Conciliation Of Inner Split

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings to all my friends here. Blessings for every one of you. May these words not just be a meaningless phrase. May you be able to feel into their deeper meaning, so as to be strengthened and enlightened by the reality of this force that is flowing into you. For if you are dull to it, you cannot feel it and it cannot penetrate you.

The same principle exists in human life. Whenever man is only cognizant of and sensitive to the outer manifestations of life, he cannot feel at home within himself and therefore in life. Such alienation is a direct result of unawareness of the inner reality of human life. A deliberate tuning into deeper, more sensitive layers of experience is required in order to cultivate and increase this awareness. A very deliberate, and yet relaxed, attempt must be made to feel the underlying causes of the outer results in your life. All sorrow and unhappiness, all emptiness and unfulfillment, all frustration and suffering are caused by being disconnected -- as you know and as I so often say -- from the causes within yourself.

This lecture is a direct continuation of the last one and will be best understood when you follow it in sequence. Some of it, of course, must be repeated in order not to lose the thread. As I mentioned in the last lecture, and also occasionally before, you produce whatever you experience. Unhappiness actually means that you have -- through errors, misconceptions, destructive feelings and behavior patterns -- created these unpleasurable experiences. What is worse is that you do not know this, so that on one level you want something and on another level you deny it. Not knowing that you deny what you consciously wish is the greatest pain. It is so painful because you pull into two opposite directions. Whenever you get closer to the fulfillment of your conscious wish, your unconscious shrinks away from it in terror. The resulting frustration confuses you, frightens you, and makes you hopeless with life. It causes you to summon up your most destructive defense mechanisms, which increase the unconscious denial, the destructiveness, and the conscious frustration. The soul movements pulling in opposite directions make you feel like being, literally, torn apart. The pain of not understanding what goes on increases the inner tension. The more hopeless it all seems, the more the conscious self strives and grasps. Such tense motion, even toward the desired goal, defeats it, for it arises from hopelessness, doubt, and an urgency which works counter to the smooth movements of the universal flow.

This division is the real pain. He who is aware of this division and experiences it consciously is blessed indeed, for in that moment a great deal of tension disappears. I would like to discuss this a little further tonight, since it is so all-important. It is absolutely impossible for man to find home within himself, to feel at home in his life, if he does not perceive that layer within that says No to what he most strenuously says Yes to on the surface.

It is not easy to get to this. You can begin to first think about this principle and make room for its reality in your mind by strengthening your will to find what it is in you that pulls into the opposite direction from wherever you outwardly and consciously move. That will must be continuously strengthened and encouraged. Yet, even those of my friends who are on this path most successfully, and perhaps for the longest time, again and again forget. When they are unhappy, they automatically, at least emotionally, blame this onto someone or something else. The moment this is done further damage occurs. It then becomes more and more difficult to extricate oneself from this pattern of inner behavior. In its wake it brings other destructive attitudes: stubbornness, blind resistance, the desire to punish those one considers responsible for the unhappiness, and it also brings deliberate self-destruction in one form or another, as a way of punishing those responsible. This is a prevalent attitude that, to some degree, exists in everyone. It is most poisonous and most deadly when it is rationalized and still unconscious.

Therefore I say to all of you, my friends who are working on this path, whenever you are unhappy, first of all look for that part in you that says No, for whatever reason. Then look for the part that blames others, even if only very subtly, indirectly, and secretly. Look at your emotions and find the place where you make a case against another person or a situation, perhaps against life as a whole. Then see this particular displacement you make. Because, no matter how wrong others may be, they can never be responsible for your suffering, no matter what the appearances are.

Perhaps you do not blame anyone, but you might overly blame yourself, in a very destructive way that becomes a dead end. Blaming others or yourself amounts to exactly the same. For this kind of self-blame is only a disguise for violent hate and blame of others. In this kind of attitude, that beats the self over the head, lies a similar streak of vindictiveness, only it may be less direct.

If you wish to connect yourself with the causes of your suffering and truly remove these causes, you must follow this process. You must really want to see where you say No to what you want most -- no matter how impossible this may seem at first. Question your emotions extremely carefully and look at them when it comes to practical reality. Somehow you then act very contrary to what you imagine you want so much.

When you find this basic knot in your soul substance, you will become aware of certain emotional tensions that prohibit the free flowing feeling of the life force. This free flowing feeling can only affect you when you are in harmony with the laws of life. Denying the truth of your saying No and then blaming others, and denying this blame as well, is a violation of the laws of life. For the laws of life are not only truth, but they also mean seeking all causes in the self, where they really are. Placing them outside is a total distortion of reality. One then deals continually with half-truths, and it becomes much more confusing and difficult to extricate yourself from half-truths than from untruths. Therefore various negative emotions, tensions, and distorted concepts come into existence.

