Infinite Possibilities Hindered By Emotional Dependency
By The Pathwork Guide
Greetings, my dearest friends. Again, I shall try to help those
of you who are on the path to move forward from where they may be stuck. Although
each of you may have a different problem to encounter in himself at this moment,
this lecture will converge into the one point all of you now need in order
to proceed without too much hindrance from within yourself, So, let us understand
certain fundamental factors, as they exist in yourself and in the universe.
It has been said by all great spiritual teachings that creation
is infinite in its possibilities and that man's potential to realize these
infinite possibilities of happiness exists in the depths of his being. Almost
all of you have heard these words. Some of you may believe them, at least
in principle. Others may have their doubts about accepting them, even in theory.
Let us now try to overcome some of the difficulties in this respect.
It is, first of all, necessary to understand that no one creates
anything new by himself. Nothing new ever comes into existence. This would
be an impossibility. But it is possible to make manifest something that already
exists. It is a fact that everything, absolutely everything, exists already.
The word everything cannot convey the scope of this concept. When one speaks
about the infinity of God, about the infinity of Creation, this is part of
the meaning. There is no state of being, no experience, no situation, no concept,
no feeling, no object, no manifestation -- in whatever variety, or type, or
degree -- that does not already exist. It exists as a potentiality, and already
in that potential lies the finished product. I can see that this idea is not
easy for man to embrace, for it is so contrary to the way of thinking, being,
and experiencing on the level of consciousness he generally lives in. But
the more you can deepen your thoughts on that subject, the easier it will
become to perceive, to sense, to grasp this truth.
Nothing is created anew, all exists already. It exists on another
level of being, of experience, of consciousness. It can be found right now,
immediately -- if and when specific obstructions are eliminated. Knowing and
understanding this principle of Creation -- that all exists already and that
man can make these existing possibilities manifest -- is one of the necessary
prerequisites.
Before man can create new possibilities of unfoldment and entirely
new ranges of experience in his personal life, it is necessary that he first
learns to apply these laws of Creation to his problem areas: to those aspects
of life where he is troubled, limited, handicapped -- where he feels trapped.
Healthy unfoldment follows the creation of a healthy personality. The learning
and comprehension of the laws of Creation can take place only if one applies
them first to the afflicted area of the personality.
Whatever possibility you can conceive of, you can realize.
Suppose you are in a conflicting situation from which you cannot see a way
out. As long as you do not conceive of a way out, you truly cannot realize
the already existing possibility. Or, if your concepts about the way out are
hazy or unrealistic, so will be the temporary solutions that will appear as
the only possibilities. The same applies, of course, to your life as a whole,
as well as to specific areas. If you truly comprehend that an infinite number
of possibilities exists in any given situation, you can find solutions where
it was hitherto impossible to do so.
It is man's prerogative to make use of these laws of Creation
and to reach out for these infinite possibilities to unfold and partake of
life's offerings. If man's life seems so limited, it is only because he is
convinced his life must be limited. He cannot conceive of anything more than
what he has experienced until now, and what he is experiencing at present.
This is precisely the first handicap. Therefore, in order to expand your own
possibilities of happiness, your mind must grasp this principle: you
cannot bring to life what you cannot conceive. This sentence should
be truly meditated on, for the understanding of it will open new doors. And
you should understand that there is a vast difference between conceiving of
further possibilities of expansion, of happiness, on the one hand, and of
daydreaming on the other. Wistful, resigned daydreaming that grabs the fantasy
as a substitute for a drab reality is not at all what is meant here; such
daydreaming is really a hindrance to the proper conceiving of life's potentials.
What I mean is a vigorous, active, dynamic reality concept of what is possible.
When you know that something you wish to bring about exists in principle,
you have made the first step toward its realization.
Therefore, I invite everyone of you to contemplate what you
truly conceive of as possibilities for your life. If you examine yourself
closely, you will find, primarily, that you conceive of negative possibilities,
which you naturally fear and wish to avoid. You defend yourself against negative
possibilities. You use the main part of your psychic energies in order to
defend against negative possibilities.
