The Roscoe Lecture: Inspiration for the Pathwork Center

This lecture was given in July 1972 at a weekend workshop in Roscoe, NY.  We were then in very preliminary negotiations about buying the Phoenicia property that was to become our Center.  It was not at all certain that we could afford it or that we would be able to overcome the initial problems.  But, using all the principles of the Guide’s teachings and working through our deepest personal, irrational aspects, we did overcome in a most wonderful way problems that at first seemed insoluble.  Since then, much of what the Guide had predicted has come to pass.

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Blessings and greetings for every one of you here.  I should like to talk tonight about the significance of what you are doing from a personal as well as from a collective point of view.  Let us look for a moment at how aware humanity is, as a whole, of negative feelings, illusions, misconceptions, of negative intentionality and attitudes.  Every bit of these aspects, as they evolve in the course of your work on this path, is for the most part unconscious at first.  In your distorted view you believe that what is unconscious does not affect you, while only what is conscious is an obstruction in your life or may have negative consequences.  The exact opposite is true.  The more you learn to see with the eyes of reality, the more inevitably will you observe that this is the truth.

Human evolution travels a curve of development from acting out negativity to the next step, which is holding it back.  This leads to repression.  The step after repressing is making it conscious but not acting it out.  Only after reaching this level of consciousness is it possible to change the energies, feelings, and creative power involved in the negative attitudes into positive attitudes.

On the scale that I have broadly outlined here you can see where the rest of humanity is compared with people like you, who are the minority.  Having come, at least to a degree, into the possession of knowledge about negative feelings, negative intentions, about holding back, not wanting to give but wanting to get everything you can—and consequently into the awareness of your distrust and greed—is a tremendous step for you.  But it is only one step; subsequent steps must follow.  I have of course already outlined these steps in various ways in the lectures I have given throughout the years.

Let us put it again in a new and different way, for the purpose of where you are now.  Most of you are just beginning to allow yourselves to become aware of the most negative feelings of hate, greed, destructiveness, and true negative intentionality.  The more you have the courage and honesty, which I invited you to acquire ever since I manifested through this instrument, the freer you become.  But this liberation requires that the following steps be undertaken, sometimes sequentially, sometimes alternately, and sometimes overlapping one another.  As these negativities come to the surface, often you still blind yourself to true reality as opposed to the distorted reality you see within the framework of the existing negativities.  You may know at this point that they are negative, but you still have to battle with yourself in order to fully perceive to what extent and why this occurs.  You have to overcome a great deal of resistance to let yourself comprehend to what degree you harm yourself and others and to what degree this attitude is irrational and not a product of reality.  For you still tend to explain it away by whatever means you can find at your disposal.  If you cannot blame it on the present circumstances, you may use past circumstances.  But whatever means of rationalization you use, it is a tremendous battle for you to fully assume responsibility and to let yourself know the consequences of your negativity, of the hurt you inflict on yourself and others.  You do this even with your thoughts and intentions, even when they are not carried through into action.

I spoke about this at greater length in past lectures.  Here I only want to say that the next step in the work, as negative intentionality and feelings of hate and rage and attitudes of greed and distrust come out, is that you try with the more advanced and developed part of your intelligence to understand why this is not good.  And as you seek truth in good faith, you will understand and perceive the false reality you have created to explain away your negative feelings and intentions, as opposed to reality as it could be, if you chose to avail yourself of the many alternatives to this pattern.

As you gain the perception of these two realities, or these two ways of seeing life, you will acquire the ability to make the transition to the next step—deciding whether or not you want to open up to life and give of yourself.  When you gain an understanding of the false reality you have created, as opposed to reality as it truly is, you will then also understand—and perhaps many of you can do this now—that no matter what external circumstance seems to be the cause of your unhappiness and dissatisfaction, it is really your own negative feelings and intentions that put you in this state.  As you observe the antics that come out of you in the process of this pathwork, you may notice that you wish to hate, wish to give nothing, wish to distrust, wish to withhold of yourself and then blame the world for your misery.  This is where most of you are now, more or less.

