It is so because the crisis inevitably comes later
on, but by then is no longer connected with its source and therefore
it hurts more. When you make up your mind, however, saying, “I
will not take cover, I will go through it” the resources within the
human soul will become almost instantly available. These resources
remain obscure to those who still tend to escape. They then feel
weak and do not believe in their own capacities to actualize the
innite powers of the Universal Spirit. They do not know their
potential, the strength that will arise, the inspiration that will come. Only when you decide to go through and ask for help in meditation
do these resources become  available. Then you will sense an
awakened trust that the conscious ego is not alone. It is not the only
faculty available to deal with the issue. I bless you and ask you to open up your innermost being, your
whole soul, all your psychic forces, to let go of the cramp that
denies truth and change, therefore self-expression and light. Open
up in this way, to let the blessed power constantly present within
you permeate your whole being. A blessing comes forth that will meet with the inner power of
which I have spoken, thus doubly strengthening you. Continue your
growth so that your whol eness, your connectedness with the
universe, will grow and give you more of the joy that is inherently
your birthright. Be blessed, be in peace. OceanofPDF.com12 
The Meaning of Evil and Its Transcendence
It is impossible to deny that evil exists on earth. What appro ach
can we take to deal with it so that humanity can transcend its
present painful state? If we strive for a unied consciousness, we
would need to integrate evil, but how can we integrate something
that is so contrary to everything that we consciously strive for? If
we deny evil, since we know that in the greater reality it does not
exist, will it also cease to exist on our plane of manifestation ? Can
it be that there is evil in all of us, and, if so, what can we do about
it? Greetings and blessings to all my old and new friends. Human beings are continually confronted with the deep problem
of how to handle the destructive forces residing within themselves
and others. This problem seems unending, for ever since the
beginning of human existence, theories and philosophies have been
built around it. Your search has always been concerned, directly or
indirectly, with this great issue. Does Evil Exist? There are usually two types of answers given about the existence
of evil, the religious and the philosophical. One stresse s evil as aforce separate from and oppo sed to good, the other denie s that evil
exists at all. To deny evil on humanity’s plane of consciousness is as unrealistic
as to believe that in ultimate reality two separate forces  exist: one
good and one evil. Such a belief implies that the evil force must be
destroyed or whisked away , as if anything could be made to
disappear in the universe! Only those who search for the truth
between these two alternatives can nd the answers. Most religions take a dualist ic approach to the great question of
evil, seeing it as a force opposed to good. The dualistic approach
reinforces your fear of yourself and your guilt; therefore, it only
increases the chasm within your soul. The energies of fear and guilt
are used to force yourself to be good. The blindness, compulsion,
and the articial concept of life that accompany this forcing create
self-perpetuating patterns, with many negative ramications. On the other hand, there are philosophies that postulate that evil
just does not exist; it is an illusion. Such philosophy has a part of the
truth, just as its religious opposite does, which recognizes the
danger of evil, its life-defea ting power, and the unhappiness and
suering it brings. The postulate that evil is an illusion is true in the
sense that there is innately only one great creative powe r. There is
union, for all is one in the consciousness of those who have
transcended dualism. As is so often true, both of these opposing teachings express great
truths, but the exclusiveness with which they are conceived and
perpetuated ultimately renders their truth untrue. The denial of evil
as a reality leads to wishful thinking, further blindness, and the
denial of the self; it decreases rather than increases awareness. Thus,
a false picture  is created—the manifestation of the present state of
humankind. Both views of evil lead to repression; yet acknowledging evil also
leads to the possibility of further destructiveness. It might lead to
justifying and condoning truly undesirable things, such as self-
righteous acting out. In such a case it is the guilt that would be
repressed, creating further splitting and duality. Let us now try tond a way to avoid either of these pitfalls and to reconc ile the two
general approaches to evil. Right Acceptance of Evil
All suering comes exclusively from one’s own destructiveness,
negativity, or evil—whatev er name you give it. You have all
experienced how threatened, anxious, and uncomfortable you feel
when you are confronted with some of your undesirable attitudes,
traits, and characteristics. This reaction must be understood in a
much deeper way. The meaning of such uncomfortable, anxious
reaction is plainly an expres sion that says, “Such and such should
not exist in me.” All the defenses you have so painstakingly erected
serve to protect you not only from the evil of others, but primarily
from your own. If you examine the cause each time you feel
anxious, you will always nd that, in the last analysi s, you are
apprehensive of your own evil, regardless of how threatening
another person  or an outside event appears. If you then translate
this anxiety into clear-cut words, thus verbalizing your inner
thought that certain attitudes or feelings “should not exist in me,”
you can then confront your attitude toward evil in a much better
way. For the evil itself is not half as damaging as your attitude to it. We shall come back to this later. From now on, instead of habitually evading, which breeds
emotional illness, problems, and suering, catch your fear and the
thought behind the fear: “I should not be that way.” If this fear is
ignored, the problem becomes worse. Evil as Distorted Creative Power
Our aim on this path is precisely the knowing and accep tance of
the evil. The word “acceptan ce” has been used a great deal for lack
of a better one, but the meaning often gets lost behind the word, so
we must pay more attention to how this acceptance comes about.For only when acceptance occurs in the right way can evil be
incorporated and reformed in the truest sense of the word. You can
then transform a force that has gone awry. Most human beings
totally forget or ignore the fact that what is worst in them is
essentially highly desirable creative power and universal ow and
energy. Only when you truly realize this, my friends, will you learn
to cope with every aspect of yourself. Almost all human beings, with very, very few exceptions, accept,
know, and only want to know, a relatively small part of their total
personality. This limitation is, of course, a terrible loss. Not being
aware of that within which is undesirable in its present
manifestation shuts them o from what is already clear, liberated,
puried, good. It also prevents most individuals from loving and
respecting themselves because they have no real percepti on of their
divine heritage. Their actual, already manifest goodness seems
unreal, even fake, because they refuse to tackle the destructive
elements in themselves. But what is even more important and
fundamental is that shutting o this undesirable part causes it to
remain stagnant and paralyzed so that it cannot change. The price of recognizing and accepting the destructive, evil aspect
of the self seem s high, but it really is not. By contrast, the price of
denying it is enormous. You may grope in confusion until you nd a
way to accept your destructive impulses and desires without
condoning them. Because you consider something in you bad, you
believe all of you is bad. What you need to do is to identi fy with the
part of you that is observing and not the rest that you observe. Understand it without identifying with it. You must learn to
evaluate negative impulses and desires realistically, without falling
into the trap of projection and self-justication. Such understanding
requires continual inspiration from the higher forces within and
deliberate requests for help in awakening and maintaining
awareness of these destructive aspects and of the proper method to
handle them. Whenever you are in an unpleasant mood, a threatening situation,
confusion and darkness, you can be sure that regardless of the outer
circumstances, the problem arises from denial and fear of your owndestructive attitudes, and your ignorance about how to handle them. Admitting this brings immediate relief and deactivates these
negative powers almost instantly. Learn by what steps you can
incorporate this power rather than shut it o. The rst step must be applying the theory that destructiveness,
evil, is not a nal separate force. You must think about this not
merely in general, philosophical terms. Rather, you must take the
specic aspects of yourself that make you feel guilty and afraid, and
apply this knowledge to all that is most distasteful in yourself and
others. No matter how ugly some of those manifestations are—
whether it be cruelty, spite, arrogance, contempt, selshness,
indierence, greed, cheatin g, or something else—you can bring
yourself to realize that every one of these traits is an energy current,
originally good and beautiful and life-arming . By searching in this directio n, you. will come to underst and and
experience how this or that specic hostile impulse was originally a
good force. When you understand that, you will have made a
substantial inroad toward transforming the hostility and freeing the
energy that has either been channeled in a truly undesirable,
destructive way, or become frozen and stagnant. Articulate clearly
the insight that these ugly traits are a power that can be used any
way you wish. This power—the same energy that may now manifest
as hostility, envy, hatred, rage, bitterness, self-pity, or blame—can
become a creative power to build happiness, pleasure, love,
expansion, for yourself and others around you. In other words, you have to learn to acknowledge that the way
the power manifests is undesirable, but the energy current behind
this manifestation is desirabl e in itself, for it is made of the life-stu
itself. It contai ns consciousness  and creative energy . It contains every
possibility to manifest and express life, to create new life. It contains
all the best of life, as you experience it—and much more. So, too,
the best of life that has revea led itself to you contains the possibility
