Reeducation depends on the eorts of both the conscious ego, with
its instructions to and dialogue with the ignorant egotistical child,
and on the intervention and guidance of the universal, spiritual self. Each in its own way will eect the gradual maturing of this infant. The ego determines its goal to change the consciousness of the
negative inner child by wanti ng this and committing itself to it. This
is its task. Full execution of this task is made possible by thespiritual inux from the deeper personality that has to be
deliberately activated. Here the consciousness must again adopt a
twofold approach: One is activity that asserts its desire to transform
the self-defeating aspects, leading the dialogue and calmly but
rmly instruct ing the ignorant child. The other is a more passive,
patient waiting  for the nal, but always gradual, manifestation of
the universal powers. It is they who bring about the inner change
when the feelings lead to new, more resilient reactions. Thus good
feelings will replace those that were negative or dead. Rushing and pressuring the resisting part is as useless and
ineective as accepting its direct refusal to budge. When the
conscious ego does not recognize that there is a part of the self that
actually refuses every step toward health, unfoldment, and the good
life, a counteractive movement may be one of hurried, impatient
pressure. Both derive from self-hate. When you feel stymied and
hopeless, take it as a sign for you to search for that part in you that
says, “I do not wish to chang e, I do not wish to be constru ctive.” Set
out and nd this voice. Use the meditative dialogue here again, to
explore and let the worst in you express itself. You can see my friends, how expressing the negative part,
exploring its meaning, cause and eect, and reeducating it must be
a constantly uctuating process, alternating and often simultaneous. See how the three levels of interaction combine in the eort of
purication and integration. Meditation functions here as a constant
articulation of what was previously unarticulated. It is a threefold
communication and confrontation: from the ego toward the
destructive self and from the ego toward the universal self, so that
the universal self can aect both the ego and the destructive self. Your own sensitivity will grow day by day to feel what exactly is
needed at any given point on your evolutionary path. A Way to Begin Meditation
Each day brings forth new tasks, exciting tasks, beautiful tasks. They should not be approach ed in a spirit of wanting to get it overwith, as if only then could life begin. On the contrary, the
meditation process is living at its best. You may begin each
meditation by asking yoursel f, “What do I really feel at this moment
about this or that issue? In what respect am I dissatised? What is it
I may be disregarding?” Then you may request the universal spirit
in you to help you nd these  particular answers. Wait trustingly for
what may unfold. Only when some part of you unfolds can you have
a direct confrontation, communication, or dialogue with it and ask
it further questions, as well as instruct it. With patience and
determination you can remold the distorted part, but only after it
has fully expressed itself. You can re-form, reorient stagnant psychic
energy with your willingness to be totally honest, totally
constructive, loving, and open. If you nd an unwillingness in this
regard, then that must be confronted, explored, and reeducated. This is the only meaningful way in which meditation can move
your life toward the resolution of problems, toward growth and
fulllment, and toward unfolding your best potential. If you do this,
my friends, the time will come when trusting life will no longer
sound like a vague, faraway theory that you cannot put into
personal action. Instead, your trust in life, as well as self-love in the
healthiest sense, will ll you more and more, based on realistic
considerations, instead of wishful thinking. Reconciliation of the Paradoxes of Your Life
As your consciousness expands, the paradoxes and opposites that
constantly puzzle you in life will be reconciled. Let us examine rst
the paradox of desire. Both desire and desirelessness are important
spiritual attitudes. Only to the dualistic, separated mind do they
seem like opposites leading to confusion about which is right or
wrong. Human beings  desire, for only desire can bring you to the fourth
aspect of meditation. This is the expansion of your conscious
concepts in order to create new and better life-substance,  hence life
experience. If you do not desire a better state of being and morefulllment, you will have no material to create and mold life-
substance. Visualization of a fuller state presupposes desire. These
concepts must be fostered by the conscious ego, and the universal
consciousness must intervene to help create a more expanded state. If you see desire and desire lessness as mutually exclusive, you
cannot grasp or feel the necessary attitude. Desire must exist for one
to believe in new possibilities and to unfold into greate r states of
fulllment and self-expressio n. But if desire is tense, urgent, and
contracted, it forms a block. Such desire implies, “I do not believe
that what I want can happen,” which is, perhaps, the result of an
underlying, “I really do not want it,” because of some misconception
or unjustied fears, or an unwillingness to pay the price. This
underlying denial creates too tense a desire. Therefore  a kind of
desirelessness must be present that could be expressed as the
statement, “I know I can and will have such and such, even if it is
not realizable right now, in this or that specic form. I trust the
universe and my own good will suciently that I can wait and will
strengthen myself along the way to cope well with the temporary
frustration of this desire.”
What are the common denominators of healthy desire and healthy
desirelessness that make meditation and indeed all life-expression
real and beaut iful? First there is an absence of fear and the presence
of trust. If you fear frustration, unfulllment, and their
consequences, the tension of your soul movement will prohibit the
fulllment you want. Eventually you will even give up all desire. Then desirelessness will be distorted, misunderstood, and of the
wrong kind because too much tense desire is present. In the nal
analysis such tense desire comes from fear caused by the infantile
belief that you will be annihilated if you do not have what you
want. Hence you do not trust your ability to cope with lack of
fulllment, which makes you inordinately frightened of it. So the
vicious circle continues. The fear induces a cramp that becomes a
denial of desire. These very subtle, obscure attitudes need to be
explored in your meditation, so that you can come to the fourth
stage of meaningful meditatio n. In this stage you express your desire
with condence in your ability to cope with both non-fulllmentand fulllment, and therefore with a benign universe, capable of
yielding to you what you long for. The obstacles along the way can
be dealt with when you know  that the ultimate state of bliss will be
yours anyway. Then desire and desirelessness will not be
irreconcilable paradoxes, but complementary attitudes. Similarly, it seems paradoxical to postulate that both involvement
and detachment must exist in the healthy psyche. Again there must
be a twofold approach to the understanding of this seeming
contradiction. If detachment is indierence because you are afraid
to be involved and unwilling to risk pain and scared of loving, then
detachment is a distortion of the real attitude. If involvem ent means
merely an expression of a super-tense will that your infantile
insistence on having what you want right away generates, then the
healthy, productive version of involvement is inverted. I will choose a third example of apparent opposites that make a
comprehensive whole when not distorted. Let us take the inner
attitudes of activity and passivity . On the dualistic level these two
seem to be mutually exclusive. How can you be both active and
passive in a harmonious way? The right inner interaction includes
both these inner movements. For instance, meditation,  as I have
explained it here, must include both. You are active when you
explore your inner levels of consciousness; you are active when you
commit yourself and struggle to recognize and overcome resistance;
you are active when you question yourself further to let the
previously unadmitted destructive side express itself; you are active
when you have a dialogue and reeducate the; infantile, ignorant
aspects of yourself; you are active when you use your ego-
consciousness to enlist the help of the spiritual consciousness; you
are active when you create a new concept of life experience, as
opposed to an old, limiting one. When the ego deals with both other
“universes” to establish a connection, you are active. But you must
also learn to wait passively for the unfoldment and expression of
both these other levels. Then the right blend of activity and
passivity preva ils in the psyche. The universal powers cannot come
to fruition in a human being unless both the active and the passive
movements are present.These are very important concepts to understand, to use, and to
observe within  yourself. Find where they are distorted and where
they are functioning well. When the three-way interaction within
yourself takes place, there is always a harmonious blend between
desire and desirelessness; between involvement and detachment;
between activi ty and passivity. When this balance becomes a steady
state, the destructive infant grows up. It is not killed or annihilated. It
is not exorcised. Its frozen powers resolve themselves into live
energy, which you will actually feel, my friends, as a new, living
force. This infant must not be slain. It must be instructed so that
salvation can come to it, liberating it, bringing it to growth. If you
work toward this goal, you will steadily move closer to unifying the
ego level and the universal self. This is powerful material. Be blessed, be in peace, be with God. OceanofPDF.com15 
Connection Between the Ego and the Universal
Power
Energy and consciousness manifest as the undivided power of the
universe. This power is the creative life principle residing within all
of us. However,  human beings often lose conscious contact with this
creative, divine power and trust the limited ego more than the
higher self within. What is the fear behind this separation? How can
we detect our shame of what is best in us, and how can we give
over to the universal power within? Greetings, my dearest friends . May this lecture give you renewed
insight and strength, so that your attempts to nd yourself—who
you are, where you belong, and how to fulll yourself—become a
little easier. May you nd a new shaft of light through these words
by truly opening up to new aspects of ideas you have perhaps heard
before but that have not as yet become personally experienced truth
for you. The Universal Life Principle and the “Forgetful” Ego
The meaningfulness and fulllment of one’s life depend , in the
last analysis, entirely on the relationship between your ego and the
universal life principle—the real self as we also call it. If this
relationship is balanced, everything falls into place. The universallife principle is life itself. It is eternal consciousness in its deepest
and highest sense, eternal movement and pleasure suprem e. Since it
is life, it cannot die. It is the essence of all that breathes, moves,
vibrates. It blows all, for it constantly creates and perpetu ates itself,
because it cannot be untrue to its own nature. Every individu al consciousness is universal consciousn ess—not
just a part of it, for a part implies only a little—but wherever
consciousness exists, it is the original consciousness. This original
consciousness, or creative life principle, takes various forms. When
in the process  of individualization an entity passes the point of
remembering its connection with its origin, a disconnection occurs. The particular consciousness continues to exist and to contain the
universal consc iousness, but it becomes oblivious to its own nature,
its laws, and its potentials. This, in short, is the state of human
consciousness as a whole. The part that has forgotten its connection
to the life principle we call the separate ego. When you begin to become aware of the life principle, you
discover that it has always been there but you have not noticed it
because you were under the illusion of existing separately. It is
therefore not entirely accurate to state that the universal
consciousness “manifests.” It would be more correct to say that you
begin to notice it. You may notice the life principle’s ever-present
power as autonomous consciousness or as energy. The separated
ego-personality possesses both, but the ego intelligence is inferior by
far to the universal intelligence whether or not you can recognize it