Negative motivation does not necessarily mean a destructive
intent. For that matter, a positive motivation, in this context, could mean
a very destructive intent or aim. The avoidance of a feared possibility means
negative motivation. Upon close examination of your mental and emotional processes,
you will find that you are negatively motivated to a considerable extent.
This is one of the first obstructions which encloses you in an imaginary and
needless prison. This applies, of course, to all levels of your personality.
It applies to the mental level, where you cannot really envisage the infinite
vistas of experience, of expansion, of stimulation, of all sorts of wondrous
and happy possibilities you have a prerogative to achieve in this life. It
exists on the emotional level, where you do not allow the spontaneous and
natural flow of your feelings. You fearfully, anxiously, and suspiciously
hold back this spontaneous flow of what you really feel. And it exists physically,
where you do not permit your body to experience the pleasure it is destined
to experience.
All these are limitations which you artificially and needlessly
inflict upon yourself. The next hindrance and obstruction in connection with
expanding your life and creating the best of all possible lives for yourself
is a cluster of misconceptions widespread in the world. We have discussed
them in the past and in various other connections. Briefly recapitulating,
they are: "It is not possible to be really happy; man's life is very
limited; happiness, pleasure, ecstasy are frivolous, selfish aims the truly
spiritual person must abandon for his spiritual development, which must consist
of sacrifice and renunciation." We do not have to elucidate these
deeply lodged misconceptions, which are often more in the unconscious than
in the conscious mind. We discussed this sufficiently in the past. But it
is necessary that you discover the subtle way in which you abide by such concepts,
no matter what you consciously believe. You may discover these subtle reactions
by observing the reluctance which you feel against realizing a perfectly harmless
and normal fulfillment, a genuine need, a truly constructive aim. You feel
as though something were holding you back, paralyzing your effort. Although
there are often a number of other reasons for this reluctance as well -- some
of which we shall discuss shortly -- it is also often true that you simply
have accepted a negative idea that really makes no sense and has no good purpose.
Fear of happiness, of pleasure, of wide expansion in one's
life experiences is based on ignorance that such fulfillment could exist.
On ignorance that you possess all the powers, faculties, and resources to
create and bring about what you wish. On misconceptions, such as that pleasure
is wrong, that it is selfish to want personal fulfillment. On fear of being
annihilated and dissolved if one trusted the flow of the universal forces
and went with them. Such trust necessitates letting go of the ego-will and
the ego-forces and surrendering to the beneficial forces of your deep nature.
Every single human being in this world harbors an attitude
of fear and weakness. This corner of the personality usually induces a strong
shame, so that it is kept secret, often even from the conscious mind. Many
different devices are invented in order to hide this weak, dependent area
in which one feels utterly helpless, dependent, unable to assert the self,
unable even to protect one's truth and integrity. Here one is constantly compelled
to sell out, to betray oneself, in order to ward off disapproval, censure,
rejection. The need for such acceptance by others is mostly less shameful
than the measures to which the personality goes in order to submit, to placate,
to appease. We did discuss some of these aspects in the past, of course, since
they are psychologically so fundamental that we could not have gotten so far
in our work unless considerable work had already been done in this respect.
All the defense mechanisms you have discovered and, perhaps to some extent,
begun to remove, are nothing but either ways to obtain this apparently vital
acceptance from others, and/or ways to hide this shameful submission.
In this lecture we shall go into this topic with a still closer
scrutiny, especially from the point of view of realizing life's possibilities.
We are less concerned here with ways in which you hide this shameful area
-- often by an apparently opposite attitude, such as indifference, hostility,
compulsion, and blind rebellion, over-aggressiveness, and so forth.
