The Spiritual Meaning Of Crisis

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings and blessings to everyone of my friends here. In this lecture before your summer vacation the topic I have chosen is the inner meaning of crisis. What is the real, spiritual meaning of crisis? Crisis is an attempt of nature, the natural, cosmic lawfulness of the universe, to effect change. If change is obstructed by that part of the consciousness that directs the will, crisis must be the result in order to make structural change possible. Without such structural change in the entity, balance cannot be attained. Every crisis ultimately means this, whether the crisis appears in the form of pain, difficulties, upheaval, uncertainty, or merely the insecurity of going into unaccustomed, new ways of living after giving up old, familiar ones. Crisis in any form, shape, or manner attempts to break down old balance structures which are based on false conclusions and therefore on negativity. It shakes lose ingrained, frozen life styles so that new growth becomes possible. It tears down and breaks up, which is momentarily painful, but transformation is unthinkable without it.

The more painful a crisis is, the more the will-directing part of consciousness must obstruct the necessary change. The necessity of crisis is so great because negativity is a stagnant mass that needs to be shaken up in order to let go of itself. Change is an integral characteristic of life. Where there is life there is unending change. Only those who are still in fear and negativity, who resist change, perceive change as something that ought to be resisted. They thus resist life itself and the suffering closes more tightly in on them. This fact applies to people, not only generally, as overall characteristics of their overall development, but it also applies to specific aspects of a person. In other words, human beings can be free and healthy in some areas, in which they do not resist change. They are in harmony with the universal movement and thus -- in those particular areas -- they constantly expand, grow, and experience life as deeply satisfying. Those same individuals react entirely differently in those areas where their blocks exist. They fearfully cling to unchanging conditions inside and outside of themselves. In the former instance, their lives will be free from crisis; in the latter, crises are unavoidable.

Human growth means to free the inherent potentials, which are truly infinite. Where negative attitudes stagnate, infinite unfoldment of these potentials is made impossible. Only crisis can shake loose and tear down a structure that is built on wrong premises, contradictory to the laws of cosmic truth, love, and bliss. Crisis corrects the frozen state, which is always negative.

We work intensely in order to free you from your negativities. What are they? The misconceptions, the destructive emotions, and attitudes, and behavior patterns that arise from them; the pretenses and the defenses. But none of these would present too much of a difficulty in themselves if it were not for their self-perpetuating force that compounds each negative aspect in an ever increasing momentum within the human psyche. All thoughts and feelings are energy currents, as you know. You also know that energy is a force that increases by its own momentum -- always based on the nature of the consciousness that nourishes and directs the energy current in question. Hence, if the underlying ideas, concepts and feelings are according to truth, and therefore positive, the self-perpetuating momentum of the energy current set in motion will increase the expressions and attitudes implicit in the underlying thoughts ad infinitum. We shall come to this later in greater detail. If the underlying ideas, concepts and feelings are founded on error, and therefore negative, then the self-perpetuating momentum of the energy current set in motion will increase and compound. But not ad infinitum.

Take some examples: you know that misconceptions create behavior patterns which inevitably and inexorably seem to prove the correctness of the assumption, so that the destructive, defensive behavior will become more firmly entrenched in the soul substance. All of you who work on the path have battled and fought such inner entanglements. You have discovered the truth of this statement, which I first made many years ago. The same principle exists in regard to feelings. Let us take some examples of destructive feelings. Fear by itself could easily be overcome if it were challenged, and exposed as to its underlying misunderstanding and mishandling. Quite apart from the fact that many times manifest emotions are not direct, primary emotions (fear may be a disguise for rage; depression a disguise for fear; etc.), the difficulty lies in the fact that fear creates fear of facing and of transcending the fear. Then one fears the fear of the fear -- and so on, and on, and on. It compounds.