of the very worst. If you can envisage the possibilities of all life
manifestations, because life is a continuous owing, moving, ongoing
process , you can never become xated on the nalities, which create
error, confusion, dualism.You will see that by denying  the evil in you, you do greater harm
to the whole of your personality, to your manifest spirituality, than
you realize. For by denying it, you inactivate an essential part of
your energies and creative forces, so they stagnate. From stagnation,
putrefaction follows. Matter putrees when it stagnates, when it can
no longer move. The same is true of consciousness. Matter is always a condensation and manifestation of
consciousness and energy. The way the energy ows—or does not
ow—and the form it takes when it condenses depends on the
attitude of consciousness “behind,” or, rather, intrinsic to, a
particular aspect of creation. Destructiveness is an erroneous form of consciousness. It must
lead, either directly through acting out and giving it direct
expression, or indirectly, through denial, that is, stagnation, to a
negation of life. This is why some supposedly negative emotions are
actually desira ble. For instance, anger can further life and be
directed against the negation of life. Denial of anger turns into
hostility, cruelty, spite, self-hate, guilt, confusion between blame of
others and blame of self, and is thus a destructive energy current. When evil is understood to be intrinsically a divine energy ow,
momentarily distorted due to specic wrong ideas, concepts, and
perceptions, it is no longer rejected in its essence but assimilated. This is precisel y what you nd most dicult to do. In fact, you nd
it so dicult that you tend to forget even those aspects in you that
are already free of distortio n, evil, and destructiveness, that are
liberated and clear, that are good and beautiful and divine. All your striving and goodwill are beautiful . Even your pangs of
conscience, notwithstanding the misplaced guilt, spring  from the
best and most beautiful manifestations of consciousness. You will
deny, ignore, fail to experien ce this best in you as long as you deny,
ignore, fail to experience the evil in you. You distort your concept of
yourself when you deny any part of yourself, no matter how ugly it
may be in its present form. The essential key to totally integrating the evil is under standing
its original nature and the indwelling possibility that it may
manifest again in its original form. This must be the aim, myfriends. As long as you try to become good by denying evil, by
forcing yourself to be what you cannot yet be, and what you can in
fact never be, you remain in a painful state of inner split, partial
self-denial, and paralysis of vital forces within you. I say “what you
can never be,” because if your expectation is to destroy or magically
whisk away a vital part of yourself and not to accept the intrinsic
desirability of all the creative energy contained in even your most
destructive aspects, you cannot become whole. Cultivate this altered
attitude. The new attitude of acceptance does not mean condoning,
excusing, or rationalizing your undesirable aspects. Quite the
contrary: It means fully acknowledging them, giving honest
expression to them, without nding excuses or blaming others, but
not feeling hopeless and self-rejecting about them either. This seems
like a tall order, but it is certainly possible to acquire this attitude if
you make a sincere eort and truly pray that guidance be given to
you for this very purpose. Liberating the Inner Beauty
When you no longer negate your ugliness, you will no longer have
to negate your beauty. There  is so much beauty in every one of you
that is already free. You actually manifest beauty that you totally
negate, ignore, fail to perceive and experience! And I do not mean
only potential, as yet to be developed beauty; I mean beauty that is
really present. You can think of this and pray to see it in yourself, as you pray to
see the ugliness. When you can perceive both, not just one,
exclusive of the other, you will have made a substantial step toward
a realistic perception of life and of yourself that will enable you to
integrate what now tears you asunder. By keeping both your beaut y and your ugliness in mind at all
times, you will also see both sides in others . You tend to completely
reject and negate people whose destructiveness you perceive, and
react to them exactly as you do toward yourself. Or you emotionallyreact to their goodness and inner beauty, while unrealistically
overlooking their ugly side. You cannot yet grasp the presence of
duality in yourself, and therefore neither can you see it in others. This creates continual coni cts and strife. Such distortion and lack
of awareness cause you to deny and paralyze the creative process
itself. Only by accepting the duality can you truly transcend it. Transformation
The overtly destructive attitudes are never the real evil. If you
truly acknowl edge them, you remain in the ow. The greatest
hatred, the most spiteful vindictiveness, the worst impulses of
cruelty, if honestly and squarely admitted, neither acted out
irresponsibly nor repressed and denied, but fully accepted, will
never become harmful. To the degree they are seen, faced, and
admitted, such feelings will diminish in intensity and must sooner or
later convert into owing, life-giving energy. Hate will turn into
love, cruelty into healthy self-assertion, stagnation into joy and
pleasure. So this is, my friends, what you have to learn. The key is to
encounter the destructive force so that you can transform it back to
its original nature, thus incorporating it into your whole being and
creating with the life-energy at your disposal. Are there any questions? QUESTION : As this lecture says, there are things in me that I feel are
wrong, evil. Yet I enjoy them; they feel pleasurable. But I feel guilty. For
instance, I overspend money. I negate that aspect of myself completely. Can you help me? ANSWER : This is a good example. What you describe is quite
typical. You are confronted with an insoluble predicament: Either
you give up all pleasure connected with overspending and
irresponsibility in order to become decent, mature, realistic, self-responsible and safe, or you take some pleasure from the negative
trait but at the tremendous cost of guilt, self-deprivation, insecurity,
and fear of not being able to run your own life. Once you see that behind the compulsion to overspend and be
irresponsible is a legitimate yearning for pleasure, expansion, and
new experience, this predicam ent will cease to exist. In other words,
you must incorporate the essence  of this wish without acting out the
destructiveness of it. You will then have much less dicu lty putting
the wish into eect in a realistic way that will not defeat you in the
end. You are now stuck in battling with one of these typical
either/or problems. How can you really want to give up
irresponsibility if responsibility implies living on a narrow  margin of
pleasure, and conning your self-expression? Since you do not really
want to give up the irresponsibility, you feel guilty. Thus you reject
that vital part of you that rightfully wishes to experience the
pleasure of creation at its fullest, but does not yet know how
without exploiting others and being parasitic. If, however, you can
fully accept the beautiful force striving for full pleasure underneath
the irresponsibility and value it as such, you will also nd how to
give it expression without infringing on others, without violating
your own laws of balance. You will not have to pay the needless
cost of worry, anxiety, guilt, and inability to manage well. You only
pay that when you sacrice peace of mind for a short-lived pleasure. The pleasure will be deeper, more lasting, and totally free of guilt
when you combine its rightfulness with self-discipline. If you can
reconcile desire for pleasure  with self-discipline and responsibility,
you will expres s the inner knowledge that says, “I want to enjoy life. There is unlimited abundance  in the universe for every contingency. There is no limit to what is possible. There are marvelou s things to
be experienced . There are many beautiful means of self-expression. I
can realize them and bring them into my life if I can nd another,
not self-destructive, way to express and obtain them.” The discipline
will be much easier to acquire, the willingness to do so will grow,
when you know that you have a perfect right to use it for the
purpose of increasing pleasure and self-expression.My dearest friends, I have given you new material that requires a
great deal of attention. Bring it to bear on your own specic
situation. Open  up your innermost being to applying this material. Do not apply it only theoretically, in general terms, but see really
where you deny what is in you out of fear and guilt, thereby
paralyzing the best in you. To those of you who are discouraged and feel hopeless I can only
say: You are in illusion and error when you feel that way. Realize
this and ask for the truth, which is that there is no reason for
hopelessness, and dicult periods need only to be understood and
worked through to make them stepping stones  for opening your lives
further and bringing more light and self-expression into them. Receive the love and blessings, my dearest friends, be in peace. OceanofPDF.com13 
Self-Esteem
The Guide once said that when human beings hate and reject
themselves “the angels weep.” We have heard it but forget too easily
that as incarna ted souls we are divine manifestations; we tend to
identify that part of our nature which we like least as our true,
permanent selves. This assumption has dire consequences, as the
Guide will explain. In this very uplifting lecture he teaches us how
to nd our true identity in our ever-changing live core. Discovering
innite possibilities in ourselves for making positive choices, we
come to respect and love ourselves . Greetings, my dearest friends . Blessings for every one of you here. May your heart be open, may your attention be focused, so that you
can absorb as much as possible in this hour. Self-esteem, self-liking, or self-value—whatever you call it—is
sorely lacking in every human being who experiences feelings of
uncertainty, fear, insecurity , guilt, weakness, doubt, negativity,
inadequacy, and inferiority. To the degree these feelings are present,
self-esteem is inevitably lacking, only this is not directly recognized. Such ignoranc e is all the more damaging, for you are then less
capable of tackling the problem directly. Only considerable insight
into the self brings the direct  awareness of “I do not like and respect
myself.”The Inner Conict Between Self-Indulgence and Self-
Rejection
People are constantly confronted with an inner, and rarely