Few things give man as much pain and shame as this weak spot
in himself, which makes him feel impotent and compelled to sell out. We already
know, my friends, that this area has remained a child. The child does not
yet know that the whole of the personality has grown up and is, indeed, no
longer helpless and dependent. An infant or a young child truly is helpless
and dependent on the parents. But in this corner of your being that is still
a child you either do not know or do not want to know that this is no longer
true, that you are no longer helpless and dependent, that you are an adult.
To briefly recapitulate: the child is dependent on the parents
for everything: shelter, food, affection, protection, and last, but not least,
also on the so necessary supply of pleasure. For man cannot live without pleasure.
It is one of the most harmful errors to deny this truth. Body, soul, mind,
and spirit wither without pleasure. As the adult is able to establish conditions
by his own forces and resources to provide shelter, food, affection, and safety,
so is he able to do the same about pleasure. In all these areas he must have
contact, cooperation, and communication with others -- in varying degrees.
He cannot provide for himself any of these necessities without interplay with
other people. But this interplay, or interaction, is entirely different from
the passive, weak, dependency of the small child. The thoroughly adult person
uses his own best forces, his intelligence, his intuition, his talents, his
observation, his flexibility to get along with others in giving and taking.
His sense of fairness makes him sufficiently pliable to give in. And his sense
of self makes him sufficiently assertive not to be stepped on and abused.
The often fine balance in these forces of communication cannot
be taught; it is an awareness that comes through personal growth. The child
is incapable of this. He is rigidly one-sided in his insistence to receive,
for this is his need. The same applies to pleasure. The child must have the
parent's permission, as it were, to have pleasure. The adult must have his
own permission to establish and utilize the source of all pleasure deep within
himself. Through his own permission, he will have the force and security to
make meaningful contact. If he first needs the other person to approve before
he can allow himself to experience pleasure, he is still in the position of
a child, or even of an infant. I repeat, this never implies that one can do
without others. But the emphasis is shifted. The adult finds in himself a
well of inexhaustibly wonderful feelings. Insecurity and weakness are not
possible when these feelings are activated.
When man is distorted in this respect and part of his development
is arrested, he waits for another person -- a parental substitute -- to make
it possible for him to realize this deep source of his own rich feelings.
He knows of them and yearns for them. But he does not know that he is no longer
a child who is dependent on others for being allowed to feel them, for being
able to activate and express his feelings. This is his tragedy, for he thus
moves into a vicious circle. Whenever a misconception is adhered to, immediately
a vicious circle comes into being, which paralyzes the pleasure forces, a
good part of energy, and thus makes life dull and lusterless.
To deny the intense pleasure of being, the pleasure of the
energy flow of man's body, soul, and spirit, is to deny life. When a child
suffers such a denial, his psyche receives sort of a shock -- perhaps by repeated
absence of pleasure and unfulfilled yearning. This shock prevents growth,
so that the personality grows lopsidedly. In his conscious mind, man ignores
the fact that in him exists a crying, claiming, angry, and helpless child.
He believes himself entirely grown. Yet on the unconscious level, where this
child exists, he is unaware that he has not grown up, and no longer needs
the parental permission, or, even more, the parent (substitute) for the source
of pleasure and life. He does not know that he is free to move toward pleasure,
toward his own fulfillment, toward the realization of his own powers to obtain
whatever he wants and needs. This is one of the most fundamental splits in
man's personality.
Let us now look a bit closer at this hidden corner, where man
has remained a child. Let us see where his consciousness ignores this and
where the child ignores the rights and powers of the adult state. The particular
vicious circle I mentioned before is this: not knowing that all exists already,
so that it can be (re)created as a manifestation in his life, makes him dependent
on an outside force, another authority, for all his wants and needs. In this
distortion of facts, he waits for fulfillment from the wrong source. This
keeps the need perpetually unfulfilled. The more unfulfilled he is, the more
urgent the need becomes. The more urgent the need, the greater his dependence,
his hope, his attempt to please whomever is supposed to fill it. He becomes
desperate. Desperate because the more he tries, the less the need is fulfilled,
as it must be in this unrealistic attempt. Consciously he knows nothing of
this, he does not know what forces drive him -- not even in what direction.
