Other Bantam New Age Books of interest to readers of THE PATHWORK OF SELF-
TRANSFORMATION:
BEYOND SUPERNATURE by Lyall Watson
CHANNELING: HOW  TO REACH OUT TO YOUR SPIRIT GUIDE by Kathryn Ridall,
Ph.D.
CREATIVE VISUALIZATION by Shakti Gawain
EDGAR CAYCE: THE SLEEPING PROPHET by Jess Stearn
EMMANUEL’S BOOK: A MANUAL FOR LIVING COMFORTABLY IN THE COSMOS
compiled by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton
EMMANUEL’S BOOK II: THE CHOICE  FOR LOVE compiled by Pat Rodegast and
Judith Stanton
FOCUSING by Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D. GOING WITHIN by Shirley MacLaine
IF YOU MEET THE BUDDHA ON THE ROAD, KILL HIM! by Sheldon Kopp
JOURNEY OF AWAKENING by Ram Dass
HANDS OF LIGHT by Barbara Ann Brennan
THE LAZY MAN’S GUIDE TO ENLIGHTENMENT by Thaddeus Golas
LIFE AFTER LIFE by Raymond A. Moody, Jr., M.D. OTHER LIVES, OTHER SELVES by Roger J. Woolger, Ph.D. THE SETH BOOKS by Jane Roberts
SHAMBHALA by Chögyam Trungpa
SOULMATES by Jess Stearn
SPIRIT COMMUNICATION by Kevin Ryerson and Stephanie Harolde
OceanofPDF.comOceanofPDF.comTHE PATHWORK OF SELF-TRANSFORMATION 
A Bantam Book / May 1990
Bantam New Age and the accompanying gure design as well as the statement “the search for
meaning, growth and change” are trademarks of Bantam Books . All rights reserved . Copyright  © 1990 by The Pathwork Foundation . Cover photo copyright  © 1990 by James Enright / Stockphotos, Inc.  
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher . For information address: Bantam Books . Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Guide (Spirit)  
   The pathwork of self-transformation / [channeled] by Eva Pierrakos. p. cm. eISBN: 978-0-307-83047-0  
   1. Spirit writings. 2. Self-realization —Miscellanea. 3. Spiritual life—Misce llanea. I.
Pierrakos, Eva, 1915–1979. II. Title. BF1301.G94 1990  
133.9′3—dc2089–27802
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell
Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the
portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Oce and in other
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OceanofPDF.comC o n t e n t s
Cover
Other Bantam New Age Books
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
1 What Is the Path? •  Longing for a Larger and More Fullling State of Consciousness
•  The False Desire
•  The Realistic Longing
•  Learning to Endure the State of Bliss
•  The Pathwork and Psychotherapy
•  The Pathwork and Spiritual Practice
•  How to Find Your Real Self
•  Positivity and Negativity Are One Energy Current
•  “Images,” or Wrong Conclusions
•  Progress on the Path
•  Freeing Your Spiritual Self
•  Giving Up Illusions
•  Being Lived Through by the Spirit
2 The Idealized Self-Image
•  The Higher Self, the Lower Self, and the Mask
•  Fear of Pain and Punishment
•  The Moral Mask of the Idealized Self
•  Self-Acceptance
•  The Inner Tyrant
•  Estrangement from the Real Self
•  Giving Up the Idealized Self
•  Coming Home
3 Compulsion to Recreate and Overcome Childhood Hurts•  The Lack of Mature Love
•  Attempts to Remedy the Childhood Hurt in Adulthood
•  The Fallacy of this Strategy
•  Reexperiencing the Childhood Hurt
•  How to Stop Recreating? 4 The Real God and the God-Image
•  The False Concept of God
•  Dissolving the God-Image
•  God Is Not Unjust
•  The True Concept of God
•  The Eternal, Divine Laws
•  God Is in You and Creates Through You
5 Unity and Duality
•  Understanding Is the Way to the Unied Plane
•  Obstructions to Finding the Real Self
•  Your Ego Versus Your Divine Center
•  The Transition from Dualistic Error to Unied Truth
6 The Forces of Love, Eros, and Sex
•  The Spiritual Meaning of the Erotic Force
•  The Dierence Between Eros and Love
•  The Fear of Eros and the Fear of Love
•  The Sex Force
•  The Ideal Partnership of Love
•  The Search for the Other Soul
•  The Pitfalls of Marriage
•  True Marriage
•  Separateness
•  Choice of Partner
•  Eros as a Bridge
7 The Spiritual Signicance of Relationship
•  Unequal Development of Parts of Consciousness
•  Elements of Dissension and Unication
•  Fulllment as a Yardstick for Personal Development
•  Who Is Responsible for the Relationship? •  Destructive Interactions
•  How to Reach for Fulllment and Pleasure
8 Emotional Growth and Its Function•  Numbing of Feelings to Avoid Unhappiness
•  Isolation
•  The Need to Exercise the Emotions
•  Allowing Immature Feelings to Surface
•  How to Activate the Growth Process
•  What Is True Security? •  If the Feelings Are Stunted, Love Cannot Grow
9 Real and False Needs
•  Awakening the Dormant Spiritual Potentials
•  The Unfulllment of the Child’s Legitimate Needs
•  How to Dissolve the Pain of the Unfullled Legitimate Needs
•  Overcoming the Resistance to Exposing False Needs
•  Present Suering Is the Result of Pursuing False Needs
•  Letting Go of the Demand for Fulllment of Unreal Needs
10 Innite Possibilities of Experience Hindered by Emotional Dependency
•  Everything in the World Exists in a State of Potentiality
•  Avoidance Motivation Closes Out New Vistas
•  A Cluster of Popular Misconceptions
•  Devices to Hide Weakness and Dependency on Others
•  The Child Within You Still Wants Validation from Others
•  Vicious Circle and Forcing-Current
•  Let Go—Let Out
•  Take O the Leash Around Your Neck
11 The Spiritual Meaning of Crisis
•  The Self-Perpetuating Force of Negative Emotions
•  Crisis Can Put an End to Negative Self-Perpetuation
•  Growth Is Possible Without “Dark Nights”
•  Outer Crisis and Inner Crisis
•  Leaving Crises Behind
•  The Message of Crises
12 The Meaning of Evil and Its Transcendence
•  Does Evil Exist? •  Right Acceptance of Evil
•  Evil as Distorted Creative Power
•  Liberating the Inner Beauty
•  Transformation
13 Self-Esteem•  The Inner Conict Between Self-Indulgence and Self-Rejection
•  What Brings Self-Respect? •  Using the Power of the Conscious Mind
•  Reconnection with the Instinctual Life
•  Unifying Love and Pleasure
14 Meditation for Three Voices: Ego, Lower Self, Higher Self
•  The Ego as Mediator
•  The Meditative Attitude
•  The Changes Eected by the Pathwork Meditation
•  The Reeducation of the Destructive Self
•  A Way to Begin Meditation
•  Reconciliation of the Paradoxes of Your Life
15 Connection Between the Ego and the Universal Power
•  The Universal Life Principle and the “Forgetful” Ego
•  The Conict Between Yearning For and Fearing the Real Self
•  Misinterpretations of the Universal Life Principle in Religion
•  How to Let Go of the Ego
•  Analogy with the Law of Gravity
•  The Human Reaction to the Real Self—Shame and Falsication
•  The Biblical Symbolism of Nakedness
16 Consciousness: Fascination with Creation
•  Knowing, Feeling, and Willing as Tools of Creative Consciousness
•  Three Conditions of Experiencing Yourself as the Universal Spirit
