Greetings, blessed be all of you, my beloved friends. The force
of love and truth, elicited by your seeking, is pouring forth, to continue
the sequence, to forge another link in the chain, to give you what you need
at this juncture of your path.
Man's average state of mind is a fragmented piece of consciousness.
In this fragmented state he is cut off from reality. He inevitably lives in
fear and limitation. Yet he believes that this is all there is to his life
and he frantically clutches at this limited, fragmented state. He stems against
the natural inner movement of the soul to go beyond; to expand this limited
state, because the split off ego consciousness fears that doing so will dissolve
his life and annihilate his existence. He ardently protects this limited state
of consciousness, while it is this very limitation that creates fear and suffering.
This is, broadly speaking, man's plight. It is his task, in
the cycle of incarnations, to re-integrate this split off ego consciousness
and to regain forever wider and deeper portions of his real self, his cosmic
existence, with its unlimited, infinite possibilities for life experience,
joy, and creation of the self.
Man believes this split-off ego-consciousness to be his real
self. He identifies with his brain, his outer intelligence, his will, his
mind, all the faculties immediately available, not knowing that to whatever
degree he possesses these he has, in the past, made them available for himself,
with effort and overcoming. For there was a state in which he possessed much
less awareness, power to create, ability to experience joy. His consciousness
was much more limited and confined. He had to use whatever consciousness he
had to enlarge his faculties and to avail himself of as yet unused potentials
and dormant possibilities. This must go on and on, until there is no longer
any split-off fragment and until man has become one with ultimate reality
and cosmic consciousness. The processes of this enlargement of self, of making
apparently foreign territory his own domain, are the pathwork -- any valid
pathwork.
Ego means fragmentation. As I mentioned, it is the task of
every entity who is caught in this fragmentation, and therefore in the cycle
of being born and dying, to enlarge his field of operation, his perception,
his awareness, and his power to create. The difficulty of doing so is that
in the limited state of the ego separation enlargement of the ego, contrary
to reality, appears as annihilation of the ego -- that is, of man's very existence,
of his sense of self. To penetrate this illusion, he needs all available force,
commitment, good will, and help -- help that he must want and reach for. This
is truly man's search and man's struggle. Only as he ventures forth, step
by step, overcoming the inherent and innate resistance to go beyond this separated
present state, does he find out gradually that there is another life beyond
the ego state. He then finds out that this other life is reality and this
reality is not to be feared. It is good, it is to be utterly trusted; it means
that there is ongoing life, self-awareness, and ever increasing joy. He finds
out that the limited ego state he so ardently protected is illusion, the illusion
of death and aloneness.
Awareness has to be fought for. It does not come easily, nor
gratuitously. Remaining in the isolated ego state may appear safe and easy,
but it leads to stagnation and death -- ever re-occurring death.
The ego uses any number of tricks in order to maintain its
separated, limited state and in order to prevent moving beyond it. I should
like to show what these aspects and tricks of the ego are.
In the first place, the tricks of the ego are every conceivable
negativity known to mankind; any fault, any violation of integrity, truth,
love, and divine law. Since all these negativities and faults, as I often
pointed out, can be summed up in the triad of pride, selfwill, and fear, I
shall show how the ego-tricks use these traits in order to prevent self-transcendence.
The fear of the ego to lose its present state of existence,
i.e., its self-awareness, is so great that it displaces the instinct of self-preservation.
The ego uses this instinct in the battle to preserve its present awareness.
Fear always blinds and distorts truth and reality. Thus the ego maintains
itself with pride. It maintains its separated state by creating an unreal,
artificial conflict between the self and others. "I am better than you," "I
am more than you," or "I must prove to the world how admirable, that is, better
than others, I am," "I must outdo others," "I must not be worse than others,"
"My interests counteract those of others, and vice versa." All these attitudes
are pridefully put into the service of maintaining the separated state of
the ego. It is always "I versus you," and this inevitably creates a spirit
of one-upmanship. Whether or not an individual happens, in his present incarnation,
to be further in development or lagging behind another, to use this fact as
a wedge between one's own ego and those of others is completely missing the
point. For, in principle, there is no differentiation. It does not even take
very long on the path to find out that it is only on the most superficial
level that one's interests conflict with those of others. What is really right
and good can be seen right underneath the surface. According to divine law,
this is right for all concerned. Therefore all measuring, comparing, competing,
and striving to up others makes the confinement of separation even tighter
and increases the illusion that this pitiful existence is all there is to
life.
