Assessing the Implications of One Aspect of The Guide’s Teachings on Homosexuality

In the Pathwork lectures the Guide reminds us many times that the things the Guide is saying are not to taken as dogma but rather are to be discerned and wrestled with, to the point where we are to arrive at our own conscientious decision as to their truth and merit. 

In lecture 53 when the Guide refers to homosexuality as sickness, the Guide appears to leave no room for equivocation and the Guide appears to clearly believe that God’s plan unfolds in the union of a man and a woman. For people steeped in the Pathwork, who have wrestled with the many times and ways one is triggered by the lecture material, the statement may not be seriously problematic.  One might shrug and say: “just another occasion, dear Guide, where, with all due respect, I beg to differ.  You appear to base your argument on homosexuality being a result of stunted emotional development and you don’t address nature itself – that human bodies get sexually aroused by attractions determined by DNA, not choice.”  But for those who aren’t yet ready or prepared to confront the Guide and keep their own sense of integrity, this statement in lecture 53 that homosexuality is a sickness is confusing, hurtful, unfair, unnecessary even.  It has indeed caused some people to walk away from the Pathwork lectures. At the Foundation level we are wondering what we can do to help those people “not throw out the baby with the bath water;” what can we do to help people get over this proverbial “bump in their path” at this delicate moment.     

When I reflect on this as a gay man, I think of the human approach to the spiritual world.  At the most basic level we see people praying to an all-knowing and all powerful God who must be appeased by correct behaviour, in this case, the strict male/female coupling plan.  On the other end of the spectrum and as the Guide discusses, the spirit realm has many spheres and spirits are both good and evil in their intent, and God is simply that part of the spirit realm where good exists without evil, where love and caring in intent and action are all that a spirit expresses.   As the Guide points out, the earth realm provides us with a great opportunity to develop our capacity to choose love over evil.  So God’s plan is not to direct us as to whom we should love, but rather that we should love.  Hence my conclusion is that homosexual love has exactly the same possibility to be part of God’s plan as heterosexual love.   

This raises the very serious observation that the Guide may not always be right or right for us.  I have to imagine that if the Guide were commenting today the Guide would say that the comments were made in the context of the day.  First of all the assumption that people to whom the Guide was talking were biologically heterosexual in the DNA of their attractions.  Second, given the huge social pressures of those times in which no one questioned the discrimination against homosexuals, the comments were taken for granted, unchallenged and unexplored. One might say exactly the same way in which Jesus takes slavery for granted in the New Testament; slaves should obey their masters and masters should be good to their slaves.     

The reality is that our consciousness evolves over times.  The Guide said in several occasions there were things the Guide could not explain because of the human limitations of language in the instrument (i.e. Eva as medium).  Interestingly many in the younger generation are now questioning the very nature of male and female and in fact looking at non-binary expressions of being and essence.  I can understand this as I seek to avoid using a first-person singular pronoun for the Guide.  We often refer to the Guide as “he” and this automatically gives the Guide the pre-eminent status accorded the male by humans.  But the Guide is a spirit, how could the Guide be binary?  In fact, the Guide says the Guide is only a spokesperson for a group of spirits.  In modern parlance, the Guide if anything, in English is a “they”.   

At the Foundation we want to help keep the wisdom of the lectures available and accessible to everyone, but particularly the younger generations, who face a fast changing world.  We are assessing providing more guidance to interpretation and working with lectures through the use of a preface and footnote in a lecture.  This is not unlike what one sees in many spiritual traditions.  For example in Judaism there is the Torah but there is also the Midrashim.  The former is considered the original spiritual guidance and the latter is the interpretation given by esteemed teachers and commentators over the ensuing centuries.   

For me this introduces the exciting possibility where people wrestling with the Guide’s words can share the inner work that led them to make conscientious decisions of love in intent and action.   As we discern this change, our goal is to help keep the Pathwork relevant, valuable and current to the times. 

Paul Paquette, President, International Pathwork Foundation