and put it to use. The same applies to the energy. Consciousness and
energy are not separate aspects of universal life; they are one . One of the universal life principle’s basic characteristics, whether
expressed as autonomous consciousness or as energy, is that it is
spontaneous. It cannot possibly reveal itself through a laborious
process or a cramped, overconcentrated state. Its manifestation is
always an indirect result of eort. Eort needs to be expended for
the sake of seeing the truth about oneself, of giving up a specic
illusion, of overcoming a barrier to wanting to be constructive
rather than destructive, and not for an as yet theoretical process
called self-realization that promises to feel good.Each step toward seeing the truth in the self, with a genuine
desire for constructive participation in the creative process of life,
frees the self. This is how the spontaneous processes begin. They are
never consciously volitional. The more you fear the unknown, the
letting go, the involuntary processes in your own body, the less you
can experience the spontaneous life principle in the self. The life principle may manifest as previously unim aginable
wisdom in solving one’s personal problems or in cultivating one’s
creative talents. It can become a new vibrant way of experiencing
life, giving a new avor to all one is doing and seein g. The life
principle is always safe, always holds out justied hope that will
never be disappointed. There is never any fear in this new life
experience, yet it cannot be pushed and forced. It comes about
exactly to the degree that you no longer fear the involuntary
processes, those inner mechanisms that are not under the direct
control of the ego. The Conict Between Yearning For and Fearing the Real
Self
Humanity nds itself in the paradoxical position of deeply
yearning for the fruits of these involuntary processes, yet fearing
and battling them. The conict is terrible and tragic, and it can be
resolved only when you let go of the fear. All psychological problems come, in the nal analysis, from this
much deeper existential conict, far beyond those individual
personal diculties the child experiences that later cause inner
problems and misconceptions. All life moves toward resolving this
basic conict. But such resolution can only happen if rst the
individual neurotic conicts are found and understood. You need to
learn to see and accept whatever is real and true in yourself, in
others, in life. Honesty must prevail to stop one’s attemp ts to cheat
life, no matter how subtly. All character defects have to be removed
by fully acknowledging and objectively observing them withoutplunging into despair or denying them. This attitude in itself
removes the defects innitely more eectively than any other
approach. Only then is one able to perceive the existential conict
between the ego and the universal consciousness. Misinterpretations of the Universal Life Principle in
Religion
The spontaneously manifesting universal consciousness has
nothing to do with religious  precepts of a removed deity , or a life
beyond this physical life. These are misinterpretations that occur
when a person senses the universal life principle and gropingly tries
to convey this experience to those whose ego is still in conict with
it. Such misinterpretations must alienate you from your immediate
self and from your practical daily life. People wish to nd a compr omise between their yearning, which
comes from the deep sense of the present possibilities available to
them, and their fear. They have created it in every formalized
religion that removes God from the self and from daily  life, that
splits human nature into the spiritual and the physical being. Thus
total fulllment is perforce removed from the now into a life after
death. All such views and approaches to life are nothing but a
compromise between what one senses could exist and what one
fears. This fear goes beyond the neurotic fears that stem from
misconceptions and personally experienced traumas. What is this basic fear of letting go of the outer ego and letting
the universal processes unfold and carry you? It is the
misunderstanding that giving up the ego means giving up existence. In order to get a little better  understanding of this problem, let us
consider how the ego formed itself out of universal life. Individuation is an integral aspect of the universal life force. Creative life is always moving, reaching out, expanding and
contracting, nding new areas of experience and branching into
new territories. It nds forever new ways to experience itself. As anindividual consciousness separates itself further and further from its
original source , it “forgets” its essence and becomes oblivious of its
own principles and laws until it seems to be a totally separate
entity. Individ ual existence is, in its present state, assoc iated only
with separate existence. Giving up the ego must then appear to the
individual as an annihilation  of its unique personal existence. This is the current condition of human beings. You live under the
illusion that life, the sense of “I am,” can be found only in your
“separate” existence. This illusion has brought death into the human
realm, for death is nothing but this illusion being carried to its nal
absurdity. The realization that the separate ego-existence is an illusion
constitutes an extremely important step in the evolution of
humanity. Any work of self-actualization brings this issue into very
clear focus. As you look deeply at the immediately availab le truth of
yourselves as individuals, you will nd that you and the creative life
principle are one. The more you look at yourself in truth and shed
your illusions about yourself, the more you will realize that
individual existence is not surrendered when the involuntary
processes of the creative life principle are allowed to take over and
integrate with the ego functions. Those who have begun to experience the immediacy of this
greater life in a renewal of energy nd, paradoxically, that the more
they give of their energy, the more renewed energy they generate
within. For that is the law of the universal life principle. The
separated state operates dualistically; it seems “logical” that the
more one gives, the less one has and the more depleted one
becomes. This comes from the illusion that the outer ego is all there
is to individua lity. The root of the fear to let go of all tight ego
defenses is precisely this misconception. Those who begin to experience these powers and energies also
begin to notice the inux of an inspirational intelligence that seems
to be much vaster than anything they know in their outer intellect
as opposed to inner wisdom. Yet it is essentially their “best self.” It
rst seems to be a foreign power, but it is not. It only seems so
when these channels have become clogged due to one’s ignorance.This vaster intelligence manifests as inspiration, guidance, and a
new form of intuition that comes not in a vague feeling, but in
concise words , in denite knowledge, graspable and translatable
into daily living. The discovery of this new life reconciles the apparent opposites of
being an individual and being at one with all others, an integral part
of a whole. These are no longer irreconcilable opposites, but
interdependent facts. All such opposites, all apparently  mutually
exclusive alternatives that cause so much heartache to humanity,
begin to fall into place when the ego connects with universal life. How to Let Go of the Ego
When I speak of letting go of the ego, I do not mean its
annihilation, or even disregar ding its importance. The ego has made
itself a separated part of the universal life that can be found deep
within the self. It is immediately accessible if so desired, when the
ego is ready to reconnect itself to its original source. When the ego
becomes strong  enough to take the risk to trust faculties other than
its limited conscious capabilities, it will nd a previously
undreamed-of new security. Before it can take this new step, the ego fears that it will be
crushed, fall into nothingne ss, and cease to exist. Holding on to
unmoving, petried psychic substances seems to alleviate this fear. The unmoving  seems safe; the moving, perilous. To want to hold on
makes life scary, for life is eternally moving. When you nd that the
movement is safe because it carries you, you have found the only
real security there is. All other security—trust in, or leaning on, the
static—is illusory and breeds forever more fear. Analogy with the Law of Gravity
The principle is the same as the one that moves the planets, which
do not fall into space. At the core of the human predicament therealways lies the feeling, “If I do not hold on to myself I endanger
myself.” Once you are conscious of this feeling, you possess an
important key, for you can consider the possibility that it is an error. There is nothing to fear; you cannot be crushed or annihilated. You
can only be carried, as the planets are carried in space. As I so often say, the state of humanity’s present consciousness
creates the world you live in, including its physical laws. You are so
used to putting eect rst and cause later, because in your dualistic
state of mind you are unabl e to see the whole picture and tend to
think in an either/or manner . The truth is you are not relegated to
this sphere; rather, this sphere, with all it contains, is an expression
of humanity’s overall state of consciousness. One of the physical
laws expressing this state of consciousness is the law of gravity. It is
a special law that pertains only to your dualistic consciousness. The
law of gravity parallels, or expresses on the physical level, the
emotional reaction to and the apprehension of falling and crushing
when the ego is given up as the sole form of individual existence. Spheres of consciousness that have transcended the dualism of this
plane have dierent physical laws, corresponding to their overall
consciousness. The science of space proves this, becaus e in outer
space there is no gravity. Your earth is not the last and only reality. This analogy is more than merely symbolic. It is a sign that could
widen your horizon in thinking about, and inwardly experiencing,
new boundari es of reality, thus diminishing your fear and your
illusory, isolated ego-existence. How to apply this, my friend s, to where most of you are in your
search for your real self? Look at the various layer s of your
consciousness. The more you succeed in making previously
unconscious material conscious and consequently reorienting the
faulty reexes of previously unconscious material, the closer you
come to the reality of the universal life principle within you. The
universal life principle then becomes freer to disclose itself, and you
become freer from fears, shames, and prejudices, until you can open
yourself up to its availability . Anyone can corroborate that as more
courage is summoned to look at the naked truth of oneself, it
becomes easier to connect with a vaster, safer, more blissful lifewithin. The more connected you become with something that
removes all uncertainty and all conict, the more you will feel a
security and an ability to function that you never knew could exist
within you. Here are functi ons of power, of energy; functions of
intelligence that resolve all conict and furnish solutions to
apparently unsolvable problems. All ifs and buts in daily practical
living are loosened up—not through outer magical means, but
through your increasing capacity to cope with everything that
happens as an integral part of yourself. Moreover, you develop an
increased ability to experienc e pleasure, as you are meant  to. To the
extent you have disconnected yourself from universal life, you must
yearn for this way of living. During our discussions we have come face to face with many
aspects of this triad. I have spoken before of a frequent
phenomenon, namely, that people are often ashamed of their higher
selves—of the best in them. This shame of your higher self is a very
important feeling, connected with the fear of exposing the real self. A specic personality type feels this shame primarily about good
qualities, about giving and loving. Such people resist giving into
society’s demands, believing that thereby they would lose the
integrity of their individuality. They fear their submiss ion to and
dependency on the opinions of others and therefore feel ashamed of
any genuine impulse to please others. They feel more “themselves”
when they are hostile, aggressive, cruel. The Human Reaction to the Real Self—Shame and
Falsication
All human beings have a similar reaction to their real self. This
does not apply only to their actual goodness and loving generosity,
but also to all other real feeling and ways of being. This strange
shame manifests as embarrassment and a sense of exposure about
the way one really is. It makes one feel as though one were naked
and exposed. This is not the shame of one’s deceits anddestructiveness, nor of one’s compliance. This shame is on an