•  Self-Observation and Purication on Three Levels
•  The Origin of “Sin” or Evil
•  The Way Out of Negative Creation
17 Creative Emptiness
•  How to Open Up to the New Consciousness
•  The Way Leads Through Seeming Contradictions
•  A New Fullness Begins to Manifest
•  Puncturing the Closed Circuit of the Mind
•  Making Your Mind an Instrument of Unication
•  Going Into the Emptiness
•  The Actual Experience
•  The New Person As the Receptacle of the Universal Intelligence
•  The Function of the Intellect in the New Person
•  Entering the New, Greater LifeThe Voice Within: A Meditation from the Guide
Background: The Guide, Eva, and the Pathwork Foundation
List of Pathwork Lectures
Acknowledgment
About the Author
OceanofPDF.comI n t r o d u c t i o n
No matter where you are in life, what your profession is, what
your problems are, whether  you are young or old, this book will
help you see yourself and life in a new light. This new light
combines reaso n with love and illuminates a path-way leading into
your innermost self. This book is channeled material. Its true author is a discarnate
being who did not give himself a name, but who came to be known
as the Guide. He delivered, through Eva Pierrakos, 258 lectures on
the nature of psychological and spiritual reality and on the process
of personal spiritual development. This process came to be known as
the Pathwork and the transmissions were called the Pathwork
Lectures or the Guide Lectures. There are many volumes of channeled material in print today, and
it therefore seems right that we do our best to let the potential
reader know what distinguis hes this book from so many others. Let
us introduce you to the two principal distinguishing features of the
Pathwork guidance:
1. The channeled teachings  of the Pathwork Guide outline a
complete path for persona l transformat ion and spiritual self-
realization. 2. This path includes a profound understanding of personal
negativity—its sources, consequences, and a process to meet and
transform it. This process, as taught by the Guide, is unmatched
anywhere else.The goal of personal psychological work is to become self-
actualized, to realize our individual human potential for meaningful
work in the world and for loving relationships with others. The goal of spiritual practice  is to experience enlightenm ent, or
unitive consciousness, our oneness with all things. The aim of
spiritual work  is to know our innermost identity as God-inspired
beings, lled with love and light. A complete path must help us address both the frustrations in the
fulllment of our personal lives and the limitations that prevent our
spiritual awakening. Most approaches to personal and spiritual
growth oer us help for only part of this journey. We still want to
know: How can I get from where I am to where I want to be? Most present-day channeled material, as well as the esoteric
traditions of most religions, tell us that we create our own reality. But if this is so and I am indeed the creator of my life, what part of me is
it that creates events that I nd quite unpleasant? Why don’t I do a
better job of creating the life that I believe I want? Why are some aspects
of myself so hard to change? The most valuable contribution the Guide has made  to the
modern psych ological-spiritual quest is a practical, rational, and
honest way to get from where we are to where we want to be. All
spiritual teachers describe the enlightened state of love and
harmony in which one feels at one with everyone and surrenders
joyfully to God. We have also read the descriptions from humanistic
and transpersonal psychologists of the fullled life of the self-
actualized, whole person. But if we do not deceive ourselves, we will know that we fall
short of these goals. We need a way to accept ourselves fully as we
are now, and to work with whatever in us blocks our personal and
spiritual evolution. We need maps of the psyche that do not idealize
or gloss over our all-too-hum an failings. The Pathwork outlines a
map of human consciousness  that includes our devils as well as our
angels, the vulnerable child as well as the competent adult, the
petty ego concerns as well as the grand visionary longings. We need guidance to give us support as we take steps from where
we are now to the larger, more fullled, more aware person that wecan be. The Pathwork encourages us to stop trying to pretend we
are an idealized image of ourselves, the person who we think we
ought to be. The Guide helps  us to relax into an acceptance of who
we honestly are and what we honestly feel, moment to moment. Any one of us who is truthful can discover disagreeable, self-
centered feelings and attitudes within ourselves. And yet we do not feel like bad people. We would like to follow
the Golden Rule. Most of us would even agree that if we could love
ourselves, and then our neighbors as ourselves, we would feel a lot
better. Why is it so hard for me to do this? Why do I continue to be so
self-centered, or, alternately, so self-degrading? Generally speaking, we are given very little real help on these
issues. Most religions give us moral commandme nts, often
reinforced by guilt or fear, threats or cajoling, so we won’t act out
our negativity. When we fail, as we inevitably will, we are
admonished to try harder. We are told to give over our aws to
someone else—to Christ, the church, or the guru. Or, in much
contemporary guidance, we are expected to “rise above” our own
limitations and see our negativity as merely temporary ignorance of
our divinity. How can I acknowledge my negativity without either
glossing over it or being devastated by it? Most psycholo gies don’t answer these questions either. Instead,
we are inadvertently discouraged from taking full responsibility for
our negativity. Since guilt is such a debilitating emotion, we are
often encourag ed by the psychological approach to stop thinking of
ourselves as sinful or even awed. In one way or another we are
allowed to blame someone else—our parents, our past lives,
oppressive societal norms—for our negativity. We think of ourselves
as victims. We discharge our bad feelings toward those whom we
see as having hurt us and then we hope that bad thoughts and
feelings will go away. But they do not. Do I just have to live with my imperfections? If I cannot overcome
them, am I condemned by them? We are left with the secret fear that
we are intrinsically bad in a way that we cannot change. This is the
source of much of our despair and discouragement.The Pathwork Lectures provide the missing element in both
contemporary and traditional approaches to personal growth. While
giving us the spiritual perspective that we are fundamentally divine,
that at our center we are one with all that is, the Guide teaches that