Or let us take the emotion of depression. Again, if the original feeling of depression is not courageously exposed as to its underlying causes, the person becomes depressed about being depressed. He may then feel that he should be able to face his depression, rather than being depressed about it, but he is not really willing to do so, therefore unable. So he will become depressed about being depressed -- and that depresses him even more. And so on, and on. The first depression (or fear, or whatever else) is the first crisis that is not heeded, not understood as to its true meaning. It is evaded, so that depression about being depressed, etc., will set in, in ever increasing self-perpetuation. The consciousness becomes more and more removed from the original feeling, therefore removed from itself. It becomes more difficult to find the original feeling. The increased negative momentum finally leads to a breakdown of the negative self-perpetuation. Contrary to truth, love, and beauty, which are infinite divine attributes, distortion and negativity are never infinite. They find their own end when the pressure bursts. This is painful, it is crisis, and an entity usually resists it with all his might. But imagine if the universe were created differently and negative self-perpetuation would also continue ad infinitum. It would mean eternal hell.

This principle is very obvious with frustration. Most people can see comparatively easily that the frustration itself is less difficult to bear than their reaction of frustration at being frustrated. Or their anger at themselves for being angry. Or being impatient about one's impatience, wishing that one could react differently and not being able to do so because the underlying causes are not exposed and faced up to. Thus the "crises" of emotions such as anger, frustration, impatience, and depression are not recognized for what they are, which makes the swelling of the negative self-perpetuation stronger and stronger, until the inflamed boil bursts. Then we have an obvious crisis.

Crisis can mean, if consciousness chooses, the final end of continual swelling of negative self-perpetuation. When eruption comes, the choices of recognizing the meaning of the crisis or continuing to escape become more clearly defined. Even if this eruption does not lead to recognition and an inner change of direction, a final crisis is bound to come where the entity can no longer take refuge from the message of the crisis. The personality must eventually see that eruption, breakdown, crisis means to tear down the old structure so as to re-erect a new and better functioning structure.

The "dark night" of the mystics is such a time of breakdown of old structures. Most human beings are still plunged into the darkness of not understanding the meaning of crisis. They continually look in the wrong direction. If nothing would be broken down, the negativity would continue. Yet it is possible, after a certain amount of awakening has taken place in the consciousness, that the person does not allow the negativity to become too firmly entrenched. Thus the negativity is prevented from starting the self-perpetuating cycle. It is confronted right at the start. Crisis can be avoided by looking at the inner truth when the first inkling of disturbance and negativity manifest on the surface. But it requires a tremendous amount of honesty to challenge one's tightly cherished convictions. This cuts the negative self-perpetuation, the motor force that compounds the destructive, erroneous psychic matter, until it finds a breaking point. It avoids the many vicious circles within the human psyche and those between human beings in relationships that are painful and problematic.

If difficulties, upheaval, and pain in the individual's life, as well as in the life of humanity as a whole, would be viewed from this point of view, the real meaning of crisis would be truly understood, and much pain could be avoided. I say to you now, do not wait for crisis to come in an eruptive fashion, as the natural, balance-establishing event which takes place as inexorably as a thunderstorm take place when certain atmospheric conditions have to be altered and clarity in the atmosphere is to be re-established. It is exactly the same within the human consciousness. Growth is indeed possible without intense painful "dark nights," if honesty with the self becomes the predominant factor in the personality. True inner looking and deep concern with the inner being, and the giving up of pet attitudes and ideas, must be cultivated, instead of obstructed. Then the painful, disruptive crisis can be avoided, because no inflamed boil, whose pus must come out, would form.

The process of death itself is such a crisis. I have discussed various deeper meanings of death. This is yet another. Superficial death -- and it is nothing else but that -- could be avoided if crisis were not allowed to swell to an eruptive boil, but dissolved voluntarily with the available consciousness. Superficial death of the human body takes place because the consciousness says, "I cannot go on any longer," or "I am at my wit's end." Any crisis contains this thought and attitude. Consciousness always expresses to itself, "I can no longer deal with the situation" -- either a specific one, then a specific crisis in life occurs, or with one's present incarnation, then physical death will occur. In the latter case, the eruption takes the form of the spirit's breaking out of the body, until it finds new life circumstances in which to deal with the same inner distortions all over again. Since eruption, breakdown, and crisis always aim at discontinuing old ways of operation and creating new ones, the process of death and rebirth signifies this identical principle.