entirely dierent level, and of a dierent quality. Whatever one
really is feels shamefully naked—regardless of good or bad
thoughts, feelings, or behavior. The shame is felt most acutely when
it comes to being what one is in the moment. Because of this feeling, people pretend. This is a dierent kind of
pretense than the one that covers up lack of integrity,
destructiveness, and cruelty. This dierent kind of pretense is
deeper, more subtle. You may pretend things you actually feel. You
may really feel love, but to show this real love feels naked, so you
create a false love. You may really feel anger, but the real anger
feels naked, so you create false anger. You may really feel sadness,
but you feel mortied to acknowledge this sadness even to yourself,
so you create false sadness, which you can easily display to others. You may really experience pleasure, but this, too, is humiliating to
expose, so you create false pleasure. This even applies to elements
like confusion and puzzleme nt. The real feeling seems naked and
exposed, so you create a false one. This falsication appears like a
protective garment that no one but one’s deepest, usually
unconscious, self knows of. This “protective garment” anesthetizes
one to the vibrancy and buoyancy of life. All such imitations build a
screen betwee n you and your life center. This, too, separates you
from reality, for it is the reality of your own being that you cannot
stand and feel compelled to imitate, thereby counterfeiting your
very existence. The moving stream of life seems dangerous, not only
as far as your safety is concerned, but also as it aects your pride
and dignity. But all this is stark and tragic illusion. As you can only
nd true safety when you unite with the source of all life within
you, so you can nd true dignity only when you overcome the
shame of being real—whatever this may mean at the moment. Sometimes annihilation seems a lesser evil than the strange sense
of shame and the exposure of one’s real being. When you recognize
this shame and do not push it away as inconsequential, you take a
tremendous step, my friend s. Feeling this shame is the key to
nding a numbness that causes despair and frustration, because it
leads to self-alienation and disconnectedness of a particular kind.This feeling is not translatab le into rational language, because only
the avor of the experience and its quality distinguishe s the real
from the false. The imitation feelings are often subtle and so deeply
ingrained that they have become second nature. Therefore it takes a
deeply sensitive letting go, letting yourself be, and letting yourself
feel, as well as wanting to be discerning about your disco veries. All
this is necessa ry before you become acutely aware of the apparent
sense of exposure and nakedness the real feelings cause in you. The
subtle imitation not only reproduces other, or opposite, feelings
from those you register, but also, and just as frequently, the
identical ones. The next step is then the intensication, which serves
as a measure to make the false appear real. When you do meet the momentary real self, it is far from
“perfect.” This is not a dram atic experience—yet it is crucial. For
what you are now contains all the seeds you will ever need in order
to live deeply and vibrantly. You are already this univer sal life power. When you have the
courage to be your real self, a new approach to your own inner life
can begin, after which all pretenses fall by the wayside. The Biblical Symbolism of Nakedness
The shame of one’s own nakedness in showing one’s self, as it is
in the now, is explained by the deep symbolism of the story of Adam
and Eve. The nakedness  of reality is paradise . For when that
nakedness is no longer denie d, a new blissful experience can begin
—right here and now, not in another life in the beyond. But it takes
some acclimatizing after one has become aware of the shame and of
the ingrained subtle habits with which one covers up one’s inner
nakedness. But once you learn to uncover yourself, you will nally
step out of your protective shell and become more real. You will be
the naked you, as you are now—not better than you are, not worse
than you are, and also not dierent from the way you are. You will
stop the imitation, the counterfeit feelings and ways of being, and
venture out into the world the way you happen to be.Are there any questions in connection with this lecture? QUESTION : How can you determine whether your feelings are real or
put on? ANSWER : The only one who can determine it is you, by seriousl y
probing and, rst of all, considering the possibility that your
feelings may be put on, and by not being frightened of this. For
people are terried of the thought that their feelings are fake—even
in a subtle way. They fear that if these feelings are not real then
they have no feelings. They fear their own emptiness. And this fear
is devastating. It exerts a subtle pressure to go on pretending. But
there is always a point inside where you say, “No, I do not want to
feel.” Whether this stems from childhood and personal traumatic
experiences, or connects with the deeper human problem applying
to all individu als that I discu ssed in this lecture, there must always
be a wish not to feel. This wish is often totally unconscious, so that
one is disconnected from it and helpless about the result—which is,
of course, no feelings. The terror is innitely greater when the
conscious self that wants feelings is ignorant of the side of the self
that fears feelings. The terror of being unable to feel cannot be
compared to any other. It is therefore of enormous help to realize
that no one is really without feelings and these feelings cannot ever
die perm anently. Life and feelings are one; where there is one, there
must be the other, even if one is inactivated at the moment. Knowing this makes it possi ble to search within and ask, “Where
have I decided not to feel?” The moment you become acutely aware
of your fear to feel, you will cease to fear that you have no feelings. It is then possi ble to reactivate your feelings with the help of reason,
through realistic and rational evaluation of the circumstances. I have given you a lot to think about. This is quite a bit of
material, which you can fruitfully use in the continuation of your
pathwork.Be blessed, every one of you. May your endeavors succeed to
become real, to nd the courage to be nakedly real without any
false covers. You cannot help but succeed if you really  want to. Those who do not move and grow and liberate themsel ves do not
want to—and it is important to know this and nd in you the inner
voice that refuses to move. May all your false layers fall away
because this is what you really want and decide. You will then
discover the glory of living. Be in peace, be in God! OceanofPDF.com16 
Consciousness: Fascination with Creation
In addition to presenting to us the universal laws govern ing
positive creation with consciousness, the Guide also explains how
negative creation came into existence. The allegory of the “fall of
the angels” is here expressed in terms accessible to the modern
mind. To put our resources into the service of positive creation by
recapturing our original God-consciousness is our goal, and the
Guide in this lecture points out the steps to be taken for its recovery . Greetings, all my friends here, who receive tangible blessings in
the form of energy currents containing consciousness and strength. They ow toward you and permeate you. They are a reality that can
be perceived as your own consciousness grows and ventures forth. I would like to talk about aspects of consciousness and its
signicance in the scheme of creation. Creation is indeed a result of
consciousness and not, as generally assumed, the other way around. Nothing can exist unless it occurs rst in consciousness . It makes no
dierence whether the source is the universal or the individualized
self. Whether your consciousness perceives, creates, and formulates
something important, world-forming, or just a passing insignicant
attitude, the principle is the same. You need to understand the tremendous signicance of your
conscious creations; your disconnection from them causes real
suering. No suering is as acute as the one that is felt when you do
not know that you have created what you experience. This applies,to a lesser extent, even to positive experiences. For if you do not
know that you have created your experiences, you will always feel
helpless in the hands of a power you cannot comprehend. This
power is truly your own consciousness, my friends. Knowing, Feeling, and Willing as Tools of Creative
Consciousness
Now let us understand a little better some of the most outstanding
attributes of consciousness. Consciousness is not only the power to
think, to discri minate, and to choose; that is obvious. It is not only
the power to know, to perce ive, and to feel. It is also the ability to
will. Willin g is a very important aspect of consciousness. Whether
you will with awareness or whether you disconnect from your will
makes no dierence. Your will is an aspect of your consciousness
and hence of what you continually create. Willing is an ongoing
process, just as knowing and feeling are. Where consciousness exists,
knowing, feeling, and willing always exist as well. Often a number of contradictory will currents short-circuit on the
surface, manifesting as a lack of awareness or numbness. Consciousness is diminished on the surface but continues below the
surface. Its products manifest as tangible life experience s and you
feel at a loss, believing that what life brings is totally independent
from your own willing and knowing. Any path of genuine
development must bring all the confused and contradictory desires,
beliefs, and inner knowing to the surface so that life circumstances
appear in their true light as the creation of the self. This awareness
gives you power to recreate. Willing, determ ining, formu lating, knowing, and percei ving are
all took of your creative consciousness. Humanity can be divided
into those who know this and use these tools deliberately,
creatively, constructively; and those who are unaware of it and are
constantly creating destruction without ever knowing it.Humans are the rst entities on the upward evolutionary scale
who can deliberately create with their consciousness. You, my
friends, who search for your true identity must come to experience
your power to create and, specically, how you have created
whatever you have or do not have now. You can then see how
ghting against your own creations augments the pain and tension
in your being. This is inevitable when you are not yet aware,
generally and specically, of how your life is the outcome of your
own mental activity. What you do not like you will invariably rebel
against, never knowing that you actually tear yourself apart even
more. The rebellion may not be entirely conscious either; it may
manifest as vague discontent  with life, hopeless longing, a sense of
futility and frustration from which you see no way out. The
discontent, too, is a land of rebellion. To understand the nature of consciousness in still greater depth,
you need to see what positive and negative directions consciousness
can take. You have within you the purest wisdom, owing toward
ever-expanding bliss, an innite variety of new life expres sions. This
is the universal spirit. I am not saying that the universal spirit is in
you; I am saying that you are it, but most of the time you do not
know it. You also harbor within you the distorted express ion of your
creative consciousness with which you will negative and destructive
results. One could also say that this is the eternal ght between God
and the devil, between good and evil, between life and death. It
does not matter what you call these powers; whatever you name
them, they are your own powers. You are not a helples s pawn in
anyone’s hand s. This is the all-important fact that truly alters your
entire self-perception and attitude toward living. Not knowing this
will make you feel constantly victimized by circumstances beyond
your control. Three Conditions of Experiencing Yourself as the Universal
SpiritIn order to perceive and experience your true identity as being the
universal spirit, three basic things are necessary:
1) That you tune in to it. You activate the universal spirit by your
deliberate attempt to listen to it. You must become very quiet within
yourself and allow it to happen. This is not as easy as it may sound,
for the tumultuous static of the busy mind keeps blocking this
possibility. Your mind requires training to become suciently calm
without producing involu ntary thoughts. Once you have
accomplished this to some degree, you will experience an emptiness. You will then seem to listen into nothingness that may even be
frightening or disappointing. Finally, the universal spirit will begin
to mani fest—not because it “decides” to because you were a “good