The next step is the detached observation of the movements of the soul, the atmosphere you live with inside, which inexorably emanates from you and affects everything around you. When you become very quiet and you listen into yourself, you will feel it, you will know what it is that moves and motivates you, no matter how subtle it may be. It is always a complexity of interacting, chain-reaction producing, and contradictory feelings and concepts, one overlapping the other, all somehow and mysteriously connected.

When man is in harmony with life because he is connected with his own causes and effects, his position toward the forces of life can be compared to a swimmer. The swimmer floats on the water. The water carries him, and yet he moves, he is not passive. If he were entirely passive, he could not be sustained by the water, not in the long run. But if he is too active, moving too tensely and anxiously, there is no pleasure in swimming, nor is it safe. The water will control him, rather than support him. He must move in a rhythmic, relaxed, confident way -- confident in the power of the water to carry him, and confident in his own ability to move smoothly and purposefully. The more rhythmic, relaxed, and harmonious his movements are, the less strenuous moving is. Movement then becomes effortless and self-perpetuating. A very secure and pleasurable relationship exists between the water and the body. There is a wonderful balance between the active and passive forces of the person swimming, which determines the harmonious relationship between him and the water. This determines the balance between the human body and the body of water. This means that, in spite of the justified truth that the water carries the body, the person does not deny his responsibility, his participation, in the act of swimming, or even of floating. This is a very apt analogy to man's position in the universe and his relation to the universal forces. His ego must be active in a healthy and relaxed way. He must not abdicate or negate the participation of the ego in the act of living. Nevertheless, he fully trusts and puts his weight on other forces, on which he floats.

This floating movement, the sensation of being carried by life, is a byproduct of the path you are on. The more you face your inner difficulties and the true causes of your suffering, the more you will develop this feeling and the more the relationship between the ego and the universal forces will automatically establish itself. This will happen in a way that is both relaxed and strong: you will feel yourself floating, being carried, and yet actively participating and self-determining.

This is a wonderful way of being. It is the way of being. Nothing can replace it, no substitute solution you seek and hope for can ever equal the true feeling of selfhood, of your own powers, of your own strength, when you connect with that in you which causes your evil experiences. Then, and then only, can you resolve the problems that cause these experiences.

This step is not easily taken. Everyone who approaches this path resists to find the causes within. If all goes well, this attitude diminishes as the person progresses. But he who is at the beginning clings to the unconscious hope of finding the causes of his suffering outside of himself. He does not realize that nothing would be gained by this, even if it were possible. For he would then not be able to change his fate, since he cannot change others. But the blind fear of imperfection and the concomitant pride overlook this fact. Thus the struggle goes on and on to pin the fault outside the self. It is the greatest step a human being can undertake when he can say to himself: "With all my heart and all my might I wish to recognize the cause within." The more this thought is cultivated, the more does something happen inside. Therein lies all hope and the salvation one is seeking. This step must be taken at one point or another.

Now, my friends, I will come to the next step. At first, it may seem even more difficult than the previous one, but actually it is not. All these difficulties are illusory. Man's unconscious fears finding the cause of unhappiness within the self, and this is an illusion. Anyone who has ever done so will confirm that it brings relief, safety, and confidence in life. It is only pride that keeps you from fully wanting to find the cause within. And so it is with the next step that seems so difficult. Whenever you get to these basic causes, which make you deny the thing you most wish for, fear, pride, and self-will are always involved. Years ago I spoke of the fact that these are the three basic faults and evils of humanity. Fear is a fault because it implies distrust; it arises out of hate. Fear must always exist to the degree the person is unhappy about his own character. Otherwise it could not exist. As I outlined in the last lecture, the fears that accrue from self-dislike breed fear of life and the life processes: fear of life, fear of death, fear of pleasure, fear of letting go, fear of self, fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of being imperfect -- any fear whatever. They are all illusion. You cannot overcome a fear unless you go through it. This is the second, seemingly so difficult, step. If the individual shies away from finding the causes of suffering within the self, he shies away even more from this step. All his energies are geared in the direction of circumventing that which he fears. And that must always prove a way of error and disappointment.

