E2016

Quotes pathwork lectures E2016

Week 1: Lecture 150: The entire universe is constituted in such a way that each created individual is capable of being in a constant state of bliss. Each created individual is made in such a way that this is not only a theoretical possibility, but it is man’s natural state of being. It is the natural law. When an individual is not in a state of bliss, it is an unnatural, disturbed condition. It is exceedingly important for you, my friends, to really grasp and appreciate this fact.

Week 2: Lecture 113: Wherever you find your stringent need to be in control — of others, of a situation, of a relationship — you have a direct clue to your nonidentification with yourself. If you look at this trend, if you use these little clues and highlights as points from which to pursue and go on, while understanding the harm of this inner stunting, you will certainly come to the nucleus of your deliberate self-denial causing so much unnecessary hardship.

Week 3: Lecture 143: The message coming from the real self says, “Your birthright is perfect happiness, freedom, and mastery over life.”

Week 4: Lecture 109: In order to make man capable of facing his lower self in its entirety, he has first to learn to accept and to forgive himself. This means to recognize and then to stop the tendency to moralize with oneself, to understand the harm of perfectionism.

Week 5: Lecture 167: If you wonder about your capacity to experience deep warm feelings of love, find how you defend yourself against any negative feeling and experience. There you will have the key.

Week 6: Lecture 97: Since many emotions on the surface of your unconscious mind are imperfect, you try forcefully to impose ungenuine emotions over them. And when your emotional life cannot function naturally and organically, unhampered by superimposed commands, how can you be your real self?

Week 7: Lecture 212: If you lack humility, you cannot allow your greatness to come forth. But in humbleness, there will be no need to hold back your greatness. There will be no pushing and no proving. It will be a quiet inner knowing. It is then entirely unimportant and unnecessary that others recognize you.

Week 8: Lecture 184: Not knowing that which is undesirable in its present manifestation shuts you off from what is already clear, liberated, purified, good. It creates the well known situation of most individuals in which they do not love and respect themselves because they have no real perception of their divine heritage, of their actual, already manifest goodness. All this seems unreal, even fake, because they refuse to tackle the destructive elements in themselves. But what is even more important and fundamental to this very problem is the fact that by shutting off this undesirable part, this same part cannot change but remains stagnant and paralyzed.

Week 9: Lecture 141: To the extent that deliberate destructiveness is unconscious and therefore cannot be given up, happiness cannot be embraced. When you comprehend the deliberate destructiveness and in what form it exists (not necessarily in action, but perhaps predominantly in hidden emotions, which can only lead to indirect corresponding actions as well as to vague thoughts and half-conscious wishes), when this is concisely crystallized in your consciousness, then you will immediately understand what blocks you.

Week 10: Lecture 17: Mankind has asked time and again why there are so many people, inferior to others, who are much happier than they. This appears to be an injustice. Why is this so? — because less can be expected of a child in a lower class then of a child in a higher class. And if you do not deliver according to your development, you must be dissatisfied with your outer life as well as with your inner life.

Week 11: Lecture 222: Your consciousness, your personality as it is in the world must make choices, including which of the wills to follow. You can choose to allow the will of that lower self to control the whole person. Or you can choose to take over and have your conscious mind, your conscious will, ally and align itself with the higher self and not suppress and repress, not push the lower self with its will, with its voice, out of your awareness.

Week 12: Lecture 82: In His last hour, Jesus had forgotten all He had known, all the revelations, all the insights He had gained. To some degree, has it not happened to each one of you that in hours of depression and anxiety your intellectual memory retains what you have learned and what you know, but you are not in command of this knowledge? Your soul is in a dark night of unbelief and doubt. Deceiving yourself about this state of mind and not acknowledging how you really feel is not the right medicine. To feel guilty and proud with the phrase “I should not feel and think that way” only leads to self-deception, and this delays your coming out of your darkness.

Week 13 : Lecture 19: Testing, trials, remaining faithful to God in times of adversity, the crucification of the ego, of the personal ego with all its vanity and self-will — this was symbolized by the body of Jesus, and the resurrection of His spirit signifies the life eternal of bliss and happiness of the spiritual being of each individual after the ego has been crucified. This cannot happen otherwise than through pain.

Week 14 : Lecture 66: Find the part in your emotions wherein you ascribe actual or imagined weakness to love and humility that is tendered in the healthy and real sense. Find in you the part which believes that strength is aloofness or a kind of coldness. When you find that, you will find your self-betrayal. Finding the wrong concepts and then, little by little, adopting the right concepts, you will no longer fear that love is humiliating, that humility, generosity, affection, and a demonstration of your true self are signs of weakness.