It is, perhaps, the next step in the transition that you allow yourself to see how you make the world responsible for your misery instead of connecting your misery with this or that particular negative attitude in yourself.  You are now at the point where you can admit your intent to give nothing of yourself and yet expect everything to be given you.  But you still fail to make the connection between the misery you experience, the dissatisfactions and the frustrations you experience, the feeling that life goes by without really fulfilling you, and the negative attitudes which you already know exist in you.  This is the step that must be undertaken.  Sometimes, if this step is undertaken too early, you miss out on the full awareness, the full extent, the full intensity of your most negative self, the most destructive parts of you; so the timing for this next step has to vary.  You have to feel sensitively into yourself.  On the other hand, you should also beware of the possibility that you may misuse this truth, staying in your negativities under another acceptable pretext—that the timing has to be watched and nothing must be precipitated.  These are subtleties for which there are no rules.  You have to put into use and pay attention to very finely calibrated listening mechanisms in order to discern your hidden motivations for whatever you do.  Your goodwill and your sincerity are of course the determining factors.  If you use these attributes, you will see yourself as you are and not as you want to appear.

The next step—and again this may overlap, and you may be already taking these various steps alternately right now—is your true intent to give in trust and to know that giving is receiving.  Only as you receive can you give, and only as you give can you receive.  How can you ever get out of the vicious circle and the bind that you are caught in between your unfulfilled needs and your spiteful withholding?  By more blame?  By more demands?  Certainly not!  Only when you decide that giving to the universe is worth risking will you then find that you and the universe are one.  As you give to it, you give to yourself.  If you withhold yourself, it is impossible to receive from life.  For life can only reveal to you to the extent you give to it.

These are the steps that must be followed through.  It is very easy to get lost in good intentions to give, to love, to be generous and open.  When along with this intent you overlook the negative side where the storm of destructiveness and meanness still rages, you split your consciousness off from this part.  It is also just as easy to get lost when you have opened this immensely energetic powerhouse of negativity within you and stay in it, indulging in it, because you have now found a new energy you had lost when you denied the existence of evil.  When you first rediscover this evil, you also rediscover energy which you never knew you possessed.  You have to allow yourself to express this energy in a harmless way.  As you do, you also have to be careful not to get lost on that step and overindulge in it, forgetting the subsequent steps, which are:  seeing the unreality that is always connected with the evil and then summoning your positive intent.  Positive intent requires faith in the universe and in your innermost being, knowing that your true desire is to accept this benign force and set it in motion.

You distrust yourself as you are now because you never make it possible for the divine consciousness to manifest through you.  You all have to learn that the divine power can manifest through you and must manifest through you if you wish to be in harmony with the universe.  But the divine power and harmony cannot manifest through you, cannot give to you unless you open yourself so it can come through.  This is, broadly speaking, the path viewed in yet another sequential system.  What I have said so far applies to you as individuals.

Now, for you collectively, I would like to say this.  A group such as this is a very important entity with much more significance to the whole evolution of this age in time and space than any one of you is capable of realizing.  As I have said again and again, it is a nucleus.  But these are merely words.  Creation unfolds from the tiniest, most minuscule nucleus or center and then spreads and creates a larger center, growing larger and larger, like one cell growing out of the next.  Growth always proceeds from an inner center to an outer center.   It is never added on from the outside as the distorted, immature personality expects.  Growth can only unfold from within, for within you exists everything the universe contains.  Every possibility exists already within you.  If you can hold this thought you can begin to believe in the possibility of your own change.  Otherwise, you can never believe in your power to change.  The smallest inner center, which is now only an obscurity, will become something that you experience as reality.  Wisdom will guide you, manifesting into your conscious mind.  Energy, feelings of love, light and hope will be your reality.  This reality is contained in your innermost center.

Now, as a sufficient number of individuals come together in common purpose to make this inner center of divine reality a visible manifestation in their lives, an outer center is being created.  Although in terms of numbers this group may be exceedingly small in comparison to the number of individuals inhabiting this earth, it is certainly not insignificant in terms of consciousness and energy.  A center of consciousness and energy is thus being created by a common purpose of purification, sincerity, honesty, and intent to bring out the divine center from within more and more individuals.