Man cramps up against that which he fears. The more he cramps up against it, the more he alienates himself from the center of his being from which all good must come. He becomes more and more contracted and enters a state in which it is impossible to float. Imagine a swimmer in such a physical state of constriction and contraction. He must sink -- and so it is with man in life.

The constriction creates all sorts of knots in the personality -- physical, mental, and emotional. These knots cause a disconnection from the soul substance, from which and through which all solutions, all wisdom, and all well-being spring forth. How can an illusion be exposed as such if it is not ever gone through? Never by hearsay, no matter how much you trust those who tell you so. You can only find out the truth when you go into it. Thus it is impossible to penetrate the fear of that which you want most -- life, pleasure, fulfillment, realization of your potentials, success in every way, meaningful living, health, love, companionship, and being connected with the real processes of life. All this cannot come when you are in fear. Yet how do you suppose to get out of fear? Do you still expect an omnipotent, benign authority to remove it from the outside? Would this ever really solve anything and reassure you for good? Certainly not. The only genuine reassurance is knowing your capacity to meet and deal with what you fear intelligently and realistically. This can only be done by fully going into it, not by evasion. The courage to accept what is inevitable strengthens the capacity to find genuine and meaningful ways of avoiding unnecessarily feared events. Make, once again, a list of your fears. I said this years ago, but now you know much more of your innermost self, so that such a list will be more profound.

Look at your fears. To what extent are they caused by pride? To what extent are they the result of a rigid self-will, unwilling to bend, to change, to flow with the stream of ever-changing life? Fears must be met. In order to be met, they must be ascertained. They must truly be faced up to, painstakingly and specifically -- not glossed over in a general way. That will never do. It is essential that you name the fear concisely and think it through.

This makes the next step possible. Look at the fear squarely in the face. Have the integrity and the courage to go through it if it cannot be helped. The self-respect and self-like that come from such an attitude are more important than anything else. All depends on that. Then you will become capable of alleviating that which is not really necessary. Some undesirable events come to you because you have set their effects in motion a long time ago and the causes cannot be eliminated. Thus the effects must be borne. By doing so you can avoid to set new undesirable results in motion. Such strength and ability grows from direct, head-on facing of each situation, not treating it as if it were a phantom, a ghost you cannot grasp or touch, and which you, just because of that, inordinately fear. In this way you breed more terror.

The unification of the tremendously painful division in you of wanting the thing you fear and fearing the thing you want can only mend when you look at the very cause of this split of desire and motivation; when you face the fears squarely, you must face your pride, which makes you so perfectionistic that you fear to fall off this self-appointed pedestal. Many of the fears will dissolve when you are willing to give up your pride. Then you will see the unfairness of your blaming life, or other people, for what is really in yourself, no matter how imperfect and how wrong others also are. When you deny the cause of your suffering within and you place it outside yourself, you always commit an unfairness, you are never in truth. It is always pride that makes facing the fear impossible.

When you reverse the old habit pattern of blaming others and circumventing what you fear, something quire extraordinary will begin to happen -- little by little and, as always, first with relapses. Your soul substance begins to change. The experience you will first have will be the following: after you become concisely aware of the climate you live in within your personality, it automatically loses a certain binding power. You are more detached in the very act of seeing yourself in the grip of it. As this goes on for a while, you will begin to sense, underneath this level on which you are all tortured, anxious, numb, hopeless, and twisted in pain, another reality. This level of reacting where one fluctuates between twisted anxiety, torture, and hopelessness on the one hand, and numbness, lifelessness on the other, is assumed by a big part of humanity to be the natural state of being, of existing, of functioning. Man generally does not even conceive of anything else, any other inner state, because he is not even really aware of the fact that this is his state. Therefore when you see yourself in this state, you come much closer to sensing another state "behind" this one, as it were.

First, it will occur only occasionally, later it will become more frequent. Underneath the tortured level a new way of being evolves. You will simultaneously experience both. I venture to say that some of my friends on this path have already experienced this new reality. They will readily confirm my words to be true. It is a feeling of immense safety and well-being, of vibrancy, peace and aliveness, a flowing feeling of utter confidence. It is this feeling of being carried and yet deeply knowing that the power exists within to govern life in the best possible way.

As I said, this experience will first come simultaneously with the usual anxious, hopeless, unhappy state. It is a gradual transition in the course of which the old and the new are experienced together, side by side, or one superimposed over the other. The new is as yet only a vague feeling, deep inside the self. But gradually it becomes more predominant, until it takes over and replaces the old. The latter recurs now as rarely as the true inner reality of life was experienced at first. To function on two levels of your being at the same time is, in itself, a good experience, for it brings the split into full focus.