child” who now “deserves” it, but because you begin to perceive its
ongoing presen ce, which you will then know was always there and
immediately accessible—almost too near to perceive. The rst manif estations may not come to you as a direct  voice, a
direct inner knowing, but through detours—through other mouths,
or as apparent ly coincidenta l ideas that suddenly occur to you. If
you are alert and sensitive, attuned to reality, you will know that
these are the rst signs of establishing contact with the universal
self. Later the emptiness will prove to be a tremendo us fullness
impossible to express in word s. Its immediacy also hinders you from
perceiving the universal spirit’s constant presence. The immediacy
is, of course, wonderful. When you discover that you harbor this
presence withi n yourself at all times, it will ll you with safety, with
strength, with the knowledge  that you never need to feel inadequate
and helpless again, for the source of all life supplies you with every
smallest detail of living that is important to you. This inner source
lls you with rich feelings; it stimulates and calms you; it shows you
how to handle problems. It oers solutions that unify decency,
honesty, and self-interest; love and pleasure; reality and bliss;
fulllment of your duties without diminishing your freed om in the
least. It contains everything. However, this wonderful immediacy
presents problems at rst, because you believe that all this can besought only very, very far away Since you were geared to
experience the universal spirit only as a remote reality you nd it
impossible to experience its nearness. 2) It is necessary to fully experience and comprehend the negative
part of your consciousness  that has become destructive. This is not
easy, precisely because, once again, you are geared to believe that
your life is a xed mold you were put into and you must learn to
cope with it, independently  of your inner abilities to think, will,
know, feel, and perceive. As you can now appreciate, it requires a
great deal of honesty, discip line, and eort to overcome resistance
to make this all-important switch in your entire approach to life:
from feeling helpless to seeing life as your own creation in all
respects. It is not really possible to activate the prese nce of the
universal self when you are still blind to your negative  creations. Sometimes certain channels happen to be unobstructed, but where
the blocks, the blindness, the imagined helplessness persist, you
cannot contact your universal self. 3) Your conscious thought processes are the rst handle on the
universal spirit. You create with your conscious thoughts just as
much as with your unconscio us thinking and willing. Your thinking
ability is actually exactly the same as the creative processes of the
universal mind. Though your consciousness is a separated fragment
of the whole , it has the same powers and possibi lities. The
separation is not even real; it exists only because this is how you
experience yourself at this time. The moment you discover the
immediacy of this presence,  you will no longer feel a separation
between your thoughts and those of the greater Being. Eventually
they will merg e and you will realize that the two have always been
one. It becomes evident that you have not availed yoursel f before of
your innate powers. You left them unused, or even misus ed them in
your blind state. You can nally begin to experience yourself as the universal spirit
by using your conscious thoughts in a deliberate, constructive way.You can do this in two steps. First, you must clearly see how you
have unknowingly used your mental processes negatively, thereby
creating destru ctively. Then you can formulate what you now wish
to produce in your life. You do this by stating that this is possible
and by perceiving, knowing, and willing it with a relaxed attitude. This also includes the willingness to change faulty and dishonest
inner attitudes, for otherwise you will block what you want. By building creative thought s you can tap the rich source within
your own being. You begin with conscious thinking, which requires
focusing attention on your thinking processes, observing how you
use them, how they create both what you do have and do not have. Once you can reverse this process you have discovered a means of
creation; you become truly your real self, for you are the universal
spirit who created the world. You are constantly creating your own
world right now: It is the life you lead. Self-Observation and Purication on Three Levels
Paying attentio n to your inner processes will reveal that much of
what you thought was unconscious is really not hidden at all. Observe this especially when you nd yourself in a disturbing
situation. See how you take so much for granted that you gloss over
your most obvious attitudes, exactly those that will give you clues to
understand how your creative power works; although in this case, of
course, they are inverted, manifesting negatively. Considering every
detail of the situation, turning your attention to a fresh approach
will bring you the insight you had been lacking so far. This self-knowledge is purication in the truest sense, because
ultimately it establishes your awareness of your power to create
your own life. Discovering how you have created destructively is
never a really bad experienc e, for it becomes immediately obvious
that you also have the power to create beautiful life experiences for
yourself. You become immediately aware of your own eternal
nature with its innite power to expand.So you see, my friends, we are dealing here with three levels. All
of them must become acces sible. They are all equally dicult to
perceive. It would be an error to believe that your everyday thought
processes are easier to perceive than either your destructive will or
your divine nature with its endless power and wisdom. They are all
equally near—and seem far only because your vision is turned away
from them. Both the willful destructiveness and the great creative
spirit you really are, are “unconscious” only because you do not give
their existence  the benet of the doubt as a rst step toward
discovering them. Practically the same is the case with your daily
mental activity, which goes on unobserved withou t critical
evaluation, so you are completely unaware of how your thoughts
continue to run in unproductive negative channels. Nor do you see
that you continue to derive a sort of satisfaction from allowing the
inattention to go on. When you observe your negative thoughts, it is important to
realize (a) what they do to you, how they connect with the very
results you deplore most in your life; and (b) that you have the
power to alter them and nd new avenues of expression for your
thoughts. These two realizati ons will make all the dierence in the
world, because they bring true liberation and self-nding, the
coming into one’s own we speak so much about. The discovery of
your true identity indeed brings glad tidings. But rst you must see
yourself pursuing negative thoughts. See yourself brooding in the
same vicious circles; see yourself almost willfully pursuing the same
roundabout, narrowly conned channels of thinking and never
venturing beyond them. Let us suppose that you are convinced you can experience only
this or that negative manifestation in life. Once you observe the
tenacity with which you take this for granted, you can ask, “Does it
really have to be so?” The moment you raise this question you begin
to open a crack in the door. But being unaware that you are
convinced of having only this one narrowly conned possibility
makes it impossible for you to imagine further alternative s. You can
actually venture into them—only by rst formulating your thoughts
as the blueprints of creating . Then the world begins to open. Thisopening must be achieved to begin with, by thinking and then
saying to yourself, “It does not have to be this way, it can be
another way. I want this other way. I would like to eliminate
whatever stands between me and this more desirable way. I have
the courage to face it and go beyond the life experience I have given
myself until now by taking for granted that it cannot be any other
way.” On this conscious level you must see how you took it for
granted that a certain negative manifestation had to be experienced
by you. Perhaps you want a positiv e result, but simultaneously  do not
wish to accept certain logica l consequences that follow from what
you wish. This is due to your misconception that these consequences
are undesirable  for you. Here you have a childish resistance to give
of yourself, a distorted attempt to cheat life and gain more than you
wish to give. Life cannot comply with such unfair desire s, and you
feel cheated and resentful because you have not really clearly
examined the issue. Nor are you aware of your false reasoning when
you resist giving of yourself. Thus you create errors and distortions
that stand in the way of unfolding your possibilities. So you can see that your level of conscious thinking is inuenced
by both your destructive side and the universal spirit. You can
choose consciously in which direction to shape your thoughts once
you are aware of their habit ual patterns. This self-determination is
your key to liberation. You will see more and more clearly that your destructiv e side is
also something you choose;  it is not something that befalls you. Once you have truly progressed on this path you come to the point
where you can nally admit this deliberate desire to choose
destructive attitudes. You can see that you are unhappy, actually
forsaking happiness, fulllment, bliss, fruitful living. You may be
terribly unhap py about the result, but you nevertheless insist on
hanging on to your negative  will. You can see how all-important it
is to nd this out. The Origin of “Sin” or Evilg f
The age-old question is: What brought all this about? Why do
human beings harbor these utterly senseless desires? Why does the
mind want to take this direction? Religion calls it sin or evil. Psychology calls it neurosis or psychosis, among other things. Whatever name you give it, it is indeed a disease. In order to heal
this disease it is necessary to understand it to some extent. This is
done, primarily, by following your own erroneous assumptions and
beliefs to the emotions and will-direction they create. This can be
done only to a certain degree without also understanding the
dynamics of mental creativi ty, both in the positive and negative
sense. People often ask, “How does evil come into existence?” Or, “Why
did God put evil into us?”—as though someone else had “put”
anything anyw here. Once you have sucient self-awar eness and
your own rejection of happiness is on the surface, the same puzzling
question may be raised, “Why do I do it? Why can’t I want what
feels good for me?” This question has been asked here, as well as
elsewhere in the world, many times, wherever spiritual teachings
are being given. Once, a long time ago, at the beginning of this
contact, I even gave an allegorical account of the so-called fall of the
angels, about a spirit who was once utterly constructive and
expanding into forever greater realms of light and bliss, then
deviated from this course, separated himself from his innermost
Godself, and became fragme nted. How did he turn into those dark,
destructive channels? Any account, such as I have given and has
been given elsewhere, is very easily misunderstood because it is
always interpreted as a historical event that has taken place in time
and space. I shall venture now to give another explanation about
how destructiveness comes into being in an utterly constructive
consciousness. I shall try to nd a dierent approach that may
perhaps reach you on some level and give you a deeper
understanding of this all-imp ortant topic. You can then meet your
own destructiveness with a new understanding and eventually come
out of it. Picture, my friends, a consc iousness, a state of being, in which
there is only bliss and innite power to create with one’s ownconsciousness. Consciousnes s is, among other things, a thinking
apparatus. Thus it thinks—and lo, something comes into existence. It wills—and lo, what is willed and thought, is. Life is endlessly
lled with these possibilities. Creating starts with thinking, then the
thinking takes on form, becomes a fact in the life beyond the
connes of the ego, the consciousness that is free-owing  and free-
oating. There the thought immediately takes form and becomes
deed. It is only in the human ego that thought seems separate from
form and deed. The less awareness an entity has, the more separated
thought, form,  and deed appear, to the extent that the form seems
entirely independent from the deed, the deed from the thought or
the will. None of these three stages seem connected. An essential part of raising one’s consciousness lies precisely in
making this connection. No matter how separate in time and space
they may appear, thought and will, deed and action, form and
