By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings in the name of the Lord. I bring you blessings my friends, to each one of you and to all of your dear ones.

When we spirits observe human beings, we can always see your bad need of spiritual nourishment. Your body is nourished, as is your intellect and even your emotional nature though the latter one not always with the best possible food. But when it comes to spiritual nourishment, most human beings starve themselves. There is a great continuation about what spiritual nourishment really means. It does not me rely mean to read, hear or learn about spiritual truth or law, about God and His creation. It does not even mean prayer and meditation, which of course if done in the right way, is also a very important part of spiritual nourishment. However, the most important substance of spiritual food is self-development. Your innermost self and your Divine Spark are constantly crying out for this. And you, your conscious being is refusing this food ever so often. When you are sad or depressed, when you are dissatisfied with your life whether you have actual and rational reasons or not, it is always because your spirit is starved. Only he can be truly happy and fulfilled who partakes of this most important food: spiritual development. For there is no human being alive who has not the opportunity to become happy. It is in your own hands, in your own decisions my friends. But you so often turn the wrong way, you seek happiness in the wrong direction, you blame others for your misfortunes, you blame fate, you blame God, you blame the alleged injustice of the world. But you do not take the one and only step that leads you to fulfillment through a deep sense of having lived your life in the way your Creator had in mind for you in this particular incarnation. It varies, of course, for not everyone has to fulfill the same way. As I often say, not the same work or effort is expected of everyone alike. But one thing you should keep in mind, my friends is that if you are not quite happy, in spite of occasional outer difficulties, you have denied your spirit some of the nourishment it craves most probably in the right way of self development and of self recognition. Anyone hearing or reading these words has sufficient means to acquire this food.

To continue the series of lectures I have given about self development, I will discuss tonight a subject have not yet gone into, at least not in public lectures. I have mentioned several factors in the human soul which are what you might call God eclipsing. Pride, self will and fear are the three factors responsible for all faults, for all unhappiness, and for all untruth that exist in each human soul. They work hand in hand in strengthening one another in different degrees and combinations with each individual. Tonight I will discuss the subject of SHAME.

There is a right kind of shame and a wrong kind of shame. The right kind of shame, differently expressed, would mean true repentance. Without this kind of shame, there could never be the incentive for self-development. No one who does not feel this shame would ever undergo this noble fight, my friends, against one's own Lower Self; no one would take the path of purification if this shame did not exist within him. True repentance is therefore a constructive and very positive element. But there is also the wrong kind of shame. All human beings so often confuse these two kinds of shame that I shall devote some time now on this subject.

Now, what is the wrong kind of shame? Differently expressed, we might call it a guilt complex that of course is entirely destructive and negative. What do your emotions actually say even though you certainly do not consciously think these thoughts when you have the wrong kind of shame? You say: "I am so bad; I am hopeless; there is just nothing that can be done.

With this attitude you not only wallow in self pity, but what is even more important and harmful, this attitude expresses to all intents and purposes the sluggishness that prohibits your lifting yourself up and working actively on the elimination of that which is wrong within you. Furthermore, this attitude becomes more and more unreasonable and unjust, for you still demand and expect respect and love from others although you do not respect and love yourself. Mind you, this is not because of your shortcomings; but in the deepest regions of your being you cannot respect yourself because of this wrong attitude and this wrong kind of shame that just makes you passive where you should be active.

Thus, you find yourself in a vicious cycle: The more you deny yourself the constructive kind of shame that would make you lift yourself up and work on yourself with realistic self recognition, which is the foundation of development, the more you despise yourself. The more you do that, the more you demand love and respect from others to make up for the lack of self respect. The blind, unconscious, and immature side of you believes somehow that if you receive sufficient appreciation of others, this will make up for the lack of self respect you can never truly possess unless you fulfill these basic spiritual laws within your own soul and unless you do the maximum of what can be expected of you in self development according to your overall spiritual development.

I know, my friends, that no one thinks these thoughts consciously, but if you would as you should test your emotions, their demands and what they actually mean and express, you would easily find out that this is what you mean in a heretofore hidden part of yourself. So remember and this is very important for your lack of self respect is not due to your faults, weaknesses, shortcomings, and sins no matter what they may be but it is due to your wrong kind of shame! The moment you exchange the wrong kind for the right, I can promise you that in the measure this change takes place within you, you must develop a true and justified self respect long before the faults in you have have disappeared. You do not have to be perfect in order to respect yourself. All you have to do is to have a realistic attitude about your imperfections and to adopt a constructive attitude in regard to them. The more your self respect is established, the less you will crave for the respect of others, for you are then resting secure within yourself. And this will so change your inner attitude and your emanations that you must have a different effect on others; this will make it so much easier for your surroundings actually to give you the love and the respect you desired in the first place.