This simultaneousness of two levels is a very distinct experience on the path. It should be expected, it should not come as a surprise, it should greet you with the confirmation that you are indeed on the right way. When these two conflicting states are experienced at the same time -- raking anxiety, anguish, depression, and a deep peace and well-being -- the former has no power any longer. You see it for what it is. However, this will not remain that way. It will alternate, it will fluctuate, you will lose what you had found and, occasionally, you will wonder whether it was real.

When you regain it, you will know that nothing could be more real. You have to battle your way through periods when you are thrown back into the old state, without being in the new one, again and again. Each battle indicates another milestone that makes the attainment of the real state of life more secure and more permanent. It will be lost less and less often, until total self-realization is attained. Then it becomes the normal state.

What I wish to stress here is perhaps somewhat confusing at first, since words are so limited. In this state all intensity vanishes. This statement is confusing only when you associate intensity with depth, with involvement, with delight and ecstasy. I mentioned this factor once before in a different context. It is very important to understand this principle. Man is habitually not only tense, but he is tense because of an intensity that is directly related to the state of duality: of believing in something very good versus something very bad. This duality makes a painful cramp inevitable. Anything you do not want, you intensely push away. Anything you desire, you intensely grasp. You grasp for the good because you fear the bad, and you also fear not attaining the good. Anything you intensely avoid, you must fear.

The peaceful, secure state I mentioned -- the only state in which total pleasure exists -- is completely free from this cramped intensity in either grasping for or avoiding. Thus they are really both the same in soul movement. How is deep pleasure possible in such a condition? This is why it is such folly to believe that pleasure is possible only in an intense state. The good of the duality is illusion; it never fulfills. The reconciliation of all duality is the fearless pleasure supreme that comes from the floating state I mentioned earlier tonight. In this state all is welcome, all is good, even though one may be preferable. The words may sound like indifference and detachment, shallowness of experience -- but these are distortions of the state I now describe. This misunderstanding often occurs about spiritual philosophies, particularly Eastern ones. It is untrue that in the state of self-realization one is so detached that one cares about nothing and is indifferent to pleasure. But the pleasure that is the opposite of pain you are used to must become less intense, just as the pain will become less intense when you learn to go through what you fear. This going through it mends the split of the duality. It lessens the intensity of both pleasure and pain. It enables the soul to go through anything and remain in a flowing state of experiencing life as it really is. It creates a shift and brings the soul onto a new level of experience, the healing of the split, where all is one.

Anyone on such a path eventually notices that the pain that is no longer fought, struggled against, avoided, and feared becomes increasingly less intense, until it ceases to be pain at all. By the same token, the old immature pleasures cease to be attractive and yield satisfaction no longer. New, deeper pleasures arise that are not the opposite of anything. They are, by themselves and in themselves, an oppositeless reality, infinite and inexorable.

The idea that pain and pleasure become more "similar" may sound impossible and even preposterous. I admit that it is difficult to explain or describe to anyone who has not gone through certain experiences on such a path. But anyone who has been near such an experience will feel what I mean. He will comprehend the misery in his soul when he grasps on the one side and wards off on the other. The courageous attitude of going through what is self-produced and inevitable must not be confused with masochism, deliberate self-destruction, or hopeless resignation. It requires an unexaggerated honesty to face up to what is within. This begins to take the hard edge off emotions and makes them bearable. It is the beginning of unification. In this attitude any painful feeling loses its terror because it no longer seems the final state. It is known to be temporary, and it is experienced as such.

The experience of pain turning into pleasure, and thus becoming one, does not have to wait for a far-away future, or a mystical state when you are much further advanced in your development. Anyone on this path can experience it at any time he truly faces up to himself. Quite a few of you have, for example, experienced how anxiety can loosen up as you fully face and understand it, as you express it directly, and you convert it into its component parts of other emotions you had denied -- perhaps rage, hurt, sadness. When these emotions are fully experienced, the torturous feelings turn into warmth and pleasure. Feelings of alive peace accompany this experience. Your body and soul are streaming in pleasure currents when you no longer run away from feared emotions. This happens invariably and inevitably when one is deep within the self, where no duality exists, where all is one, where your own causes and your salvation must be found. Then, no matter what the experience, it must become pleasurable. Such pleasure is of an entirely different nature than the pleasure that is opposed to pain in the dualistic state. On the level of duality, pleasure is feared as annihilation, while at the same time one fears to lose it and to fall into its opposite. The completeness, the wholeness of the unitive pleasure may also be intense, but in a very different way than ordinary intensity. It knows no fear and no cramp. It involves the total personality.

