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Images

247.

The Mass Images of Judiasm and Christianity

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 247  |  January 11, 1978

This lecture grew out of an answer to the following question.
Question: I am very puzzled by the tremendously strong reactions about the whole issue of Jesus Christ. I understand what you said about the fear of expansion that applies to all phases of expansion. But the reaction to your emphasis of the role of Jesus Christ in the pathwork is so strong that I have the feeling there is more to it than resistance to expansion. Could you comment on this?

111.

Soul Substance—Coping With Demands

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 111  |  February 01, 1963

When a new child enters this earth, its soul-stuff is very malleable, very soft. Within this soul-stuff lie all the potentials — the talents, qualities, tendencies, characteristics, and also the unresolved problems. It is according to these potentials — positive, as well as negative — that the entity grows.

99.

Falsified Impressions of Parents: Their Cause and Cure

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 99  |  March 02, 1962

Once again, let us talk about love. Let us remember that anyone without love is withering away. The love you receive is not the most important, you need the love force in your heart; it is your spiritual life-blood. This is the driving force — in a good and healthy sense — that gives meaning to life. Without the love-capacity your life will be empty, meaningless, shallow.

93.

The Link Between the Main Image, Repressed Needs, and Defenses

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 93  |  November 24, 1961

The child in you resists growth, desires to remain immature, and is burdened with unworkable wrong conclusions and destructive defense mechanisms. Without the pseudo-solutions and defenses, a part of you believes itself lost and endangered. To let go of that which seems to you the very protection you seek causes the psyche to resist. Yet such states of struggle are not due entirely to the resistance to growth and change and to the fear of letting go of familiar, although defective, behavior patterns.

87.

The Next Phase on the Path: Questions and Answers

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 87  |  June 09, 1961

Some of you have wondered why at the beginning my talks were of a more spiritual nature, while lately the emphasis has been more psychological. Although you all realize by now that true spiritual development cannot occur without clearing up distorted emotions, your knowledge is still largely theoretical and not yet conducive to a true understanding.

86.

The Instincts of Self-Preservation and Procreation in Conflict

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 86  |  May 26, 1961

Growth, development, maturity and the healing of distorted soul forces lie in eliminating the pseudo-solution and replacing it with truth, which is always flexible and knows no rules. It alone can provide true security, although the personality going through the process feels acute insecurity and anxiety when called upon to give up the pseudo-solutions.

84.

Love, Power, Serenity as Divine Attribute and as Distortions

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 84  |  April 28, 1961

The attitudes of submissiveness, aggressiveness, and withdrawal are the distortions of love, power, and serenity. I would now like to speak in detail about how they work in the psyche, how they form a supposed solution, and how the dominant attitude creates dogmatic, rigid standards that are then incorporated in the idealized self-image.

83.

The Idealized Self-Image

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 83  |  April 14, 1961

I have occasionally used the term mask self in the past. The mask self and the idealized self-image are really one and the same. The idealized self masks the real self.

79.

Questions and Answers

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 79  |  February 03, 1961

QUESTION: What is the meaning of the Way of the Cross, its principles and its course of actions? How is it comparable to the Eastern concept, the one that follows the Buddha?

62.

Man and Woman

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 62  |  April 01, 1960

The original spirit as first created was male and female in one. When the development of all the fallen beings will have been completed, male and female shall be one again. As one of the byproducts of the Fall, the original being separated and split. I have stated this before at various times. The lower the development of the entities that have been involved in the fall, the more the original being is now split into a greater number of separate parts. The development of humanity has reached a stage where the split is twofold. It manifests in the existence of the two sexes: man and woman.

57.

The Mass Image of Self-Importance

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 57  |  October 09, 1959

Such a universal mass image is the following: “If I receive attention or approval or admiration, all my worth is established not only in the eyes of the world but in my own eyes. If I cannot get it, then I am inferior.” Needless to say that this is a wrong conclusion and not a conscious thought, but an unconscious emotional attitude. None of you will fail to verify this emotion within yourself.