conscious, conict about this recognition. The conict arises out of
the dualistic perception characteristic of humanity. I have often
shown how a misconception splits the truth into two opposing
halves that confuse you and make it impossible for you to make
satisfying choices. You are then torn in inner dissension and painful
confusion. In this case the dilemma is: How can you accept and like
yourself without falling into the danger of self-indulgenc e and self-
justication for the destructive traits that exist in all human beings,
no matter how concealed they may be? Or, on the other side, how
can you confront, accept, and admit those negative, destructive
traits, weaknesses, little selshnesses, cruelties, and vanities that
often make you vindictive and unloving, and nevertheless maintain
your self-respect? How can you avoid falling into the danger of
destructive guilt, self-rejection, and self-contempt? This is a deep- rooted conict, and most human beings, whether or
not they know  it, battle with it. It is a typical dualistic confusion
that apparently makes admitting an unpleasant truth and self-
acceptance into mutually exclusive opposites. But before I discuss this in greater detail and oer you a key that
will make it possible to unify this split, let me discuss the conict
itself a little more. Those of you who have recently found this raging
battle within yourselves will know exactly what I am talking about. Others, who have not yet recognized their self-rejection, will have to
come to this awareness gradually. Perhaps the only way you can
now recognize your self-dislike and your undervaluation of yourself
will be an indirect one. You can certainly sense shyness,
uncertainty, insecurity, apprehension about being rejected or
criticized, as well as feelings  of inferiority and inadequacy. Perhaps
you may perceive here or there a peculiar guilt feeling that makes
no sense to you. Although this guilt usually hides behind other
attitudes, it is rarely so remote that it cannot be clearly perceived attimes, once you set out to detect such things. Perhaps you are aware
that you are not open to the untold possibilities of blissful
fulllment in life; that you make do with much less than you could
experience. Perhaps you can discern that you stand back in life and
feel vaguely undeserving and perceive your own possibilities
negatively at least in certain areas of your life. All these manifestations indicate self-rejection, self-dislike. It
should not be too dicult  to bridge the gap in consciousness
between any of these manifestations with the more profound root,
namely that you do not think much of yourself. You may dislike
yourself for some traits and attitudes, but this specicity may be
even more hidden from your awareness. It is quite possible that you
can rst ascertain only the vague general feelings of self-disdain,
without being  able to pinpoint the specic traits you dislike in
yourself. Once you feel, however vaguely, that you do not respect yourself
and lack esteem  and appreciation for yourself as a human being, the
next step must be to make this attitude more specic. If you really
want to nd it, you will do so, although the recognition of exactly
what this attitu de is may come quite indirectly. This is the way the
path often works. On the other hand, you may see something quite clearly in
yourself that is truly regrettable and undesirable. Then you may fall
into the erroneous attitude of deance and self-justication, because
you believe that admitting your undesirable traits means that you
must dislike and reject your entire self. You fail to dierentiate
between reject ing a trait and rejecting the person, whether yourself
or others. Therefore you fall into the error of justifying, denying,
falsifying, and rationalizing— and often even beautifyin g—a very
undesirable and destructive trait. Here you have the full-edged
confusion! What Brings Self-Respect?Here is how to nd the key that will enable you to squarely
confront the undesirable attitudes, without in the least losing
respect for yourself or losing the sense that you are a valuable
human being. First, you have to perceive and experience life in a
new way. Your life—and you are life because you are alive—
represents all life, all nature. One of the earmarks of life is its untold
potential for change and expansion. To be more specic: Once you
perceive life as it is, you will sense that even the lowliest of all
destructive creatures has every possibility for change and for
goodness, for greatness, and for growth. At any moment, the
thinking may change and create new attitudes and behavior, new
feelings, new ways of being. And if these do not happen now, that
alters nothing, for one day things are bound to change and then
your true nature must nally  emerge. The knowledge of one’s true
nature having to emerge sooner or later changes everything: It
changes your despair about yourself. It opens the door to knowing
your potential for goodness, regardless of how maliciou s you now
may be; for generosity, regardless of how mean you may now be; for
loving, regardl ess of how selsh you now may be; for strength and
integrity, regardless of how weak you may now be and how tempted
to betray your best self; for greatness, regardless of how petty you
may now be. Look at nature, at any manifestation of life, and it is forever
changing; it is forever dying and being reborn; it is forever
expanding and contracting and pulsating. It is always moving and
branching out. This applies particularly to life that is conscious, and
even more so to life that is self-conscious, The power of thought, of
will, of emotions is innitely greater than any inanimate power. And yet, the inanimate power of, say, electricity, and even more of
atomic energy, is so great that you have barely begun to gain an
inkling of its possibilities both for good and constructive,  as well as
for destructive, ends. Wherever there is life and consciousness, both
these possibilities exist. Using the Power of the Conscious Mindg f
Now, if in the smallest atom —so small that it cannot even be
perceived with the naked eye—a power exists to release untold
energies for building or destroying, how innitely more is this the
case with the power of the mind: the power of thinking, feeling, and
willing. Just dwell on this signicant fact, my friends, and it will
open new vistas to you. Why do you blindly assume that the power
of inanimate things is greater than the power of the mind? The powers to think, will, feel, express, act, and decide  are the
earmarks of consciousness. They are vastly underrated by humanity. Living consciou sness therefore deserves a respect that can hardly be
put into words . It does not matter how it manifests; no matter how
undesirable and destructive the present manifestation may be, the
life that issues from the momentary destructiveness holds all the
potential for turning into constructive channels, for life’s source is
truly inexhaustible. Since the very essence of life is movement, and therefore change,
this is what justiably and realistically gives hope, no matter how
hopeless a situation or a state of mind may appear. People in deep
depression and hopelessness must be in error, for they negate the
very essence of life. And those who despair about themselves
because they feel they are so bad, so unacceptable, so destructive, so
negative, nd themselves in the error of perceiving and
experiencing life in a xed way, as though what is now must always
be. This is the error of deadness: “This is so, and that is all there is
to it.” Such thinking ignores and negates the ux of true life. Since
you are alive, this uidity is yours; in reality you are uid. The only thing that keeps you from being uid, and therefore
changing into a state of realistic hopefulness and light, into the
essence of life itself, is your own enclosure, your ignora nce of this
truth—your momentary state of consciousness. This state of
consciousness is now xed in the conviction that life and your
personality traits are static and must remain that way. Your state of
consciousness remains xed in this dark imprisonment as long as
you know nothing else. You have the possibility of applying these words to your personal
situation. Where are you hopeless? Why are you hopeless? Do youfeel hopeless because of life itself? Because you believe the
possibilities for expansion and happiness are too limited to give you
sucient scope? Are you hopeless because you feel you do not
deserve and cannot have a more meaningful, fullled experience of
life? The latter thought may smolder secretly beneath your
perception of life’s limitations. If you can bring these eeting impressions into more  concise
awareness, you can ask yourself: “Am I hopeless about deserving
happiness because I, possibly quite justiably, dislike certain traits
in me?”  But don’t you then also believe that these traits mark and
dene your person. That is the great struggle, my friends: You
erroneously believe that what is most obnoxious to you is you. This,
at the same time, is the cause  for the great resistance, inherent in all
human beings, against chang ing. For, since you do not believe that
you can essentially be anythi ng else but that which you dislike, you
have to hold on to it nevertheless, because you do not wish to cease
existing. That is the crux of this dualistic confusion. This is why you
so inexplicably hold on to destructive traits. You hold on because you genuinely believe this is you; you are in
a xed state, and any change is impossible because you do not
realize that all possibilities exist in you. You are already what you
think you would have to produce articially, laboriously, and
through forcib ly contorting your very nature. But since you will not
believe this, you cannot give up holding on to the very facets you so
dislike, for they seem to represent your essence. This is indeed a vicious circle, for true self-esteem can, of course,
come only by your sensing your capacity to love, to give of yourself. Yet this capaci ty cannot be known when you take it for granted that
it simply does not exist; when you believe that any state other than
the one you express now is alien to you—intrinsically alien, and
your real, nal, xed self is what you dislike. As long as that is the
case, you remain trapped in a vicious circle. In order to come out of this circle, life must be understo od in its
essence. No matter how xed your life may appear, it is only one
tiny part of the whole story, my friends. Underneath  all these
personality traits you believ e are xed, nal things, the uid lifeexists like a winter stream under the snow. It is constan t; feelings
branch out of it in all directions, spontaneously and wondrously
forever self-renewing. Its life pulsates vibrantly; it is movement