we also each contain a layer of negativity which he calls the lower
self. The lower self is that part of us which actively, though usually
unconsciously, chooses  negativity, separation, egotism, fear, and
distrust. Howe ver, since the lower self is ultimately a distortion of
the one divine energy that animates the universe, it can be
transformed back into its original life-arming vitality. In the
Pathwork Lectures, the Guide shows us how. It is very hard work to come face to face with the lower self and
most of us would like to avoid it. That is why we cling to the
idealized images of ourselves. That is why we avoid the deep
emotional work where such negative feelings surface. Yet
recognizing and acknowledging our negative emotions are not too
hard when we have the spirit ual perspective and experience that tell
us that our essence is divine. The troubled feelings we nd inside
can be transformed when we acknowledge them without evasion
and learn to reconvert them into their originally divine nature. As
the Guide says:
Through the gateway of feeling your weakness lies your strength . Through the gateway of feeling your pain lies your pleasure and joy . Through the gateway of feeling your fear lies your security and safety . Through the gateway of feeling your loneliness lies your capacity to have
fulllment, love, and companionship . Through the gateway of feelin g your hopelessness lies true and justied
hope. Through the gateway of accepting the lacks in your childhood lies your
fulllment now . Not only does the Guide oer a spiritual approach to the problem
of evil, but also a systematic and thorough path to releasing the
light hidden behind our distortions. He leads us gently and lovinglythrough our darkness. The practice of honest, compassionate
confrontation of the lower self, while anchoring ourselves  more and
more solidly in the higher self, brings the greatest personal
liberation. This is a path of empowerment through self-
responsibility. It is the most illuminating experience to nally be able to connect
the events of one’s life—both positive and negative—with those
forces within that have created them. It brings us home to the
unitive core in ourselves, to our true, creative identity. The lectures in this volume were carefully chosen to represent the
basic teachings of the Guide and give an overview. We recommend
that you read them sequentially, because the concepts are
introduced gradually and progressively. However, you will
understand them even if you pick at rst those titles that most
intrigue you. It is possible to work with the lectures by yourself, following
through with whatever exercises for self-awareness the Guide
proposes in the lectures themselves. It is also helpful to form a small
group in which the lectures can be discussed and your self-work can
be shared. The Pathwork Centers oer introductory workshops as
well as ongoin g teaching and training programs that help you apply
the lecture material to your personal development. The Centers also
have trained helpers availab le to work individually or with groups. You can also use the Pathw ork Lectures in your sessions with a
spiritually inspired therapist. Many psychotherap ists and
psychiatrists have already discovered that the Guide ’s lectures
contain materi al on transforming negativity that is nowhere else to be
found . And many clergy and other people doing spiritual service
have found in these lectures practical help in fullling their calling. The important  thing is commitment to your personal truth, to your
own inner path. The Guide’s teachings help us to purify ourselves so that we can
fulll our task on earth, become self-realized people, and learn tolove in the true sense of the word. As members of society our task is
to transform the planet Earth , and create a global brother-sisterhood
through the spreading of the new consciousness and devel oping new
ways of communication, interaction, and problem-solving. Understanding our personal evolution as part of the evolution of the
planet Earth, and becoming  conscious co-creators of a new and
expanded reality, are the most joyful and positive aims of this path. To absorb these lectures is the beginning of doing Pathwork . Let
them touch you deeply, not only in your mind, but also in your
heart. May they inspire you. JUDITH SALY and D ONOVAN THESENGA
OceanofPDF.com1 
What Is the Path? A journ ey through the known into the unknown regions of the
soul is similar to the quest told in fairy tales. The ignorant hero or
heroine sets out from the familiar, everyday world because of a
longing to nd a greater life than the ordinary routine of a limited
existence. Frightening encounters, tests of all kinds follow. If you
pass the tests, you nd happiness. The reward is wealth and a life
partner; you become king or queen: a fullled adult . The inner quest, if taken seriously, also takes courage, also
traverses dark regions, and also leads to maturity—and the treasure
is also always found. Just as in the fairy tales the hero doesn’t
sneak around the dragon but ghts him, and doesn’t run away from
the old witch but befriends her, you, too, must meet the destructive
forces within yourself and deal with them . In this lecture the Guide shows how to follow the longing and
liberate the dormant powers within yourself, so that you come upon
the treasure of your wise, loving, inner Godself . Greetings and welcome, my friends. Blessings for every one of
you. In this lecture I would like to discuss the path to the fulllment
of your deepest longings. Longing for a Larger and More Fullling State of
ConsciousnessEvery human being senses an inner longing that goes deeper than
the longings for emotional and creative fulllment, although these
are, of course, part of the deeper and more essential desire. This
longing comes  from sensing that another, more fullling state of
consciousness and a larger capacity to experience life must exist . As you translate this longing into conscious terms, you may
become involved in confusion and contradiction. Confusions and
apparent contr adictions come from the dualistic consciousness of
the human mind. The dualism is always present, for humans
perceive reality in terms of either/or, good or bad, right or wrong,
black or white. This way of perceiving life is at best only half true:
One can perceive only fragments of reality; the full truth  can never
be found. Truth always comprises more than what the dualistic way
of seeing reality can grasp. One confusion  might be: “Am I longing for something unreal? Would it be perhaps more realistic and more mature to give up this
longing and accept that life is just this at, dismal, gray place? Do
we not hear over and over that acceptance is necessary in order to
be at peace with oneself and life? Therefore I should really abandon
this longing.”