Perhaps it has not occurred to you that this wrong kind of shame comes from your pride and furthers your pride even more. This may sound paradoxical to you at first. Let me explain it to you in this way: There is your Lower Self with all its shortcomings. This is a fact that you have to reckon with if you do not want to escape your present reality. The more you try to escape these facts, the sicker your soul must become. That you know, for I have talked about this fact again and again. But by having the wrong kind of shame, you do escape this reality, for your emotions express that you will not accept yourself as you really are. The moment you hopelessly despair about the lower side of your nature, you have not accepted yourself as you are. That means you are lacking the humility of courageously facing everything about yourself and that is pride.

Let me stress once again: Intellectually you know that you are imperfect, but not emotionally. Often there is a wide chasm between what you know and think consciously and what your emotions claim and desire. It is not at all difficult to make these emotions conscious, if only you were to take the trouble to translate them into thought, so to say. But it needs a little effort in this direction. So now your emotions already desire perfection, while this perfection is not yours as yet. Your emotions place you on a higher point than you have taken efforts to reach. On the other hand, you do know or feel that this place is not yours as yet. But instead of consciously recognizing this and slowly working up to the point where you want to be, you become angry at the world and at yourself because you are what you are and refuse to take the inner effort to become what you want to be. So the wrong kind of shame means pride, laziness, injustice, and the escape from your present reality. And this makes you feel guilty, my friends, and this is not because of the actual faults you may possess. These would never make you feel guilty, provided you adopt the right kind of shame in which you accept yourself in humility as you are at present, not fleeing and not escaping from this reality and thus it builds up from there slowly, step by step. It is the only realistic and constructive way to change and develop.

However, the wrong attitude brings further hazards. Because of your pride and because of your need for respect and love from others, you begin to withdraw from what you really think and feel about yourself and hide it behind a wall, so to say. You dare not stand up for what you really are because your emotions say that if you would be yourself, you would be despised. As I said before, the more you lack self respect, the more important the respect of others becomes to you. So you create a mask self. In some subtle way, you become a fake. And that, in turn, makes you even more despondent with your self and you despise yourself even more. The vicious cycle continues in full force and carries you into deeper emotional conflicts until you develop the courage and humility to break it. Please do not confuse standing up for what you are, which includes your Lower Self, to mean that you should give in to the trends of this latter in your deeds. There is a vast difference between that and simply recognizing and accepting what you are and not building up a different personality for the outside world by which you appear different. Man often establishes a fake of his real self for the very reasons explained here. That is what I mean.

As long as you feel sad, bitter, defiant, or disharmonious in any way when you encounter your own faults, you have not yet accepted yourself as you are. Again you have to strive for the middle path: Accepting does not mean that you wish to stay in that state of imperfection, which you first have to learn to accept. Furthermore, you should find out where in your emotions you desire to be cherished by others for your shortcomings, so to say, as a compensation for your imagined inability to change and thus cherish yourself. When you have made these unreasonable emotions known, then it will be easy for you to direct them into proper channels.

When you are capable of really and truly accepting yourself as you are you do not want to have a higher place, not desiring to appear better than you are, you have fulfilled the basic requirements to be on this Path, my friends. Be aware that you are not on it as yet, but merely still in a state of preparing to enter the most important and decisive gate leading on to it. In other words, as long as there is the wrong kind of shame in you, you cannot advance on this Path; you have to exchange it for the right kind of shame.

The wrong kind of shame will create a state of mind that is not only extremely unhealthy, as outlined just now, but also that which will make you feel more and more alone. Whenever you feel lonely and not understood, please realize that, at least to some degree, what I am saying here must be responsible for it and not other people, their lack of love or understanding. No matter how incapable of love your surroundings may be, you would never feel lonely if this wrong attitude were not somehow prevailing within you. So do not seek a remedy from without, but turn around within and look at yourself from this point of view.