Also, man's prevalent tendency to live for the sake of appearance,
rather than for the sake of truth, for the sake of his real feelings and interests,
goes under the same category of pride. The illusion of the separated ego state
is so strong at this point that it seems more important to man to create an
impression than to even consider what a tragic, wasteful sacrifice he makes
for an entirely imaginary gain that can never, never be made.
All attitudes of mask and defense, of pretense and false shame
(shame of exposure, embarrassment about real feelings and one's inner reality
regarding the spiritual self) belong into the category of pride; they are
tricks of the ego to maintain its limited state.
Under selfwill belong all aspects of stubbornness, resistance,
spite, defiance, and rigidity. All these attitudes connote a stiffening up
against change -- that is, against expanding into new spiritual territory.
These traits express, in effect,"I will stay where and as I am."
The trick of the ego is to make this appear as desirable and to make open,
flexible movement appear threatening and/or humiliating. Pride and fear must
necessarily be coupled to selfwill, just as selfwill must be present where
either of the other two dominates. Every one of these aspects harbors the
other two as well.
The refusal to move may be evaluated, on a more superficial
level and by dint of more personal idiosyncrasies and neuroses, as spite against
a specific human being or human beings -- let us say parents or parent substitutes
or general authority figures. Or there might be a spiteful attitude toward
life itself. But on a deeper level the trick of the ego is to remain in the
isolated, separated status quo position.
Under the category of fear belong all worry, anxiety, and apprehensiveness.
The fear exists not only in preventing the going beyond the limited, confused
state per se. The trick of the ego is to make this move appear threatening
and life-annihilating. Worrying and anxiety are also ego tricks in that they
prevent the joyousness, peace, and freedom of the cosmic reality to be gained
when the present state is expanded.
The entire topic of negative intentionality we have recently
explored is part and parcel of ego trickery to preserve the limited present
state. Whatever the specific negative intentionality may be, it always indicates
spite -- hence selfwill, which always blurs the real view and falsifies the
situation, so that all desirable life experience is denied.
Other tricks of the ego, to maintain its present "safe" position,
are to deny pleasure, bliss, joy, expansion, creative movement into life.
The fear of all these positive states is obviously also a trick of the ego.
This is such a well-known phenomenon, applying to all human beings, that it
can easily be observed as applying to the common state of mankind.
Other tricks of the ego are: inattentiveness, lack of power
of concentration, abstractedness, absent-mindedness. These attitudes deny
the focusing necessary for the ego to transcend itself. To transcend its present
limited state, the ego requires a good deal of one-pointed focusing, of being
all there, as it were.
Laziness, tiredness, and passivity are tricks of the ego. They
make movement impossible and make it appear as if movement were undesirable
and exhausting. We shall come back to this later.
Fear of exposure, denial of showing the real feelings, do not
only go under the heading of pride, but they directly perpetuate isolation
and therefore are being used as ego tricks to deny oneness.
Negative reactions to the negativity of others is another trick
of the ego to maintain its isolated state. The moment there is negativity,
the energy system functions in such a way as to deny the expansion of the
ego, which would effectuate self-transcendence. It denies the joyousness of
true being by making something more of other people's behavior than need be.
It cuts off the vision of the real life that is beyond the limited present
state. Only the isolated entity experiences the terror of finiteness.
Distrust and suspiciousness are part of the general fear that
makes the ego wish to remain in the unmoving present state and resort to trickery
in order to deny the inherent natural movement toward the entity's ultimate
fate. While fear (distrust) is the motivating force, the ego simultaneously
uses distrust as a trick to effectuate its wish for non-movement.
The ego assumes a preposterous and paradoxical position. It
is intrinsically unhappy, just because of its finiteness, or what seems like
finiteness in this present limited state. It is self-evident that the ego
can only see what is within its range, within its present scope of awareness,
within its present field of operation. And what it sees is, to varying degrees,
limited and falsified. Hence, it sees and experiences finiteness, the disconnected,
meaningless universe in which the little ego is powerless and senselessly
suffering. This perception of life can only alter to the exact degree that
the ego overcomes the temptation to stay put. But the paradoxical position
of the ego state is to fight for remaining in the very state that is often
unbearably lonely, fearful, and meaningless.