The way out of your confusio n can only be found when you take a
step beyond the dualism implicit in this dilemma. It is true that you
must accept your present state. It is true that life, as it manifests,
cannot be perfect. Yet this fact is not what truly makes you
unhappy, rather it is your demand that life should be perfect and be
handed to you in its perfection that creates a problem. If you go
deeply enough, you will inevitably discover that there is a part of
you that denies pain and frustration; a place where you are angry
and spiteful because there is no loving authority who will eliminate
undesirable experiences for you. Thus it is true that your longing for
this utopian kind of happier state is unrealistic and should be
abandoned. The False DesireBut does this truly mean that the longing per se stems from
immature, greedy, or neuroti c attitudes? No, my friends, it does not. There is an inner voice tellin g you there is much, much more to your
life and yourself than you are capable of experiencing at this time . How then can we nd clarity  about what is real and what is false
about your deepest longin g? The desire is false when your
personality wishes love and fulllment, perfection and happiness, or
pleasure and creative expansion without paying the price of strictest
self-confrontation. It is false when you do not assume the
responsibility for your prese nt state, or the state you long for. For
example, if you feel sorry for yourself because of your unfullled
life, and if you in any way blame others for your present state, no
matter how wrong those others may be, whether your parents, your
peers, your associates, or life as a whole, then you do not assume
responsibility. If this is the case, then in some way you also wish to
receive the new and better state as an unearned reward. You may
try to be a good little obedient follower of a powerful authority
gure in order to be rewarded. Since the reward in reality can never
come from the outside, no matter what you do, you must feel
disappointed, resentful, cheated, and angry, and you will resort
again and again to your old, destructive patterns that are in fact
responsible for the state that creates your unfullled longing. The Realistic Longing
The longing is realistic when you start from the premise that the
clue to fulllment must lie in you; when you wish to nd the attitudes
in you that prevent you from experiencing life in a fullled and
meaningful way; when you interpret the longing as a message from
the core of your inner being , sending you on a path that helps you
to nd your real self. However, when the inner message of longing is misinterpreted by
the negative, greedy, ungiving and demanding personality,
confusion sets in. The longing is then put into channels of
unrealizable fantasies of magic. You believe fulllment is supposedto be given to you, rather than attained through the courage and
honesty of looking at yourse lf as you now are, even at areas you
would rather avoid. If a life situation is painful and you react with
rage, complain ts, and other defenses against cleanly experiencing
this pain, you are not in truth about your present state. But if you
just let the pain be and feel it, without playing games like “it will
annihilate me,” or “it will last forever,” the experience will release
powerful creative energies to increasingly work for you in your life
and open the channels to your spiritual self. Feeling the pain will
also yield a deeper, fuller, and wiser understandin g of the
connections between cause and eect. For instance, you will see
how you attracted this particular pain. Such insight may not come
immediately, for the more you force it, the more it will elude you. But it will come if you stop the inner ghting and resisting. Do not abandon the longing itself . Take it seriou sly. In fact, cultivate
it and learn to understand it, so that you will follow its message and
take the inner  path to your core; go through that part which you
want to avoid, which is the real culprit solely responsib le for your
less than fullled and joyful state. Do not abando n the longing that comes from the sense that your
life could be much more, that there is a state in which you can live
without painfu l, tortured confusions, where you can function on a
level of inner resilience, contentment, and security, where you are
capable of deep feelings, of blissful pleasure and can express them,
where you are capable of meeting life without fear because you no
longer fear yourself. You will, therefore, nd life, even its problems,
a joyful challenge. If your inner problems can become a challenge
that gives spice to your life, the ensuing peace will be all the more
sweet. The tackling of these problems will give you a sense of your
own strength, resourcefulness, and creative ability. You will feel the
spiritual self owing through your veins, in your thoughts, in your
vision and your perceptions, so that decisions will be made from the
center of your being. When you live this way, occasional outer
problems are the salt of your life and become almost pleasurable. But the times of outer problems will become less frequent, and
peaceful, joyous, creative living will become the norm.Learning to Endure the State of Bliss
Right now, the saddest part of your longing is that deep inside
you know how your own body and soul are not even capable of
accepting and sustaining intense pleasure at this time. Pleasure
exists on all levels: spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental. However, spiritual pleasure, separated from the levels of everyday
functioning, is an illusion, because true spiritual bliss encompasses
the total personality. The personality must therefore learn to endure
a state of bliss. This it cannot  do unless it learns to endure whatever
is locked inside the psyche now: pain, meanness, malice, hate,
suering, guilt, fear, terror. All these must be transcen ded. Then,
and then only, can the human personality function in a blissful
state. Your longing to experie nce more pleasure is a message for you
to embark on a road that aords you the possibility of being in bliss. The state of existence I described need not be given up as
unrealistic or wishful thinking. It need not be given up because you
will earn it and make it your own by going through whatever in you
prevents you from experien cing it. This state already exists as a
dormant potential within you. It is not something that can be given
to you by others, or acquired through learning or eort. It unfolds
organically as a byproduct of your going on a path such as I am
privileged to show you. This brings us to the whole  question of what this path is. This
path is not new: It has existe d in many dierent forms for as long as
human beings  have lived on this earth. The forms and the ways
must change as humanity evolves, but the fundamental path
remains the same. The particular path—the “Pathwork”—in which I
guide you is anchored in ancient and perennial wisdom and yet it is
also new. It oers help for your psychological and spirit ual growth
at this present, critical stage in humanity’s evolution. The Pathwork and PsychotherapyThe pathwork is not psychotherapy, although aspects of it must
necessarily deal with areas psychotherapy also deals with. In the
framework of the pathwork,  the psychological approach is only a
side issue, a way of getting through obstructions. It is essential to
deal with confusions, inner misconceptions, misunderstandings,
destructive attitudes, aliena ting defenses, negative emotions, and
paralyzed feelings, all of which psychotherapy also attem pts to do
and even posits as its ultimat e goal. In contrast, the pathwork enters
its most important phase only after this rst stage is over. The
second and most importan t phase consists of learning how to
activate the greater consciousness dwelling within every human
soul. Often the second phase overlaps with the rst phase that is
concerned with overcoming the obstructions, because the second or
spiritual phase of the pathwork is essential for truly executing the
rst. The rst part of the work cannot truly be successful unless
contact with the spiritual self is regularly cultivated and used. However, when and how this may be done varies greatly and is
dependent on the personality and on the predisposition, prejudices,
and blocks of the individual entering this path. The sooner you can
use, explore, and activate the inexhaustible fountain of strength and
inspiration within, the easier and faster will you deal with the
obstructions. It is thus quite clear in what way this path diers from
psychotherapy, although some of the emphases and, at times, even
the methods may be similar. The Pathwork and Spiritual Practice
Nor is this path a spiritual practice that aims simply at reaching
higher spiritu al consciousness. There are many methods and
practices that attempt realiza tion of the spiritual self. Though using
valid methods to forcefully reach this goal, many spiritual
disciplines do not pay suci ent attention to those areas of the ego-
self that are steeped in negativity and destructiveness. Any success
thus achieved is always short-lived and illusory, even though someof the experie nces may be genuine enough. But a spiritual state
