Emotions

Everybody knows that it is important to be a decent person, not to commit so-called sins, to give love, to have faith, and to be kind to others. However, this is not enough. In the first place, knowing all this and actually being able to act on it are two different stories. You may be able by voluntary action to refrain from committing a crime such as stealing or killing, but you cannot possibly force yourself to feel that you do not want to harm anybody, ever. You may act kindly toward another, but you cannot force yourself to feel kindly. Neither can you force yourself to have love in your heart or to have real faith in God. Whatever pertains to emotions is not dependent upon your direct actions or even on your thoughts. Changing your feelings requires the slow process of self-development and self-recognition.

There are three basic types of human personality. The first type governs his or her life and reactions mainly with reason. The second type does so mainly with emotion, and the third does so with the will. In other words, the three personality types are dominated by reason, by emotion, and by will. In your self-search it will be useful for you to find out which type you are. A personality is never completely one-sided; every person is a mixture of types, but one is always predominant. In some cases, the predominance is obvious; in others, the mixture is more complicated, and therefore the predominant type is more difficult to detect.

Identifying and analyzing your images and wrong conclusions will lead you finally to the recognition of their common denominator: The constructive attitude is: “In my ignorance I believe—perhaps unconsciously so far—that selfishness will bring me reward, will protect me from hurt. In what way have I been selfish? In what way has my conclusion been wrong from this viewpoint? What is the right conclusion?” If you will consider your inner problems from this angle—after you have found hitherto hidden emotions, reactions, and tendencies—you will be able to make a change in your personality that will eventually change your life.

QUESTION: What is the difference between an emotionally mature and an immature person? How can you recognize it?

The instinct of survival — or self-preservation — aims at gaining, maintaining, and improving life. By its very nature it works against anything that destroys or endangers life. Just as the body needs health to live, so the soul needs health to live most constructively. In order to live, one needs to be safe from destruction and damage.

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.

But why is the emotional nature generally neglected? There are good reasons for that, my friends. To gain more clarity, let us first understand the function of the emotional nature in human beings. It includes, first of all, the capacity to feel. The capacity to experience feeling is synonymous with the capacity to give and receive happiness. To the degree you shy away from any kind of emotional experience, to that extent you also close the door to the experience of happiness.

Once you stop repressing your emotions, you will find not only definite individual negative emotions, such as hostility, resentment, aggressiveness, and envy, but also certain psychological conditions. It is important to recognize their existence and their significance. Are they real? Are they mature? When you ask these questions, you will understand how they breed the negative emotions about which, consciously or unconsciously, you feel so guilty.

QUESTION: In a previous lecture about emotional growth and its function, a question was asked as to how to handle very wild emotions at a time when one has no helper available. But what does one do if the emotions are so deep-seated, so deeply buried and repressed, for such a long time, that they simply will not come out to the degree one would like?

There are many indications of true selfhood. Take for instance the capacity to experience and to give joy. You cannot give joy if you are not a joyful person. How can you become joyful living in a very imperfect world?

From our vantage point, we see you barricading yourselves behind a wall of separateness. This wall is a useless and illusory form of self-protection. In the last analysis it is simply a barricade against happiness and freedom. So, my friends, realize for all time that the goal of dissolving your obstructions is to enable you to enter the great flow of the eternal current. The ultimate reason for living is to make your life meaningful, but without being merged into this current this cannot happen.

First, let us briefly recapitulate. To begin with, the child suffers from imperfections in the parents’ love and affection. It also suffers from not being fully accepted in its own individuality. By this I mean the common practice of treating a child as a child, rather than as a particular individual. You suffer from this, although you may never be aware of it in these terms or in exact thoughts. This may leave as much of a scar as the lack of love or attention. It causes as much frustration as the lack of love, or even cruelty.

When you are on the defensive, you are frightened; you feel threatened and endangered. There certainly are realistic dangers, and the human system is equipped to deal with them. If an actual attack is made on you, all your faculties will withdraw from their usual preoccupations and will be directed to and concentrated on this one danger. In order to deal with an urgent issue at the moment, you need all your faculties to focus on that one point.

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.

Tonight I should like to discuss a new topic, humanity’s relationship to time. This is, indeed, an important subject. My words will be very helpful, if you take the trouble of pondering them and trying to apply them to yourself. What I will say may at first seem utterly inapplicable to your personal lives because of its abstract, philosophical and metaphysical nature.

A long time ago, I gave a lecture about the life force. Let us look into this again with the greater understanding you have gained. The life force is a free-flowing energy current, manifest in the entire universe. Wherever an organization fulfills certain essential conditions, it tunes into the life force. The life force permeates and revitalizes it. It lives. A living organism comes into existence.

Every once in a while it is important to restate what the pathwork is and what it is supposed to accomplish. It is important to always see this in a new light, from different angles. This path is not supposed to be taken as a cure, nor is it to be taken as a luxury —

When one speaks about God’s infinity or about Creation’s infinity, this is part of the meaning. There is no state of being, no experience, no situation, no concept, no feeling, no object that does not already exist. Everything in the world exists in a state of potentiality which already contains the finished product within it.

The function of this path is not to remove a bothersome symptom in a person’s life. This is not a treatment of sickness. Nor is the path simply a way of becoming a better person, of developing spiritually. All this happens, of course. But it must be fully understood by all of you, no matter how far you decide to follow it, that the aim of the path is the total realization of the divine kernel.

In truth, there is essentially no difference between the ultimate spiritual state of bliss and the human potential for it. Only the degree of intensity varies, for no human being is capable of the depth of experience which is possible for an unstructured, highly developed consciousness.

Nothing can be created unless mutuality exists, be it a new galaxy, a work of art, or a good relationship between human beings. This applies even to the creation of the simplest object. To illustrate this principle, let us take this example. First the idea of the object must be formed in the mind. Without the creative inspiration and imagination by which the mind extends itself beyond its previous awareness of what already exists, not even a plan can be formed.

The sexual force is an expression of consciousness reaching for fusion. You all know that fusion, which you can also call integration, unification, or oneness is the purpose of Creation. Whatever term you use, the final aim of all split-off beings is to reunify the individualized, separated aspects of the greater consciousness with the whole.

We shall talk about certain aspects of love in this lecture. To completely cover the topic would be absolutely impossible in one lifetime, even if it were discussed every hour of the day, so deep and so far-reaching is it. We shall discuss those aspects of love that you most need on your path at this juncture.