Man, however, opposes his going on to other ways of operating and reacting. This obstruction is so unnecessary. It is actually this opposition that creates the tension and strain of crisis, not the giving up of the old structure itself. When necessary change is not accepted willingly, you put yourself automatically into a state of crisis. The intensity of the crisis indicates the intensity of the opposition, as well as the urgency of the need for change. The greater the need for change, and the greater the obstruction to change, the more painful the crisis is going to be. The more openness and willingness there is, on whatever level, to go into a change, and the less necessary the change is at any given moment of the evolutionary path of an individual, the less severe and painful the crisis is going to be.

The severity and pain of a crisis is by no means determined by the objective event. I think most of you, my friends, can readily verify this. Most of you have gone through severe changes outwardly. You have lost a loved one, you may have coped with the most drastic changes and objectively traumatic events -- wars, revolution, loss of fortune and home, illness, etc. Yet you may inwardly have been much less agitated and in pain than in situations which are outwardly incommensurate with the agitation of your inner feelings. Thus we can say that an outer crisis may leave you inwardly in greater peace than an inner one. The objectively more traumatic event hurts sometimes less than the objectively less traumatic one. In the former instance the necessary change takes place on an outer level, which your inner being accepts more, adjusts to better, and finds a new modality of dealing with life with much less resistance. In the latter instance, the need for inner change meets up with greater resistance. Your personal, subjective interpretation of an event makes the crisis disproportionately painful. Sometimes one tries to find rational explanations for this seemingly peculiar fact -- these explanations can be called rationalizations. Sometimes both inner and outer changes and crises meet the same inner attitude.

When the process of the crisis is accepted and no longer obstructed, when one goes with it, instead of fighting it, relief will come comparatively quickly. Once pus runs out of the boil and the flexible new adjustment of soul attitudes is made, self-revelation brings peace; understanding brings new energy and aliveness. The healing process is at work, even while the boil erupts. The negation of this process, the inner attitude that says, "This should not be, I should not have to go through this. Do I have to go through this? This and that and the other is wrong with others. If it were not, I would not have to go through this now," prolongs the agony. This attitude tries to avoid the necessary eruption of the boil, which consists of a painful entanglement of ever increasing negative energy whose momentum makes it more and more difficult to alter the course. Hopelessness is a result of the ongoing negative cycle and its futile, automatic repetition that the consciousness is unable to stop, or, rather, which it could stop only by no longer avoiding the necessary change.

How many times have I emphasized that every negative experience, every pain, is a result of a wrong idea. How many times have you, my friends who work on this path, found this to be so, when you go deeply enough and look at those subtle levels on which you harbor secret convictions which you do not permit yourself to truly challenge, or even really to consciously express. An aspect of this very work is the articulating of these ideas. And yet, how often all of you still miss the necessary recognition by not keeping these incontrovertible facts in mind when you meet with an unhappy situation.

Once an individual takes on the habit of first of all questioning his hidden wrong assumptions and destructive reactions when anything unwelcome comes his way, and fully opens to truth and change, his life will alter in a very drastic way. Pain will become proportionately less frequent and joy more and more the natural state. Crisis becomes superfluous. Therefore, eventually death becomes superfluous. This may sound like an extreme statement, especially to those who are still awed by the mystery of death (therefore also of life), but it is nevertheless true. The rhythm of growth can then proceed smoothly, without the leaps and bounds of breaking up negative structures in the soul substance.

We discussed the negative aspects of self-perpetuation. Of course, it exists primarily on the positive side. Let us look into this now: let us say you love. The more you love, the more you have this capacity and can produce love feelings genuinely, the more you will become capable of producing more of these feelings without impoverishing yourself and others. That is, you do not deduct anything from anyone by giving out. On the contrary, more will come from giving out. You will find new ways, deeper ways, more variations of experiencing love, giving and receiving it, being in tune with this universal feeling. The ability to experience and express it will grow in an ever increasing self-perpetuating motion within.

So it is with every other constructive feeling and attitude. The more meaningful, fulfilled, and joyous your life is, the more of all of these attributes it must generate. It is an ongoing, never ending process of steady increase, expansion, and self-expression that multiplies within itself. The principle is exactly the same as with the negative self-perpetuation. The only difference is that in the positive process there truly is no limit, no breaking point. It is infinite.

