Benefits of Pathwork

We all yearn for deeper, more loving relationships, and we all want more physical pleasure, vitality, and abundance. Ultimately, we want a sense of purpose for our lives that only comes with intimate contact with God. The Pathwork is a collection of teachings that helps us see and understand ourselves, enabling us to gradually remove the obstacles that keep us separate from others, separate from the source of our creativity and life energy, from our divine core.

The Pathwork® is a spiritual path of self-purification and self-transformation on all levels of consciousness. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing, accepting, learning to know and ultimately transforming our Lower Self or shadow side of our nature. Pathwork helps us understand that through honest self-examination, with carefully applied tools and practices, we can overcome and remove the inner obstacles that keep us from living fully from and in our Godself, our true nature.

The Pathwork is not dogmatic. It has no required belief system and does not ask that we abandon religious practices or beliefs that nurture and support us. It does ask us to be willing to examine our beliefs, and to accept the ultimate authority of the true Self. Pathwork also encourages us to develop a healthy, mature ego. For it is only when the ego is strengthened, and purified of its misconceptions about life and its own task, that it can look beyond itself and recognize that it is only a part-albeit a vital part-of our greater self. By using the ego to transcend itself, we are afforded a way to become fully and consciously who we are: our Real Self, our Godself.

Abundance

The Pathwork teaches that whenever we feel anything less than joyous, free, uninhibited, expansive, and fulfilled, we are operating in some sort of spiritual error. In other words, in this respect, we are violating a spiritual law. Often, we do not want to acknowledge the possibility of spiritual error or personal negativity that may be at work in our lives.

The Pathwork helps us understand that we cannot use our innate power to create things outside of ourselves unless we have first come to terms with what is inside of us. And our feelings and emotions are a reliable barometer, telling us what needs attention, where we are in illusion, where we are not in truth, etc. Our power to create the life we want will be expanded as we master our own inner world.

“To the degree you offer generously and trustingly the best you have to give to life, allowing God to take over, to that very same degree will you feel perfectly entitled to spread your arms wide to receive the best life has to offer.”

Pathwork Lecture 212

Health

Another of the goals of the Pathwork is to help people establish a healthy, strong mind and body. Students are guided by Pathwork Helpers in a process of discovery that leads to an ever-deepening understanding of the nature of our disharmonies. It is in transforming our deepest negativities or in releasing old attachments that we free up the Life Force, heal old wounds, and restore individual health leading to a fulfilling life.

In Pathwork Lecture 164, we are told, “The real self says to the outer personality that it is conducting something in a wrong manner. This message comes from health and wants to reestablish health, well-being and happiness. Truth in life equates with feeling good in the deepest possible way – without reservations, in joyful security and self-liking. When you act and move in life in a way that is conducive to such a state, the spirit being of your innermost core is completely content.”

Sue spent years pacifying her emotional needs with a sugar addiction that led to a steady decline in her health. Through the Pathwork process she came to see that her health issues and self-abuse were destructive responses to real internal needs. Becoming conscious of those needs and wounds through greater body awareness was the first step in her healing process. Sue has since learned to nurture herself through connection to spirit and to respect her body as divine. She now leads a very fulfilling, active, and healthy lifestyle.

Relationships

Pathwork teachings emphasize the importance of knowing ourselves through our relationships with others. It is through our relationships, including intimate love relationships, family relationships, and all others we interact with, that we see reflections of our inner self, and learn the laws of cause and effect.

Pathwork can help us deepen our intimate relationships, and it can help us understand what stands in the way of having the intimate relationship we want. The Pathwork teachings that most directly speak to relationship issues are compiled in the book Creating Union, by Eva Pierrakos and Judith Saly, and are available through this web site.

After 14 years, Ron & Lindy’s marriage was a tangle of deepening anger, betrayal and hurt. They began studying the Pathwork as Lindy packed to move to the other end of the country. Working independently, they began to see how their childhood wounds, false beliefs, and defenses were operating in the relationship. After nearly four years, Lindy moved back and their separation ended. The marriage has resumed as a dance of mutuality, full of richness and pleasure. They have now been married 22 years, and are teaching Pathwork to others.

Work Life

Our careers, be they in raising children or in the executive suite of major corporations, occupy a significant share of our time and our minds. There we find the out-picturing both of our creative powers and positive intentionality, and of our internal conflicts and unconscious negativity. Pathwork strengthens our understanding of how our intellectual, emotional, and spiritual make-up shows up in the world of work, and helps us gain access to our virtually unlimited creative capacities.

An example of Pathwork teaching that can have a strong positive impact on our search for fulfilling careers and fulfillment in the workplace can be found in Lecture 233, The Power of the Word. This lecture may be downloaded for free, and the original recording is available in the words of Eva Pierrakos.

“You must know and believe that you have the right and the ability to mold and create substance with your mind. You may never have even thought of this possibility, so now when you examine your attitude, you may find that you strongly doubt that you can do it. Accept this possibility as a hypothesis to begin with, until you know that it is indeed true.”

Pathwork Lecture 194

Spiritual Life

We all know intuitively that there is more to life than whatever limited reality we now experience. We long to awaken to the depths of who we are and what life could be. Whatever temporary yearnings may preoccupy us—for less pain and more joy, for a fulfilling relationship or for meaningful work—there is something that calls to us from deep within. We want to know the truth about life and we want to feel love in our hearts.

The Pathwork describes in practical detail the steps we need to take to unify the parts of ourselves, some of which we have denied, and to renew our connection with the inner spark of the Higher Self. The special contribution of the Pathwork is an emphasis on the importance of seeing and transforming our negative qualities, the shadow side or Lower Self. The Pathwork offers a simple, clear methodology for this transformation. Only through the courageous confrontation of our own distortions can we find freedom and truth; the release of lower self energies creates a larger capacity for love, courage, and wisdom.

An in-depth exploration of the Pathwork journey toward the spiritual home within each of us is found in Susan Thesenga’s Undefended Self, available on this site or in bookstores.