The dissension is caused not by actual
dierences among units of consciousness, but, just as in the
individual, by dierences in the development of the manifesting
universal consciousness. Even though the principle of unication is exactly the same
within and among individu als, it cannot be applied to another
human being unless it has rst been applied to one’s inner self. If
the divergent parts of your self are not approached according to this
truth, and your ambivalence is not faced, accepted, and understood,
the process of unication cannot be put into practice with another
person. This is a very important fact, which explains the great
emphasis of this pathwork on rst approaching the self . Only then can
relationship be cultivated in a meaningful and eective way.Elements of Dissension and Unication
Relationship represents the greatest challenge for the individu al, for it
is only in relationship to others that unresolved problems still
existing within the individual psyche are aected and activated. Many individuals withdraw from interaction with others, so they
can maintain the illusion that the problems arise from the other
person becaus e one feels disturbance only in his or her presence,
and not when by oneself. However, the less contact is cultivated, the more acute the
longing for contact becomes. This, then, is a dierent kind of pain—
the pain of loneliness and frustration . But contact makes it dicult to
maintain for any length of time the illusion that the inner self is
faultless and harmonious. It requires mental aberration to claim for
too long that one’s problem s in relationship are caused only by
others and not by oneself. This is why relationships are
simultaneously a fulllment, a challenge, and a gauge to one’s inner
state. The friction that arises out of relating with others can be a sharp
instrument of purication and self-recognition  if one is inclined to use
it. By withdrawing from this challenge and sacricing the fulllment
of intimate contact, many inner problems are never called into play. The illusion of inner peace and unity that comes from avoidance of
relating has even led to concepts that spiritual growt h is being
furthered by isolation. Nothin g could be farther from the truth. This
statement must not be confused with the notion that intervals of
seclusion are necessary for inner concentration and self-
confrontation. But these periods should always alternate with
contact—and the more intimate such contact is, the more it
expresses spiritual maturity. Contact and lack of contact with others can be observed in
various stages. There are many degrees of contact between the crass
extremes of total outer and inner isolation, at one end, and the
deepest, most intimate relate dness at the other. There are those who
have obtained  a certain supercial ability to relate but who stillwithdraw from a more meaningful, open, unmasked mutual
revealing. I might say that the average present-day human being
uctuates somewhere between the two extremes. Fulllment as a Yardstick for Personal Development
It is also possib le to measure one’s personal sense of fulll ment by
the depth of relatedness and intimate contact, by the strength of the
feelings one permits oneself to experience, and by the willingness to
give and receive. Frustration indicates an absence of contact, which,
in turn, is a precise indicator that the self withdraws from the
challenge of relationship, thereby sacricing personal fulllment,
pleasure, love, and joy. When you want to share only on the basis of
receiving according to your own terms, and you are in fact secretly
unwilling to share, your longings must remain unfullled. People
would be well advised to consider their unfullled longings from
this point of view, rather than indulging in the usual assumption
that one is unlucky and unfairly put upon by life. One’s contentment and fulllment in relationship is a much
neglected yardstick for one’s  own development. Relatio nship with
others is a mirror of one’s own state and thus a direct help to one’s
self-purication. Conversely, only by thorough self-honesty and self-
facing can relationships be sustained, can feelings expand, and
contact blosso m in long-term relationships. So you can see, my
friends, that relationships represent a tremendously important
aspect of human growth. The power and signicance of relationship often pose severe
problems for those who are still in the throes of their own inner
conicts. The unfullled longing becomes unbearably painful when
isolation is chosen due to the diculty of contact. This can be
resolved only when you seriously settle down to seek the cause for
this conict within your self, without using the defense of annihilating
guilt and self-blame, which of course eliminates any possibility of
really getting at the core of the conict. This search, together with
the inner willingness to change, must be cultivated in order toescape the painful dilemma in which both available alternatives—
isolation and contact—are unbearable. It is important  to remember that withdrawal can be very subtle
and may be outwardly unnoticeable, manifesting only in a certain
guardedness and distorted self-protection. Outer good fellowship
does not necessarily imply a capacity and willingness for inner
closeness. For many, closen ess is too taxing. On the surface this
seems related to how dicu lt others are, but actually the diculty
lies in the self, regardless of how imperfect others may also be. Who Is Responsible for the Relationship? When people whose spiritual development is on dierent levels
are involved with one anoth er, it is always the more highly developed
person who is responsible for the relationship , Specically, that person
is responsible for searching the depths of the interact ion which
create any friction and disharmony between the parties. The less developed person is not as capable of such a search,
being still in a state of blam ing the other and depending on the
other’s doing “right” in order to avoid unpleasantness or frustration. Also, the less developed person is always caught up in the
fundamental error of duality . From this perspective any friction is
seen in terms of “only one of us is right.” When caught up in
dualistic thinking, such a person, when noticing a defect in the
other party, will automatic ally assume innocence, although in
reality his or her own negati ve involvement may be innitely more
weighty than the other person’s. The spiritually  more developed person is capable of realistic, non-
dualistic perception . That person may see that one of the two may
have a deeper problem, but that does not eliminate the importance
of the possibly  much lesser problem of the other one. The more
developed one will always be willing and able to search for his or
her own involvement whenever he or she is negatively aected, no
matter how blatantly at fault the other may be. A person of spiritual
and emotional immaturity and crudeness will always put the bulk ofthe blame on the other. All this applies to any land of relationship:
mates, parents and children, friendships, or business contacts. The tendency to make yourself emotionally dependent on others,
the overcomin g of which is such an important aspect of the growth
process, largely  comes from wanting to absolve yourself from blame
or extract yourself from diculty when establis hing and
maintaining a relationship. It seems so much easier to shift most of
this burden to others. But what a price to pay! Doing this renders
you helpless indeed and brings about isolation, or unending pain
and friction with others. It is only when you begin truly to assume
self-responsibility by looking at your own problem in the
relationship, and by a willingness to change, that freedom is
established and relationships become fruitful and joyous. If the more highly developed person refuses to undertake the
appropriate spiritual duty to assume responsibility for the
relationship and look for the core of dissension within, he or she
will never really understand the mutual interaction, how one
problem aects the other. The relationship must then deteriorate,
leaving both parties confused and less able to cope with the self and
others. On the other hand , if the spiritually developed person
accepts this responsibility, he or she will also help the other in a
subtle way. If he or she can desist from the temptation to constantly