You, whoever you are, may feel ashamed of something. You feel ashamed whether it is big or small, grave or unimportant that is not the point. You know how you react. You cover it up; you hide it; you appear to be without that something of which you are ashamed. This is the wall that separates you from the others. In this way you can never be sure that you are really loved and appreciated. For always this little voice in you keeps saying: "If they only knew how I really am and what I have done whatever it may be they would not love me". That makes you alone and suffering and cold. You feel that all the affection given to you is destined for the person you appear to be but not for the person you really are. Of course, you are uncertain and lonely in that state. But only you can change it only you. It will be easy for you to see that the only remedy of this constant state of loneliness, of uncertainty, and of growing self reprisal is the one step that appears hardest to you, namely to break down the shame and stand up for what you really are. The more you try the other way, the way of deception in some subtle way, the deeper you will be in your dilemma. You have seen that. So it is up to you to take the one courageous step of becoming yourself. Only in this way will you gain true security and the true evaluation of your friends. For he who is spiritually developed and capable of love will most certainly not love you less, quite on the contrary. And he who is immature and therefore incapable of love in the first place will not be retracting his love for you since he never really gave it nor did you ever really own it. For such a person finds himself in exactly the same spot as you are in now. He is craving for your affection, respect, and love to assure his own lack of self respect which is lacking because he too does not have the courage to be himself. This kind of love was an illusion in the first place. So the only way to build a secure ground on which to stand in life is to take off the pretense you have laboriously planted all your life. This seems a hard step at first, my friends. Again, I want to stress that you are not expected to tell your secrets to everyone you meet. Choose the right person to whom you can open up; choose the person who can help you. Then choose the people with whom you are really close and those who know you as you really are. Otherwise, you can never really be yourself. Aside from that, it is not a question of what you say to all the other people you meet in life; it is more a question of what you feel; it is a question concerning your inner attitude. In order to adjust your emotions from the wrong kind of shame to the right kind, all you have to do is delve into your own emotions and, as I so often say, translate them into clear-cut concise thoughts, along with what your emotions actually say. Then you can sort of readjust them when you see the unreasonableness of the immature side in your soul. Only when you do that, will you be able to take the next step. Only then will you have security and self-respect. For as long as you hide behind a wall of falsity, you must despise yourself much more than a brother or sister of yours who have many more weaknesses but who have the courage to live according to what they really are and to do so without pretense.

Thus, it is not a question of how good you are or of how many weaknesses you still have that determines your self-respect. Self respect and as a result of it also the respect of others can only be determined by how true you are to yourself, or how much you deceive, how much you escape yourself, or how much you hide behind a wall of pretense. I hope I do not have to stress that this wall of pretense is not, something easily recognizable from outside. It is something subtle within that you, and only you yourself, can find out in the manner prescribed and by testing and probing your emotions and their meanings.

True repentance in the positive sense therefore means simply to take stock of the self and to accept the weaknesses in their present state, deeply desiring to change them, but realistically recognizing that the change can only come by recognizing forever and ever anew the deeply ingrained fault and comparing the faulty reaction to the ideal state. Thus humility is learned while the fault lingers on by necessity, for it cannot be overcome so quickly.

The moment you do not wish to appear better or more than you are, even in your own eyes, you will have taken yourself down from the high place in which you have put yourself. Then, and only then can you start rebuilding after you have torn down the false house. If you have the courage to stumble one hundred or a thousand times over the same faults and have forever again lifted yourself up to try again, recognizing your weakness, then you pay God the debt you owe Him; then you are worthy of His grace; then you are truly on the Path. Then you rid yourself of pride and falsity long before you are perfect in the many details of your character and thus approach perfection much faster than you think, in spite of the lingering on of some of your stubborn shortcomings. When you will have that courage and can conduct your emotions in that way, you must win. But if every time after you stumble again over a recognized fault, you become so despondent and depressed that you despair with yourself, in a way that you wish to give up and you consider this to be senseless, you have the wrong kind of shame, the destructive and weakening kind that is not pleasing to God and that which will never get you anywhere. For as long as you despair so easily, there is too much pride in you. The healing, curative action of being able to observe your own weaknesses in the true light of what they are and not by exaggerating them or diminishing them will never be able to affect your soul.

So my friends, do not despair if you have no success for quite a while in overcoming your weaknesses. You may perhaps understand better now that just in the fact that you are unsuccessful for a time lies a great curative agent for something that is even more important than the actual weakness you are treating, namely, the learning of the right kind of shame and the acceptance of yourself, thus learning humility, overcoming pride, and living in your own reality. If you were very successful in overcoming your individual faults, it might make you even prouder, and this is more harmful than many other faults.

Apart from that, the faults against which you are battling are often ingrained in you for many, many incarnations, so you cannot expect to get rid of them within a few years. However, if you are capable of facing these weaknesses; if you meet them with open eyes and a healthy attitude, and learn even while you are still stumbling over them; if you have the humility to face yourself knowing where you really belong not too low; nor too high then even though you are still imperfect in one or the other respect, you contribute the ground stones to this very healthy and normal inner makeup you need.