Once you establish the contact with your innate wisdom, beauty, and joyousness, and allow it to unfold, it will increase and multiply by itself. The ongoing, automatic motion of self-perpetuation takes over, once these energies are released and admitted by consciousness. The initial actualization of these powers requires effort, but once the process is flowing, it is an effortless, ongoing inner movement. The more you bring forth of the universal qualities, the more will there be to bring forth.

Your own potentials, my dearest friends, are indeed infinite, in the possibility to experience beauty, joy, pleasure, love, wisdom, and creative expression of your innermost being. Again, the words have been said, heard, registered. But how deeply do you know that this is a reality? How deeply do you believe in your innermost potentials to be self-creating, to be in bliss, to live the infinite life? How much do you believe in your resources to solve all your problems? How much do you trust in the possibilities that are not yet manifest? How much do you believe it is real that new vistas of yourself can be discovered? How much do you truly believe that you can unfold qualities of peace, coupled with excitement; of serenity, coupled with adventure, through which life becomes a string of beauty -- even though initial difficulties are still to be overcome? Ask yourself this question. To the extent you only pay lip service to this belief, but do not actually and actively express it into yourself, you will still be heavy, hopeless, depressed, in fear or anxiety, entangled in apparently insoluble conflicts with yourself and others. This is a gauge which tells you that you do not truly believe that you are an infinitely expanding potentiality. If you do not truly believe this, my dearest ones, it is because there is something in you that you hold on to desperately. You do not wish to expose it because you do not wish to give it up and change.

This applies to every single one of you here, and of course to everyone in the world. For who has not the "dark night" to put up with? Some have many little "dark nights," coming and going. Or their "dark night" is gray continually. They may not be in a great crisis at any given moment, but life is gray, and fluctuates comparatively little. But then there are those who have already worked their way out of this grayness. They no longer want to content themselves with its comparative safety from crisis. They want more and are, deep within themselves, willing to chance temporary upheaval for the sake of reaching a more desirable steady state. They want to realize their potentials of deeper joys and self-expression. Then the "dark nights" must become more circumscribed. Either in ever changing, fluctuating experience of upheaval and liberation, joy and light, or, in some lives, they may come bunched up in stronger manifestations. Changes from utter darkness and loss, pain, and confusion alternate with heights of golden light, carrying justified hope for an eventual uninterrupted state of bliss. Whatever it may be with anyone of you, in whatever state you may now be, there is always a message for you to discover about your own life. It is up to you not to project your experiences outwardly, which is always the most dangerous, the most insidious temptation. Or, for that matter, to project them into yourself in a self-devastating way, which avoids the issue just as much as when you project it onto others. The attitude "I am so bad, I am nothing" is always dishonest. This dishonesty has to be exposed, so that the crisis can become meaningful, whether it be small or great.

If you eventually learn to take the smallest shadow of your everyday life and explore it to its deepest meaning, you will handle the little crisis -- this small event -- in such a way that makes the swelling of the boil impossible. Hence no painful eruption is needed to destroy rotten structures. This will reveal to you the stark reality that universal life, in its untampered state, is golden joyousness of ever increasing beauty. Every smallest shadow is a crisis, for it need not be there. It is only there because of your turning away from the issue that creates crisis. So take those smallest shadows of your everyday life and ask yourself what is the meaning of them. What do you not wish to see, and not wish to change? If you face this, and truly, truly wish to face the real issue, and change where it is necessary, the crisis will have fulfilled its meaning. You will discover new dimensions about the issue which will make the sun rise and the dark night will turn out to be what it actually is: the educator, the therapist that life continually is if you so wish to understand it.

Your capacity to cope with the negativities of others grows only to the extent that you can do what I said in this lecture. How often do you sense negative feelings from others, but you cannot handle them because you are anxious, uncertain, and not clear about the nature of your involvement and interaction with them. At other times, you may not even sense the actual presence of hostility in others. Their subtleness and indirectness confuses you, makes you feel guilty about your instinctive responses, but you are even less able to handle the situation. This frequent occurrence is totally a result of your blindness to yourself, and your resistance to change that which ought to be changed. Due to projecting all your own negative experience onto others, it is impossible for you to have adequate awareness of what actually goes on in the other person, and therefore you cannot deal with it. Many of you have begun to experience the magnificent change that comes into your life as you grow in your capacity to look honestly at what disturbs you within yourself, and as you become willing to change. Almost inadvertently, and as if it had nothing to do with your efforts, a new gift arises in you: you see the negativity in others in a new way that leaves you free, that permits you to confront them; and it is effective; it has no adverse effect on you. It must, in the long run, also be beneficial for the other, whenever he desires it to be so.