And he is desperate because, in his urgency to have the need fulfilled, he
betrays himself, his truth, his best. Both his frustrated striving and his
self-betrayal create a forcing current. This forcing current may manifest
in a very subtle way. It may not be overt at all, but the emotions are all
cramped up with it and it must inevitably affect others and have its lawful
and appropriate consequences. Any forcing current is bound to make others
resist and shrink back, even if what they are forced to do were for their
own benefit and delight. Thus the vicious circle continues. The continued
frustration, believed to be caused by the mean refusal of the other to cooperate
and to give, brings rage, fury, and perhaps even vindictiveness, and also
varying degrees of cruel impulses into the soul. This, in turn, weakens the
personality even more, for guilt comes up. The destructive feelings must be
hidden, so as not to antagonize the "source of life." The net of entanglement
becomes tighter and tighter, the individual is completely ensnarled in this
trap of his own misconceptions, distortions, and illusions, with all the destructive
emotions that follow suit. He finds himself in the preposterous position of
craving for the love and acceptance of a person whom he hates and resents
for having left him unfulfilled for so long. This one-sidedness -- this insistence
to be loved by a person one deeply resents and wishes to punish -- increases
guilt, for the ever wakeful presence of the real self flashes its reactions
into a mind that is unable to interpret and sort out the messages of the real
self from those that come from the child inside.
The fact that this need is not fulfilled by the other also
weakens man's conviction that he has a right to the pleasure he so much desires.
He vaguely suspects that he may be wrong to want this. Thus he begins to displace
the original, natural need and desire, he conducts them into other channels,
where they are "sublimated." More or less compulsive other needs come into
existence. All the while he is torn between the force of the deeply hidden
original need and the doubt that he has a right to it. The more he doubts,
the more dependent he becomes for reconfirmation by an authority person --
a parent substitute, public opinion, certain groups of people who represent
the last word of truth.
The more the vicious circle goes on, the less pleasure and
the more unpleasure exists in the psyche and the more such a person must despair
about life and doubt that fulfillment is possible. There comes a point when
a person inwardly gives up.
There is not a single human being who does not harbor, in some
way and to some degree, such a weak area within. In this secret corner he
feels not only helpless and dependent, but deeply ashamed for the means he
employs in order to placate the person who, at any given period, is supposed
to fulfill the role of the authority to grant him what he needs in pleasure,
safety, and self-respect.
The forcing current says, "you must." It makes
demands on others to be, feel, and do what the person needs and desires. This
may not at all manifest outwardly. In fact, on the surface it may have the
entirely opposite effect. Man's inability or difficulty to healthily assert
himself is a direct result of hiding the shameful and threatening forcing
current. It is threatening because the person knows quite well that if it
shows openly, it will evoke great censure and disapproval and possibly even
overt rejection.
I invite all my friends to vigorously face this feared area
in themselves. Some of you have done so already, others are still struggling
with it and have only half-heartedly admitted its existence. Perhaps some
of you may still have to face up to it. But all of you must tackle it if you
wish to realize life's and your own best potentials, if you wish to discover
your own infinite powers to create infinite goodness in your life.
The stronger the "must" is secretly and inwardly thrown at
others, the more man inactivates his own powers and the more paralyzed and
inactive he becomes in body, soul, and mind. This inactivity exists, on the
one level, where he does not move into his own nucleus, where all realistic
promise lies, where all potential for every kind of fulfillment and delight
exists. He inadvertently makes himself hang on to others, which must elicit
hate. Finding the treasure of one's nucleus, on the contrary, makes one free,
and contact with others becomes a delightful luxury that elicits love.