belabor the obvious defects of the other and look within , he or she
will raise his or her own development considerably and spread
peace and joy. The poison of friction will soon be elimina ted. It will
also become possible to nd other partners for a truly mutual
growth process. When two equals relate, both carry the full responsibility for the
relationship . This is indee d a beautiful venture, a deeply satisfying
state of mutuality. The slightest aw in a mood will be recognized
for its inner meaning and thus the growth process is kept up. Both
will recognize their co-creation of this momentary aw—whether it
be an actual friction or a mom entary deadness of feelings. The inner
reality of the interaction will become increasingly more signicant. This will largely prevent injury to the relationship.Let me emphasize here that when I speak of being responsible for
the less developed person, I do not mean that another human being
can ever carry the burden for the actual diculties of others. This
can never be. What I mean is that diculties of interaction in a
relationship are usually not explored in depth by the individual
whose spiritua l development is more primitive. He or she will
render others responsible for his or her unhappiness and
disharmony in a given intera ction and is not able, or willing, to see
the whole issue. Thus that person is not in a position to eliminate
the disharmony. Only those who assume responsibility for nding
the inner disturbance and mutual eect can do so. Hence the
spiritually more primitive person always depends on the spiritually
more evolved one. A relationship between individuals in which the destructiveness of
the less developed one makes growth, harmony, and good feelings
impossible, or in which the contact is overwhelmingly negative,
should be severed. As a rule, the more highly developed person
should assume  the initiative. If he or she does not, this indicates
some unrecogn ized weakness and fear that needs to be faced. If a
relationship is dissolved on this ground, namely, that it is more
destructive and pain-producing than constructive and harmonious, it
should be done when the inner problems and mutual interactions
are fully recognized by the one who takes the initiative to dissolve
an old tie. This will prevent him or her from forming a new
relationship with similar underlying currents and interactions. It
also means that the decision to sever the connection has been made
because of growth, rather than as a result of spite, fear, or escape. Destructive Interactions
To explore the underlying interaction and the various eects of a
relationship in which both people’s diculties are laid bare and
accepted is by no means easy. But nothing can be more beautiful
and rewarding. Anyone who comes into the state of enlightenment
where this is possible will no longer fear any kind of interaction.Diculties and fears arise to the exact degree that you still project on
others your own problems  in relating and still render others
responsible for anything that goes against your liking. This can take
many subtle forms. You may constantly concentrate on the faults of
others, because at rst glance such concentration appears justied
to you. You may subtly overe mphasize one side of an interaction, or
exclude another. Such distortions indicate projection and denial of
self-responsibility for the diculties in relating. This denial fosters
dependency on the perfection of the other party, which in turn creates
fear and hostility for feelin g let down when the other does not
measure up to the perfect standard. My dear friends, no matter what wrong the other person  does, if
you are disturbed, there must be something in you that you
overlook. When I say disturbed, I mean this in a particular sense. I
do not speak of clear-cut anger that expresses itself guiltlessly and
does not leave  a trace of inner confusion and pain. I mean the kind
of disturbance that comes out of conict and breeds furth er conict. A favor ite tendency among people is to say, “You are doing it to
me.” The game of making others guilty is so pervasive  that you
hardly even notice it. One human being blames the other, one
country blame s the other, one group blames the other. This is a
constant process at humanit y’s present level of development. It is
indeed one of the most harmful and illusory processes imaginable. People derive pleasure from doing this, although the pain that
ensues and the insoluble conicts that follow are innitely
disproportionate to the puny , momentary pleasure. Those who play
this game truly harm themselves and others, and I strongly
recommend that you begin to be aware of your blind involvement in
this guilt-shifting game. But how about the “victim”? How is that person to cope? As a
victim, your rst problem is that you are not even aware of what is
happening . Most of the time, the victimization happens in a subtle ,
emotional, and unarticulated fashion. The silent, covert blame is
being launched  without a spoken word. It is expressed indirectly in
many ways. Now, obviously, the rst necessity is concise, articulate
awareness, for otherwise you will unconsciously respond in equallydestructive, falsely self-defensive ways. Then neither person really
knows the intricate levels of action, reaction, and interaction until
the threads become so enmeshed that it seems impossible to
disentangle them. Many a relationship has faltered due to such
unconscious interaction. The launching of blame spreads poison , fear, and at least as much
guilt as one tries to project. The recipients of this blame and guilt
may react in many dierent ways, according to their own problems
and unresolved conicts. As long as the reaction is blind and the
projection of guilt unconscious, the counter-reaction must also be
neurotic and destructive. Only conscious perception can prohibit
this. Only then will you be able to refuse a burden that is being
placed on you. Only then can you articulate and pinpoint it. How to Reach for Fulllment and Pleasure
In a relationship that is about to blossom, one must be on the
lookout for this pitfall, which is all the more dicult to detect
because guilt projection is so widespread. Also, the recipients should
look for it in themselves as well as in the other. And I do not mean
here a straightforward confrontation about something the other
person did wrong. I mean the subtle blame for personal
unhappiness. This is what must be challenged. The only way you can avoid becoming a victim of blame and guilt
projection is to avoid doing it yourself. To the degree you indulge
yourself in this subtly negat ive attitude—and you may do it in a
dierent way than the one who does it to you—you will be unaware
of it being done to you and will therefore become victim ized by it. The mere awareness will make all the dierence—whether or not
you verbally express your perception and confront the other person. Only to the degree that you undefensively explore and accept your
own problematic reactions and distortions, negativities and
destructiveness, can you defuse someone else’s guilt projection. Only
then will you not be drawn into a maze of falseness and confusion in
which uncertainty, defensiveness, and weakness may make youeither retreat or become overaggressive. Only then will you no
longer confuse self-assertion with hostility, or exible compromise
with unhealthy submission. These are the aspects that determine the ability to cope with
relationships. The more profoundly understood and lived these new
attitudes are, the more intimate, fullling, and beautiful human
interaction will become. How can you assert your rights and reach into the universe for
fulllment and pleasure? How can you love without fear unless you
approach relating to others the way I have outlined above? Unless
by learning to do this you purify yourself, there must always be a
threat when it comes to intimacy: that one or both will resort to
using the whip  of loading guilt upon the other. Loving, sharing, and
profound and satisfying closeness to others could be a purely
positive power  without any threat if these snares were looked at,
discovered, and dissolved. It is of utmost importance that you look
for them in yourselves, my friends. The most challenging, beautiful, spiritually important, and
growth-producing kind of relationship is the one between man and