Week 15 : Lecture 201: The facing of the guilt of the pain you inflict is really not very different from the pain you have received. In both instances you can exaggerate it and make yourself incapacitated for life. Or you can decide not to feel it at all. Or you can allow the feeling, let the feeling be, and say: “Yes, they have made mistakes. I have made mistakes. They were blind and groping, and so was I. They were in darkness, I was in darkness. This is regrettable, but this is what we are all here for. And I now lift my head in the dignity of who I am. I know the greater power within me will help me to feel pain I have given and pain I have received.”

Week 16 : Lecture 120: It is, in actuality, that the human body, soul, and spirit are identical with the body, soul, and spirit of humanity as a whole. Contemplation of this factor will not only help you to better understand the world you live in but will deepen your own self-understanding. The identical processes are involved in all organisms. One apparently single cell also consists of many aspects. It, too, becomes sick if it is split. The many aspects in one cell are a replica of the bigger organism it forms a part of, as the individual forms a part of the larger body, mankind.

Week 17 : Lecture 211: The perception of the human mind is specifically faulty in that you take what you see as the whole. Yet you only see small segments. This then alters the nature of the perceived aspects of reality. It sheds a totally different picture on life, on creation, and on the processes of life and creation. Imagine as an analogy that here is a vast picture, but you only glimpse a small aspect of it through a narrow opening because the rest of the picture is covered. What you see then is only a part of reality, but if you believe it is the whole, your entire perception and understanding are faulty. It is the same way with the human mind and the human perception in regard to the real world.

Week 18: Lecture 81: Seek, and you will find an area of your being that clings to life only in order to avoid death. This motivation contains negation, and thus the life force is negated too. But if you face and come to terms with death, your embracing of life will be done in positive spirit, and that alone will solve the problem of duality, since duality arises out of negation.

Week 19: Lecture 71: Find out how your fear of loving makes you withdraw and how guilty you feel about it deep down within your innermost self. Find also how you need to force others to love you in order to atone for this guilt as though it were a confirmation that the hidden voice of your guilt is wrong. Find the existing emptiness within yourself due to your unwillingness to love, which you would balance by making others love you. For all these reasons, the forcing current works strongly, although in very devious and hidden ways. When in the course of your further work you have recognized all these emotions and reactions, you will gain a great insight.

Week 20: Lecture 99: From a spiritual point of view, from our vantage point, one single person gaining truth within, in the sense of this pathwork, has an infinitely greater influence on the entire cosmic development than millions of people in error!

Week 21: Lecture 88: There exists a mutuality. Accepting death and the unknown is connected with acceptance of independence and of self-responsibility. Both indicate spiritual and emotional adulthood, freedom, growth, creativity, strength, trust in the self, real security!

Week 22: Lecture 13: The first step to true positive thinking is to take the consequences of what he has done at a past time. Whether it concerns a previous incarnation or this very same life, the mature person and true follower of positive thinking will say: “I have gone against the law, and the effects have to be worked out. This means I have to, among other things, accept these conditions.”

Week 23: Lecture 253: The Christed person does not experience fluctuations. The outer experience in no way influences which level of reality he is connected with. It is indeed true that such a person reacts to pain in no way differently than he reacts to pleasure. In that way they become indeed one and the same. To put it differently, duality is being transcended.

Week 24: Lecture 180: The answers to the next questions will determine whether the relationship falters, dissolves, stagnates – or blossoms. Are they aware of the direct relationship of enduring pleasure and inner growth? Do they use the inevitable difficulties in the relationship as yardsticks for their own inner difficulties? Do they communicate in the deepest, most truthful, self-revealing way, sharing their inner problems, helping each other rather than placing mutual guilt on each other and whitewashing themselves?

Week 25: Lecture 143: The only way you can truly enter into the unitive state of life, in which you can truly be master, is by no longer needing to triumph, to win, to be separate, to be special, to be right, to have it your way, by finding and discovering the need in all situations, whatever they are, whether you deem them good or bad, right or wrong.

Week 26: Lecture 142: Wherever positive fields are at work, (consciously or unconsciously) trust must exist. The more of positive and the less of negative fields that exist in a human psyche, the greater must be the trust in the powers, in the energy fields which create your life, apparently independently of your volitional self. The more such trust exists, the less problematic will it be to give up the little, outer self and let it flow and integrate with the inner, superior one with all of its available forces and resources.

Week 27: Lecture 174: Self-esteem or self-liking or self-value is sorely lacking in every human being who experiences uncertainty, fear, insecurity, guilt, weakness, doubt, negativity, feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. To whatever degree any of these feelings or attitudes are present, to that degree self-esteem is inevitably lacking, only it is not directly recognized as such. And that is all the more damaging for the person, for he is then less capable of tackling the problem directly. Only considerable insight into the self, as a result of hard work, brings this direct awareness, “I do not like and respect myself.”