By continually using inner, covert pressure on others, because
he believes himself dependent on them, man diminishes his available energy
supply. If energy is used in its natural, correct, meaningful way, it never
exhausts itself. There are innumerable means man uses in order to send forth
this forcing current. It may be from every degree of compliance, passive resistance,
spite, withdrawal, the refusal to cooperate, forceful outer aggression, the
attempt to persuade through false strength, and assuming oneself a kind of
authority role, intimidations, etc., etc. They all mean, deep down, "you
must love me and give me what I need." The more he is blindly involved
in this way of being, the more man weakens himself, and the further he alienates
himself from the center of his true inner life, where all is found that he
needs and can ever want.
In order to re-orient and re-condition the soul forces into
health and into their true nature, the following must happen: man must let
go of the particular person or persons of whom he expects his life fulfillment
and whom he, simultaneously, resents for this very fact. He must recognize
that he extends expectations to and makes demands on others that no one else
can fulfill but himself, for himself. The real love you all need and long
for can only come when your soul is fearless and when you know that the material
to love with -- the strength of your feelings, with which you can give and
receive -- is found within you. For as long as you hang on to another in the
ways of a child, denying the adult you are, you enslave yourself in the true
sense of the word. The more you do this, the less you can either receive or
give; the less real feelings of any sort, feelings about any vital experience,
can find a place within you. For fear and anger take up most of the "room"
in your psyche. This is why it is so essential to let out these negative emotions,
in the way you learn to do on this path, where no one is harmed. Letting out
makes room for the good feelings. Here so many of my friends are still locked
and paralyzed. It is the last thing you want to do. Even if you admit such
negative emotions in principle, you still prefer to act them out rather than
express them and take the responsibility for them onto yourself. You still
claim a false perfection, which you do not really believe to exist in yourself
any longer, in order to favorably dispose others toward you. Also, you cling
to the negative emotions for dear life because you fear the positive feelings.
The less you are responsible for yourself in the deepest possible
sense -- concerning the negative feelings you still possess, as well as your
possibility to create happiness -- the more you must live in fear. Consequently,
the more you must "do" to eliminate that fear. Thus negative motivation comes
about. You live in a makeshift life of avoidance, rather than unfoldment and
expansion, of positive experience and pleasure. You aim to avoid the threat
of your own negative feelings, which would spoil your aim of obtaining from
others that which you must obtain from yourself. You stake your salvation
on others, from whom it can never come.
Apart from recognizing all these aspects, which is the fundamental
necessity, the reorientation must always begin by the willingness to let go.
This cannot be forced upon one who has not been made aware of the dependency
itself in very exact ways. But once this is the case, it becomes possible
to give up what one so tightly holds on to. This loosening up must occur in
order to bring about a change in the balance structure of soul forces so that
benign circles are set into motion. You must also be willing to dispense with
your rationalizations that make your "case" seem so right. For you can always
succeed to present it to yourself and to others as though your wishes, your
needs, and your demands on others are not only justified, but that there is
nothing wrong about them, that, in fact, they are also beneficial for the
other. This may even be quite true, as far as it goes. What you want, in principle,
may indeed be good and legitimate. But in a hidden, emotional forcing current
you go about it in the wrong way and you do not grant the other person the
freedom you wish for yourself. You do not give him the right to freely choose
whom to love and accept, you coerce him; you feel rejected and hated when
he asserts this freedom; you refuse him the right to be wrong without being
hated and totally denied. This is a freedom you very much wish for yourself
and you deeply resent it when others do not grant it to you. You are unable
to defend yourself adequately in such cases, only because you do not grant
this same freedom to others on certain emotional levels. When you look very
closely, you will find this to be true. And when you do so, your sense of
fairness and objectivity will help you to give up what you so desperately
hold on to, even while you emotionally still believe that your life depends
on getting the other to feel and do as you wish.