woman. The power that brings two people together in love and
attraction and the pleasure involved are a small aspect of cosmic
reality. It is as though each created entity knew unconsciously about
the bliss of this state and sought to realize it in the most potent way
open to humanity: in love and sexuality between man and woman. The power that draws them together is the purest spiritual energy,
leading to an inkling of the purest spiritual state. However, when a man and a woman stay together in a more
enduring and committed relationship, maintaining and even
increasing bliss depends entirely on how the two relate to each
other. Are they aware of the direct relationship between enduring
pleasure and inner growth? Do they use the inevitable diculties in
the relationship as yardsticks for their own inner diculties? Do
they communicate in the deepest, most truthful, self-revealing way,
sharing their inner problems , helping each other? The answers to
these questions will determine whether the relationship falters,
dissolves, stagnates—or blossoms.When you look at the world around you, you will undoubtedly see
that very few human beings grow and reveal themselves in such an
open way. Equally few realize that growing together and through each
other determines the solidity of feelings, of pleasure, of enduring
love and respect. It is therefore not surprising that long-lasting
relationships are almost invariably more or less dead in feelings. Diculties that arise in a relationship are always signals for
something unattended to. They are a loud message for those who
can hear it. The sooner it is heeded, the more spiritual energy will
be released, so that the state of bliss can expand along with the
inner being of both partners. There is a mechanism in a relationship
between a man and a woman that can be likened to a very nely
calibrated instrument that shows the nest and most subtle aspects
of the relationship and the individual state of the two people
involved. This is not suciently recognized by even the most aware
and sophisticated people who are otherwise familiar with spiritual
and psychological truth. Every day and every hour one’s inner state
and feelings are a testimony to one’s state of growth, lb the degree
they are heeded, the interaction, the feelings, the freedom of ow
within and toward each other will blossom. The perfectly mature and spiritually valid relationship must
always be deeply connected with personal growth. The moment a
relationship is experienced as irrelevant to inner growth, left on its
own, as it were, it will falter. Only when both grow to their
ultimate, inherent potential can the relationship become more and
more dynamic and alive. This work has to be done individually and
mutually. When relationship is approached in that way, it will be
built on rock, not sand. No fear will ever nd room under such
circumstances. Feelings will expand, and security about the self and
each other will grow. At any given moment, each partner  will serve
as a mirror to the inner state of the other and therefore to the
relationship. Whenever there is friction or deadness, it is an indicat ion that
something must be stuck. Some interaction between the two people
remains unclear and it needs to be looked at. If it is understood and
brought out into the open, growth will proceed at maximum speed,and, in the dimension of feeling, happiness, bliss, profound
experience, and ecstasy will become forever deeper and more
beautiful, and life will acquire more meaning. Conversely, fear of intimacy implies rigidity and the denial of
one’s own share in the relationship’s diculties. Anyone who
ignores these principles, or who pays only lip service to them, is
emotionally not ready to assume the responsibility for his or her
inner suering—either within a relationship or in its absence. So you see, my friends, it is of the greatest importance to
recognize that bliss and beauty, which are eternal spiritual realities, are
available to all those who seek the key to the problems of human
interaction, as well as to loneliness, within their own hearts. True
growth is as much a spiritual reality as are profound fulllment ,
vibrant aliveness, and blissful, joyous relating . When you are
inwardly ready  to relate to another human being in such a fashion,
you will nd the appropriate  partner  with whom this manner of
sharing is possible. It will no longer frighten you, will no longer
beset you with conscious or unconscious fears when you use this all-
important key. You cannot ever feel helpless or victimized when the
signicant transition has taken place in your life and you no longer
render others responsible for what you experience or fail to
experience. Thus growth and fullled, beautiful living become one
and the same. May you all carry with you this new material and an inner energy
awakened by your goodwill. May these words be the beginning of a
new inner modality to meet life, to nally decide, “I want  to risk my
good feelings. I want to seek the cause in me, rather than in the
other person, so that I become free to love.” This kind of meditation
will indeed bear fruit. If you carry away a germ, a particle, of this
lecture, it has truly been fruitful. Be blessed, all of you, my dearest
friends, so that you become the gods that you potentially are. OceanofPDF.com8 
Emotional Growth and Its Function
“If I didn’t feel anything, I wouldn’t suer.” Most people are
trying very hard not to feel in the mistaken belief that then they
could avoid being unhappy. Haven’t you had such a thought? We
think it is only a thought, but this wish has its consequenc e: the
numbing of our feeling capacity. Yet, the repression of feelings does
not alleviate suering; on the contrary, it increases the pain. Feelings need room to grow, just as our minds and bodies do, so
that we achieve  a higher emotional state in which we can dare to
love. Greetings, my dearest friends . God bless each one of you, blessed
is this hour. In order to know yourself on a deeper level, it becomes
increasingly necessary to allow all emotions to reach surface
awareness, so as to understa nd these emotions and to enable them
to mature. Most of you have a great resistance to letting this
happen. You are unaware of the obstructions you put in the way of
your own growth. Hence it is necessary that I discuss the mechanism
of your resistance. Let us rst be clear about the unity of the human personality. Human beings  who function harmoniously have developed the
physical, ment al, and emotional sides of their nature. These three
spheres are supposed to function harmoniously with one another,
each helping the other, rather than one faculty subduing another. Ifone function is underdeveloped, it causes a disharmony in the
human structure, and also cripples the entire personality. Now let us understand what causes human beings to particularly
neglect, repres s, and cripple the growth of their emotion al nature. This neglect is universal. Most human beings look mainly after the
physical self. They do more or less what is necessary to make it
grow and remain healthy. A good portion of humanity cultivates the
mental side. In order to do so you learn, you use your brain, your
thinking capacity; you absorb, you train your memory  and your
logical reasoning. All this furthers mental growth. But why is the emotional nature generally neglected? There are
good reasons for that, my friends. To gain more clarity, let us rst
understand the function of the emotional nature in human beings. It
includes, rst of all, the capacity to feel. The capacity to experience
feeling is synonymous with the capacity to give and receive
happiness. To the degree you shy away from any kind of emotional
experience, to that extent you also close the door to the experience
of happ iness. Moreover, the emotional side of your nature, when
functioning, possesses creative ability. To the degree you close yourself
o from emotional experience , to that very degree the full potential of
your creative ability is hindered in manifesting itself. Contrary to what
many of you may believe, the unfolding of creative ability is not a
mere mental process. In fact, the intellect has much less to do with
it than may appear at rst glance, in spite of the fact that technical
skill also becomes a necessity in order to give the creative outow