I would like to add here that for a number of souls life on earth is a task that they have deliberately undertaken.  This task always comprises, basically, personal purification.  Unless the personal purification proceeds, no valuable task in the scheme of things can ever be completed.  This does not mean of course that you must be perfect.  It means that you proceed with devotion and full commitment into your inner land until you find the nucleus.  And as more and more people do so they create a larger nucleus that is an intrinsic power from the point of view of spiritual energy.

I very rarely make predictions, but if I do, they have a purpose.  When I have done this in the past they have always come true.  I say to you, my friends, who are involved in this work, that what is at stake is very important in the spiritual planes.  If you build and work in a community that lives in this honesty, in this truthfulness, in this intimacy of self-revealing as you really are, not as you want to appear, it must create greater spiritual power centers.  Such a community is such a rarity in this world that it will draw power in the spiritual sense, not in the worldly sense.  This power will have its effect, and one day the difficulties and frictions that are inevitable in such a venture at the beginning will have taught you the necessary lessons.  By handling obstructions in a truly honest, open, self-revealing way—according to the principles of this path, as you have learned and tried to put into practice—you will set an example for world government.  It will come, perhaps in years, but most of you will live to see it right here on this earth.  Little by little, politicians and people of influence will be drawn into this circle—perhaps first seeking to work on themselves—and thus bring into the world a new approach.  It is a task that will set examples.  You will have to go about it slowly, overcoming the negativities within the individual selves, and thus in the small nucleus.  By recognizing obstructions for what they are even without necessarily being able to overcome them, you produce a cleanliness that can never exist in a group of people that hide their evil and pretend it does not exist.  That will set an example.  For that reason the growth must be slow and sometimes arduous.  It is up to you to overcome the obstacles.  It is also up to you to realize that each obstacle that you encounter represents an aspect within yourself that becomes your lesson.  And everyone of you can recognize it as a reflection of something within yourself.

I ask you, my friends, to recognize all the negativities, but do not make this an occasion to overlook your own potentiality that is always waiting for truth, beauty, love, generosity, giving, trust and the spirit of divine creation which is within all of you.  Seek it and you will find it, every one of you.  Even if you think that you are empty now—and many of you here believe that you are empty—find your fullness as a result of your goodwill, as a result of an attempt to be open.  As you do this, you may then still find another level where you say, “No, I want to hold on, I do not want to give anything.”  But as you let these two levels meet and confront one another, a still deeper level will manifest.  A very beautiful, full giving will come, in which there is not even the slightest trace of anxiety or doubt.  You must wait and want this level to manifest.  As you express your hate, also express your love, for that exists too.  As you express your withholding, also express your giving, for that exists too. As you express your lie you are already truthful in doing so.  Even as you express your hate, you already love to some extent, especially when you do not explain it away and justify it, but instead name it for what it is.  Nevertheless, you can also directly express love and giving, for that waits in you to be liberated.  This is my message for you.

I will now suggest a meditation in which you can all join, which you can use for yourselves.

Again, I say, be still, and know that deep within you is the nucleus of God that will speak to you.  You will help it manifest if you say words such as:  “Let go, let go of the mind and its preconceived ideas and its ingrained negativity.  Let go of the habit and let God.  Let in new attitudes, new feelings.”  These may not be new, per se, but new for your conscious mind.  You will hear the voice within that says, “Be still and know I am God,” in every one of you.  Say, “I have the power in me to let God manifest.  I surrender to this will of truth and beauty.  I want the love and the truth of God to instruct me.  I want to give the best of my conscious life to let the truth and love and beauty of my innermost being unfold.  I will not shy away from destroying my self-image, my vanity, my pride.  For the truth and beauty and love of the supreme spirit within me are more important than my little vanity and my little self-righteousness.  I dedicate my life to the Spirit of the Universe.”

Every answer you need exists if you listen to the universal indwelling spirit.  Every solution to every problem will unfold if you trust this indwelling spirit.  Seek it and you will know your truth.  Seek it honestly and the love of the universe will forevermore unfold.  And as you are together in this truth of your own path, a wonderful strength and beauty will unite you in the common venture and will wipe out the little uglinesses, the little withholdings and all those things that are shadows that hide the sun from you.  You are indeed blessed.  The love of God is given to all of you.  Let your heart feel it.  Be blessed.