manifestation, are all one unit. In the state of being, where there is
no connemen t, where there is no tight structuring, this unit is
experienced as a living reality. In the experience of this lies an
indescribable bliss and fascination. The whole universe is open for
exploration, for new ways of self-expression and self-nding, giving
form to forever more worlds, more experience, and more eects. The fascination of creating is endless. Since the possibilities are innite, the consciousness can also
explore itself by conning itself, by fragmenting itself to “see what
happens,” as it were. To experience itself it contracts instead of
expanding; it wants to see how it is to feel and experience  darkness. Creating is pure fascination . This fascination is not eliminated simply
because what is created is at rst perhaps only slightly less
pleasurable or blissful or brilliant. Even in that may lie a special
fascination and adventure. Then the creation begins to take on a
power of its own. For everything that is created has energy invested
in it and this energy is self-perpetuating. It takes on its own
momentum. The conscious being who has created these pathways
may experiment longer, and go beyond more than what is “safe”
because it no longer leaves itself enough power at the moment to
reverse the course. Thus the consciousness may get lost in its ownmomentum, and be unwilling to stop. Later, it no longer sees how to
stop. Creation then takes place in a negative sense, until the results
are so unpleas ant that the conscious being seeks to get a hold on
itself and counteract the momentum by “recalling” its knowledge of
what could be. At any rate, it knows there is no real danger, for
whatever suering you human beings feel is truly illusory in the
ultimate sense. Once you nd your true identity within, you will
know it. It is all a play, a fascination, an experiment, from which
your real state of being can be recaptured, if only you will truly try. Now, many human beings still nd themselves in the state in
which they do not yet want to really try. They still nd fascination
in the exploration of negative creation, at least to some extent. Some
separated entities have never gone beyond the point where they lose
the immediate  awareness of who they really are and their power to
redirect their explorations. Others have temporarily lost this
awareness. But they will nd it again the moment they really want
to. It is well that all of you should remember this. The momentum of creating contains incredibly powerful energies. These energies have impact; they impress the all-pervading creative
substance—the stu that responds to creative mind. This substance
then is molded into form, event, object, state of mind, or whatever. The imprints in the soul substance are so deep that nothing but the
greater power of molding mind can erase false imprints, which
govern your life events. Mind or consciousness impresses; life
substance is impressed upon. Everything around and within you
participates in both the masculine principle of a determining,
etching consciousness and the feminine principle of a molded,
responding life substance. Find this truth within you, and the
universe will become yours all over again, as it once was. Thus if the creative consciousness does not alter the course at a
certain point, it becomes caught within its own processes. Part of
the power and momentum of consciousness is the quality of being
“self-imitating.” It is very hard to convey this aspect of creative
energy. Human beings frequently experience the urge to imitate
others. This takes on many forms and applies to self-imitation aswell. It is a process of deeply imprinting something upon the
substance of life. Let me give you an example of the power of imitat ion and
creating new experiences. Many of you have experienced the
strange urge you have when you see cripples who limp, perhaps, or
those who have a facial tick, to imitate their postural or facial
aberrations. Haven’t you experienced the sometimes irresistible
desire to imitate something that is highly undesirable for you? At
the same time there is a kind of revulsion and fear of doing this
because you sense somehow  that by doing it you set something in
motion that you might imitate again and again and cannot stop
doing. The power and the energies of creation have this self-
perpetuating eect that only consciousness, with its knowing, will,
and determination, can alter. Creating becomes so involving, and
the pleasure of it so engrossing, that once set in a negative direction,
the pleasure continues to keep the soul in its spell until the
consciousness steps in with its deliberate counter-force. Even if what
is created is painful, the pleasure of creating is dicult to abandon
as long as the individual ignores that positive creation is also
possible. As negative creations proceed, consciousness seems to become
more and more fragmented—not really, my friends, but your
awareness cannot experience your connection with the world spirit,
which you are. I do not know to what extent these words can reach you. But if
they can, they will prove, as you meditate and think about them, of
tremendous help for you, They will help you not only to
comprehend, but nd the right way to eliminate the destructiveness
within you. It is the power of your mind that creates the negative. This force is even stronger when it is used for the positi ve because
in the negative there are always conicts, contrary longings, and
will directions that weaken the force. In the constructive, expanding
direction, this need not be so. Once the switch is made, something
will “click” in your mind. Your consciousness will ow into a new
direction that comes more easily and naturally, without the torture
that negative creation always entails.The more consciousness has separated itself from the whole, the
more fragmented it becomes,  the greater the structure it creates. But
the wholeness of consciousn ess is unstructured; it is the state of
being in all its blissfulness. Once fragmentation has occurred, lost
consciousness gradually works toward a state of self-consciousness. This state needs structure to protect it from the chaos of negativity
and destruction. When negativity is met and eliminated,
unstructured, blissful consciousness is attained again. The Way Out of Negative Creation
The ego, with its connement, is the structure that protects the
entity from its own destructive creating. It holds the destructive
urges in check. Only when consciousness expands in bliss and truth
can the structure be remove d. So, at one point in your evolution,
you were chaotically unstru ctured. As you grow and evolve, the
structuring walls o this chaos, so that at least for a while
consciousness is protected from the inner chaos. The available thinking processes can then become the tools to
show the way out of negative creations and conning structuring. Looking beyon d the structure and into the chaos, comprehending it,
realizing the power of the mental processes constantly in use,
aords you the possibility to reverse the downward curve that
makes you constantly seek ways to deny life, love, pleasure,
happiness; to court decay, waste, and pain. The part of your
universal self that has remained whole knows the pain is short and
illusory, but the part of you that is in chaos does not know this and
suers. Let us review. Conscious processes can swing the pendulum from
destructive creating to the original state of consciousness, an
expanding blissful creating. The conning structure will dissolve,
and the ultimate state of being, unstructured consciousness and
experience, energy and blissful being, will reinstate themselves and
become your existence. This is where it is all going, my friends. Part
of your attempts must therefore go in the direction of bringing orderinto the confusion of the workings of your mind, its self-
involvement, its blindness to itself and its tendency to get lost to
itself. It is not the world outside yourself that confuses you; it is the
world within your own consciousness that does so. You can now begin to contemplate how you can deliberately will
creative construction; you can do it by consciously formulating,
thinking, and willing a state of happiness, aliveness, fulllment,
truth, love, growth, both in general and in particular detail. The
climate of this may rst seem  strange and unfamiliar. You need to
acclimatize yourself to it. Picture yourself in such states and call
upon the universal power within to fortify your conscious mind with
the necessary creative energy . The will to happiness must become so
strong that the causes for unhappiness must be seen and eliminated,
and this, too, must truly be wanted. Then the creative power will
grow; the divine self will inspire you and show the way. You will
learn to recognize it and receive it in your conscious brain. Make use of what I have said here. I mean actively  make use, not
just reading this as a beautiful theory, but deeply knowing its
immediate value and applying it every day of your life. On the day
when you see your destructive creating and then deliberately
change it, you will indeed have done something wonderfu l. The will
to be happy and to unfold in life is the foundation of your power to
create. The more concisely this is formulated and the greater your
willingness is to eliminate attitudes that hinder the result, the more
eective your creation will become. Be blessed. Receive the power that is streaming forth, and
increase it by your conscious, deliberate, willing expressions and
formulations. Express your willingness to grow, to be happy, to be
constructive. Do this not by willing in a tight, insistent, constricted
way, but in a relaxed, condent way, contemplatin g that all
possibilities exist as potential realities, realizable the moment you
know and will this with all your being. The power is there, it is in
you. All you have to do is tap it, use it, build with your conscious
mind the channels that can free it, and become very quiet  and calm. Listen and tune in on it. It is there forever and ever, in its grandiosepower, in its wonderful wisdom, in its ultimate knowledge that
there is nothing but bliss, already now, within you. OceanofPDF.com17 
Creative Emptiness
In order to reach the greatest heights of spirituality, we need to
learn to become receptive channels for the God-consciousness. We
cannot achieve such a state without knowing how to still the outer
mind. This is yet another step into the unknown, into a temporary
sensation of inner emptiness. The reward for taking it is the opening
of a channel through which we can always contact the voice of God
within . My most beloved friends, blessings for every one of you. A golden
force is owing through your inner being now and forever, if you
open yourself to it. I have spoken to you about the coming of a new era. This event
requires that many human beings be ready for it. For many years,
you on this path have worked for that purpose, whether or not you
were aware of it. You have led away impurities, and you still do. And you make yourself available for a powerful force that has been
released in the universe—the inner universe. Many spiritual teachers and channels know this, but many have
misinterpreted this event. They believe it will bring geological
cataclysms with eects on a human level. As I have said before, this
is not true. The changes that are already in progress are changes in
consciousness. And you are working at this. You see, as you develop
and purify yourself, you become more and more ready for an inner
enlightenment that has not yet occurred and is indeed self-perpetuating in its force. It is unprecedented, for there was no other
time in human  history when this power was as availab le as it is
now. What you increasingly experience is the result of this power’s
coming upon a receptive channel. If this power hits an unreceptive
channel, a crisis arises, as you well know. Even if only a part of you
blocks the creative forces that could make you thrive in an entirely
new way, you put yourself under great psychic, emotional, and
spiritual stress. This must be avoided. On your path you have learned to contact the deep levels of
intentionality where you deny truth and love as well as a greater
power that operates dieren tly from the outer ego power you so
strive for. Real truth and love, real power, come from within. How to Open Up to the New Consciousness
I will now speak about the importance of being receptive to this
force, this energy, this new consciousness: the Christ consciousness
that is spreading through human consciousness wherever possible. To become receptive to it, you also need to understand another
principle: that of creative emptiness. Most human beings create an agitated mind because they are
frightened that they may be empty, that there may be nothing
within to sustain them. This thought is rarely conscious, but on a
path such as this the time comes when you do become conscious of
this fearful thought.