itself. Above all, it is a life in which you are free at any moment to
think new and dierent thoughts that create a new and dierent life
expression and personality. You see, as long as you ignore the true state of life, hence your
own true state, you cannot give yourself the fundamen tal respect
that you deserve as a human creature. As long as you confuse life
with death, with inanimate  matter, you will despair. And even
inanimate matter, as you now know from present-day science, has
an intrinsic life and incredible movement, once this life is released. Think about this, my friends . Even an apparently dead object is not
dead; it contains life, movement, and utter change. Think of the
movement, life, and change in every atom of the deadest-seeming
matter. So, nothing in the universe actually exists that is lifeless. How
much less so with consciousness! Your thinking is a constant
movement. The only trouble  is that you have conditioned yourself
to let it ruminate in habitual  negativity, self-rejection, and needless
limitation. But once you decide to use your thinking in a new way,
you will experience the truth of life’s hopeful changeability, its
endless possibi lities to move in new directions. You can constantly
expand your thinking, take in new ideas, embrace new realizations,
and therefore bring to yourself new will-directions, new expansions,
new aims, new energies, new feelings. All of this is personality
change. Without your being  quite aware of it, these new ways of
thinking and feeling chang e those attitudes you now dislike so
much. When I talk about new ways of being, I want to make it quite
clear that this does not mean they have not existed in you as a
dormant essence. They are only new as far as your awareness is
concerned, for they are all there, constantly ready to be used for the
asking. But as long as you enclose yourself within the narrow
framework of your limited perceptions of yourself and of life, you
cannot use what is already there. Perceive yourself as fertile soilbefore the seeds are planted . Fertile soil contains incredible power
to bring about new expressi ons of life. The potentials seethe in it,
whether or not the seeds  are actually put in. Your entire
consciousness and aliveness are the most fertile soil imaginable. The
fertile soil is constantly there with incredible power to bring forth
new expression s of life in your thinking, your feeling, your willing,
your energies, your possibilities of action and reaction. Each situation you are in contains new possibilities for reaction. You have choices all the time. You can be in a new situation and
automatically fall into the old conditioned reexes, your negative
approach, without paying attention to what you are doing. Perhaps
you moan about the misery of life because this or that has happened
to you that you do not like, and you never see the connection
between your discontent and failures on the one hand,  and your
one-sided, negative automatic reactions on the other. As long as you
assume that this habitual approach is the only one possibl e, you will
not grasp the possibilities and powers in your life. Thus, when you feel unhappy  or hopeless, question yourself: “Do I
not have anoth er way to react to this situation that seem s to befall
me out of nowhere and to which I choose to react negatively,
destructively, making myself hopeless, complaining and feeling
angry about it?” This choice is yours. Your anger and complaints
against the world are wasted, for all that energy could do so much
to build new life for you if it were used properly. You cannot change
others, but you can certainly  change your own attitudes and your
thinking. Then life oers its limitless possibilities to you. First, your thinking and your attitudes change; then the feelings
follow suit; then your actions and reactions begin to respo nd to new
spontaneous impulses. And these, in turn, bring forth new life
experiences. The more you experience the chain reaction of this
process, the more you also perceive that you are a living, moving,
endlessly changing unit of life expression. And no trait merits
evaluating and rejecting your whole self because of it. Once you
perceive this, you can aord the wonderful, relieving  luxury of
calmly admitting any undesirable, ugly trait, without in the least
disliking yours elf for it; without in the least losing your sense ofbeing a divine expression, no matter what the traits may be. Then,
and only then, can you really transform these traits. Paradoxical as this may seem, the total self-rejection, the
destructive kind of guilt under discussion is incapable of overcoming
anything. You will not understand why, my friends, unless you see
that it is impos sible to overcome anything when you believe you are
a xed,  unchangeable blob. You have heard that according to your
belief you must experience, but when you have built a false belief
system you cannot see beyon d it. Your actions then are determined
by your beliefs and must thus provide proof of their veracity, no
matter now mistaken those beliefs are and how many other
alternatives exist in reality. Thus, if you are convinced that you cannot change, you cannot
even take a meaningful step in the direction of change. Therefore,
you cannot experience chang e and must be convinced that change is
impossible. The negative conviction makes it also impossible to
summon the necessary eort for bringing change about. The energy,
the discipline, the stamina, the initiative essential for eecting a
change will be comparative ly easy to muster when you know a
change is possible; when you know that change merely means
bringing out your dormant  qualities. When you know that, no
matter how ugly the traits may be, you will not despair about being
unlovable. You will make available the powers in you to surge
forward; you will be able to dip into the resources of your innermost
being that enable you to overcome any ugly destructive trait. The power that created the universe, with everything in it,
including all that you are, possesses the strength to change
anything. For even the things that should be changed were created
by that same power and must, in essence, be something other than
they appear now. This power is also you and is manifest once you
contact it deliberately. This can be done only when you know of the
source within you, which is forever changing, moving, and
expanding with innite possibilities. Reconnection with the Instinctual Lifef
You see, my friends, the life that is inherent in nature is also in
you. Bare will and intellect are sterile, as you well know. Only the
feeling of life, the natural life, can indeed bring you the fulllment
without which  life is a sorry aair indeed. This is what we have
been talking about and aiming for on this path. Now why has
humanity lost touch with the source of its own life, the source of its
feelings, the source of its instincts, the source of its own nature,
deep inside the self? Only because you are so terried of your
destructiveness and do not know how to handle it. So civilization
has for millennia denied the instinctual life in order to preserve
itself from its dangers. But by doing so humanity has cut o its
connection with the essence  of life itself. It had not realized that
there are other ways to eliminate the distorted, perverted, natural
forces, ways that need not deny life itself. The instinctual life has
always been wrongly equated with destructiveness. Only as
humanity matu res is it capable of learning that the instinctual life
does not need to be denied in order to avoid evil. Indeed , it should
not be denied, for doing so defeats life every bit as much as the
feared evil itself. Only within the deep core of the instincts can God
be found because only there can true aliveness be found. Thus
humanity must nd another means to handle its destructive instincts
if it is not to annihilate itself by dierent but just as fatal ways as
giving vent to those negative instincts. This lecture will give you an additional tool to meet your
destructive side. You will learn to value and nurture the deep
instincts you have always so distrusted and to nd the truth of the
living creative spirit in and through them. You will then joyfully
further your instinctual life, unfold and integrate it. You will believe
and trust in it. Do not deny and fear it because you still have
diculties accepting and meeting your undesirable destructive
traits. If you truly look at them in a dispassionate, objective way,
you will always nd that fear and denial really oppose the life of the
instincts. The instincts are simple and innocent in themselves; your
destructiveness is always a result of pride, selfwill, fear, vanity,
greed, separateness, lovelessness, one-upmanship.In this way, you will nd it more and more possible to meet,
acknowledge, admit, and accept anything in you, no matter how
ugly, and never lose for one second the sense of your intrinsic
beautiful aliveness, and of deserving your own esteem. This inner
state will be the springboard from which change become s possible. It will not only be a possibili ty in the abstract, but an eective way
of living, day in and day out, a constantly growing movement. Any one of you who can truly bring this important topic to bear
upon whateve r state you are in at this moment will overcome an
important hurdle. Many of you may be stuck just in this painful
inner confusion . Some of you may not know this consciou sly; others
may feel it vaguely; still others may be quite aware of this struggle. Most human beings are totally oblivious of the fact that this very
same battle rages in them; that this battle has created the instinctual
restrictions and fear, the self-alienation, the aridity and
impoverishment of the souls who cannot thrive in a climate of self-
rejection. People also ignore that all the religious commands to love
cannot be fullled until this dualistic split is healed and unication
found, so that self-liking is no longer confused with self-indulgence,
and honest self-confrontation need not bring self-loathing. You can
nd peace only when you can truly accept the ugliest in you and
never lose sight of your intrinsic beauty. Now, are there any questions? QUESTION : I feel a terric battle going on right now in relation to my
self-esteem. It feels like an atomic explosion. I realize I’m stuck in my
own limitations. I realize that I can’t stand pleasure. Coming from my
habitual state of unpleasure, pleasure almost seems unnatural . ANSWER : If you can conceive of yourself as the essence of life, with
all its incredible powers, possibilities, and inherent potentials, you
will indeed know that you are deserving of your own esteem and
acceptance. You will be able to see the traits you hate and still not
lose sight of who you essentially are.I also suggest a specic exercise you might nd quite helpful. Put