Unfathomable death at the end of each living period is terrifying,
and although it is possible to escape from and deny this terror, it cannot
be dissolved as long as the ego remains in its present narrow confines. Sooner
or later everyone is faced with this terrifying illusory end, both with his
own and with that of others. But even if this terror is not acute and man
escapes from it, it remains a gnawing force in his soul, a force that must
always exist until the ego gives up its resisting position. In spite of the
extremely uncomfortable and undesirable position of the limited, confined
ego, it clings to the very condition and to the very state that makes true
vision, beyond the imaginary line of demarcation, impossible. This is the
sickness of the ego state and the perversion of it -- to cling to the very
thing it battles against.
All of my friends can easily recognize themselves in this description.
For the pathwork makes the incongruity of the human state very obvious. I
believe it will help you all greatly to see your plight in this light and
to know that this is a universal state which you are called upon to transcend.
On this path you must be concerned with and grope for an understanding of
how to transcend this state and what it really means.
Isolation and separateness are, without a doubt and without
exception, painful and tragic; tragic because unnecessary, and ironical because
the ego clings to what it hates and what it hurts it most. It lacks the discipline
and the perseverance, the commitment and the faith to venture beyond its present
scope of awareness. Suffering must exist as long as you cling to and indulge
in this present state. As long as all the tricks of the ego are acted out,
rationalized, denied, perpetuated, and nurtured -- as is usually the case
-- man cannot help but suffer.
You all know, my friends, and many of you have indeed experienced
it, that every step on the path forward reveals new vistas, which are very
real, much more real than the previous state that you thought was the ultimate
reality. Every step of the way this newly-gained reality opens life wider
and fuller for you. The result is more joy, more peace, more consciousness,
more understanding of the beautiful deep meaning of life, more creativity,
and more intrinsic knowledge of life's eternality versus the illusion of death,
the illusion of finiteness.
But every one of these steps could only have been won by a
tremendous amount of investment on your part. He who still wants indulgence
and easy, cheap results can never, never gain this new state. He will look
wistfully beyond, yet doubt that anything else could exist that would warrant
the effort and the lowering of his pride. This doubt becomes then the excuse
for the status quo that is artificially maintained. This is the sin against
life, defeating life's natural movement toward evolution and unification.
Discipline, courage, humility, and the ability to commit yourself
-- these are not attitudes you do not possess, my friends. Everyone of you
possesses every conceivable attribute in the universe. The question is only,
do you wish to avail yourself of these potentialities within you, or do you
wish to claim that you do not possess them and that someone has to magically
give them to you?
You often have the misplaced and confused idea that self-discipline
hampers your freedom, and, conversely, that the free person does not discipline
himself. Nothing could be further from the truth. Freedom, in its real sense,
is unthinkable without discipline. And, conversely, the person who indulges
himself and who rejects discipline is unavoidably dependent, weak, powerless,
and consequently afraid. He lacks freedom. Freedom can only be gained to the
degree one uses voluntary self-discipline -- uses it for his own sake and
not in order to appease and to appear good in the eyes of others. The latter
attitude often leads to either actual or imaginary discipline being imposed
upon the person by others. When such imposition happens -- and this is, of
course, undesirable -- it is always a result of the denial of voluntary self-discipline,
which goes together with self-responsibility.
Every expansion must be fought for with self-discipline, by
overcoming the imbedded resistance against expansion. The discipline must
be used for stringent recognition of the ego tricks and against giving in
to them. This expansion is always a step beyond a known territory. The ego,
in its present state (which varies, of course, from human being to human being)
is a result of what man has already gained. The "territory" he had gained
determines his degree of functioning, the scope of his experience and of his
awareness.
When I speak of "territory," I mean a state of awareness and
of available creative life force and influx from the real world, all of which
make experiencing life deeper and more meaningful. The word "territory" is
thus not to be understood in a geographical sense, but in a total sense. The
fences around this territory indicate the degree of the ego's self-transcendence.