full expression. Creative unfoldment is an intuitive process. Needless
to say, intuitio n can function only to the degree that your emotional
life is strong, healthy, and mature. Therefore, your intuitive powers will be hindered if you have
neglected emotional growth and discouraged yourself from
experiencing the world of feeling. Why is there such a predominant
emphasis in your world today on physical and mental growth and a
conspicuous neglect of emotional growth? Several general
explanations could be advanc ed, but I would like to go immediately
to the root of the problem.Numbing of Feelings to Avoid Unhappiness
In the world of feeling you experience the good and the bad, the
happy and the unhappy, pleasure and pain. Contra ry to just
registering such impressions  mentally, emotional experie nce really
touches you. Since your struggle is primarily for happiness, and
since immature emotions lead to unhappiness, your secondary aim
becomes the avoidance of unhappiness. Unhappy circumstances
exist in every child’s life; pain and disappointment are common. This creates the early, mostly unconscious, conclusion: “If I do not
feel, then I will not be unhappy.”  In other words, instead of taking the
courageous and appropriate step of living through negative,
immature emotions in order to aord them the opportunity to grow
and thus become mature and constructive, the childish emotions are
suppressed, put out of awareness and buried, so that they remain
inadequate and destructive, even though the person is unaware of
their existence. Although it may be true that you can anesthetize your capacity
for emotional experience, and therefore cannot feel immediate pain,
it is also true that you dull your capacity for happiness and pleasure
while not really avoiding the dreaded unhappiness in the long run. The unhappiness you seem to avoid will come to you in a dierent
and much more painful, but indirect, way. The bitter hurt of
isolation, of loneliness, of the gnawing feeling of having passed
through life without experiencing its heights and depths, without
developing yourself to the most and best you can be, is the result of
such a wrong solution. Using such evasive tactics you do not experience life at its fullest. By withdrawin g from pain, you withdraw from happiness and, most
of all, you withdraw from experience. At one time or another—and
you may never remember the conscious declaration of intent—you
withdrew from living, loving, and experiencing—from everything
that makes life rich and rewarding. The result is that your intuitive
powers are dulled together with your creative faculties. You only
function to a fraction of your potential. The damage you haveinicted upon yourself with this pseudo-solution, and go on
inicting upon  yourself as long as you adhere to it, is one that
eludes your comprehension and evaluation at the present time. Isolation
Since this was your defense against unhappiness to begin  with, it
is understandable that unconsciously you ght tooth and nail
against giving up what seem s to you a vital protection. You do not
realize that not only do you miss out on life’s richness, life’s
rewards, your own full potential, but you do not really avoid
unhappiness. This painful isolation was not willingly chosen by you
and therefore it is not accepted as a price to be paid. Rather, it came
as a necessary byproduct of your pseudo-solution, and with this
defense mecha nism at work the child in you hopes and ghts for
receiving what you cannot possibly receive. In other words,
somewhere deep inside, you hope and believe that it is possible to
belong and to be loved while you dull your world of feeling into a
state of numbness and thereby prohibit yourself from truly loving
others. Yes, you may need others and this need may appear as love
to you, but now you know that it is not the same. Inside, you hope
and believe it possible to unite with others, to communicate in a
rewarding and satisfying way with the world around you, while you
put up a wall of false protection against the impact of emotional
experience. If and when you cannot help but feel, you are busy
hiding such feelings from yourself and others. How can you receive
what you yearn for—love , belonging, communication—if you
neither feel nor express the occasional glimpses of feelin gs that the
still healthy part in you strives for? You cannot have it both ways,
though the child in you never wants to accept that. Since you “protect” yourself  in this foolish manner, you isolate
yourself, which  means exposing yourself much more to that which
you strive to avoid. Hence you miss out doubly: You do not avoid
that which you fear—not really and not in the long run—and you
miss out on all you could have if you would not run away fromliving. For living and feeling are one. The love and fulllment you
must increasingly crave for makes you blame others, circumstances,
the fates, or bad luck, instead of seeing how you are responsible for
it. You resist such insight because you sense that the moment you
see it fully, you will have to change , and you can no longer cling to
the comfortable but unrealiz able hope that you can have what you
want without meeting the necessary conditions to get it. If you want
happiness you must be willin g to give it. How can you give it, if you
are unwilling and unable to feel as much as you are capable of
feeling? Realize that it is you who caused this state of unfulllment,
and it is you who can still change it, regardless of your physical age. The Need to Exercise the Emotions
Another reason for resorting to this unsuccessful pseudo -solution
is the following: As in everything else, feeling and emotional
expression can be mature and constructive or immature and
destructive. As a child you possessed an immature body and mind
and therefore, quite natural ly, an immature emotional  structure. Most of you gave your body and mind a chance to grow out of the
immaturity and to reach a certain physical and mental maturity. Let
me give you an example on the physical level: An infant will feel the
strong urge to use its vocal cords. It has an instinct with the function
of prom oting the growth of certain organic matter through strong
use of the vocal cords. It is not pleasant to hear a baby screaming,
but this period of transition leads to strong healthy organs in this
particular aspect. For the baby, not going through this unpleasant
time by suppressing the instinctual urge to scream would eventually
damage and weaken the respective organs. The urge to indulge in
strong physical exercise has the same function. All this is part of the
growing proce ss. To stop the growing process with the excuse that
there is a danger in overexertion would be foolish and damaging. Yet this is done with your emotional self. You stop its functioning
because you consider the growing transitional period so dangerous
that you proceed to stop growth altogether. You not only hinderexcesses as a result of this reasoning, but you also hinder all the
transitory functioning that alone can lead to constructive, mature
emotions. Since this is more or less the case with every one of you,
the growth period of experiencing and maturing has to happen now. When your mental processe s mature, you have to go through
transition periods too. You not only learn, you are also bound to
make mistake s. In your younger years you often hold opinions
which you later grow out of. While later you perceive that these
opinions are not as “right” as they seemed to you during your youth
and see another side that earlier eluded you, it was nevertheless
benecial for you to go through those times of error. How could you
appreciate truth if you had not gone through error? You can never
gain truth by avoiding error. It strengthens your mental faculties,
your logic, as well as your range and power of deduction. Without
being allowed to make mistakes in your thinking or your opinions,
your mental faculties could not grow. Strangely enough, there is much less resistance in human nature
to the necessa ry growing pains of the physical and ment al sides of
the personality than to the growth of the emotional nature. Hardly
anyone recognizes that emotional growing pains are necessary too,
and that they are constructive and benecial. Without consciously
thinking about it in these terms, you believe that the emotional
growth process should come about without growing pains. Most of