In order to come to this level, my friends, you must go through these steps with your own helpers. Also, in your approach to yourself, through meditation, make up your mind, again and again, "I want to face the cause of the evil in my life, that which causes my suffering. I truly want to look, with courage and honesty, at all the truth in me and around me." The more you do this, the more this path will help you by its own self-perpetuating forces that are thus activated. Each successive step must become easier.

Now, my friends, are there any questions in regard to this topic?

QUESTION: At the coming together of pleasure and pain, could it be said that they come together when you experience pain as a feeling, that the common denominator is when the self experiences both of them as a feeling, when even the feeling of pain becomes pleasurable because it is experienced?

ANSWER: You are quite right. I would put it this way: the moment the personality ceases to struggle against a feeling, the pain ceases and becomes pleasurable. This is why a person who can say "I am intensely angry" experiences this anger in a totally different way than when he is struggling against the anger and letting it out in a haphazard way. Then one accepts, faces, and ceases to fight what is. There is no denial, no attempt to negate. The same applies to any emotion. The moment it is fully acknowledged one begins to see it for what it is. It then dissolves, for it is always an illusion.

It then reconverts itself into its original real substance. Anyone not having experienced this may misunderstand and confuse this acceptance with condoning and finality. It merely means stopping the struggle against what is, a struggle always conducted out of the motives of pride, fear, and self-will.

Often you are unaware of your struggle against what is in you. You then disclaim it, you profess to accept willingly what is, but you are unable to find it. Let this be a proof to you that you have not accepted what is in you, that somewhere you fight yourself and thus you put yourself into a painful state, whether you are aware of it or not. So, rather than denying the struggle, let your mood, let your inner feeling be the determining factor that tells you where you are within yourself.

QUESTION: Would the same apply to the fear of death? That the moment one accepts the experience of it, it ceases to be frightening?

ANSWER: Absolutely. This is quite true.

QUESTION: Recently I have come to the realization that all my anger and sarcasm are displaced positive feelings, especially overwhelming feelings of love. I am terrified of expressing these enormous feelings in certain particular instances. Could you help me in that? I am afraid of the consequences.

ANSWER: Yes, this is a wonderful step. First of all, ascertain concisely what it is you are afraid of. Much of it is pride. Furthermore, there is also a certain amount of greed involved here, in the sense of refusing to accept a possible frustration or denial. It seems absolutely unbearable to you that if you would express your desires, your love, your tenderness, it might not be reciprocated. It would seem like annihilation. This, of course, is not true. As you know from your own experience, in the present state you are in (which is more or less the state in which most individuals find themselves) you do not refuse to respond because you necessarily find the other person unlovable. Mostly it is because you are frightened of the experience. When you give up the self-centeredness of the infant and, at the same time, the greed of the infant that cannot brook denial, it will no longer be the end of the world if you are not assured of reciprocation. You will then automatically develop the intuition to know when and how to express your feelings. Sometimes the expression of feelings may be frightening for those who are still immature. They recoil, not because they do not appreciate you as an individual, but because they cannot handle the feelings. Only when you are not a child yourself will you see it in that way. Then you will regulate your expression -- not in a miserly, self-centered, vain way, not due to lack of generosity and feeling, not out of pride, fear, and self-will, but out of the wisdom and intuition that recognizes who is ready and how a person is able to receive what you have to give. In other words, you will be able to allow these wonderful feelings, whether or not it is possible to express them in a direct way, whether or not the other person is at all times able to take them. The very fact that you have these feelings is in itself the most precious treasure, the most wonderful experience, for it makes you alive and streaming with pleasure. It gives you true security. For, to the extent you can acknowledge and allow these feelings, to the extent you can express them or simply have them, as the case may be, to that extent you will automatically attract the kind of individuals who will be able, as you are, to feel, to receive, and to give good feelings. Or, you will be able to help those you are involved with to become that way, if they are at all willing to grow.

No problem can be so severe that it cannot be helped and solved, provided you truly want to go to the roots of it, provided you wish to look at whatever truth is in you, and you are ready to change where it is indicated. No problem can be so "insignificant" as not to be hopeless if this attitude is lacking. If you are willing to face the fact that, at one point, you have denied your good feelings and deliberately turned them into bad ones, you will come out of the pain of self-hate.

Be blessed, all of you, be in peace, be in God.

The guide
by Eva Pierrakos
February 2, 1968

Back