Week 28: Lecture 60: Sincerely investigate your everyday occurrences, irritations, and annoyances. Find out what in yourself responds or corresponds either to a similar characteristic (although perhaps on a quite different plane) or to the exactly opposite extreme of the person who has provoked you. If you truly find the corresponding note in yourself, you will automatically cease to feel victimized. Although a part of you enjoys just that, it is a doubtful joy. It weakens you and is bound to make you fearful. It enchains you utterly. By seeing the connection between your inner wrong currents and attitudes and the outer unwelcome occurrence, you will come face to face with your inadequacy, but instead of weakening you, this will make you strong and free.

Week 29: Lecture 122: If you can accept a no without becoming an angry or hurt child within yourself, then independence and self-respect consistently grow and give you sufficient security to truly let go to the extent commensurate with the occasion and to the extent healthy at any given phase of your life.

Week 30: Lecture 252: Often an important reason for secretiveness is the fear of self-exposure. The fear says “If I show myself how I really am, they will not love me.” In this reasoning certain blatant facts are being ignored. For instance, it is assumed that the love, respect, or approval of others is more important than one’s own. It is being ignored that the courage and honesty of transparency, no matter what shameful facets may have to be revealed, creates at first more self-esteem than the secretiveness ever could. And therefore eventually it must also create esteem and love from others.

Week 31: Lecture 154: The better you are attuned to your inner path, the clearer you will see how each phase of your life means something in terms of your evolution. Each phase concentrates on certain aspects of your being. And each difficulty and hardship requests something from you. It contains a distinct message — coming from your own real self. How soon are you going to understand this message and learn what you have to learn? How soon will you decide to go through it in pulsating openness of your psyche rather than attempting to go around?

Week 32: Lecture 66: It is necessary in the course of your work that you find in you that part wherein you betray not only the best, the highest, and the noblest in you, but also the one parent who was the weaker one to begin with and who might have loved and cherished you in a much more satisfying way. To find and to stop this inner betrayal is important not because of the parent in question, but mostly because you suffer from it much more than you realize. This betrayal weighs you down with guilt. It is the deepest of your guilts.

Week 33: Lecture 155: The truly healthy and fulfilled individual, who functions as he is meant to function according to his inborn capacities, can completely surrender to the life force as it manifests in him with its pleasure currents. He will spontaneously express this powerful force; he will not fear and reject it. This will enliven his entire system with beautiful strength, energy, and delight.

Week 34: Lecture 154: Home means your real, innermost true self. He who is his real self is at home. At home in the world, at home in life, safe and secure with a firmly established ground under his feet. At home means the inner place where all problems find their solution, where no fear and hate exist. When fear exists, hate must exist, and vice versa. They are really one and the same. At home is the inner place where eternal well-being and eternal life are reality, experienced as a fact.

Week 35: Lecture 83: If you have not found your real self, you cannot come home. You must be lost and remain lost until you do find the way into the center of your being. On the other hand, you can find your way home right here and right now while you are still in the body. When you muster the courage of becoming your real self, even though it would seem to be much less than the idealized self, you will find out that it is much more. And then you will have the peace of being at home within yourself. Then will you find security. Then will you function as a whole human being. Then will you have eliminated the iron whip of a task master whom it is impossible to obey.

Week 36: Lecture 15: If a group of human beings, even only a very small group, get together in the sincere and honest desire to serve God and His great plan, do you know what form we see in the spirit world by this wish which does not merely remain a wish but is also put into execution? We see a very beautiful temple being built in the world of spirit.

Week 37: Lecture 256: True selfhood creates a social being who is not at odds with his surroundings. On the contrary, this kind of person is intimately connected with others and always contributes to them. The truly autonomous person can be a strong leader, as well as a willing follower because his vision is clear and his selfhood centered in divine reality.

Week 38: Lecture 201: Your life reveals what your underlying beliefs and attitudes must be. It cannot be otherwise. The magnetic power of the force field is self-indoctrinating, self-perpetuating. It is like a deeply imprinted motor or mechanism set in motion with great energy. It thus requires a stronger energy to deactivate this motor force and to change a negative force field into a positive one.

Week 39: Lecture 99: The moment you understand your parents, the sense of rejection will disappear even if they were cruel to you. In understanding what made them cruel, you will see it as their problem and will, perhaps for the first time in truth and reality, know that this had nothing to do with your unworthiness. So far, you know this in your intellect, but emotionally you will feel unworthy so long as you feel your parents rejected you due to your unworthiness, and due to this sense of unworthiness, you are unable to establish constructive patterns that will give you reason to feel secure in yourself now.

Week 40: Lecture 175: Willing, determining, formulating, knowing of an existing possibility, perceiving — all of these inner activities are the tools of creation. Mankind can accurately be divided into those who know this and use these tools deliberately, creatively, constructively, and those who are unaware of these facts and are victims of their ignorance, constantly creating destructively and never knowing it.