the time it is completely ignored that this area exists at all, let alone
that it needs growth; neither do you know how such growth is to be
accomplished. You who are on this path ought to begin to
understand this. If you do, your insistence on remaining deadened
and dulled will nally give way and you will no longer object to
going through a period of growth now. Allowing Immature Feelings to Surface
In this growing period, immature emotions have to express
themselves . Only as they are allowed expression for the purpose of
understanding their signicance will you nally reach a point whenyou no longer need such immature emotions. This will not happen
through a process of will, an outer mental decision which represses
what is still a part of your emotional being, but through an organic
process of emotional growth wherein feelings will naturally change
their direction , their aim, their intensity, their nature. But this can
only be done if you experience your emotions as they exist in you
now. When you were hurt as a child, your reactions were anger,
resentment, hate—sometimes to a very strong degree. If you prevent
yourself now from consciou sly experiencing these emotions, you
will not get rid of them; you will not enable healt hy mature
emotions to follow in their place, but you will simply repress
existing feelings. You will bury them and deceive yourself that you
do not feel what you actually still feel. Since you dull your capacity
to feel, you become unaware of what exists underneath. Then you
superimpose feelings that you think you ought to have but that you
do not really and truly have. You all operate—some more, some less—with feelings that are not
genuinely yours, with feelings you think you ought to have but do
not have. Underneath, something entirely dierent is taking place. Only in times of extreme crisis do these actual feelings reach the
surface. Then you believe it is the crisis that has caused these
reactions in you. No: the crisis reactivated the still immature
emotions. It is the eect of the hidden emotional immaturity, as
well as of the existing self-deception. The fact that you put raw, destructive, immature emotion s out of
sight instead of growing out of them and then deceive yourself,
believing you are a much more integrated and mature person than
you actually are, is not only a self-deception, but it also leads you
more deeply into isolation, unhappiness, alienation from yourself,
and unsuccessful, unrewarding patterns that you repeat over and
over again. The result of all this seems to conrm your pseudo-
solution, your defense mechanism, but this is a very misleading
conclusion. Immature emotions earned you punishment as a child; either they
caused you actual pain, or produced an undesired result when youexpressed them. You lost something you wanted, such as the
aection of certain people, or a desired goal became unattainable
when you expressed what you really felt. This then became an
additional reason for you to hinder self-expression. Consequently, as
you perceived such emotion s to be undesirable, you proceeded to
whisk them also out of your own sight. You found it necessary to do
so because you did not want to be hurt, you did not wish to
experience the pain of feeling unhappy. You also found it necessary
to repre ss existing emotions because the expression of the negative
produced an undesirable result. You might say that because the latter is true, your procedure is
therefore valid, necessary, and self-preserving. You will rightly say
that if you live out your negative emotions, the world will punish
you in one form or another. Yes, my friends, this is true. Immature
emotions are indeed destructive and will indeed bring you
disadvantages. But your error lies in the conscious or unconscious
thought that to be aware of what you feel and to give vent to it in action
are one and the same. You cannot discriminate between the two
courses. Neither can you discriminate between a constructive aim—
for which it is necessary to express and talk about what you feel, at
the right place, with the right people—and the destructiveness of
heedlessly letting go all control, of not choosing the right aim, the
right place, and the right people, of not wanting to use such
expression as would yield you insight into yourself. If you merely let
go because you lack disciplin e, or an aim, and expose your negative
emotions, that is indeed destructive. Try to distinguish between constructive and destructive aims, try
to realize the purpose of exposing your emotions, and then develop
the courage and humility to allow yourself to be aware of what you
really feel, and to express it when it is meaningful. If you do this,
you will see the tremendous dierence between merely allowing
immature and destructive emotions to come to the fore in order to
relieve yoursel f of pressure and give them an outlet without aim or
meaning, and the purposeful activity of reexperiencing all the
feelings that once existed in you and that still exist in you. What has
not been properly assimilated in emotional experience but hasinstead been repressed will constantly be reactivated by present
situations. These remind you in one way or another of the original
“solution” that brought on such unassimilated experience in the rst
place. Such a reminder may not be factual. It can be an emotional
climate, a symbolic association that lodges exclusively in the
subconscious. As you learn to become aware of what is really going
on in you, you will also notice such reminders. With this may come
the realization that you often actually feel very much the opposite
of what you force yourself to feel. How to Activate the Growth Process
As the rst few tentative steps are taken in the direction of
becoming aware of what you feel and expressing it in a direct way
without nding reasons and excuses, you will gain an understanding
about yourself such as you never had before. You will feel the
growing process at work, because you are actively engaged in it
with your innermost self, not merely with outer gestures. You will
not only come to understan d what brought on many unwelcome
results, but how it is in your power to change them. Understanding
the interaction between yourself and others will show you how your
unconscious, distorted pattern has aected others in exactly the
opposite way to what you originally wanted. This will give you an
inner understanding about the process of communication. This is the only way emotions can mature. By going through the
period that was missed in childhood and adolescence, the emotions
will nally mature and you will no longer need to fear the power of
those emotions that you cannot control by merely putting them out
of awareness. You will be able to trust them, and to be guided by
them—for that is the nal aim of the mature and well-functioning
person. I might say that this has happened to all of you to some
degree. There are times when you allow yourself to be guided by
your power of intuition. But it happens more as an exception than
as a rule. It cannot happen as a rule as long as your emotions
remain destructive and childish; they are unreliable in this state.Since you discourage their growth, you live by your mental faculties
only—and they are secondary in eciency. When healthy emotions
make your intuition reliab le, there will be a mutual harmony
between the mental and emotional faculties. One will not contradict
the other. As long as you cannot rely on your intuitive processes,
you must be insecure and lacking in self-condence. You try to
make up for this by relying on others, or on false religion. This
makes you weak and helpless. But if you have mature, strong
emotions, you will trust yourself and therein nd a security you
never dreamed existed. After the rst painful release  of negative emotions, you will nd a
certain relief in the realization that poisonous matter has left your
system in a manner that was not destructive for you or for others. After thus having gained insight and understanding, new warm,
good emotions will come out of you that could not express
themselves as long as the negative emotions were held in check. You
will also learn to discriminate between genuine good feelings and
the false good feelings that you superimpose out of the need to
maintain your idealized self-image: “This is the way I should be.”