reached in such a one-sided way is not solid and cannot be
maintained unless the total personality is included. Since human
beings shy away from accep ting and dealing with certain parts of
themselves, they often seek refuge in paths that promise that one
can avoid facing these problematic inner areas. If you think of a
spiritual path as the practice of meditation for its own sake, or for
the sake of reaching blissful cosmic experiences and consciousness,
then this path is not your way. The temptation to use spiritual practices to grab happiness and
fulllment, and to avoid already existing negativities, confusions,
and pain, is great. But this attitude defeats the purpose; it comes
from and leads to further illusions. One illusion is that anything that
exists in you can be avoided. Another illusion is the belief that what
is in you needs  to be feared and denied. No matter how destructive
it is, any inner aspect of you can be transformed. Only when you
avoid what is in you does your illusion truly become detrimental to
you and others. Let me recapit ulate what I have said so far. This path is neither
psychotherapy, nor a spiritual path in the usual sense of the word:
and, at the same time, it is both. It will be helpful if you remember
the following points as you consider the possibility of embarking on
this journey. How to Find Your Real Self
By doing the pathwork, you embark on a voyage leading you into
the new territory of your inner universe. Whether you have had
therapy—satisfactory and successful or not—or whethe r you are
deeply troubled and need help in order to live your life in a
fullling way, you will still weed for quite a while to pay attention
mainly to those areas within  yourself that are negative, destructive,
and in error. You may not like to do so, but if you truly wish to nd
your real self, that core of your being from which all good stems,
this focus is necessary.“How long will it take?” you may ask. That depends on your own
state of mind or feeling and your outer life manifestation. When
your inner negativities are overcome, this new state will express
itself in your life: There will be no doubt. Your path will organically
bring you into dierent emphases and concerns. The aim of this
path is not to cure you of an emotional or mental illness, although it
does this very well and it is bound to do so if you do the work. But
you should not alter this path for that purpose. Do not enter this path if you expect that it will make you forget
your sadness and pain or let you gloss over those aspec ts of your
personality you like least or even dislike outright. Your dislike may
not be “neurotic.” You may be quite right to dislike these aspects,
but you are not right in believing yourself hopelessly bad because of
them. So this path must teach you to face whatever is in you, for
only when you do this can you truly love yourself. Only then can
you nd your essence and true Godself. If you wish to nd your
essence but refuse to face whatever is in you, this is not the path for
you. It cannot be denied that to expand the consciousness of a limited
mind is a tremendously dicult task, for all human beings have
only the limited mind available to them when they start out. This
limited mind must transcend  itself in order to realize its unlimited
power and scope. Therefore this path constantly requires your mind
to bridge the gap of its own limitations by considering new
possibilities and by making room for other alternatives for the self,
for life, and for expressing the self in life. Make no mistake: This is not an easy path. But the diculty is not
xed and immovable. It exists only to the degree the personality has
a state in avoiding aspects of the self. To the degree the
commitment is made to be in truth with the self, the diculty
vanishes. And what rst seem ed a diculty now begins to become a
challenge, an exciting journe y, a process that makes life so intensely
real and wholesome, so secure and fullling, that you would not
want to give it up for anything. In other words, the diculty exists
exclusively in the false belief that if you have a certain negative
attitude, then all of you is bad. Such a belief makes facing the selfdicult or even impossible . Hence it is necessary to nd the
underlying beliefs behind any strong resistance to looking at the
dark areas of the self. This path demands from you that which most people are least
willing to give: truthfulness with the self, exposure of what exists now,
elimination of masks and pretenses, and the experience of one’s naked
vulnerability . It is a tall order, and yet it is the only real way that
leads to genuine peace and wholeness. But once you have
committed yourself to it, it is no longer a tall order but rather an
organic and natural process. Positivity and Negativity Are One Energy Current
This path is simultaneously the most dicult and the easiest. It
merely depend s from what point of view you look at it and choose
to experience it. The diculty can be measured in terms of your
truthfulness with yourself. To the degree you want to be in truth,
the path will appear neither too dicult, nor will it appear as if it
dealt, in the words of some of its critics, “too much with the
negative side of life and self.” For the negative is the positive, in
essence. Negat ive and positive are not two aspects of energy and
consciousness: they are one and the same. Whatever particles of
energy and consciousness in your self have turned negati ve must be
reconverted into their original positive way of being. This cannot be
accomplished without fully taking responsibility for the negativity
in you. The reluctance to be truthful with oneself applies to even the most
honest people. A person may be noted for his or her honesty and
integrity on one level, yet there can be deeper levels where this is
not so at all. This path leads into the as yet concealed, more subtle
levels that are dicult to pinpoint but certainly ascertainable. “Images,” or Wrong ConclusionsOn these concealed, unconscious levels, misconceptions are
formed in early childhood. These distorted perceptions of reality
continue to inuence the behavior of the adult. They develop into
rmly held conclusions about life, which I like to call “images,”
because they form rigid patterns as if engraved on the soul
substance. An image is made up of misconceptions, distorted feelings, and
physical block s. A conclusion drawn from distorted perception is a
wrong conclusion; therefore images are actually wrong conclusions
about the nature of reality that are so rmly embedded in a person’s
psyche that they become behavior-controlling signa ls in life
situations. A person may have several images, but underlying them
all is a main image, which is the key to the basic negati ve attitude
toward life. Let me give you some examples. An image formed because of a
particular situation in the child’s family might be that the display of
emotion, especially of warm feelings, is a sign of weakne ss and will
lead to one’s being hurt. Although this is a personal image, it may
be reinforced by the societal  mass image that, especially for a man,
the display and physical expression of warm feelings are unmanly
and weak because they mean losing control. An individual with this
image will then, in any situation where he could emotionally open
himself, obey the signal of the images instead of spontaneously
responding to the actual situation or to the other person, which
would be the positive, life-arming response. He will also act
toward others in a way to which they will respond negatively and
conrm his false belief. In this way he deprives himself of pleasure
and restricts the ow of the life force, creating inner tensions and
further feeding his image. Thus negative compulsive patterns, or
self-perpetuating vicious circles, are created. Or, a baby cries because she is hungry, but the mother does not
respond. However, when she does not cry, the mother will come and
feed her. So the little girl draws the conclusion that if she shows her
need, she will not be heard, but if she does not, she will get
attention. Then the following conclusion is drawn: “In order to have
my need fullled, I must not show that I have a need.” With thisparticular mother, perhaps not showing the need actually did work
for a while, but, obviously, in later years such an attitude will
produce the opposite result. Since no one will know that this woman
has any specic needs, no one will fulll them. However, since she
is comp letely ignorant of her “image,” that is, the wrong conclusion
about showing  needs, because it has long ago sunk into her
unconscious, she will go through life showing her needs less and
less, hoping that eventually someone will reward her for being so
unassuming, and not understanding why she is so unfullled. She
does not know that it is her behavior that makes life conrm her
wrong belief. For images have a magnetic power. The wrong conclusions that form an image are drawn in
ignorance or half-knowledge and therefore cannot remain in the
conscious mind, and could actually have been carried over from
previous incarnations. As the child grows up, his or her newly
learned intellectual knowledge contradicts the old emotional
“knowledge.” The person pushes the emotional knowledge down