down in writing everything that you dislike about yourself. Have it
down in black and white. Look at those traits when they are written
down. Then feel into yourself and ask: “Do I really believe that this
is all there is to me? Do I really believe that I must be these traits all
my life? Do I believe I have the possibility to love? Do I hold forces
locked up in me that contai n all the good imaginable?” By raising
these questions seriously, you will get an answer on a deeply feeling
level, a level where the answer is more than a theoretical concept. You will experience a new power in you that you do not need to
fear, and a new gentleness and softness that does not need hostility
or other defenses. Then you will know how much there is in you to
love and respect. Unifying Love and Pleasure
You have recently come across, in your personal pathwork, a very
specic miscon ception that makes loving impossible as long as you
harbor it. When you mista kenly equate loving with the terrible
danger of being totally impoverished, even robbed of your very life,
how can you want to love? How can you let yourself love? According to this false idea, giving of yourself means losing what
you give without ever being replenished. If this were true, love
would indeed be impossible and giving a folly. Is it now conceivable
for you to see that this is not so; that reality is dierent? And if you
can see that love comes from the same inexhaustible well as
wisdom, as all life does, can you further perceive that you will not
need to deny your own natural instinct that wants to reach out, that
wants the pleasure of feeling love, warmth, and giving of yourself? And can you still foresee the next natural, organic step in the chain,
which is that if you can love, you will inevitably love yourself? This
is the reason why you fear pleasure. For pleasure not only seems
entirely undeserved, but love and pleasure are interchangeable. True pleasure is loving, and without loving pleasure just does not
exist. If you harbor love feelings your whole body is in a blissfulvibration, with certainty, with security, with peace, with
stimulation, with excitement in the most relaxed, pleasurable way. That cannot come through anything that is given to you when you
are merely a recipient. It comes when you vibrate with this feeling. Nor does this mean that you do not also receive love. The giving
and receiving become so interchangeable that it can often no longer
be discerned which is which. Both become indistinguishable in one
movement. But if your nature is as yet incapable of allowing the feeling of
love, you must fear bliss, since bliss and loving are the same thing. The misconception that giving is losing causes you to close up and
contract in all situations that might bring forth your natural
instincts. When you deny love and pleasure, you must inevitably
also deny your self-esteem. Your key must lie in seeing that your
inability to love is not an inborn aspect that you alone harbor
forever. It is a temporary block to loving, based on some false
premises that exist on a deeper level of your emotional experience. You can change this misconception any moment you truly and fully
look at it. Be blessed, every one of you. Be in peace. Be what you are,
honestly and truly, so that God manifests more and more in you. OceanofPDF.com14 
Meditation for Three Voices: Ego, Lower Self,
Higher Self
In this meditation, specically  geared to self-transformation,  we
engage the conscious ego to facilitate a dialogue between the higher
self and the lower self, so that what is in the unconscious reveals
itself to the conscious mind. Doing this, and noting down what
comes to the surface because it needs to be acknowledged and
transformed, can be an invaluable daily practice. With the strength
thus acquired, we can learn the art of positive life-creation . Greetings, all my friends here. Love and blessings, help and inner
strength are coming forth to sustain you and help you open up your
innermost being. I hope you will continue and cultivate this process,
so that you bring to life your entire being—creating wholeness in
you. There are many dierent kinds of meditation. Religious
meditation consists of reciting set prayers. There is meditation in
which the main emphasis is put on increasing the powers of
concentration. In another type of meditation spiritual laws are
contemplated and thought through. There is also meditation in
which the ego is made totally passive and will-less and the divine
allowed its own ux. These and other forms of meditation may have
more or less value, but my suggestion to the friends who work with
me is rather to use the available energy and time for confronting
that part of the self that destroys happiness, fulllment, andwholeness. You can never create the wholeness you truly aspire to,
whether or not this aim is articulated, if you bypass this
confrontation, This approach includes giving voice to the
recalcitrant aspect of the egotistical, destructive self that denies
happiness, fulllment, and beauty for any reason. To really understand the dynamics, the meaning, and the process
of meditation and derive the maximum benet from it, you must be
clear about certain psychic laws. One of those is that if meditation is
to be truly eective, three fundamental layers of personality must be
actively involved in it. These three fundamental personality levels we may call:
(1) the conscious ego level, with all conscious knowin g and
willing;
(2) the unconscious egotistical child level, with all its
ignorance, destructiveness, and claims to omnipotence; and
(3) the supraconscious universal self, with its superior wisdom,
power, and love, as well as with its comprehensive
understanding of events in human life. In eective meditation the conscious ego activates both the
unconscious, egotistical, destructive self and the supraconscious,
superior, universal self. A constant interaction among these three
levels must take place, requi ring great alertness on the part of your
conscious ego self. The Ego as Mediator
The conscious ego must be determined to allow the unconscious
egotistical self to reveal itself, to unfold, to manifest in awareness,
to express itself. This is neither as dicult nor as easy as it may
seem. It is dicult exclusively, my friends, because of the fear of not
being as perfect, as evolved, as good, as rational, as ideal, as one
wants to be and even prete nds to be, so that on the surface of
consciousness the ego becomes almost convinced of being theidealized self-image. This surface conviction is constantly
counteracted by the unconscious knowledge that this image is
untrue, with the result that secretly the whole personality feels
fraudulent and terried of exposure. It is a signicant sign of self-
acceptance and growth when a human being is capable of allowing
the egotistical, irrational, outright destructive part to manifest in the
inner awareness, and acknowledges it in all its specic detail. This
alone will prevent a dangero us indirect  manifestation of which the
person’s consci ousness is not aware because it is not connected with
it, so that the undesirable results seem to come from outside. So the conscious ego has to reach down and say, “Whatever is in
me, whatever is hidden that I ought to know about myself, whatever
negativity and destructiveness there is should be out in the open. I
want to see it, I commit myself to seeing it, regardless of the hurt to
my vanity. I want to be aware of how I deliberately refuse to see my
part wherever I am stuck, and how I therefore overconcentrate on
the wrongs of others.” This is one direction for meditation. The other direction must be toward the universal higher self,
which has powers that surpass the limitations of the conscious self. These higher powers should  also be called upon to expose the
destructive little self, so that resistance can be overcome. The ego-
will alone may be incapa ble of accomplishing this, but your
conscious self-determining ego can and must request the higher
powers to help. The universal consciousness should also be asked to
help you to understand the expressions of the destructive infant
correctly, without exaggeration, so that you do not go from ignoring
it to making it a monster. A person can easily uctuate from an
outer self-aggr andizement to a hidden, inner self-deprecat ion. When
the destructive infant reveals itself, one could fall prey to believing
that this destructive self is the ultimate, sad reality. For a complete
perspective on the revelation of the egotistic infant, one needs to ask
constantly the guidance of the universal self. When the infant begins to express itself more freely because the
ego allows it and receives it as a non-judgmental, interested, open
listener, collect this material for further study. Whatever reveals
itself should be explored for origins, results, further ramications.Ask yourself what underlying misconceptions are responsible for the
hate, spite, malice, or whatever negative feelings come to the
surface. When the misconceptions are recognized, guilt and self-hate
diminish proportionately. Another question to ask is, what are the consequences when for
the sake of a momentary satisfaction you give in to the destructive
impulses? When questions like these are clearly worked out, the
destructive aspects weak en—again in proportion to the
understanding of the particu lar cause and eect. Without this part
of the pathwork, the task is only half done. Meditation must deal
with the entire problem of unconscious negativity step by step. The interaction is threefold . The observing ego must initially want it
and commit itself to reaching in and exposing the negat ive side. It
has also to ask for the help of the universal self. When the infant
reveals itself, the ego should  again  ask for the help of the universal
self to strengthen the consci ousness for the further work, which is
the exploration of the underlying misconceptions and the heavy
price paid for them. The universal self can help—if you allow it—to
overcome the temptation to give in again and again to destructive
impulses. Such giving in does not necessarily result in action, but
manifests in emotional attitudes. The Meditative Attitude
Such meditation requires a great deal of time, patience,
perseverance, and determination. Remember that wherever you are
unfullled, wherever there are problems, wherever there is conict
in your life, your attitude should not be to concentrate with woe on
others or circumstances outside your control, but to reach into
yourself and explore the causes embedded in your own egocentric
childish level. Meditation is an absolute prerequisite here: It means
ingathering yourself;  calmly , quietly wanting to know the truth of this
particular circumstance and its causes. Then you need to quietly