When you resist change, fear grows because your innermost being knows that crisis, eruption, breakdown is inevitable, and is steadily growing nearer. Yet you resist doing what could offset the crisis. What I say here is the story of human life. This is where human nature is caught. The lesson must then be repeated, again and again and again, until the illusory fear of change is exposed for its own error. If crisis can be understood in the way I show you here, and if you really meditate about it to understand your own crisis and to give up what you hold on to, and to challenge and question the limitation in your vision of a particular issue, life will open up at once, or almost at once.

Are there any questions in regard to this before I continue with the rest of this lecture?

QUESTION: I am involved with someone in a similar way to what you described. I cannot cope with this person's angry rebellion. I know I have this trait in myself, but I still react to it negatively. I do not communicate and open up, I do not let go. Instead, I suppress it. Maybe you can help me in suggesting what my positive response should be?

ANSWER: First of all, I recommend the assertion, "Here I am in stress and pain. I am in a situation that gives me anxiety, that I wish did not exist. What is the meaning in it for me?" Open up anew. Do not use the knowledge you have already gained about yourself as the answer. It may even be correct, but previous recognition can subtly serve as a barrier. You will truly have to be willing, deep, deep inside, to let go. To see and to let it be.

Here I come to the further aspect of this lecture, which will also be an answer to you. You must realize that change cannot be executed by yourself. The ego cannot accomplish it. The willing, conscious self alone is incapable of doing it. Of course, I have talked about this before, but I see how it is forgotten and not applied. The difficulty of changing, and the resistance to it, are to a large extent based on the fact that man forgets that he cannot do it without divine help. Thus he goes from one wrong extreme to the other. One extreme is that man thinks he is the one who must accomplish inner transformation. Since he knows, deep inside, that he cannot do this, that he just does not have the equipment to do it, he gives up. He feels it is hopeless to make himself change, therefore he does not even really try, nor does he express the concisely formulated desire to do so. He is right to believe that the capacity to change is missing in him when he considers himself to be exclusively the conscious, willing ego self. Resistance is partly an expression of avoiding the frustration to want something that cannot be done and must prove a disappointment. This extreme takes place on the innermost level of the human psyche. So does the opposite extreme, in which man professes the belief in higher powers, or God, who is supposed to do it all for him. He remains in an absolutely passive state, waiting for it to be done. Again, the conscious self does not try. False hope and false resignation are only two sides of the same coin of absolute passivity. But the pushing ego, attempting to go beyond its own capacity, must inevitably end up in the same passive state -- either falsely waiting or falsely giving up hope. The pushing exhausts the self and renders it passive. These attitudes may exist simultaneously or alternately.

The way to go about a positive response is to want it; you must be willing to be in truth and you must be willing to change. And you literally have to pray to the innermost divine functionings within your soul to make the change possible. Then you wait for the change to take place, in a trusting, confident, and patient way. This is the absolute prerequisite for change. When it does not occur to a person to assume this prayerful attitude, "I want to change, but my ego cannot do it. God will do it through me. I will make myself a willing, receptive channel for this to happen," then he is basically unwilling to change and/or is doubtful about the reality of the higher forces within him.

This confident, patient waiting, this assurance and trust that it will come when you are utterly willing to look at the truth, can be acquired. It is not a childish attitude that wants an authority to do it for him. Quite the contrary. This approach conciliates the attitudes of adult self-responsibility, that takes action in the sense of facing it; of wanting truth and change; of the willingness to expose hidden shame; and the receptive attitude in which the ego knows its own limitations, as I said in the last lecture. In this receptive attitude, you let God in you into your soul from deep within yourself. You open for this to happen. When this attitude is adopted, change becomes a living reality for anyone and everyone. When trust and faith are lacking that this can come to pass, that the Divine can actualize Itself through you, it is because you have not given yourself the opportunity to experience the stark reality of these processes; you have denied yourself this experience. And since you have never experienced it, how can you trust it. Also, since you have this or that little back door, which you wish to keep in reserve so that you still do not need to enter into life fully and committedly, you cannot experience the marvel of the reality of the Universal Spirit within yourself. Since you are not honest with life, you cannot really believe in the power of the Universal Intelligence dwelling in you at all times, which goes to work the instant you make room for it. Total commitment to it is necessary, without reservation.