Week 41: Lecture 185: All that separateness that appears so real in this reality of being, is as much an illusion as the separateness between you and yourself. It is an artifact that comes into being exclusively because of what is denied. By closing your eyes and your consciousness to the total person you happen to be at this stage, you create apparently two selves: the acceptable and the unacceptable. But in reality there are not two entities. They are both you, whether or not you choose to know this now.

Week 42: Lecture 133: The great spiritual laws always seem contradictory. Letting go of the self into the harmonious flow, unifies, while strenuously and fearfully holding the self together splits and disintegrates the psyche. The more the universal forces flow into the many directions and possibilities, the more do they in the end become one. This great possibility is frightening, for the soul constantly is used to holding itself together.

Week 43: Lecture 161: All self-destruction is a slow form of suicide. Death is unconsciously longed for to the precise degree that it is feared; the longing is there because the perpetual wakefulness of an isolated ego becomes unbearable. Thus man finds himself in ambivalence. On the one hand, he fears letting go of the ego in the healthy way, and, on the other, he strives for letting go of the ego in an unhealthy way.

Week 44: Lecture 189: If the personality blindly believes it is its own negativity, its destructive aspects, it becomes encased in a special kind of inner battle. On the one hand, there will be self-annihilation, self-punishment, violent self-hate as a reaction to perceiving the self as only that negative part; on the other hand, how can the personality truly want to give up these traits, to even fully face and investigate them when he believes that this is the only reality of the self? The person is thrown back and forth between, “I must remain as I am, unchanged and unimproved, for this is my only reality and I do not want to cease to exist,” and “I am so terrible, so bad, so despicable that I have no right to exist, and I must punish myself out of existence.”

Week 45: Lecture 27: To fulfill a task demands a great severity with the self by the self. It means that you have to count, not with recognition from any human side for a long time, but with people who take your help for granted, at best, and at worst they will be against you. You have to count that for a long time nobody but God and yourself will know what you are doing. If you are still willing to do it under these circumstances, you will be tested for it. And if we recognize that you are ready, we may try it, but it may only be a try. For many are called, but few are chosen.

Week 46: Lecture 257: When two entities — individual or collective ones — are involved in a negative interaction and even if this interaction has a most undesirable result at the moment, a deeper purpose is being fulfilled. The higher self of both entities is always at work. It is not that the higher self has created the negative interaction per se. It is that what already exists is being used for the purpose of dissolving it. This dissolution and transformation of negative material could not possibly take place unless there is an outright manifestation. Even if the involved entities are totally in the dark about the part they themselves play in this interaction and are still on the level of self-righteous one-sidedness, a higher purpose is served nevertheless.

Week 47: Lecture 33: As long as other people’s faults bring you disharmony of any sort, this means that deep down you resent them as they are; you want to change them into different beings and resent it even more that you cannot do so. This inner reaction means the breaking of a spiritual law. And this should be the best indication to you where you stand in accepting yourself as you are, in all humility. The more serene you remain in the face of other people’s faults, the more you have accepted yourself as you are and thus have a healthy basis in your soul, no matter how many imperfections there still are in you. But the more you fight inwardly against other people as they happen to be presently, the more you are not really accepting yourself.

Week 48: Lecture 242: In its divine expression the human soul deeply knows that no matter how distorted and negative another human being may be, he is nevertheless a divine manifestation and, as such, truly equal to him — on that deepest level.

Week 49: Lecture 217: In the state of cosmic consciousness, all is one, there is no separation. In that state of consciousness, all is known. The innermost self is known, the Godself is known. The Godself of the personal entity as well as that of other entities is known. The truth of being is known. In that state of consciousness, you live in a state of being. But on this level of development, the state of being surpasses self-awareness; it has reached universal awareness. To put this differently and possibly more accurately: the self is recognized as being in all that exists.

Week 50: Lecture 249: The earth consciousness is ready for a great new step in its growth. Just as with individual consciousness, so it is with a collective entity: if overall growth and potential for a deepening of understanding and an acceptance of truer divine values is hindered by parts that resist this movement, crisis and pain are inevitable.

Week 51: Lecture 216: You all float in a safe cloud of divine consciousness, and you are nurtured by divine love whether you know it, feel it, and experience it, or not. Your total consciousness knows it. Your fragmented consciousness does not. Try to connect with your inner being so that you will know this to be true.

Week 52: Lecture 219: Perhaps you can see your Christmas tree that you light, as a symbol expressing the many, many candles that have to be lit and be aflame within you in order to bring the total consciousness to its eternal glow on the outer level of your manifest existence. Each recognition, each insight, each honest admission, each shedding of a partial mask, each breaking through of a defense, each step of courage and honesty where you take responsibility for your negativity is a lighting of yet another candle. You bring light into your soul by bringing truth into your darkness.