wait for an answer . In this state of mind, peace will come to you even
before you fully understand why you have a particular negativity.This truthful approach to life will already give you a measure of the
peace and self-respect you lacked as long as you held others
responsible for what you had to suer. If such meditation is cultivated, you will discover a side of
yourself that you have never  known. In fact, you will come to know
two aspects: The highest universal powers will communicate
themselves to you to help you discover your most destructive,
ignorant side, which needs insight, purication, and change. Through your willingness to accept your lower self, the higher self
will become more of a real presence in you. In fact, you will
increasingly experience it as your real self. Many people meditate, but they neglect the two-sidedness of the
endeavor and therefore miss out on integration. They may indeed
actualize some of the universal powers that come into play
wherever the personality is suciently free, positive, open, but the
unfree, negative, closed areas are neglected. The actualized
universal powers will not, by themselves, enforce an integration
with the undeveloped part of the self. The conscious ego-self must
decide for this integration and ght for it, otherwise the universal
self cannot get through to the blocked-o areas. Partial integration
alone with the universal self may lead to even greater self-deception
if the consciousness is deluded by the actually existing partial
integration with divine powers and becomes even more  prone to
overlook the neglected side. This makes for lopsided development. The Changes Eected by the Pathwork Meditation
When you go through the entire process, a tremendous
strengthening of your whole self takes place. Several things begin to
happen within  your personality, my friends. In the rst place, your
conscious ego-personality itself becomes stronger and healthier. It
will be stronger in a good, relaxed sense, with more determination,
awareness, meaningful directedness and a greater power of
concentration with one-pointed attention. Second, you will cultivate
a much greater self-acceptance and understanding of reality. Unrealself-hate and self-disgust will go away. Equally unreal claims for
specialness and perfection also stop. False spiritual pride and vanity
as well as false self-humiliation and shame disappear. Through the
steady activati on of the higher powers, the self feels less and less
forlorn, helpless, lost, hopel ess, or empty. The whole sense of the
universe in all its marvelous possibilities reveals itself from within,
as the reality of this wider world shows you the way to accept and
change your destructive inner child. This gradual change enables  you to accept all your feelings and
let the energy ow through your being. When you accept your
small, petty, mean side without thinking that it is the total, nal
reality, then the beauty, love, wisdom, and innite power of the
superior self become more real. Dealing with your lower self leads
to balanced development, integration, and a deep, reassuring sense
of your own reality. Realistic, well-founded self-liking must result. When you see the truth in yourself and it becomes second nature
to want and commit yourself to this truth, you will detect an ugly
side in you, which until this point you were too resistant to see. Simultaneously, you also detect this great, universal, spiritual power
that is in you and that in fact is you. Paradoxical as it may seem, the
more you can accept the mean little creature, the ignorant little
infant in you without losing your sense of self-worth, the better you
will perceive the greatness of your innermost being, provided you
truly do not use your discoveries about the little self to beat yourself
down. The lower self wants to seduce the conscious ego to stay
within the narrow connes of neurotic self-beating, hopelessness,
and morbid capitulation, which always cover unexpress ed hatred. The conscious  ego must prevent this stratagem using all its
knowledge and resources. Observe this habit of self-beating,
hopelessness, and capitulation in yourself and counteract it—not by
pushing it underground again , but by using what you know. Talking
to this part of yourself you can bring to bear on it all the knowledge
of your conscious ego. If this is not sucient, request the powers
beyond your consciousness to come to your help. As you get to know both the lowest and the highest in you, you
discover the function, the capacities, but also the limitations of theconscious ego. On the conscious level the ego’s function is wanting
to see the full truth of both the lowest and highest in you, wanting
with all of its strength to change and give up destructiv eness. The
limitation is that the ego-consciousness cannot execute this alone
and must turn for help and guidance to the universal self and wait
patiently without doubting or impatiently pushing. This waiting
needs an open attitude about the way the help might manifest. The
fewer preconceived notions one has, the faster help will come forth
and be recognizable. Help from the universal consciousness may
come in an entirely dierent manner than your concepts may make
room for, and this might prove to be an obstacle. An open, waiting,
accepting, and positive attitude is also necessary, though
recognizing its absence, however, can also become a constructive
acknowledgment of where the self is at the moment. The Reeducation of the Destructive Self
So far we have discussed two phases of the meditation process:
rst the recognition of the unconscious, destructive egotistical self
and then the understanding of the underlying misconceptions, the
causes and eects, the meaning and the price to be paid for the
present destructive attitudes. The third phase  is the reorient ation and
reeducation of the destructive part of the self. The destructive infant is
now no longer entirely unconscious. This infant with its false beliefs,
its stubborn resistance, its spitefulness and murderous rage, must be
reoriented. Reeducation, however, cannot take place unless you are
fully aware of every aspect of this destructive infant’s beliefs and
attitudes. This is why the rst part of meditation—the revealing,
exploratory phase—is so fundamental. It goes without saying that
this rst phase is not something one gets over with, so that then the
second, and later the third phase can begin. This is not a sequential
process; the phases overlap. What I will say now must be taken with great care, other wise the
subtleties involved will not be communicated. Reeducation might
very easily be misunderstood and lead toward a renewedsuppression or repression of the destructive part that is beginning to
unfold. You have to take great care and deliberately aim to avoid
this, without, however, allow ing the destructive part to engulf you. The best attitude toward the unfolding destructive part is one of
detached observation, of unjudging, unharried acceptance. The
more it unfolds, the more you must remind yourself that neither the
truth of its existence, nor its destructive attitudes are nal. They are
not the only attitudes you have, nor are they absolute. Above all,
you have the power inherent in you to change anything. You may
lack the incen tive to change when you are not fully aware of the
damage the destructive part of you does to your life when it goes
unrecognized. It is therefore another important aspect of this phase
of pathwork meditation to look deeply and widely for indirect
manifestations. How does unexpressed hate manifest in your life? Perhaps by making you feel undeserving and afraid or by inhibiting
your energies. This is only one example; all indirect manifestations
have to be explored. It is important here to remind yourself that where there is life,
there is constant movement, even if this movement is temporarily
paralyzed: Matter is paralyze d life-stu. The frozen blocks of energy
in your body are momentarily hardened, immobilized life-stu. This
life-stu can always be made to move again, but only consciousness
can do it. For life-stu is lled with consciousness, as well as
energy; whether this energy is momentarily blocked and frozen or
whether this consciousness is momentarily dimmed does not matter. Meditation must mean, above all, that the part of you that is already
conscious and moving actual ly intends to make blocked energy and
dimmed consciousness moving and aware again. The best way to do
this is to allow the frozen and dimmed consciousness rst of all to
express itself. Here you need a receptive attitude, instead of a
reaction that what comes forth is devastating and catastrophic. The
panicky attitude toward one’s own unfolding destructive infant does
more damage than the destructive infant itself. You must learn to
listen to it, to take it in, to calmly receive its expressions without
hating yourself, without pushing the infant away. Only with such anattitude can you come to understand the causes of its underlying
destructiveness. Only then can the process of reeducation begin. The denying, panicky, frightened, self-rejecting, and perfection-
demanding attitude you usually have makes every part of this
meditation impossible. It does not permit unfoldment; it does not
permit explora tion of the causes of what might be unfolded; and it
certainly does not permit reeducation. It is the accepting and
understanding attitude that enables the conscious ego to assert its
benign dominion over violently destructive and stagnant psychic
matter. As I have said many times, kindness, rmness, and deep
determination against your own destructiveness are necessary. It is a
paradox: Identify with the destructiveness and yet be detached from
it. Accept that it is you, but also know that there is another part of
you that can say the nal word if you so choose. For this you need
to widen the limitations of your conscious ego expressions to
include saying at any moment: “I will be stronger than my
destructiveness and will not be hampered by it. I determine that my
life will be at its best and fullest and that I will and can overcome
the blocks in me that make me want to remain unhappy. This
determination of mine will bring in the higher powers that will
make me capable of experien cing more and more bliss because I can
let go of the doubtful pleasure of being negative, which I now fully
recognize.” This is the task of the conscious ego. Then and then only
can it also call into play the powers of guidance, wisdom , strength,
and a new inner feeling of love that comes from being penetrated by
the universal self. For reeducatio n, too, has to proceed through the relationship of
the three interactive levels, just as it was necessary for making the
destructive side conscious and exploring its deeper  meaning.