This unreserved commitment to it is the absolute prerequisite for your discovery of its reality within you. Even if you do not know what the immediate outcome may be, or how it is going to be, or what the implications may turn out to be, or whether it is going to work in this way or that way, or whether God's way will be agreeable to you, the commitment must be made. Not knowing the total answer right now is part of it. All such considerations avoid commitment and keep you holding on to the old, distorted, cheating way of handling life, while still wanting to reach for the new, liberated, free way of life, in which you are whole, not inwardly divided and wracked by the pain of this division. But you cannot have it both ways. Your commitment to the Ultimate Creator must become total, it must be applied to the most seemingly insignificant aspect of daily living and being. You must be totally committed to the truth, then you are also committed to the Universal Spirit. If you thus commit yourself, you will let go of the old shore and you will float momentarily in an apparent no man's land; but you will not mind this. You will feel safer than ever before, when you held on to the old shore, with the false structure that must be torn down. You will soon know that there is nothing to fear. This courage must be summoned, only to find that this is really the most safe and secure way possible to live, to be, to expand, and to vibrate in and toward life. It actually requires no courage at all. Then, and then only, the "dark nights" will turn into instruments of light.

QUESTION: This lecture is very close to where I am. I just begin to discover the meaning of crisis. I feel that I either have to take refuge somewhere or I have to ride through the storm, which I feel I am doing now.

ANSWER: This recognition is very good. It touches upon the age-old question, the age-old alternative: taking refuge or driving through. This is perhaps the all-important question, which appears again and again on the evolutionary path of each entity. Man remains in the cycle of death and rebirth, of pain and struggle, of conflict and strife -- physically as well as spiritually and psychologically -- precisely because he cuddles the illusion that going through can be avoided and refuge is possible. Actually, refuge not only does not do any good, but it increases the boil. The momentary relief is illusion of the most serious nature. Serious because the inevitable crisis that comes later is then no longer connected with its source and inner reason, and that hurts more. However, when the mind is made up, "I will not take refuge, I will go through it," the capacities and the resources within the human soul will become instantaneously available. These resources are hidden and remain obscure to the person who still tends to take refuge. He then feels weak and does not believe in his own capacities to actualize the infinite powers of the Universal Spirit. He does not know of his potentialities, of the strength that will arise, of the inspiration that will come to him. These resources become available only when the mind has decided to go through, and helped is asked for in meditation. The trust that the conscious ego self is not alone is then awakened. It is not the only faculty available to deal with the issue.

I emphasize again that a person may be oriented in this way in some areas of his being, while he still remains closed and unwilling in some problematic manifestations. It is accordingly that he will experience life and himself.

It is important that you simply want to do the best you can. It is not important whether or not you make "mistakes," whatever they may mean. The struggle itself is what counts and what must bring conciliation. The thus arising blessing, strength, and growing wholeness of the personality cannot be put into words. It cannot be described. Man wants "ideal solutions," so he always temporizes on the threshold of this total commitment. But what are ideal solutions? They mean nothing if they are not based on the growing wholeness of a person, which comes to pass through this process described here.

I bless you and ask you to open up your innermost being, your whole soul, all your psychic forces, to let go of the cramp that denies truth and change, and therefore self-expression and light. Open up in this way, so as to let the blessed power that is a constant presence within you permeate your whole being. This power is strongly activated in such gatherings, when you come together here, when you receive help and open up to another, and yet another channel of help. A blessing comes forth that will meet with the inner power of which I have spoken, thus doubly strengthening you. Continue your growth process in the way I discussed here. In this last year I have been privileged to help you each one of you has made great strivings, has grown and unfolded, perhaps more than you know. Let this process continue, in the spirit advocated in this lecture, so that your wholeness, your connectedness with the universe, will grow and give you more of the joy that is inherently your birthright. Be blessed, be in peace.

The Guide
by Eva Pierrakos
June 5, 1970

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