Every incarnation, on whatever level this may pertain, requires
the entity to increase the scope of his "field of operation," to widen the
fences around the fragmented ego, to bring in more reality from the world
beyond the illusory confinement. Indirectly this applies to all levels. Even
the most mundane, outer, physical, and intellectual knowledge and skill to
be acquired increase in some way the present scope of operation and life experience,
and thus indirectly contribute to the total task of self-transcendence. The
acquisition of new knowledge and skills also demands the cultivation of some
of the attitudes necessary for self-transcendence. And every bit of new knowledge
or a new skill, in one way or another, yields, directly or indirectly, more
spiritual power and awareness, more experience of joy, and realization of
your own adequacy and potentiality.
To acquire new knowledge or skills, on whatever level, always
means overcoming laziness, the temptation to succumb to the line of least
resistance; it means self-discipline; it means often hard work (the more desirable
the new aspect of life is, the more real and durable, the more investment
of work is necessary); trial and error; the ability to convert a failure into
success. It means perseverance, patience, faith; it means overcoming fear,
until the new thing becomes one's own, natural "possession," until it becomes
part of the personality, a "second nature," as the saying goes.
The ego's task is always first to accept the difficulties,
the hardships, the overcoming, the learning process. Only when the ego has
learned the more mechanical aspects of the venture can the influx of the spiritual
self make the new acquisitions a spontaneous, living, effortless experience.
Ego means effort, spiritual self means effortlessness. However, this desirable
effortlessness is not given by magic, for this would mean that the ego is
not being transcended, but avoided. The ego must change its own lazy, resistant
attitudes in order to transcend itself and become compatible to unify with
the cosmic, greater self. The ego must lay the arduous groundwork until the
real self can come through. This can be noted in every activity or skill.
First there is always effort. It becomes pleasurable only when it seems, and
actually is, "happening through you."
If it is a manual task, the manual rules have to be learned,
until they become part of the ego. If it is a mental task, mental knowledge
has to be painstakingly acquired through first often quite mechanical processes.
Then the new knowledge will become the person's own and the spirit can use
this newly acquired expansion, with its accompanying wider vision, knowledge,
skill, energy, and accomplishment, to play creatively. An artist who wants
to bypass the effortfulness of learning the ground rules can never unfold
his real creative ability, no matter how real it may initially be. These creative
abilities will wither because he wants to cheat life.
The spiritual path itself demonstrates these identical principles.
As mentioned before, the ego must learn and adopt attitudes compatible with
the universal, divine ones. This is, as you know, not easy. The influx and
the inspiration of the spiritual self are blocked off to the degree the ego
is blindly involved in its laziness, pride, selfwill, fear, negativity, wish
to cheat life, tendency to escape, etc. But when these tendencies are being
honestly recognized and gradually given up, the influx of the world of eternal
truth, love, and beauty becomes possible.
So what comes first is always the arduousness of making the
ego flexible; teaching it and changing it; making it receptive and vibrant;
letting new life energy and creative flow come through to it by identifying
and abandoning its tricks. Whether it be a new knowledge, a new skill, a new
attitude toward life and the universe, this changing of the ego always means
that a new territory has become your own.
He who withers in the narrow confines of his present state
because he feels this is safe, and thereby eliminates the need for effort
and investment, truly withers away. He does not permit life to regenerate
him, which can only happen when inner movement exists.
It always seems at first frightening to go beyond the present
ego confines. New land is unaccustomed, foreign, unknown. Man wants to avoid
the unknown and rather cower in fear of it than have the courage of making
it known, making it his own. To make the unknown known, outside as well as
inside, that is the beauty of the spiritual path.
The ego is under the illusion that to stay in the stagnant,
narrow confines of the already known territory (regardless of how much wider
it may be compared to the territory of others, it is still narrower as compared
to one's potentials and the waiting task) is easy, relaxing, restful, effortless.
To get yourself up by your bootstraps and moving beyond seems terribly tiresome.
This feeling is an illusion because the stagnant state is really a manifestation
of contraction, and contraction is by no means relaxing and restful, although
it may seem so to the confused mind because of its immobility. But true restfulness
is always alive and moving -- effortless moving. And this is impossible in
a state of contraction. You can verify this by looking around you: the people
who do least are always most tired. And the people who do most are always
most energized, restful, and relaxed (provided that their activity does not
serve as an escape from the self).