The_Pathwork_of_Self-Transformatio_by_Eva_Pierrakos.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        It is so because the crisis inevitably comes later
on, but by then is no longer connected with its source and therefore
it hurts more. When you make up your mind, however, saying, “I
will not take cover, I will go through it” the resources within the
human soul will become almost instantly available. These resources
remain obscure to those who still tend to escape. They then feel
weak and do not believe in their own capacities to actualize the
innite powers of the Universal Spirit. They do not know their
potential, the strength that will arise, the inspiration that will come. Only when you decide to go through and ask for help in meditation
do these resources become  available. Then you will sense an
awakened trust that the conscious ego is not alone. It is not the only
faculty available to deal with the issue. I bless you and ask you to open up your innermost being, your
whole soul, all your psychic forces, to let go of the cramp that
denies truth and change, therefore self-expression and light. Open
up in this way, to let the blessed power constantly present within
you permeate your whole being. A blessing comes forth that will meet with the inner power of
which I have spoken, thus doubly strengthening you. Continue your
growth so that your whol eness, your connectedness with the
universe, will grow and give you more of the joy that is inherently
your birthright. Be blessed, be in peace. OceanofPDF. com12 
The Meaning of Evil and Its Transcendence
It is impossible to deny that evil exists on earth. What appro ach
can we take to deal with it so that humanity can transcend its
present painful state. If we strive for a unied consciousness, we
would need to integrate evil, but how can we integrate something
that is so contrary to everything that we consciously strive for. If
we deny evil, since we know that in the greater reality it does not
exist, will it also cease to exist on our plane of manifestation. Can
it be that there is evil in all of us, and, if so, what can we do about
it. Greetings and blessings to all my old and new friends. Human beings are continually confronted with the deep problem
of how to handle the destructive forces residing within themselves
and others. This problem seems unending, for ever since the
beginning of human existence, theories and philosophies have been
built around it. Your search has always been concerned, directly or
indirectly, with this great issue. Does Evil Exist. There are usually two types of answers given about the existence
of evil, the religious and the philosophical. One stresse s evil as aforce separate from and oppo sed to good, the other denie s that evil
exists at all. To deny evil on humanity’s plane of consciousness is as unrealistic
as to believe that in ultimate reality two separate forces  exist: one
good and one evil. Such a belief implies that the evil force must be
destroyed or whisked away, as if anything could be made to
disappear in the universe. Only those who search for the truth
between these two alternatives can nd the answers. Most religions take a dualist ic approach to the great question of
evil, seeing it as a force opposed to good. The dualistic approach
reinforces your fear of yourself and your guilt; therefore, it only
increases the chasm within your soul. The energies of fear and guilt
are used to force yourself to be good. The blindness, compulsion,
and the articial concept of life that accompany this forcing create
self-perpetuating patterns, with many negative ramications. On the other hand, there are philosophies that postulate that evil
just does not exist; it is an illusion. Such philosophy has a part of the
truth, just as its religious opposite does, which recognizes the
danger of evil, its life-defea ting power, and the unhappiness and
suering it brings. The postulate that evil is an illusion is true in the
sense that there is innately only one great creative powe r. There is
union, for all is one in the consciousness of those who have
transcended dualism. As is so often true, both of these opposing teachings express great
truths, but the exclusiveness with which they are conceived and
perpetuated ultimately renders their truth untrue. The denial of evil
as a reality leads to wishful thinking, further blindness, and the
denial of the self; it decreases rather than increases awareness. Thus,
a false picture  is created—the manifestation of the present state of
humankind. Both views of evil lead to repression; yet acknowledging evil also
leads to the possibility of further destructiveness. It might lead to
justifying and condoning truly undesirable things, such as self-
righteous acting out. In such a case it is the guilt that would be
repressed, creating further splitting and duality. Let us now try tond a way to avoid either of these pitfalls and to reconc ile the two
general approaches to evil. Right Acceptance of Evil
All suering comes exclusively from one’s own destructiveness,
negativity, or evil—whatev er name you give it. You have all
experienced how threatened, anxious, and uncomfortable you feel
when you are confronted with some of your undesirable attitudes,
traits, and characteristics. This reaction must be understood in a
much deeper way. The meaning of such uncomfortable, anxious
reaction is plainly an expres sion that says, “Such and such should
not exist in me. ” All the defenses you have so painstakingly erected
serve to protect you not only from the evil of others, but primarily
from your own. If you examine the cause each time you feel
anxious, you will always nd that, in the last analysi s, you are
apprehensive of your own evil, regardless of how threatening
another person  or an outside event appears. If you then translate
this anxiety into clear-cut words, thus verbalizing your inner
thought that certain attitudes or feelings “should not exist in me,”
you can then confront your attitude toward evil in a much better
way. For the evil itself is not half as damaging as your attitude to it. We shall come back to this later. From now on, instead of habitually evading, which breeds
emotional illness, problems, and suering, catch your fear and the
thought behind the fear: “I should not be that way. ” If this fear is
ignored, the problem becomes worse. Evil as Distorted Creative Power
Our aim on this path is precisely the knowing and accep tance of
the evil. The word “acceptan ce” has been used a great deal for lack
of a better one, but the meaning often gets lost behind the word, so
we must pay more attention to how this acceptance comes about. For only when acceptance occurs in the right way can evil be
incorporated and reformed in the truest sense of the word. You can
then transform a force that has gone awry. Most human beings
totally forget or ignore the fact that what is worst in them is
essentially highly desirable creative power and universal ow and
energy. Only when you truly realize this, my friends, will you learn
to cope with every aspect of yourself. Almost all human beings, with very, very few exceptions, accept,
know, and only want to know, a relatively small part of their total
personality. This limitation is, of course, a terrible loss. Not being
aware of that within which is undesirable in its present
manifestation shuts them o from what is already clear, liberated,
puried, good. It also prevents most individuals from loving and
respecting themselves because they have no real percepti on of their
divine heritage. Their actual, already manifest goodness seems
unreal, even fake, because they refuse to tackle the destructive
elements in themselves. But what is even more important and
fundamental is that shutting o this undesirable part causes it to
remain stagnant and paralyzed so that it cannot change. The price of recognizing and accepting the destructive, evil aspect
of the self seem s high, but it really is not. By contrast, the price of
denying it is enormous. You may grope in confusion until you nd a
way to accept your destructive impulses and desires without
condoning them. Because you consider something in you bad, you
believe all of you is bad. What you need to do is to identi fy with the
part of you that is observing and not the rest that you observe. Understand it without identifying with it. You must learn to
evaluate negative impulses and desires realistically, without falling
into the trap of projection and self-justication. Such understanding
requires continual inspiration from the higher forces within and
deliberate requests for help in awakening and maintaining
awareness of these destructive aspects and of the proper method to
handle them. Whenever you are in an unpleasant mood, a threatening situation,
confusion and darkness, you can be sure that regardless of the outer
circumstances, the problem arises from denial and fear of your owndestructive attitudes, and your ignorance about how to handle them. Admitting this brings immediate relief and deactivates these
negative powers almost instantly. Learn by what steps you can
incorporate this power rather than shut it o. The rst step must be applying the theory that destructiveness,
evil, is not a nal separate force. You must think about this not
merely in general, philosophical terms. Rather, you must take the
specic aspects of yourself that make you feel guilty and afraid, and
apply this knowledge to all that is most distasteful in yourself and
others. No matter how ugly some of those manifestations are—
whether it be cruelty, spite, arrogance, contempt, selshness,
indierence, greed, cheatin g, or something else—you can bring
yourself to realize that every one of these traits is an energy current,
originally good and beautiful and life-arming. By searching in this directio n, you. will come to underst and and
experience how this or that specic hostile impulse was originally a
good force. When you understand that, you will have made a
substantial inroad toward transforming the hostility and freeing the
energy that has either been channeled in a truly undesirable,
destructive way, or become frozen and stagnant. Articulate clearly
the insight that these ugly traits are a power that can be used any
way you wish. This power—the same energy that may now manifest
as hostility, envy, hatred, rage, bitterness, self-pity, or blame—can
become a creative power to build happiness, pleasure, love,
expansion, for yourself and others around you. In other words, you have to learn to acknowledge that the way
the power manifests is undesirable, but the energy current behind
this manifestation is desirabl e in itself, for it is made of the life-stu
itself. It contai ns consciousness  and creative energy. It contains every
possibility to manifest and express life, to create new life. It contains
all the best of life, as you experience it—and much more. So, too,
the best of life that has revea led itself to you contains the possibility