Because you cling to this idealized self-image, you canno t nd your
real self, and do not have the courage to accept that a comparatively
large area of your persona lity is still childish, incomplete, and
imperfect. What Is True Security? To acknowledge this is the rst necessary step to destroy your
destructive processes and to build a real solid self that will stand on
rm ground. For only in the mature emotions, in the courage to
make this maturity and growth possible, will you gain the security
within yourself you so ardently hunt for elsewhere. So, build your true security. You have nothing to fear from
becoming aware of what is already in you. Looking away from what
is does not cause it to cease to exist. Therefore, it is wise on your
part to want to look at, to face, and to acknowledge what is in you—no more and no less! To believe that it harms you more to know
what you feel and are than not to know is extremely foolish. Yet to
some degree that is exactly what you all do. That is the nature of
your resistance  to accepting and facing yourself. Only after you face
what is in you will your much more mature intellect be able to
make the decision as to whether these inner behavior patterns are
worth keeping or not. You are not forced to give up what seems a
protection to you, but look at it with the clear and lucid eyes of
truth. That is all I ask you to do. You have nothing to fear from it. And now, my friends, let us consider this subject in the light of
spirituality. You all have come originally with the idea of growing
spiritually. I might say that more or less all of you hope to
accomplish this without tending to your emotional growth. You
want to believe that the one is possible without the other. Needless
to say, this is a complete impossibility. Sooner or later all of you
will reach the point where you have to make up your mind as to
whether you really want emotional growth or you still want to cling
to the childish hope that spiritual growth is possible while you
neglect the world of feeling and allow it to lie dorma nt without
giving it the opportunity to grow. Let us examine this for a moment,
my friends. If the Feelings Are Stunted, Love Cannot Grow
You all know, regardless of what religion or spiritual philosophy
or teaching you follow, that love is the rst and the greatest power . In
the last analys is, it is the only power . Most of you have used this
maxim many times, but I wonder, my friends, if you ever knew that
you were using empty word s, always veering away from feeling,
reacting, and experiencing. Now, how can you love if you do not let
yourself feel? How can you love and at the same time remain what
you choose to call “detached”? That means remaining personally
uninvolved, not risking pain, disappointment, personal involvement. Can you love in such a comfortable way? If you numb your faculty
of feelin g, how can you truly experience love? Is love an intellectualprocess? Is love a lukewarm matter of laws, word s, letters,
regulations, and rules you talk about? Or is love a feeling that
comes from deep within the soul, a warmth of owing impact that
cannot leave you indierent  and untouched? Is it not foremost a
feeling, and only after the feeling is fully experienced and expressed,
will wisdom, and perhaps even intellectual insight—as a byproduct,
so to speak—result from it? How can you hope to gain spirituality—and spirituality and love
are one—by neglecting your emotional processes? Think about this,
my friends. Begin to see how you all sit back, hoping for a
comfortable spirituality that leaves out your personal involvement
in the world of feelings. After you see this clearly, you will
comprehend how preposterous this attitude is. Your conscious or
unconscious rationalizations in still denying the awareness and
expression of your emotions , even though they are at the moment
still destructive to quite a degree, will take on a diere nt light in
your own eyes. You will look upon your resistance to doing what is
so necessary with a little more understanding and truth. Any
spiritual development is a farce if you deny this part of your being. If you do not have the courage to allow the negative in you to reach
your surface awareness, how can healthy, strong emotions ll your
being? If you cannot deal with the negative because it is out of your
awareness, this very same negative element will stand in the way of
the positive. Those of you who now follow this path and do what is so
necessary will rst experienc e a host of negative feelings. But after
these are dealt with and properly understood, mature, constructive
feelings will evolve. You will feel warmth, compassion, and good
involvement such as you never thought possible. You will no longer
feel yourself isolated. You will begin to relate to others in truth and
reality, not in falsehood and self-deception. When this happens, a
new security and respect for yourself will become part of you. You
will begin to trust and like yourself.QUESTION : Is a faith in God and love without emotional maturity
possible? ANSWER : That is impossible, if we speak about real love, the
willingness to be personally involved, and not about the childish
need to be loved and cherished that is so often confused with love. For real love and real, genuine faith to exist, emotional maturity is a
necessary basis. Love and faith and emotional immaturity are
mutually exclusive, my child . The ability to love is a direc t outcome
of emotional maturity and growth. True faith in God, in the sense of
true religion as opposed to false religion, is again a matter of
emotional maturity because true religion is self-dependent. It does
not cling to a father-authority out of the need to be protected. False
faith and false love always have the strong emotional connotation of
need. True love and true faith come out of strength, self-reliance,
and self-responsibility. All these are attributes of emotional
maturity. And only with strength, self-reliance, and self-
responsibility are true love, involvement, and faith possible. Anyone
who ever attained spiritual growth, known or unknown in history,
had to have emotional maturity. QUESTION : If someone doing this work nds wild emotions going back
to childhood, how is it possible to handle them and substitute for them
and let them disintegrate without the person who helps in this work right
there? At the time, let us say twice a month, when we have the
opportunity to express them with a helper present, we may not feel such
emotions, while we strongly feel them at other times. If one is on one’s
own, what is the right way to handle these emotions at the moment they
come up? ANSWER : In the rst place, it is signicant if emotions only come
out when one is not active ly doing this work with the so-called
helper. This in itself points to a strong resistance. It is the long,
drawn-out result of consistent repression. Due to such repression,
the emotions that come out rst will appear at inopportune
moments and will be so stron g as to confuse the person. But after acomparatively short time, with the inner will truly determined to
face the self in its entirety, destructive emotions will not only
appear at the proper time and in the proper place, but you will be
able to handle them with a meaningful result. The state of resistance
points to the fact that inward struggle and hate still exist along with
the child’s desire that manifest conicts should be resolved while
the basic defense-mechanism is left untouched. If destructive
emotions govern you, instead of your being able to govern them
without repression, it is a form of temper tantrum in which the
psyche says, “You see, you have forced me to do this, and now see
where this leads to.” If such subtle hidden emotions can be detected,
it will alleviate any danger of negative emotions taking on a power
that the personality cannot handle. In the second place, it is important that you do not feel guilty
about the existence of such emotions, which are probably