Think about this, my friends. Meditate on these words. Again I stress the fact that it is not sufficient to just hear or read them once, for that will not be spiritual food. Spiritual food is when you try to compare where your feelings still deviate from the ideal state which I have explained here and where you can find an echo in you to go on from there in your daily strivings and in your daily spiritual work. When you do that, you will give yourself the food your spirit needs.

Therefore, perhaps you will begin to understand or sense why it is so necessary on the Path, at one time or another, to be able to talk openly about yourself to a qualified person and then to the people with whom you are really close. For as long as you keep things hidden within you, it puts everything out of proportion.

Then you may exaggerate one thing and underestimate another. And an

other person who is detached from your problem and your inner struggles may see things in the right light. That is not the only reason. As I have often said in private lectures, there is a spiritual law; and the same spiritual law holds true when humanity invented psychoanalysis, or for that matter confession. Behind this is the same idea. It is the law of brotherhood. The moment you open up to another person, this indicates an act of humility, at least towards that one person. You do not want to appear more perfect that you are at that moment with that person. This is one of the most harmful things in the laws of the soul, my friends, for it is harmful for you.' Thus, to that one person you show yourself as you are, or to some degree perhaps, to begin with. Even if t hat person does not give you one piece of advice, you instantly feel relief, the relief your spirit has cried for. Your spirit suffers when you act against its laws. And you feel better all of a sudden when you are able to see things differently. It is the law of brotherhood; something in you says, "At that moment I do not want to appear better than I am; I want to show myself as I am; I do not strive for respect and love that I think is not really due me because of these things of which I am ashamed". Because you are wrong in that too, for love and respect is due every living creature, but you think it is not due you because of something or other you keep in hiding. In this distorted view you suffer loneliness and you go on pretending in some subtle way. So you can see that the wrong kind of shame also violates the Law of Brotherhood, in addition to the aforementioned violations. Thus you may see once again how every emotion and every inner feeling can be right when it comes from God. However, the same can be distorted by the luciferic powers. Thus, it is also with shame.

So I say to you, my friends, he who really and truly desires to develop along this Path will find guidance at a certain point and in such a way that you are sort of almost pushed into a corner wherein you will open up for your own salvation. Of course, you always have your free will and this, we spirits will respect at all times and never violate it, even if we do know what may seem so difficult f or you to express. But you have to do the talking. We will not do it for you. You are always free, therefore, to refuse, to back up, and to retire deeper into this corner and to resent that you are being pushed in this way. However you can also refrain from backing up and being pushed and having to step out of your hiding place, if you only wish to open your eyes that herein lies your own salvation. That is up to you.

Such guidance, appearing first like a test in the form of unpleasantness that you cannot fully understand, is to help you to do what is necessary. You yourself do not understand the necessity and the healing of such opening up of your personality. Therefore, you would not do it unless such guidance comes to you. And because you do not understand it yet, you think of these happenings as an unpleasant hardship. Once you have understood, you will cease to see it in that way. In that respect you are all like children; you do not know what is good for you. And God's helpers who are all around you constantly - particularly with the person who is willing to take this Path of Purification - manage to guide and inspire people around you in such a way as to create a certain situation in order to afford you this opportunity. But you have to decide with your free will whether or not you want to do it. You can then open your eyes to the significance of the situation viewed in that light, or you can shirk from the issue and refuse to recognize the call, for it is a call! Decide, my friends, do you want to take your courage into your hands or do you want to hide in cowardice?

Do you think, after hearing this, you can advance on this path by not having the courage to do that? But I can promise one thing: After it is done, there will already be a foretaste of that spiritual new birth that must come sooner or later when a certain phase is reached on this path. The greater the effort and the apparent difficulty in doing it, the more relief, the more victory, the more happiness, the more self respect, and the more inner joy and peace will you feel after it is over and after you have fully understood how to go on from there. This, my friends, I beg you to remember very well. Do not choose to forget these words merely because you want to evade the issue, thus thinking in your innermost self that by evasion the situation does not exist. Read them every day, whenever you are faced with such a decision.