until it disappears from conscious sight. Yet the more the emotional
knowledge is hidden, the more potent it becomes . These unconscious
images then restrict the unfolding of the person’s potential. Therefore, a conscious eort has to be made to bring these images
into awareness and learn how to inactivate them. To nd out if such unconscious images exist in you on a deeper
level you can use an infallible key that will give you faultless
answers. This key is: How do you feel about yourself and about your
life? How meaningful, fullled, and rich is your life? Do you feel
secure with others? Do you feel comfortable about your most
intimate self in the presenc e of others, or at least with certain
people with whom you have a goal in common? How much joy are
you capable of feeling, giving , and receiving? Are you plagued with
resentments, anxiety, and tension, or with loneliness and a sense of
isolation? Do you need a lot of overactivity in order to alleviate
anxiety? Actua lly, the fact that you do not consciously feel anxious
by no means proves that you are without anxiety. Many start out on
the path without awareness  of their anxiety, but they feel dead,
numb, listless,  and paralyzed. This may be a sign that the anxietywas overcome through an articial deadening process. This path
cannot skip the step of making you rst feel your anxiety and then
feel whatever the anxiety hides. Only then can real aliveness come. Exhilaration, enthusiasm, joyousness, and the unique blend of
excitement and peace that connotes spiritual wholeness are a result
of inner  truthfulness. When these states are absent, then truthfulness
must be absent. It is as simple as that, my friends. So if you are prepared to embark on the journey into yourself to
nd, acknowle dge, and bring out whatever is in you, if you summon
all your inner truthfulness and commitment for the journey, if you
nd the courage and humility not to appear other than you are even
in your own eyes, then you have indeed every right to expect that
this path will help you realize your full life, and fulll your longing
in every conceivable way. This is a realistic hope. You will
increasingly know it to be so. Progress on the Path
Little by little you will begin to function from your innermost
center, which is a very dierent experience from functioning from
your periphery. You are now so accustomed to the latter that you
cannot even imagine how else it could be. Now you are constantly
dependent on what happens around you. You depend on
appreciation and approval from others, on being loved, and on
being successful in terms of the outside world. Whether you are
aware of it or not, you inwardly strive to make sure you will obtain
all this outer support so as to have peace and fulllment. When you function from your center, security and joy spring from
a deep well within you. This does not by any means imply that
when this happens you are condemned to live without  approval,
appreciation, love, or success. This is another dualistic
misunderstanding. You think: “Either I experience my center and
then must forfeit all love and appreciation from others and be alone,
or I must forfeit my inner self because I cannot contemplate such a
lonely life.” In reality, when you function from the liberated centerof your innermost self, you attract all the abundance of life to you,
but you do not depend on it. It enriches you and is a fulllment of a
legitimate need, but it is not the substance of life. The substance is
within. In the healthy life of every human being there must be exchange,
intimacy, communication, sharing, mutual love, mutual pleasure,
and the giving as well as the receiving of warmth and openness. Also, every human being needs recognition of what he or she does. But there is an enormous dierence between wanting this
recognition in a healthy way and depending on outside recognition
to such an extent that you are unable to do without it at all times. In
the latter case, the self begin s to sacrice its integrity in tragic ways
that cost much too much. Then the real self is betrayed and the
seeking of recognition defeats itself. This path is geared to nding
your center, the deep, inner spiritual reality, and not some illusory
religious escape. Quite the contrary, this path is immensely
pragmatic, for the true spiritual life is never in contradiction to
practical life on earth. There  must be a harmony between these two
aspects of the whole. Forsaking everyday living is not true
spirituality. In most cases, it is merely another kind of escape. For
many it is easier to sacrice something and to chastise themselves
than to face and deal with their dark aspects. The guilt for the latter
is constantly atoned for by self-deprivations that are supposedly
doorways to heaven. Yet this guilt cannot be wiped out unless the
personality deals directly with the darkness within. Then sacrice
and deprivation become not only unnecessary but even
contradictory to true spiritual unfoldment. The universe is abundant
in its joy, pleasure, and bliss: Human beings are supposed to
experience them, not forsake them. No amount of forsaking will
wipe out the guilt for avoiding the purication of the soul. I would  like to mention another specic feature of the inner
obstructions that must be met so they can be transcended. It is
necessary to rst understan d that all thoughts and feelings are
powerful agents of creative energy, regardless of whether the
thoughts are true and wise or false and limited. Likewise, whether
the feelings are loving or hateful, angry or benign, fearful orpeaceful, their energy must create according to their nature. Thoughts and opinions create feelings, and both of them  together
create attitudes, behaviors, and emanations, which in turn create
the life circumstances. These sequences must be connected with,
understood, and fully recogn ized. This is an essential aspect of the
pathwork. Your fear of your negative feelings is unjustied. The feelings in
themselves are not terrible or unbearable. However, your beliefs and
attitudes can make them so. This process is constantly being veried
by those who follow this path, because they nd that the deepest
pain is a reviv ifying experience. It releases contracted energy and
paralyzed creativity. It enables people to feel pleasure to the degree
they are willing to feel pain. The same applies to fear. To experience fear in itself is not
devastating: once experienced, the fear instantly becomes a tunnel
through which you travel, not letting go of the feeling of fear until it
carries you to a deeper level of reality. The fear is a denial of other
feelings. When the original feeling is being accepted and
experienced, the knot dissolves. Thus, it is never the feeling itself
that is unbearable. However,  your attitude has the power  to make it
so. Fear of your feelings makes you cut them o. Thus you cut
yourself o from life. Your spiritual center cannot evolve and
manifest and unify with your ego self unless you learn to fully
embrace all your feelings, allow yourself to be carried by them, and
learn to take responsibility for them. If you make others responsible
for your feelings, you will be in a bind because you will either deny
them or act them out destructively against others. Neither one of
these two alternatives is desirable or can bring any solution. Freeing Your Spiritual Self
Your spiritual self cannot be freed unless you learn to feel all your
feelings, unles s you learn to accept every part of your being no
matter how destructive it may be right now. No matter hownegative, mean, vain, or egotistical you may nd a corner of
yourself to be—contrary to other, more developed aspec ts of your
personality—it is absolutely necessary that every aspect of your
being be accepted and dealt with. No aspect should be left out or
covered over in the wishful hope that it would no longer matter and
would someho w just go away. It does matter, my friend s. Nothing
that exists in you is powerless. No matter how hidden a dark aspect
might be, it creates life conditions that you must deplore. This is one
reason why you must learn to accept the negatively creating aspects
in you. Anothe r reason is that no matter how destructive , cruel, and
bad it may be, every aspect of energy and consciousness is in its
original essence both beautifu l and positive. The distortions must be
reconverted into their original essence. Energy and consciousness
can become creative again in a positive way only when the light of
cognizance and positive intentionality are brought to bear on them. Unless you do this, you cannot come into your creative core. Giving Up Illusions
This is basically the pathwor k. Your only diculty is you cling to
illusions about how you are and how you should be, and to another
illusion that you should not have certain problems. Unless you give
up these illusions and take stock of whatever is in you, you must
remain alienated from your own spiritual essence. That essence is
constantly self-renewing; it is constantly conciliating apparently
insoluble conicts. Your spiritual essence furnishes you with all that
you could ever need for living your life and for completin g the task
you came to fulll through your birth. It is your divine center. You
are thus an expression of all that exists—the all-consciousness. As