incompatible with the image you have of yourself. If you learn to
accept the reality of yoursel f instead of your mistaken self-image,
the strength of negative emotions will abate. Yes, you will, of
course, experie nce negative emotions, but you will never fear that
they can lead you into losing self-control. Let me put it this way:
The strong impact of negative emotions, to the point where you fear
that you are unable to handle them, is due not so much to their
existence per se  but due to the lack of accept ance on your part of the
fact that you are not your idealized self. The negative emotions in
themselves would be much less disturbing if you did not cling to the
idealized self while strugglin g to give it up. Once you have accepted
yourself as you now happen to be, and have made the inner decision
to part with the illusion of yourself, you will feel much more at
ease. You will become capab le of experiencing negative emotions in
a way that promotes growth. You will derive insight from them,
even if you are alone at the moment. Moreover, emotions  will come
up during working sessions and will yield even greater  insight if
they are expressed and worked with. So, I cannot give you rules to observe. I can only point to the
reason behind  this manifestation. If you truly absorb it, wish tounderstand it, and go on from there, this will help you a great deal. Of course, this is addressed to all of my friends. QUESTION : That means that the emotions  as such are not dangerous,
but it is our disappointment in ourselves that makes them so powerful or
dangerous? ANSWER : Yes, that is right. But they need not be dangerous, if you
do not want them to be. If inner anger is not properly understood
and released in a constructive way, such as you learn on this path, a
so-called temper tantrum takes place and the child in you lashes
out, destroying  others and the self. Find the child who wants to
strike out and you will be in control of evolving negative emotions
without repressing them, but expressing them constructively and
learning from them. Find the area in which you resent  not being
taken care of, not being given all you want. Once you are aware of
the reason for all this anger, you will be able to humor yourself
because you will see the preposterous demands of the child in you. This is the work you have to do in this particular phase. It is a
crucial and decisive mileston e on your road. When you get over this
particular hump, the work will proceed much more easily. Whenever you are afraid of losing control, I advise you to think of
the image you have of yourself, of what you think you should be, as
opposed to the emotions that actually come to the fore. The moment
you see this discrepancy, you will no longer feel threate ned by the
negative emotions. You will be able to handle them. This is the best
advice for you in this respect. Find in yourself where you are angry
at the world for not allowing you to be your idealized self-image,
where you feel it prevents you from being what you could be
without its interference. Once you are aware of such emotional
reactions, you will again come a great step forward. You see, my friends, your misunderstanding is that you think the
harm comes from the existen ce of the negative emotions as such. It
does not. It comes from your non-acceptance of your real self, from
the blam e you throw into the world for not allowing you to be whatyou feel you could be if the world would let you. This is the nature
of such strong, powerful emotions, and they can endanger you only
as long as you are unaware  of their nature. Therefore, seek their
meaning. Seek their true message and you will never have to fear. With this, my dearest, dearest friends, I go from you. Blessings for
each one of you. May you all gain further strength, furth er wisdom
to conduct your life and your inner growth so that you do not stand
still. For this is the only thing that gives meaning  to life—
continuous growth. The better you accomplish this, the more you
will be at peace with yourself. Blessings with all strength , love, and
warmth are given unto you. Be blessed, be in peace, be in God. OceanofPDF.com9 
Real and False Needs
Most of us are convinced that our troubles are caused by other
people who do not respond to our needs. Not so, says the Guide. Many of the specic fulllments we strive for are based on false
needs and can therefore never be fullled. How the false needs
came to substitute for unfullled real needs; how to distinguish
them from the real ones and let them go; and, nally, how to
recognize and fulll our present real needs is the content of this
lecture . Greetings to all of you, my friends. Blessings and strength are
pouring forth. If you open your hearts as well as your minds, you
can receive them. Most human beings are not yet aware of the immense spiritual
potentials and powers they have. Now, what do I mean when I say
spiritual poten tials and powers? I mean that these powers  transcend
by far the human capacities  considered normal in your sphere of
being. Awakening the Dormant Spiritual Potentials
These powers remain inaccessible or may even be dangerous if the
human being is not puried to a certain degree, or if the
consciousness is still in a state of half-sleep, which is alwaysconnected with destructive attitudes such as selfwill, pride, fear,
greed, envy, malice, cruelty, spite, and selshness. The majority of
human beings nd themselves in a state of being approximately
ninety percent  asleep and only ten percent awake to what exists in
the world around them, and within themselves. The process of
reawakening the self requires a great deal of eort, commitment,
work, and also the willingness to sacrice destructive patterns with
their short-live d, expensive satisfactions. Only then can awareness
gradually grow , perception sharpen, and new inner knowledge
become available as a manifestation of the awakening real self. This growing intuitive perception, this inner knowled ge—rst
about the self, then about the innermost being of others, and
eventually also about cosmic truth and creation—extends into an
experience of eternal life. The certainty of it! Awakening the
spiritual potentials also involves access to the ever-presen t forces of
life, all of which exist within and around you. These powers can be
utilized for healing, for helping, and for increasing fulllment and
consciousness in the self and others. Needless to say that if the little
ego still predominates over the spiritual real self, abuse of these
powers will be inevitable. Love has to rst be awakened in the soul of
a person  so that the new powers will be safe to use. If the energy force
eld of a huma n being is geared to low frequencies due to the soul’s
undeveloped state, the much higher frequencies of spiritual powers
can destroy health and life and create tremendous hazards. This is
why it is so important for development to proceed in certain
rhythms. The safest way is always to emphasize, above all else,
purication . When purica tion precedes  the development of spiritual and
psychic potent ial and power, bliss grows. Fearlessness  increases. Solutions to all problems become increasingly more accessible: They
present themselves because the problems are faced and dealt with. Healing of all the ills of the mind, the soul, and the body will then
be possible. But this utopian state cannot be obtained unless you deal with
your needs, both real and false, both conscious and unconscious. Any person not bringing his or her unconscious feeling experiencesinto consciousness must carry all the repressed material into the
next incarnatio n. The embedded material seeks out circumstances
and people for the next incarnation that will give an opportunity to
bring this dormant, unassimi lated material to the fore again, Thus a
set of parents or a certain environment will seem to be responsible
for painful experience in childhood. Actually, the undeveloped state
of the parents functions as a means to bring out images that would