We deal not only with what you consciously know and hide. That is comparatively easy. Once this consciously hidden thing comes out, you have, with our help, to try to find what unconscious currents lie behind these conscious actions you may be ashamed of. That is then the work to be done. Of course, you cannot do so alone; you cannot do so unless you have displayed the courage to bring into the open what you do know. With many people there are unconscious factors that are hidden in the same manner as the conscious ones. And that is a little more complicated to find. It goes without saying that the first preliminary is to be free and open enough to be able to talk about everything pertaining to your person. As long as that is not done, you can never reach the hidden motives, currents, and emotions. If you fulfill the necessary requirements, help will be given to you that you can be sure of. This help you need is the grace of God. Without it you cannot reach your unconscious and stubbornly hidden shames that block the way at times. But if you wait for this grace of God in defiance and anger, saying to yourself, "Why can't I have it? why someone else and not me? I have suffered so much. I am due for it now; I have tried so hard", then you push away the time of grace, because your attitude is not a humble one. You take it upon yourself to judge, and you cannot judge. You have no way of judging how much you have suffered and when the grace is due and how hard you have tried, especially in comparison with others. You lack this opportunity for comparison; you even lack complete self-recognition, for as long as you cannot delve into your subconscious hides, you do not know yourself. By not even knowing yourself, how can you dare to judge and compare? But when you nurse a spirit of humility, of true humility and patience, then the grace, my dear ones, will be much nearer. So if you have difficulties, try to concentrate on this. If you cannot advance, although you are working and doing your best (and many do not advance because they are not working the way they could; so it is not the lack of grace) and if there exist these blocks you cannot seem to penetrate, ask yourself, "How humble is my attitude? Nurse this, instead of turning away from God the moment things become difficult for you. This also is my advice for some of my dear, beloved friends.

I should like to discuss one more subject before we turn to your questions. I have already mentioned that you are ashamed of your faults. This is true in many instances. Some faults you are really ashamed of some faults you really do not want to have. However, there is also another category of faults in you, my friends, and the time has come when it is important to mention this so that you may look upon this from this point of view which will help you a great deal. It will explain to you why you cannot get ahead in some particular way of your development. In each one of you, there is a certain number of faults with which you are in love. You do not admit it, but you are actually quite proud of them. Of course, as long as this is the case, you cannot possibly overcome it. The only way in which to go about it is by finding out where this truth applies in you. Once you are aware of the fact that you actually like some of your faults emotionally, you can pray that God may help you to recognize why this is so, what lies behind it and that you may be able to see it in the true and objective light, so as to develop the right kind of shame in this respect.

Check all your faults and then check your emotional reaction to them in all honesty. You will see, by going through your list, that there are some faults you really do not like and that there are others you may cherish in some way. Then, when you feel that, ask yourself "How would I react if another person were to display the same fault either in the same way or perhaps in a slightly different way?" Because you are actually often quite irritated when another human being displays the same fault you are somewhat proud of in yourself is the reason for this. Once you approach it from this point of view, you will lose that certain feeling of pride you take in some of your faults. As long as this feeling persists, you cannot possibly get over the fault.

In the following lectures, I will be very happy to let you bring up any fault you choose at random and to present it to me for analysis. I will show you how every fault is connected with Pride, Self will, and Fear. I will show you further how to analyze this fault, how it leads to other faults, what is connected with it so as to give you more and better help for self-understanding. I will show you how to meditate on it, how to proceed particularly with the spiritual work on your Path. I will then also show you how every single fault or weakness or imperfection or shortcoming is a direct hindrance to Love and therefore to God. I will further show you in some instances what the underlying good quality is behind each fault, for there is no fault that is not a distortion. Something that was once good and pure. Try this as an exercise yourself; apply this, of course, to your own faults, for your spiritual work is useless if it is abstract and impersonal. And where you are unable to do so, bring these faults here as general questions, so to say. Of course, I will treat it here as though it were entirely a general question. Now are there any questions in connection with the subject I just talked about before we turn to your other questions?

You touched in this lecture on the fact that this opening up has to be done to a qualified person. Now could you elaborate on the problem of a person who has the desire to open up and to be humble but does so indiscriminately and therefore there is no good coming from it only harm and repercussions?

Yes, you see that this is, of course, the opposite extreme, and you know that all extremes are bad and wrong. In such a person this is a deep need for which the spirit cries. Consciously what it really needs is not exactly recognized and therefore the wrong means are sought. However, the case you mentioned is not as much of an extreme as you think. It is often possible for a human being to open up about many things, little things, and even actual shortcomings so as to ward off or keep the real thing hidden. That is true also, in the case of which you are thinking.

Yes. I was going to ask that. But what if that same person actually masks the true faults and invents artificial guilts he wishes to divulge?

"That is right. You see, it will not do any good to tell such a person to choose the right people to whom he should open up, because he will never know who the right people are. The intuition is lacking, as well as the sound intellectual judgment. Both cannot really function well as long as one rationalizes and covers up the reasons. So a person like this has to be brought to understand that he must first recognize this fact. That, of course, can only be done very slowly. And it cannot be done at all, of course, if the desire is not there. But the desire can grow. In this case, the desire will eventually come."

The Guide
By Eva Pierrakos
1958

Copyright 1958, the Center for the Living Force, Inc.

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