Once you have learned this initial condition -- surely with
a number of inevitable relapses, that must forever be newly observed and dealt
with -- you will take a vast step towards the source of your inner being,
where you are not chained in weakness and anxiety, in fear and anger. You
all chafe at the leash around your neck that keeps you dependent and anxious
in a situation in which you cannot find the strength to assert yourself; in
which you find yourself absolutely caught and cannot see a way out, for each
possibility seems wrong. None of the visible alternatives give you that good
feeling about yourself, that resilient strength and well-being, in which even
different steps become feasible because you know they are right for you. Most
of you have, at least occasionally, experienced this. It is that your real
self is freed and is operative through you. It is our aim to bring it out
completely. In order to do so, this weak point must be found so that you can
eventually let go of it.
The weak point is where you are most bound and anxious. Ask
yourself what it is that you want from the other person -- where you are bound,
resentful, afraid, weak, and unable to assert yourself? This is your leash,
which can be given up only when you stop wanting from others what you must
supply from yourself. Whatever it is you find you need from others, verbalize
it concisely to yourself. This will bring you nearer to letting go. You will
then know that this is precisely where you enslave, weaken, and paralyze yourself.
You will then experience a new, resilient strength coming out of you that
suddenly conciliates apparently insoluble problems. You will become free as
you let free. Only when you can let go -- on the ego level -- in the areas
where you exert force, can you gain or win -- on the level of Creation --
the power to form a good life. Conversely, your inability to give up, to let
free, to be fair; your insistence to win and have your way, your refusal to
lose on this ego-level, makes it impossible to win where it counts and makes
it impossible for you to find your real strength.
Jesus Christ spoke about this when He said, "He who wants
to live must be able to lose his life." This is the meaning. In the
very first lectures here, a good number of years ago, I spoke the sentence,
"You must give up what you want to gain." This is the meaning. Here we are
dealing with levels. I hope it is quite clear that there is no sacrifice or
renunciation involved. What is meant here is that you cannot obtain what you
want, and what you should have, in the manner and through the source you exert
your effort to. The emphasis must shift. If you insist to win on the wrong
level, you cannot win. If you can lose on that level, you will win. You will
inevitably come into that nucleus of yourself where every conceivable power
exists. As you grant others the right to be, whether it is convenient to you
or not, to that extent you will truly find your own rights.
It is a steadily growing process to find these rights. First
it will manifest by no longer selling out, in no longer downgrading yourself.
You will find genuine, good defenses against abuse. You will feel good about
them. Later, you will discover ever increasing "rights" for pleasure and happiness,
which you can expand towards obtaining. You will find yourself move toward
vistas and visions of what your life can be, possibilities you never dreamed
could exist. You will suddenly permit yourself pleasure. You will no longer
cramp up against it, as inadvertently you continuously do. You will stop undermining
the spontaneous processes and will learn to trust in them. This will open
a richness of life and a security that truly are heavenly. By letting go and
giving up inner forcing, you will experience the beauty of free relationships,
not forced relationships. When you live in the dependency pattern, you force
the other and are thus forced to make him do what you want. Thus you have
mutual force. This weakens you and creates a host of negative emotions through
which you lose contact with the nucleus of your real being, as well as with
your good feelings. When you can lose gracefully, you will find a treasure
within that is an entirely new venture, a new way of life, whose beginning
stages you are just embarking on. You will feel free in the areas of your
life where heretofore you have felt so weak and trapped.
Reach into your inner being, communicate with it, for the purpose
of eliminating this weakness in you that binds you and that wastefully and
needlessly holds you back in your life, for no good purpose whatever, no matter
how much you may glorify this holding back. All of you do this in one way
or the other, just as mankind has done for millennia, by saying that pleasure
is wrong and frivolous and unspiritual. This way you may have your own private
excuses to beautify your weakness and apparently make an asset out of it.
Thus you cannot really come face to face with yourself. Only by coming face
to face with the forcing current in you that says to others "you must,"
can you also come face to face with the strength, the beauty, and all the
potentials that exist in you, in a way you cannot even fathom yet.
Be blessed by the great strength that is here now, but even
more so by the great strength that dwells in you. Be in peace, be in God.