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:

        Reeducation depends on the eorts of both the conscious ego, with
its instructions to and dialogue with the ignorant egotistical child,
and on the intervention and guidance of the universal, spiritual self. Each in its own way will eect the gradual maturing of this infant. The ego determines its goal to change the consciousness of the
negative inner child by wanti ng this and committing itself to it. This
is its task. Full execution of this task is made possible by thespiritual inux from the deeper personality that has to be
deliberately activated. Here the consciousness must again adopt a
twofold approach: One is activity that asserts its desire to transform
the self-defeating aspects, leading the dialogue and calmly but
rmly instruct ing the ignorant child. The other is a more passive,
patient waiting  for the nal, but always gradual, manifestation of
the universal powers. It is they who bring about the inner change
when the feelings lead to new, more resilient reactions. Thus good
feelings will replace those that were negative or dead. Rushing and pressuring the resisting part is as useless and
ineective as accepting its direct refusal to budge. When the
conscious ego does not recognize that there is a part of the self that
actually refuses every step toward health, unfoldment, and the good
life, a counteractive movement may be one of hurried, impatient
pressure. Both derive from self-hate. When you feel stymied and
hopeless, take it as a sign for you to search for that part in you that
says, “I do not wish to chang e, I do not wish to be constru ctive. ” Set
out and nd this voice. Use the meditative dialogue here again, to
explore and let the worst in you express itself. You can see my friends, how expressing the negative part,
exploring its meaning, cause and eect, and reeducating it must be
a constantly uctuating process, alternating and often simultaneous. See how the three levels of interaction combine in the eort of
purication and integration. Meditation functions here as a constant
articulation of what was previously unarticulated. It is a threefold
communication and confrontation: from the ego toward the
destructive self and from the ego toward the universal self, so that
the universal self can aect both the ego and the destructive self. Your own sensitivity will grow day by day to feel what exactly is
needed at any given point on your evolutionary path. A Way to Begin Meditation
Each day brings forth new tasks, exciting tasks, beautiful tasks. They should not be approach ed in a spirit of wanting to get it overwith, as if only then could life begin. On the contrary, the
meditation process is living at its best. You may begin each
meditation by asking yoursel f, “What do I really feel at this moment
about this or that issue. In what respect am I dissatised. What is it
I may be disregarding. ” Then you may request the universal spirit
in you to help you nd these  particular answers. Wait trustingly for
what may unfold. Only when some part of you unfolds can you have
a direct confrontation, communication, or dialogue with it and ask
it further questions, as well as instruct it. With patience and
determination you can remold the distorted part, but only after it
has fully expressed itself. You can re-form, reorient stagnant psychic
energy with your willingness to be totally honest, totally
constructive, loving, and open. If you nd an unwillingness in this
regard, then that must be confronted, explored, and reeducated. This is the only meaningful way in which meditation can move
your life toward the resolution of problems, toward growth and
fulllment, and toward unfolding your best potential. If you do this,
my friends, the time will come when trusting life will no longer
sound like a vague, faraway theory that you cannot put into
personal action. Instead, your trust in life, as well as self-love in the
healthiest sense, will ll you more and more, based on realistic
considerations, instead of wishful thinking. Reconciliation of the Paradoxes of Your Life
As your consciousness expands, the paradoxes and opposites that
constantly puzzle you in life will be reconciled. Let us examine rst
the paradox of desire. Both desire and desirelessness are important
spiritual attitudes. Only to the dualistic, separated mind do they
seem like opposites leading to confusion about which is right or
wrong. Human beings  desire, for only desire can bring you to the fourth
aspect of meditation. This is the expansion of your conscious
concepts in order to create new and better life-substance,  hence life
experience. If you do not desire a better state of being and morefulllment, you will have no material to create and mold life-
substance. Visualization of a fuller state presupposes desire. These
concepts must be fostered by the conscious ego, and the universal
consciousness must intervene to help create a more expanded state. If you see desire and desire lessness as mutually exclusive, you
cannot grasp or feel the necessary attitude. Desire must exist for one
to believe in new possibilities and to unfold into greate r states of
fulllment and self-expressio n. But if desire is tense, urgent, and
contracted, it forms a block. Such desire implies, “I do not believe
that what I want can happen,” which is, perhaps, the result of an
underlying, “I really do not want it,” because of some misconception
or unjustied fears, or an unwillingness to pay the price. This
underlying denial creates too tense a desire. Therefore  a kind of
desirelessness must be present that could be expressed as the
statement, “I know I can and will have such and such, even if it is
not realizable right now, in this or that specic form. I trust the
universe and my own good will suciently that I can wait and will
strengthen myself along the way to cope well with the temporary
frustration of this desire. ”
What are the common denominators of healthy desire and healthy
desirelessness that make meditation and indeed all life-expression
real and beaut iful. First there is an absence of fear and the presence
of trust. If you fear frustration, unfulllment, and their
consequences, the tension of your soul movement will prohibit the
fulllment you want. Eventually you will even give up all desire. Then desirelessness will be distorted, misunderstood, and of the
wrong kind because too much tense desire is present. In the nal
analysis such tense desire comes from fear caused by the infantile
belief that you will be annihilated if you do not have what you
want. Hence you do not trust your ability to cope with lack of
fulllment, which makes you inordinately frightened of it. So the
vicious circle continues. The fear induces a cramp that becomes a
denial of desire. These very subtle, obscure attitudes need to be
explored in your meditation, so that you can come to the fourth
stage of meaningful meditatio n. In this stage you express your desire
with condence in your ability to cope with both non-fulllmentand fulllment, and therefore with a benign universe, capable of
yielding to you what you long for. The obstacles along the way can
be dealt with when you know  that the ultimate state of bliss will be
yours anyway. Then desire and desirelessness will not be
irreconcilable paradoxes, but complementary attitudes. Similarly, it seems paradoxical to postulate that both involvement
and detachment must exist in the healthy psyche. Again there must
be a twofold approach to the understanding of this seeming
contradiction. If detachment is indierence because you are afraid
to be involved and unwilling to risk pain and scared of loving, then
detachment is a distortion of the real attitude. If involvem ent means
merely an expression of a super-tense will that your infantile
insistence on having what you want right away generates, then the
healthy, productive version of involvement is inverted. I will choose a third example of apparent opposites that make a
comprehensive whole when not distorted. Let us take the inner
attitudes of activity and passivity. On the dualistic level these two
seem to be mutually exclusive. How can you be both active and
passive in a harmonious way. The right inner interaction includes
both these inner movements. For instance, meditation,  as I have
explained it here, must include both. You are active when you
explore your inner levels of consciousness; you are active when you
commit yourself and struggle to recognize and overcome resistance;
you are active when you question yourself further to let the
previously unadmitted destructive side express itself; you are active
when you have a dialogue and reeducate the; infantile, ignorant
aspects of yourself; you are active when you use your ego-
consciousness to enlist the help of the spiritual consciousness; you
are active when you create a new concept of life experience, as
opposed to an old, limiting one. When the ego deals with both other
“universes” to establish a connection, you are active. But you must
also learn to wait passively for the unfoldment and expression of
both these other levels. Then the right blend of activity and
passivity preva ils in the psyche. The universal powers cannot come
to fruition in a human being unless both the active and the passive
movements are present. These are very important concepts to understand, to use, and to
observe within  yourself. Find where they are distorted and where
they are functioning well. When the three-way interaction within
yourself takes place, there is always a harmonious blend between
desire and desirelessness; between involvement and detachment;
between activi ty and passivity. When this balance becomes a steady
state, the destructive infant grows up. It is not killed or annihilated. It
is not exorcised. Its frozen powers resolve themselves into live
energy, which you will actually feel, my friends, as a new, living
force. This infant must not be slain. It must be instructed so that
salvation can come to it, liberating it, bringing it to growth. If you
work toward this goal, you will steadily move closer to unifying the
ego level and the universal self. This is powerful material. Be blessed, be in peace, be with God. OceanofPDF. com15 
Connection Between the Ego and the Universal
Power
Energy and consciousness manifest as the undivided power of the
universe. This power is the creative life principle residing within all
of us. However,  human beings often lose conscious contact with this
creative, divine power and trust the limited ego more than the
higher self within. What is the fear behind this separation. How can
we detect our shame of what is best in us, and how can we give
over to the universal power within. Greetings, my dearest friends. May this lecture give you renewed
insight and strength, so that your attempts to nd yourself—who
you are, where you belong, and how to fulll yourself—become a
little easier. May you nd a new shaft of light through these words
by truly opening up to new aspects of ideas you have perhaps heard
before but that have not as yet become personally experienced truth
for you. The Universal Life Principle and the “Forgetful” Ego
The meaningfulness and fulllment of one’s life depend, in the
last analysis, entirely on the relationship between your ego and the
universal life principle—the real self as we also call it. If this