52.

The God-Image

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 52  |  June 05, 1959

Children experience their first conflict with authority at an early age. I have talked at length about this. They also learn that God is the highest authority. Therefore it is not surprising that children project their subjective experiences with authority on their imaginings about God. An image is formed, and whatever the child’s, and later the adult’s, relationship to authority is, his or her attitude toward God will, most probably, be colored and influenced by it.

48.

The Life Force in the Universe

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 48  |  March 13, 1959

An inanimate object is petrified life force. A beautiful idea, a truth, is flowing life force. Life force is eternal and therefore all life is eternal. Death is but an illusion. An inanimate object you call dead is only so temporarily. All life, in whatever way it manifests, must exist eternally, for non-eternal life is no life and therefore a meaningless contradiction. The life force contains all divine attributes. It is, it has not come into existence, it does not do, it does not work or have. It simply is. Try to understand the significance and the distinction of these words. Life force is all around you and within you.

45.

The Conflict Between Conscious and Unconscious Desires

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 45  |  January 30, 1959

Your unconscious desires often deviate from your conscious ones. I think you all understand by now that this is one of the main reasons for your conflicts and frustrations. You often create similar conflicts and unfulfillments, while ignoring their full significance. The fact is that your conscious desires and aims that guide your actions are in accord with the goals of your higher self, but simultaneously lower and selfish aims are also present in your motivation. These lower aims find justification in the higher aims, which serve very well to hide their existence. It is very important to find this fact out, my dear friends. Although your actions are worthy and good as such, although the high and noble motives truly exist in you, they lose their splendor if you cannot see the lower motives coexisting with the higher ones in the very same goal. Even long before you can purify yourself to such an extent that these selfish, proud, vain, and fearful motives cease to exist in you, the fact that you simply recognize their existence purifies you to a considerable degree and therefore also purifies your right action.

41.

Images: The Damage They Do

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 41  |  December 05, 1958

I am continuing this series about the images in the human soul, for there is no person who does not have them. Such inner impressions are formed in young years, and from those impressions wrong conclusions were drawn. These very images are responsible for your suffering, for the phantoms you carry about decade after decade, and often incarnation after incarnation.

40.

More on Image-Finding: A Summary

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 40  |  November 21, 1958

In the two previous lectures I started to indicate how the images can be found. This cannot be an easy process, for what dwells in the unconscious is hidden from conscious awareness. I have given you methods to bring these unconscious images to the surface. This, my friends, is the only way to control your life to some extent.

39.

Image-Finding

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 39  |  November 11, 1958

I promised you that tonight I would continue my discussion of image-finding. A few facts are important for pursuing a diligent search. What I say here will not mean very much to those who still feel reluctant about embarking on this path and who merely listen to these words. Perhaps they will gain a little more understanding of the Pathwork principles. These glimpses may eventually open the door for the active, personal search so necessary for complete purification, to voluntarily step across the threshold from the darkness into the light. I beg any of you who has not started yet, but is willing, to ask one of the people of the inner group to work with you, for it cannot be done alone. Arrangements will be made; guidance will come. Anyone truly desirous of spiritual growth will find help; of that you can be sure.

38.

Images

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 38  |  October 24, 1958

My dear friends, it is important to realize that over the course of a lifetime, usually even in earliest childhood or infancy, every personality forms certain impressions due to environmental influences or to sudden, unexpected experiences. These impressions or attitudes usually take the form of conclusions in the mind of the person. Most of the time these conclusions are wrong. You see and experience something unfortunate, one of the unavoidable hardships of life, and you then make generalizations from them. These generalizations later establish themselves as preconceived ideas.
The conclusions are not thought out; rather they are emotional reactions, general attitudes toward life. They are not completely devoid of a certain logic, albeit limited and erroneous. As the years go by, these conclusions and attitudes sink more and more into the unconscious. From there, they mold the life of every person to some extent. We call each such conclusion an “image,” since we spirits see the whole thought process as a spiritual form—or image.