Harmonious movement is not tiring or exhausting, although the
first manifestations may indeed give such symptoms to you, because to go from
an unmoving state to a moving state -- on whatever level -- requires at first
the acceptance of temporary effort, with self-discipline, faith, courage,
and humility, until the effort becomes effortless.
Spiritual movement is effortless. By spiritual movement I mean
the movement of ultimate reality, of the totally unified entity. The stagnant
state of non-movement is really very effortful, because stagnation requires
an enormous amount of (often unconscious) effort in order to sustain the resistance
against the natural inclination of the soul to follow its destiny. This unconscious
effort then makes itself known as tiredness, exhaustion, and weakness, which
furnish the excuse to remain even more in the status quo. The ego uses as
tricks the results of its own errors.
You know that all life is movement and movement is not effortful
when the entity is in harmony with his life. But it seems temporarily effortful,
until this harmony is being established by re-orienting the ways of the ego.
You then move within the rhythm of your life stream. When you can feel the
rhythm of your life stream, you have already acquired a certain amount of
self-awareness and you are already within the movement of expansion.
Those who are on a path such as yours will find that some aspects
of yourself are already within the cosmic movement; other aspects still resist,
stagnate, and hold. The moving part of you is also the aware part. That part
is capable of recognizing the meaning of the resistance to movement. That
part can meditate in the way I just explained: on seeking a deeper understanding
of your task in life; on the meaning of your life in the light of this lecture.
You will find greater motivation to request guidance so that the stagnating
part in you will yield to the moving part. Little by little you will energize
the contracted consciousness that has separated itself from the Whole.
As I speak of ego, I do not wish to convey that the ego as
such is to be totally negated, denied, and insulted. The ego is a part of
divine consciousness and holds all aspects of the greater self from which
it has separated itself, even if they are distorted and misused. The basic
energy and consciousness of the ego is made of the same substance with which
you ultimately unite once again.
As I said elsewhere in a different context, the ego must be
healthy in order to transcend itself; in order to venture beyond its present
confines and make as yet unknown spiritual land, knowledge, experience, and
creative potentialities known and your own. In order to do this, the ego must
adopt attitudes that are compatible with its original nature. All the tricks
of the ego, all the negativity and the evil that are imbedded strictly in
the ego, have to be recognized for what they are, with a very incisive, sharp
self-honesty. The indulgence of denial, of glossing over, of rationalization,
and projection must be given up. The searchlight must be ruthlessly turned
on the little self. Only when you can put the strong light of truth, with
your ego consciousness, on other aspects of your ego consciousness, can these
other aspects adopt healthy and truthful attitudes. Then the ego gradually
becomes healthy, and only the healthy ego can transcend itself and unify with
the, of course, always healthy divine consciousness.
The weak, sick, distorted ego very often wants to give itself
up just because it cannot bear itself any longer. The burden of itself is
too heavy. Then various forms of ego escape, such as drugs and other means
of false ego transcendence, are being adopted. But such ego transcendence
is highly dangerous and is just a variation of insanity. For insanity itself
is the attempt of the ego to lose or transcend itself because it can no longer
bear itself. In all these false and dangerous attempts, the entity always
seeks to avoid effort, pain, inconvenience, and those aspects of life with
which it does not agree or which it does not understand. It seeks cheating
shortcuts, which can never work and which require a very high price. The subsequent
reaction of the entity may be to hold on even tighter, thus making healthy
ego transcendence as impossible as the false one.
The only way is to use the healthy part of the ego to shed
light on the sick part; to use the honest part of the ego to shed light on
the dishonest part. Then ego transcendence takes place in the safest possible
way. Then new territory is being acquired; territory that was first frighteningly
foreign, unknown, and apparently dark will become known, familiar, light.
With this new safety a sense of eternality is being created in the self; the
deepest feeling, knowledge, and experience of life's continuum grows, and
thereby an enormous amount of pain and fear are automatically eliminated.
But this cannot come cheaply. It requires every investment and commitment
on your part. And he who does it genuinely must reap the fruits in a most
concrete and tangible way.
The greater your efforts become, the more of a spiritual force
you lawfully elicit and make your own. Every step of truth and good will activates
automatically and inexorably the powerful and creative spiritual force within
and around you.
Blessing and love for all of you, my dearest ones.
The Guide
by Eva Pierrakos
March 24, 1972
Copyright 1972, the Center for the Living Force, Inc.