relationship is balanced, everything falls into place. The universallife principle is life itself. It is eternal consciousness in its deepest
and highest sense, eternal movement and pleasure suprem e. Since it
is life, it cannot die. It is the essence of all that breathes, moves,
vibrates. It blows all, for it constantly creates and perpetu ates itself,
because it cannot be untrue to its own nature. Every individu al consciousness is universal consciousn ess—not
just a part of it, for a part implies only a little—but wherever
consciousness exists, it is the original consciousness. This original
consciousness, or creative life principle, takes various forms. When
in the process  of individualization an entity passes the point of
remembering its connection with its origin, a disconnection occurs. The particular consciousness continues to exist and to contain the
universal consc iousness, but it becomes oblivious to its own nature,
its laws, and its potentials. This, in short, is the state of human
consciousness as a whole. The part that has forgotten its connection
to the life principle we call the separate ego. When you begin to become aware of the life principle, you
discover that it has always been there but you have not noticed it
because you were under the illusion of existing separately. It is
therefore not entirely accurate to state that the universal
consciousness “manifests. ” It would be more correct to say that you
begin to notice it. You may notice the life principle’s ever-present
power as autonomous consciousness or as energy. The separated
ego-personality possesses both, but the ego intelligence is inferior by
far to the universal intelligence whether or not you can recognize it
and put it to use. The same applies to the energy. Consciousness and
energy are not separate aspects of universal life; they are one. One of the universal life principle’s basic characteristics, whether
expressed as autonomous consciousness or as energy, is that it is
spontaneous. It cannot possibly reveal itself through a laborious
process or a cramped, overconcentrated state. Its manifestation is
always an indirect result of eort. Eort needs to be expended for
the sake of seeing the truth about oneself, of giving up a specic
illusion, of overcoming a barrier to wanting to be constructive
rather than destructive, and not for an as yet theoretical process
called self-realization that promises to feel good. Each step toward seeing the truth in the self, with a genuine
desire for constructive participation in the creative process of life,
frees the self. This is how the spontaneous processes begin. They are
never consciously volitional. The more you fear the unknown, the
letting go, the involuntary processes in your own body, the less you
can experience the spontaneous life principle in the self. The life principle may manifest as previously unim aginable
wisdom in solving one’s personal problems or in cultivating one’s
creative talents. It can become a new vibrant way of experiencing
life, giving a new avor to all one is doing and seein g. The life
principle is always safe, always holds out justied hope that will
never be disappointed. There is never any fear in this new life
experience, yet it cannot be pushed and forced. It comes about
exactly to the degree that you no longer fear the involuntary
processes, those inner mechanisms that are not under the direct
control of the ego. The Conict Between Yearning For and Fearing the Real
Self
Humanity nds itself in the paradoxical position of deeply
yearning for the fruits of these involuntary processes, yet fearing
and battling them. The conict is terrible and tragic, and it can be
resolved only when you let go of the fear. All psychological problems come, in the nal analysis, from this
much deeper existential conict, far beyond those individual
personal diculties the child experiences that later cause inner
problems and misconceptions. All life moves toward resolving this
basic conict. But such resolution can only happen if rst the
individual neurotic conicts are found and understood. You need to
learn to see and accept whatever is real and true in yourself, in
others, in life. Honesty must prevail to stop one’s attemp ts to cheat
life, no matter how subtly. All character defects have to be removed
by fully acknowledging and objectively observing them withoutplunging into despair or denying them. This attitude in itself
removes the defects innitely more eectively than any other
approach. Only then is one able to perceive the existential conict
between the ego and the universal consciousness. Misinterpretations of the Universal Life Principle in
Religion
The spontaneously manifesting universal consciousness has
nothing to do with religious  precepts of a removed deity, or a life
beyond this physical life. These are misinterpretations that occur
when a person senses the universal life principle and gropingly tries
to convey this experience to those whose ego is still in conict with
it. Such misinterpretations must alienate you from your immediate
self and from your practical daily life. People wish to nd a compr omise between their yearning, which
comes from the deep sense of the present possibilities available to
them, and their fear. They have created it in every formalized
religion that removes God from the self and from daily  life, that
splits human nature into the spiritual and the physical being. Thus
total fulllment is perforce removed from the now into a life after
death. All such views and approaches to life are nothing but a
compromise between what one senses could exist and what one
fears. This fear goes beyond the neurotic fears that stem from
misconceptions and personally experienced traumas. What is this basic fear of letting go of the outer ego and letting
the universal processes unfold and carry you. It is the
misunderstanding that giving up the ego means giving up existence. In order to get a little better  understanding of this problem, let us
consider how the ego formed itself out of universal life. Individuation is an integral aspect of the universal life force. Creative life is always moving, reaching out, expanding and
contracting, nding new areas of experience and branching into
new territories. It nds forever new ways to experience itself. As anindividual consciousness separates itself further and further from its
original source, it “forgets” its essence and becomes oblivious of its
own principles and laws until it seems to be a totally separate
entity. Individ ual existence is, in its present state, assoc iated only
with separate existence. Giving up the ego must then appear to the
individual as an annihilation  of its unique personal existence. This is the current condition of human beings. You live under the
illusion that life, the sense of “I am,” can be found only in your
“separate” existence. This illusion has brought death into the human
realm, for death is nothing but this illusion being carried to its nal
absurdity. The realization that the separate ego-existence is an illusion
constitutes an extremely important step in the evolution of
humanity. Any work of self-actualization brings this issue into very
clear focus. As you look deeply at the immediately availab le truth of
yourselves as individuals, you will nd that you and the creative life
principle are one. The more you look at yourself in truth and shed
your illusions about yourself, the more you will realize that
individual existence is not surrendered when the involuntary
processes of the creative life principle are allowed to take over and
integrate with the ego functions. Those who have begun to experience the immediacy of this
greater life in a renewal of energy nd, paradoxically, that the more
they give of their energy, the more renewed energy they generate
within. For that is the law of the universal life principle. The
separated state operates dualistically; it seems “logical” that the
more one gives, the less one has and the more depleted one
becomes. This comes from the illusion that the outer ego is all there
is to individua lity. The root of the fear to let go of all tight ego
defenses is precisely this misconception. Those who begin to experience these powers and energies also
begin to notice the inux of an inspirational intelligence that seems
to be much vaster than anything they know in their outer intellect
as opposed to inner wisdom. Yet it is essentially their “best self. ” It
rst seems to be a foreign power, but it is not. It only seems so
when these channels have become clogged due to one’s ignorance. This vaster intelligence manifests as inspiration, guidance, and a
new form of intuition that comes not in a vague feeling, but in
concise words, in denite knowledge, graspable and translatable
into daily living. The discovery of this new life reconciles the apparent opposites of
being an individual and being at one with all others, an integral part
of a whole. These are no longer irreconcilable opposites, but
interdependent facts. All such opposites, all apparently  mutually
exclusive alternatives that cause so much heartache to humanity,
begin to fall into place when the ego connects with universal life. How to Let Go of the Ego
When I speak of letting go of the ego, I do not mean its
annihilation, or even disregar ding its importance. The ego has made
itself a separated part of the universal life that can be found deep
within the self. It is immediately accessible if so desired, when the
ego is ready to reconnect itself to its original source. When the ego
becomes strong  enough to take the risk to trust faculties other than
its limited conscious capabilities, it will nd a previously
undreamed-of new security. Before it can take this new step, the ego fears that it will be
crushed, fall into nothingne ss, and cease to exist. Holding on to
unmoving, petried psychic substances seems to alleviate this fear. The unmoving  seems safe; the moving, perilous. To want to hold on
makes life scary, for life is eternally moving. When you nd that the
movement is safe because it carries you, you have found the only
real security there is. All other security—trust in, or leaning on, the
static—is illusory and breeds forever more fear. Analogy with the Law of Gravity
The principle is the same as the one that moves the planets, which
do not fall into space. At the core of the human predicament therealways lies the feeling, “If I do not hold on to myself I endanger
myself. ” Once you are conscious of this feeling, you possess an
important key, for you can consider the possibility that it is an error. There is nothing to fear; you cannot be crushed or annihilated. You
can only be carried, as the planets are carried in space. As I so often say, the state of humanity’s present consciousness
creates the world you live in, including its physical laws. You are so
used to putting eect rst and cause later, because in your dualistic
state of mind you are unabl e to see the whole picture and tend to
think in an either/or manner. The truth is you are not relegated to
this sphere; rather, this sphere, with all it contains, is an expression
of humanity’s overall state of consciousness. One of the physical
laws expressing this state of consciousness is the law of gravity. It is
a special law that pertains only to your dualistic consciousness. The
law of gravity parallels, or expresses on the physical level, the
emotional reaction to and the apprehension of falling and crushing