long as you remain disconnected from it because you are too afraid
of giving up your little vanity, your longing can never be fullled,
for there is no panacea that can give you what you need and
rightfully wish for without taking the path into and through your
own darkness. Spiritual practices alone cannot fulll your longing,
no matter how much you sit in meditation and concentration.Meditation, and creative visualization, however, can be very helpful
tools when used in conjunction with self-confrontation. Very, very few people on this earth are willing to undertake the
kind of path I have describe d to you. But for those who have the
courage to go all the way, relentlessly and patiently, what glory
awaits them in their innermost center! Being Lived Through by the Spirit
The path is glorious when you have progressed beyond the initial
stages in which you battle with your own false ideas that always
create two unacceptable alternatives. When the path opens up from
within you, you begin to experience, maybe for the rst time in
your life, your own potential of being, your own divinity . You will
feel your potential for pleasure and security, awareness of yourself
and others, and therefore your innitely greater power to relate to
others, comprehend them and be with them without fear. The initial decision to enter a path such as this must be made
realistically if it is to work. Are you willing to give up your illusions
about yourself and your expectations—which come from your
resistance to giving up self-delusions—of what others should do for
you? Are you willing to shed your false fears about what feelings
you should or should not, could or could not experience? If you
make your commitment to yourself to fully accept everything you
now are and to proceed to get to know yourself where you do not
yet know yourself, you will nd it is the most exciting, signicant,
and meaningful journey into your own depth. You will have all the
help you can possibly need, for no one can undertake this journey
alone. The help will be given to you; it will come to you. When your spiritual center begins to manifest, your ego-
consciousness integrates with it and you begin to be “lived
through,” as it were, by the spirit. Your living becomes a
spontaneous, eortless ow. Now, are there any questions?QUESTION : In what way was this path dierent in former eras and
cultures? ANSWER : Humanity’s development in former times necessitated a
dierent appro ach. For example, people in the Middle Ages were
apt to act out their cruel impulses. They were not capable of
separating themselves suciently from their impulses in order to
identify them, own up to them, and assume responsibility  for them. They felt compelled to give vent to them and becam e wholly
enveloped by them. Therefore people required strict authority from
the outside to keep their lower natures in check. Only when the
human personality became capable of using self-control could the
next evolutionary step be taken. That over-control must now be
loosened up. In former times the average person was too far removed from his
or her core to seek spiritual life from inside; it had to be projected
outside. This inability to assume responsibility for the self then led
to the creation of an outer devil who would possess an individual
and an outside God who would help. Now all this has changed. For example, today human-kind’s
greatest hindr ance is egotistical pride. People have accomplished
much with the powers of the ego. They needed to develop these
powers so as to no longer be irresponsible, helpless children. But
these powers must now be exercised from within by one’s own
spiritual center  and not be ascribed to the ego. The pride of the ego
makes this dicult. Question s arise such as: “What will others say? Will they think me naive, stupid, or unscientic?” It is everyone’s
task today to overcome this pride and this dependency on the
opinions of others. How often do individuals betray their spiritual
truth by mouthing what is supposed to be intelligent without ever
even daring to let their divine selves inspire them! These are the
criteria for the path today. Every stage in the evolution of spiritual consciousness necessitates
a dierent approach. Howev er, there is one exception. In every era
there always was a small minority of people who were developedway beyond the scope of the average person. For them the path was
always the same. These few formed secret societies that were
unknown and not in the least popular. A group such as yours can
therefore not be a popular movement either, for even today there
are very few people capable  or willing to follow such a path. But
there are certainly many more today who could do so than in
former times; many could, but few will. I will withdraw now from this instrument through which I am
allowed to manifest. A great spiritual power protects you. This may
seem incompr ehensible for some of you, yet it is a reality, my
friends. There is a whole world beyond the world you know and
touch and see. Only as you explore yourself and go into your core
will you meet this world, and then it will reveal itself in its stark
reality and utter glory. This world exists within and around you and
it will inspire you from its own complete wisdom as you reach for it. Be blessed, every one of you. Those of you who want to make the
commitment to your inner being, and want to avail yourselves of
the help this particular path can give, are blessed and guided in all
your moves; and those of you who do not yet wish to take this step
or who are drawn elsewhere, they, too, are being blessed. Be in
peace. OceanofPDF.com2 
The Idealized Self-Image
Most of us grow up believing that we are not good enough to be
loved for just being ourselves. So we try desperately to live up to a
self-created image of how we should be. The constant struggle to
uphold this idealized version of ourselves causes many of our
diculties. It is, therefore, important to discover on what
assumptions you have created your own idealized image and how it
has caused distress and frustration in your life. You will nd that it
has achieved the exact opposite of what you had hoped it would. This discovery may be painful, but will allow you to reevaluate the
way you are presenting yourself to the world and help you to
become your true, relaxed self . Greetings. God bless all of you, my dearest friends. The Higher Self, the Lower Self, and the Mask
In an eort to understand human nature better, imagi ne it as
represented by three concentric spheres. The central sphere, the
inmost core, is the higher self, which is part of the universal
intelligence and love that pervades life; in short: God. It is the
divine spark. The higher self is free, spontaneous, creative, loving,
giving, all-kno wing, and capable of uninterrupted joy and bliss. Youcan always get in touch with it when you are in truth, when you
give from your heart, and through meditation and prayer. The layer that surrounds the divine self is the hidden world of
egocentricity that we call the lower self. This is your undeveloped
part, which still contains negative emotions, thoughts, and impulses
such as fear, hate, or cruelty. The outermost layer, with which people cover up their lower
selves and often even their higher selves as a protective shield, is
the mask self , or idealized self-image. Needless to say, there are many degrees and stages within each of
these levels of consciousness. The way they overlap, cancel each
other out, and create confu sion, along with indirect eects and
chain reactions , needs to be explored and understood. This work of
exploration is what you are engaged in on this path. All these
aspects of the personality can be conscious or unconscious to
varying degree s. The less awareness you have of any of them, the
more conict will be in your life and the less you will be equipped
to deal with the challenges that come your way. If your awareness is
low, it will slow down the process of transformation by which you
will eventually  integrate your lower self and your mask self into
your divine center. It is about the mask self, or idealized self-image, that I want to
speak to you tonight. Pain is part of the human experience, beginning with birth. Though pleasurable experiences are bound to follow the painful
ones, the know ledge and fear of pain are always present. The most
signicant countermeasure to which people resort in the false belief
that it will circumvent unhappiness, pain, and even death, is the
creation of the idealized self-image as a universal pseudo-protection. It is supposed to be a means of avoiding unhappiness. Unhappiness,
insecurity, and lack of belief in oneself are interconnected. By
pretending what one is not, that is, by creating the idealized self,
one hopes to reestablish happiness, security, and self-condence. In truth and reality, healthy and genuine self-condence is peace
of mind. It is security and healthy independence and allows one to
achieve a maximum of happiness through developing one’s inherenttalents, leading  a constructive life, and entering into fruitful human
relationships. But since the self-condence established through the
idealized self is articial, the result cannot possibly be what was