of the very worst. If you can envisage the possibilities of all life
manifestations, because life is a continuous owing, moving, ongoing
process, you can never become xated on the nalities, which create
error, confusion, dualism. You will see that by denying  the evil in you, you do greater harm
to the whole of your personality, to your manifest spirituality, than
you realize. For by denying it, you inactivate an essential part of
your energies and creative forces, so they stagnate. From stagnation,
putrefaction follows. Matter putrees when it stagnates, when it can
no longer move. The same is true of consciousness. Matter is always a condensation and manifestation of
consciousness and energy. The way the energy ows—or does not
ow—and the form it takes when it condenses depends on the
attitude of consciousness “behind,” or, rather, intrinsic to, a
particular aspect of creation. Destructiveness is an erroneous form of consciousness. It must
lead, either directly through acting out and giving it direct
expression, or indirectly, through denial, that is, stagnation, to a
negation of life. This is why some supposedly negative emotions are
actually desira ble. For instance, anger can further life and be
directed against the negation of life. Denial of anger turns into
hostility, cruelty, spite, self-hate, guilt, confusion between blame of
others and blame of self, and is thus a destructive energy current. When evil is understood to be intrinsically a divine energy ow,
momentarily distorted due to specic wrong ideas, concepts, and
perceptions, it is no longer rejected in its essence but assimilated. This is precisel y what you nd most dicult to do. In fact, you nd
it so dicult that you tend to forget even those aspects in you that
are already free of distortio n, evil, and destructiveness, that are
liberated and clear, that are good and beautiful and divine. All your striving and goodwill are beautiful. Even your pangs of
conscience, notwithstanding the misplaced guilt, spring  from the
best and most beautiful manifestations of consciousness. You will
deny, ignore, fail to experien ce this best in you as long as you deny,
ignore, fail to experience the evil in you. You distort your concept of
yourself when you deny any part of yourself, no matter how ugly it
may be in its present form. The essential key to totally integrating the evil is under standing
its original nature and the indwelling possibility that it may
manifest again in its original form. This must be the aim, myfriends. As long as you try to become good by denying evil, by
forcing yourself to be what you cannot yet be, and what you can in
fact never be, you remain in a painful state of inner split, partial
self-denial, and paralysis of vital forces within you. I say “what you
can never be,” because if your expectation is to destroy or magically
whisk away a vital part of yourself and not to accept the intrinsic
desirability of all the creative energy contained in even your most
destructive aspects, you cannot become whole. Cultivate this altered
attitude. The new attitude of acceptance does not mean condoning,
excusing, or rationalizing your undesirable aspects. Quite the
contrary: It means fully acknowledging them, giving honest
expression to them, without nding excuses or blaming others, but
not feeling hopeless and self-rejecting about them either. This seems
like a tall order, but it is certainly possible to acquire this attitude if
you make a sincere eort and truly pray that guidance be given to
you for this very purpose. Liberating the Inner Beauty
When you no longer negate your ugliness, you will no longer have
to negate your beauty. There  is so much beauty in every one of you
that is already free. You actually manifest beauty that you totally
negate, ignore, fail to perceive and experience. And I do not mean
only potential, as yet to be developed beauty; I mean beauty that is
really present. You can think of this and pray to see it in yourself, as you pray to
see the ugliness. When you can perceive both, not just one,
exclusive of the other, you will have made a substantial step toward
a realistic perception of life and of yourself that will enable you to
integrate what now tears you asunder. By keeping both your beaut y and your ugliness in mind at all
times, you will also see both sides in others. You tend to completely
reject and negate people whose destructiveness you perceive, and
react to them exactly as you do toward yourself. Or you emotionallyreact to their goodness and inner beauty, while unrealistically
overlooking their ugly side. You cannot yet grasp the presence of
duality in yourself, and therefore neither can you see it in others. This creates continual coni cts and strife. Such distortion and lack
of awareness cause you to deny and paralyze the creative process
itself. Only by accepting the duality can you truly transcend it. Transformation
The overtly destructive attitudes are never the real evil. If you
truly acknowl edge them, you remain in the ow. The greatest
hatred, the most spiteful vindictiveness, the worst impulses of
cruelty, if honestly and squarely admitted, neither acted out
irresponsibly nor repressed and denied, but fully accepted, will
never become harmful. To the degree they are seen, faced, and
admitted, such feelings will diminish in intensity and must sooner or
later convert into owing, life-giving energy. Hate will turn into
love, cruelty into healthy self-assertion, stagnation into joy and
pleasure. So this is, my friends, what you have to learn. The key is to
encounter the destructive force so that you can transform it back to
its original nature, thus incorporating it into your whole being and
creating with the life-energy at your disposal. Are there any questions. QUESTION : As this lecture says, there are things in me that I feel are
wrong, evil. Yet I enjoy them; they feel pleasurable. But I feel guilty. For
instance, I overspend money. I negate that aspect of myself completely. Can you help me. ANSWER : This is a good example. What you describe is quite
typical. You are confronted with an insoluble predicament: Either
you give up all pleasure connected with overspending and
irresponsibility in order to become decent, mature, realistic, self-responsible and safe, or you take some pleasure from the negative
trait but at the tremendous cost of guilt, self-deprivation, insecurity,
and fear of not being able to run your own life. Once you see that behind the compulsion to overspend and be
irresponsible is a legitimate yearning for pleasure, expansion, and
new experience, this predicam ent will cease to exist. In other words,
you must incorporate the essence  of this wish without acting out the
destructiveness of it. You will then have much less dicu lty putting
the wish into eect in a realistic way that will not defeat you in the
end. You are now stuck in battling with one of these typical
either/or problems. How can you really want to give up
irresponsibility if responsibility implies living on a narrow  margin of
pleasure, and conning your self-expression. Since you do not really
want to give up the irresponsibility, you feel guilty. Thus you reject
that vital part of you that rightfully wishes to experience the
pleasure of creation at its fullest, but does not yet know how
without exploiting others and being parasitic. If, however, you can
fully accept the beautiful force striving for full pleasure underneath
the irresponsibility and value it as such, you will also nd how to
give it expression without infringing on others, without violating
your own laws of balance. You will not have to pay the needless
cost of worry, anxiety, guilt, and inability to manage well. You only
pay that when you sacrice peace of mind for a short-lived pleasure. The pleasure will be deeper, more lasting, and totally free of guilt
when you combine its rightfulness with self-discipline. If you can
reconcile desire for pleasure  with self-discipline and responsibility,
you will expres s the inner knowledge that says, “I want to enjoy life. There is unlimited abundance  in the universe for every contingency. There is no limit to what is possible. There are marvelou s things to
be experienced. There are many beautiful means of self-expression. I
can realize them and bring them into my life if I can nd another,
not self-destructive, way to express and obtain them. ” The discipline
will be much easier to acquire, the willingness to do so will grow,
when you know that you have a perfect right to use it for the
purpose of increasing pleasure and self-expression. My dearest friends, I have given you new material that requires a
great deal of attention. Bring it to bear on your own specic
situation. Open  up your innermost being to applying this material. Do not apply it only theoretically, in general terms, but see really
where you deny what is in you out of fear and guilt, thereby
paralyzing the best in you. To those of you who are discouraged and feel hopeless I can only
say: You are in illusion and error when you feel that way. Realize
this and ask for the truth, which is that there is no reason for
hopelessness, and dicult periods need only to be understood and
worked through to make them stepping stones  for opening your lives
further and bringing more light and self-expression into them. Receive the love and blessings, my dearest friends, be in peace.
By acknowledging and accepting our own destructive impulses and desires, we can transform them and redirect them towards constructive channels, rather than repressing or denying them, which can lead to stagnation and paralysis.
What is the significance of acknowledging and accepting our own destructive impulses and desires?
The key is to understand and accept the true nature of our destructive impulses and desires, rather than trying to suppress or deny them, as this can lead to further harm and stagnation.
What is the key to overcoming self-rejection and self-hate?
By accepting and acknowledging our own destructive impulses and desires, we can redirect them towards constructive channels, rather than trying to suppress or deny them. This allows us to experience a new sense of self-acceptance and self-love.
How can I reconcile my desire for pleasure with my self-discipline?
The conscious ego plays a crucial role in the process of self-transformation, as it is responsible for facilitating the dialogue between the higher and lower selves, and for guiding the process of self-acceptance and self-love.
What is the role of the conscious ego in the process of self-transformation?
Recognizing and accepting our true nature is essential, as it allows us to understand and transform our destructive impulses and desires, rather than trying to suppress or deny them, which can lead to stagnation and paralysis.
What is the importance of recognizing and accepting our true nature, rather than trying to change or deny it?