when the ego is given up as the sole form of individual existence. Spheres of consciousness that have transcended the dualism of this
plane have dierent physical laws, corresponding to their overall
consciousness. The science of space proves this, becaus e in outer
space there is no gravity. Your earth is not the last and only reality. This analogy is more than merely symbolic. It is a sign that could
widen your horizon in thinking about, and inwardly experiencing,
new boundari es of reality, thus diminishing your fear and your
illusory, isolated ego-existence. How to apply this, my friend s, to where most of you are in your
search for your real self. Look at the various layer s of your
consciousness. The more you succeed in making previously
unconscious material conscious and consequently reorienting the
faulty reexes of previously unconscious material, the closer you
come to the reality of the universal life principle within you. The
universal life principle then becomes freer to disclose itself, and you
become freer from fears, shames, and prejudices, until you can open
yourself up to its availability. Anyone can corroborate that as more
courage is summoned to look at the naked truth of oneself, it
becomes easier to connect with a vaster, safer, more blissful lifewithin. The more connected you become with something that
removes all uncertainty and all conict, the more you will feel a
security and an ability to function that you never knew could exist
within you. Here are functi ons of power, of energy; functions of
intelligence that resolve all conict and furnish solutions to
apparently unsolvable problems. All ifs and buts in daily practical
living are loosened up—not through outer magical means, but
through your increasing capacity to cope with everything that
happens as an integral part of yourself. Moreover, you develop an
increased ability to experienc e pleasure, as you are meant  to. To the
extent you have disconnected yourself from universal life, you must
yearn for this way of living. During our discussions we have come face to face with many
aspects of this triad. I have spoken before of a frequent
phenomenon, namely, that people are often ashamed of their higher
selves—of the best in them. This shame of your higher self is a very
important feeling, connected with the fear of exposing the real self. A specic personality type feels this shame primarily about good
qualities, about giving and loving. Such people resist giving into
society’s demands, believing that thereby they would lose the
integrity of their individuality. They fear their submiss ion to and
dependency on the opinions of others and therefore feel ashamed of
any genuine impulse to please others. They feel more “themselves”
when they are hostile, aggressive, cruel. The Human Reaction to the Real Self—Shame and
Falsication
All human beings have a similar reaction to their real self. This
does not apply only to their actual goodness and loving generosity,
but also to all other real feeling and ways of being. This strange
shame manifests as embarrassment and a sense of exposure about
the way one really is. It makes one feel as though one were naked
and exposed. This is not the shame of one’s deceits anddestructiveness, nor of one’s compliance. This shame is on an
entirely dierent level, and of a dierent quality. Whatever one
really is feels shamefully naked—regardless of good or bad
thoughts, feelings, or behavior. The shame is felt most acutely when
it comes to being what one is in the moment. Because of this feeling, people pretend. This is a dierent kind of
pretense than the one that covers up lack of integrity,
destructiveness, and cruelty. This dierent kind of pretense is
deeper, more subtle. You may pretend things you actually feel. You
may really feel love, but to show this real love feels naked, so you
create a false love. You may really feel anger, but the real anger
feels naked, so you create false anger. You may really feel sadness,
but you feel mortied to acknowledge this sadness even to yourself,
so you create false sadness, which you can easily display to others. You may really experience pleasure, but this, too, is humiliating to
expose, so you create false pleasure. This even applies to elements
like confusion and puzzleme nt. The real feeling seems naked and
exposed, so you create a false one. This falsication appears like a
protective garment that no one but one’s deepest, usually
unconscious, self knows of. This “protective garment” anesthetizes
one to the vibrancy and buoyancy of life. All such imitations build a
screen betwee n you and your life center. This, too, separates you
from reality, for it is the reality of your own being that you cannot
stand and feel compelled to imitate, thereby counterfeiting your
very existence. The moving stream of life seems dangerous, not only
as far as your safety is concerned, but also as it aects your pride
and dignity. But all this is stark and tragic illusion. As you can only
nd true safety when you unite with the source of all life within
you, so you can nd true dignity only when you overcome the
shame of being real—whatever this may mean at the moment. Sometimes annihilation seems a lesser evil than the strange sense
of shame and the exposure of one’s real being. When you recognize
this shame and do not push it away as inconsequential, you take a
tremendous step, my friend s. Feeling this shame is the key to
nding a numbness that causes despair and frustration, because it
leads to self-alienation and disconnectedness of a particular kind. This feeling is not translatab le into rational language, because only
the avor of the experience and its quality distinguishe s the real
from the false. The imitation feelings are often subtle and so deeply
ingrained that they have become second nature. Therefore it takes a
deeply sensitive letting go, letting yourself be, and letting yourself
feel, as well as wanting to be discerning about your disco veries. All
this is necessa ry before you become acutely aware of the apparent
sense of exposure and nakedness the real feelings cause in you. The
subtle imitation not only reproduces other, or opposite, feelings
from those you register, but also, and just as frequently, the
identical ones. The next step is then the intensication, which serves
as a measure to make the false appear real. When you do meet the momentary real self, it is far from
“perfect. ” This is not a dram atic experience—yet it is crucial. For
what you are now contains all the seeds you will ever need in order
to live deeply and vibrantly. You are already this univer sal life power. When you have the
courage to be your real self, a new approach to your own inner life
can begin, after which all pretenses fall by the wayside. The Biblical Symbolism of Nakedness
The shame of one’s own nakedness in showing one’s self, as it is
in the now, is explained by the deep symbolism of the story of Adam
and Eve. The nakedness  of reality is paradise. For when that
nakedness is no longer denie d, a new blissful experience can begin
—right here and now, not in another life in the beyond. But it takes
some acclimatizing after one has become aware of the shame and of
the ingrained subtle habits with which one covers up one’s inner
nakedness. But once you learn to uncover yourself, you will nally
step out of your protective shell and become more real. You will be
the naked you, as you are now—not better than you are, not worse
than you are, and also not dierent from the way you are. You will
stop the imitation, the counterfeit feelings and ways of being, and
venture out into the world the way you happen to be. Are there any questions in connection with this lecture. QUESTION : How can you determine whether your feelings are real or
put on. ANSWER : The only one who can determine it is you, by seriousl y
probing and, rst of all, considering the possibility that your
feelings may be put on, and by not being frightened of this. For
people are terried of the thought that their feelings are fake—even
in a subtle way. They fear that if these feelings are not real then
they have no feelings. They fear their own emptiness. And this fear
is devastating. It exerts a subtle pressure to go on pretending. But
there is always a point inside where you say, “No, I do not want to
feel. ” Whether this stems from childhood and personal traumatic
experiences, or connects with the deeper human problem applying
to all individu als that I discu ssed in this lecture, there must always
be a wish not to feel. This wish is often totally unconscious, so that
one is disconnected from it and helpless about the result—which is,
of course, no feelings. The terror is innitely greater when the
conscious self that wants feelings is ignorant of the side of the self
that fears feelings. The terror of being unable to feel cannot be
compared to any other. It is therefore of enormous help to realize
that no one is really without feelings and these feelings cannot ever
die perm anently. Life and feelings are one; where there is one, there
must be the other, even if one is inactivated at the moment. Knowing this makes it possi ble to search within and ask, “Where
have I decided not to feel. ” The moment you become acutely aware
of your fear to feel, you will cease to fear that you have no feelings. It is then possi ble to reactivate your feelings with the help of reason,
through realistic and rational evaluation of the circumstances. I have given you a lot to think about. This is quite a bit of
material, which you can fruitfully use in the continuation of your
pathwork. Be blessed, every one of you. May your endeavors succeed to
become real, to nd the courage to be nakedly real without any
false covers. You cannot help but succeed if you really  want to. Those who do not move and grow and liberate themsel ves do not
want to—and it is important to know this and nd in you the inner
voice that refuses to move. May all your false layers fall away
because this is what you really want and decide. You will then
discover the glory of living. Be in peace, be in God.
The two approaches are the conscious ego's dialogue with the ignorant egotistical child and the universal, spiritual self's guidance. They work together to gradually mature the inner child.
What are the two approaches to reeducation, and how do they interact?
An absence of fear and the presence of trust. This allows for the manifestation of the universal life principle.
What are the common denominators of healthy desire and healthy desirelessness?
You can determine this by seriously probing and considering the possibility that your feelings may be fake, and then confronting and reeducating the part of yourself that refuses to change.
How can you determine whether your feelings are real or put on?
It is necessary to tune in to it, make a conscious effort to use it, and then deliberately choose to change your thoughts and will. This requires a willingness to be honest, constructive, loving, and open.
What is the key to experiencing the universal spirit and accessing its power?
Self-observation and self-reflection are crucial in the process of spiritual growth, as they allow you to confront and overcome your own negative tendencies, leading to a more harmonious and constructive approach to life.
What is the importance of self-observation and self-reflection in the process of spiritual growth?