost annihilating -- when the personality is still geared to negativity and destructiveness. To put it differently, to the degree that the personality has impaired its integrity -- to the degree that impurity, dishonesty, cheating, and malice exist in the psyche -- pure pleasure must be rejected; the pain of the negative pleasure is the only way the entity can experience a modicum of pleasure. When you, on your path, find that, deep within yourself, you fear pleasure as a danger, you must ask yourself: "Where am I not honest with life? With myself? Where do I cheat? Where do I impair my integrity?" This shows precisely where, why, and to what degree pure pleasure must be rejected. It further explains why destructiveness is held on to when man ascertains that he himself fears and rejects pleasure, rather than that life is depriving him of pleasure. He can help himself by answering the pertinent questions and finding the elements of impairment in himself. This procedure is the way out. When he finds where he violates his sense of decency and honesty, he can unlock the door which keeps him stuck in negative pleasure, and which forces him to reject pleasure which is unhampered by pain.

QUESTION: Would you define pleasure as expansion and pain as contraction?

ANSWER: Yes, that is quite accurate. Pain is a contraction in the same sense that a cramp is. But there is also contraction in pure pleasure; the difference is that it takes place in a rhythmic, smooth motion, in a harmonious way. Unpleasure is an extended, protracted, cramp-like contraction.

QUESTION: The way I experience fear of pleasure is by experiencing a fear of losing myself in pleasure. Is that what you meant?

ANSWER: Yes, this is precisely what I meant. It can be explained, when you think about it, in terms of trust. When, consciously or unconsciously, you sense your hidden little mechanisms for not being straightforward with the life process, when your response to life is negative in any form, and when consequently your sense of integrity is impaired, then you cannot trust yourself. Nor can you trust yourself when you run away from the nucleus of your negative pleasure principle, as explained in this lecture. Your negative pleasure has to be accepted, understood, and inwardly lived through with full self-acceptance before you can trust yourself to be unguarded. As I have often said, your innermost self, your own psychic energies, and the life energies are of one and the same substance. You cannot trust yourself without trusting life. If you distrust yourself for any reason, right or wrong, then how can you lose yourself into yourself and into life? A trust must exist, and this trust is, in principle, absolutely justifiable. But in practice, in specific manifestations, it is often not justifiable. Full self-acceptance must be established before trust can exist. Then there will no longer be any fear of losing yourself, because trusting will be experienced as bringing you back to yourself, richer than ever.

QUESTION: Is the principle of pain and pleasure characteristic of this earth sphere?

ANSWER: It is characteristic of this earth sphere, but this does not mean incarnated beings only. It means all those who are in this specific state of consciousness, whether they are in the flesh or out of the body. It applies to all those whose consciousness is geared to the concept of dualism, who cannot perceive the conciliating, unifying way of creation, of life, of themselves. In all these cases, pleasure and pain must exist as opposites. As I said at the beginning of this lecture, the good and the bad forces, pleasure and pain, are thought of as two separate forces, not as one and the same energy current.

QUESTION: It seems to me that when I do something I don't like, which is meant to invite anger or guilt or jealousy, that I have someone else whom I hold responsible for my being the way I am. Is this a valid observation and what should we do about it?

ANSWER: Even if some of the blame is put on the other person's doorstep because that is partially true in the situation -- and this is usually the case with sane human beings -- there must be something in you that you ignore and which bothers you, for otherwise there could be no problem, no disharmonious feeling in you. It is relatively easy to accept the other person's shortcomings or failings. Otherwise, one would not be involved in situations where these failings cannot help but negatively affect the self. Therefore, the very fact of such disturbances points to unknown elements which must be ascertained in order to eliminate destructive feelings. This anger is essentially directed against the self. You may be angry because you are angry, and you cannot accept this emotion in yourself. You may become angry because you cannot accept a similar or corresponding aspect in yourself. That is, that which angers you in the other may exist in a slightly different form in yourself. In short, the question must be asked: "What is it in me that has produced this situation? How am I a co-producer of this situation? In what way do I contribute to it?"

The second thing I have to say here is this: Often a person cannot find the answer because he looks for the cause in a limited or moralistic manner. The way he may contribute to the situation may be altogether different from what he thinks he contributes and feels defensive about. For example, a person tries to exonerate himself because he sense a badness in himself. Actually, his contribution may not be at all bad or mean. Rather, it may be that he underestimates his value, his rights, his entire person. He may be weak, submissive, not assertive enough, and thus encourage a negative situation in a very different way from that which he vaguely defends against in himself. Such a weakness is, of course, always a result of some disturbance of the psyche on a deep level, and cannot help but create negativity and destructiveness. The way to eliminate this weakness is not by forcing the destructive feelings away; this cannot succeed. One must work on a very deep level with these problems. Often weakness is confused with goodness, and strength with ruthlessness or selfishness. In these confusions, man does not find a way to resolve the problem and find clarity.

Therefore, I suggest a meditation that reaches deep into the self and says:

"I do want to see where I possibly violate some spiritual law, where I am wrong in the usual sense of the word; but I would also like to know where I am weak and confused and so allow negative emotions to come into existence. Where is it that I am perhaps not aware of my value and, because of this lack of awareness, I fight in the wrong way? I would like to see these elements and straighten them out. I want to see both these aspects."

These various aspects usually interact, they are not unconnected elements. Lack of self-assertion on one level may induce an angry over-assertion on the surface. When the meditation is directed into such channels, a new vision may come, a vision that was hitherto blocked.

May your understanding grow so that you sense your own distortions and how these distortions are a valuable life energy that can be activated in the specific way I showed here.

Be blessed, every one of you. Receive the strength and the power that flows into you and make use of it. Travel this path to the very nucleus of your inner being. Be in God.

The Guide
by Eva Pierrakos
December 2, 1966

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