expected. Actually, the consequence is quite the contrary and
frustrating because cause and eect are not obvious to you. You need to grasp the signi cance, the eects, the damages, and
the links between your unhappiness and your idealized self-image
and to fully recognize in what particular way does it manifest in
your individual case. To nd this requires a great deal of work. The
dissolution of the idealized self is the only possible way to nd your
true self, to nd serenity and self-respect, and to live your life fully. Fear of Pain and Punishment
As a child, regardless of what your particular circumstances were,
you were indoctrinated with admonitions on the importance of
being good, holy, perfect. When you were not, you were often
punished in one way or another. Perhaps the worst punishment was
that your parents withdrew  their aection from you; they were
angry, and you had the impression you were no longer loved. No
wonder “badness” associa ted itself with punishm ent and
unhappiness, “goodness” with reward and happiness. Hence to be
“good” and “perfect” became  an absolute must; it became  a question
of life or death for you. Still, you knew perfectly well that you were
not as good and as perfect as the world seemed to expect you to be. This fact had to be hidden; it became a guilty secret, and you started
to build  a false self. This, you thought, would be your protection
and your means of attaining what you desperately wanted—life,
happiness, security, self-condence. The awareness of this false front
began to vanish, but you were and are permanently permeated with
the guilt of pretending to be something you are not. You strain
harder and harder to becom e this false self, this idealized self. You
were, and unconsciously still are, convi nced that if you strain hard
enough, one day you will be that self. But through this articial
attempt to squeeze yourself into something that you are not, youcan never attain genuine self-improvement, self-puric ation, and
growth. You started building  an unreal self on a false foundation
and left your real self out. In fact, you are desperately hiding it. The Moral Mask of the Idealized Self
The idealized self-image may assume many forms. It does not
always dictate standards of generally recognized perfection . Oh yes,
the idealized self-image often does impose high moral standards,
making it all the more dicult to question its validity. “But isn’t it
right to want to be always  decent, loving, understanding, never
angry, and to have no faults, but try to attain perfection? Isn’t this
what we are supposed to do?” Such considerations will make it
dicult for you to discover the compulsive attitude that denies
present imperf ection, such as the pride and lack of humility that
prevents you from accepting  yourself as you are now. This includes
the pretense and the shame  that goes with it, fear of exposure,
secretiveness, tension, strain, guilt, and anxiety. It will take some
progress in this work before you begin to experience the dierence
in feeling between the genuine desire to gradually work toward
growth, and the ungenuine  pretense imposed upon you by the
dictates of your idealized self. You will discover the deeply hidden
fear that says your world will come to an end if you do not live up
to its standards. You will sense and know many other aspects and
dierences between the genuine and the ungenuine self. And you
will also discover what your particular  idealized self demands. There are also facets of the idealized self, depend ing on
personality, life conditions, and early inuences, which are not and
cannot be considered good, ethical, or moral. Aggressive, hostile,
proud, overam bitious trends are gloried, or idealized. It is true that
these negative tendencies exist behind all idealized self-images. But
they are hidde n, and since they crassly contradict the morally high
standards of the particular idealized self, they cause additional
anxiety, in that the idealized self will be exposed for the fraud it is. The person who glories such negative tendencies, believing themto prove strength and independence, superiority and aloofness,
would be deeply ashamed of the kind of goodness anoth er person’s
idealized self uses as a front, and would consider it as weakness,
vulnerability, and dependency in an unhealthy sense. Such a person
entirely overlooks the fact that nothing makes a person as
vulnerable as pride; nothing causes so much fear. In most cases there is a combination of these two tendencies:
overexacting moral standards impossible to live up to and pride in
being invulnerable, aloof, and superior. The coexistence of these
mutually exclusive ways presents a particular hardship for the
psyche. Needless to say, the conscious awareness of this
contradiction is missing until this particular work is well in
progress. There are many more facets, possibilities, and individual pseudo-
solutions combining all sorts of mutually exclusive behaviors. All
this has to be found individually. Let us now consider some of the general eects of the existence of
the idealized self and some of the implications. Since the standards
and dictates of the idealized self are impossible to realize, and yet
you never give up the attempt to uphold them, you cultivate within
yourself an inner tyranny of the worst order. You do not realize the
impossibility of being as perfect as your idealized self demands, and
never give up whipping yourself, castigating yourself, and feeling a
complete failur e whenever it is proven that you cannot live up to its
demands. A sense of abject worthlessness comes over you whenever
you fall short of these fantastic demands and engulfs you in misery. This misery may at times be conscious but most of the time it is not. Even if it is, you do not realize the entire signi cance, the
impossibility of what you expect from yourself. When you try to
hide your reactions to your own “failure,” you use specia l means to
avoid seeing it. One of the most common devices is to project the
blame for “failure” into the outer world, onto others, onto life. The more you try to identify with your idealized self-image, the harder
the disillusionment whenever life brings you into a position where this
masquerade can no longer be maintained . Many  a personal crisis is
based on this dilemma, rather than on outer diculties. Thesediculties then become an added menace beyond their objective
hardship. The existence of the diculties is a proof to you that you
are not your idealized self, and this robs you of the false self-
condence you tried to establish with the creation of the idealized
self. There are personality types who know perfectly well that they
cannot identify  with their idealized self. But they do not know this
in a healthy way. They despair. They believe they ought to be able
to live up to it. Their whole life is permeated with a sense  of failure,
while the former type experi ences it only on more consc ious levels
when outer and inner conditions culminate in showi ng up the
phantom of the idealized self for what it really is: an illusion, a
pretense, a dishonesty. It amounts to saying: “I know I am
imperfect, but I make believe I am perfect.” Not to recognize this
dishonesty is comparatively easy when rationalized by
conscientiousness, honorable  standards and goals, and a desire to be
good.
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:

        Other Bantam New Age Books of interest to readers of THE PATHWORK OF SELF-
TRANSFORMATION:
BEYOND SUPERNATURE by Lyall Watson
CHANNELING: HOW  TO REACH OUT TO YOUR SPIRIT GUIDE by Kathryn Ridall,
Ph. D. CREATIVE VISUALIZATION by Shakti Gawain
EDGAR CAYCE: THE SLEEPING PROPHET by Jess Stearn
EMMANUEL’S BOOK: A MANUAL FOR LIVING COMFORTABLY IN THE COSMOS
compiled by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton
EMMANUEL’S BOOK II: THE CHOICE  FOR LOVE compiled by Pat Rodegast and
Judith Stanton
FOCUSING by Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.
The primary goal of the book is to help readers understand and transform their inner self, rather than trying to change their outer circumstances.
What is the primary goal of the book "The Pathwork of Self-Transformation"?
The Pathwork is a holistic approach that addresses both the ego and the negative aspects of the self, whereas other spiritual practices may only focus on reaching a higher state of consciousness without acknowledging and transforming the negative aspects.
What is the main difference between the Pathwork and other spiritual practices?
The lower self is the part of the personality that is responsible for negativity, separation, egotism, fear, and distrust. It is a distortion of the one divine energy and can be transformed back into its original, life-affirming state.
What is the concept of the "lower self" in the Pathwork?
The Guide is a channeled being who provides guidance and support for personal and spiritual growth, helping individuals overcome their negative tendencies and reach a state of self-acceptance and self-love.
What is the role of the "Guide" in the Pathwork?
The key is to recognize and accept the negative aspects of oneself, and then work to transform them, rather than trying to hide or deny them.
What is the key to overcoming the idealized self-image?