otherwise remain dormant and inaccessible to consciousness,
thereby blocking total puric ation. Of course, it is possible to treat
painful experie nce in the old ways of avoidance and prolong the
cycle. But the day comes for every entity when it is no longer
possible to avoid confronting this experience openly. You can follow this chain of events even within the present life
span. To the degree you have not experienced fully your past as a
child, you must attract similar experiences later in life. If you have
avoided your childhood and are unaware of what truly went on in
you, you tend to not recognize what you feel and experience now as
you repeat the experience. Conversely, as you become conscious of
your past feelings, you also become aware of how past experience
repeats itself. Your state of numbness about your past feelings
numbs you to similar prese nt experiences, unless and until you
make a real commitment and a real eort to awaken yourself, no
matter how painful this may seem at rst. The Unfulllment of the Child’s Legitimate Needs
You can only be alert to and have full knowledge of what happens
to you now when the similar experiences of the past are out in the
open and fully dealt with. Then not only will the residual soul
matter of this life be cleared up, but also simultaneously the legacy
of previous existences. When  in your pathwork you experience more
of this residual matter, you encounter the fact that the most painful
element in it is the unfulllment of your legitimate needs as a child. The negation of your real needs creates your false needs. This is
tremendously important to observe.What are real needs and what are false needs? In the rst place,
whatever is real at one perio d of a person’s life may be utterly false
and unreal at a later period. What is a real need for a child is not at
all a real need for an adult. When the growing person denies the
pain of an unfullled real need, this need does not disappear. On the
contrary, the denial of the pain of its unfulllment perpetuates the
need and projects it into a later time and onto other people, so that
it becomes a false need. Take the specic example of a child needing
solely to receive care, nursing, good feelings, attention, and
appreciation of his or her own uniqueness. If these needs are not
fullled, the child must suer. If this suering is accepted and
worked throug h on the conscious level, the person does not remain
crippled, in spite of what many would want to believe. What does
create a crippled state is the belief  that this pain can only be
eliminated when the person  is nally given all that was lacking,
even years later. This can never happen, of course. For even if it
were possible for an adult to nally nd substitute parents, ideal
and perfect according to the notions of the deprived child, for the
adult all this giving, coming from outside the self, could never bring
real fulllment. The fulllment  so painfully longed for can be attained only when
you, as an adult, proceed to search within yourself for all that you
still look for outside of yourself. This must begin with self-
responsibility. If you remain  stuck by making your parents and life
responsible, you deprive yourself of the vital center of all good
within you. Only when you search to alter your own attitude and
discover that your suering is induced by your attitude  now, can
you begin to nd security—t he security you once looked for in the
sustenance given you by others. Anxiety will disappear to the exact
degree you search within yourself for the cause of your present
suering. And this suering is the denial of the original pain and the
consequent negative and destructive patterns of feeling and
thinking. When people begin to assume true self-responsibility, they will
gradually also cease to wait for the good feelings to come from
outside. They will be less dependent on being praised and lovedbecause they will be able to give themselves the self-esteem they
could not feel when remaining demanding, resentful children. This
is yet another step toward being centered within the real self. This,
in turn, increases the ability to have a strong ow of good, warm
feelings, and nourishes the desire to share them rather than
spitefully withhold them. The ability to experience pleasure from
within the body and soul, and oer it to others, becomes a real
alternative to greedily insisting on receiving. All these increased
abilities will ll the emptiness created by the child’s unfullled
need. How to Dissolve the Pain of the Unfullled Legitimate
Needs
The more the pain of the unfullled legitimate need remains
unfelt or only half experienced, the more false needs  will ll the
personality, which then is bound to make demands on others. When
these demands are not being fullled, the resentments—and often
the venom with which cases are being built against life and others—
increase one’s sense of deprivation, so that a continuous vicious
circle seems to entrap the person in a state of hopelessne ss. It is not
too dicult to rationalize a case and produce a blaming accusation. One can always nd actual, imagined, or exaggerated and distorted
reasons for focusing the weight of responsibility outside of the self. Since all this is subtle and concealed, it requires specic attention in
self-observation and self-honesty to see this process at work. Only
when you are capable of admitting your irrational dema nds and of
seeing how you want to deal out punishment to those you blame
can you truly understand the connections I make here. What are the real needs of an adult? They are self-exp ression,
growth, development, reaching one’s spiritual potential, and
everything that accrues from that. This means pleasure, love,
fulllment, good relationships, and a meaningful contribution to the
great plan in which everyone has his or her task. When a certainamount of growth has taken place, this task begins to be felt and
inwardly exper ienced until it becomes a reality. It is a real need to
perceive one’s inner growth;  the lack of it brings unhappiness. You
must then proceed to search for the obstructions within your own
soul and remove them. They are always, in one way or another,
connected with a perpetuation of needs once real, which have now
become false needs. Overcoming the Resistance to Exposing False Needs
The perpetuation of false needs creates any number of destructive
conditions within the soul of a person. Since these needs  can never
be fullled, continuous frustration and emptiness wipe out hope,
blacken vision,  and induce resentment, hate, blame, and often spite. A venomous, passive resistance and self-punishment are used to
punish others who appear to cause the negative state. The worse
these inner traits are, the greater the guilt and the self-evasion,
which make it impossible to get down to the roots of the problem,
change direction and focus. Only when resistance to recognizing the
false needs is vigorously overcome can all this be reversed. Real needs never require others to comply and “give it to you.”
Only to the little self does that appear necessary.
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:

        The dissension is caused not by actual
dierences among units of consciousness, but, just as in the
individual, by dierences in the development of the manifesting
universal consciousness. Even though the principle of unication is exactly the same
within and among individu als, it cannot be applied to another
human being unless it has rst been applied to one’s inner self. If
the divergent parts of your self are not approached according to this
truth, and your ambivalence is not faced, accepted, and understood,
the process of unication cannot be put into practice with another
person. This is a very important fact, which explains the great
emphasis of this pathwork on rst approaching the self. Only then can
relationship be cultivated in a meaningful and eective way. Elements of Dissension and Unication
Relationship represents the greatest challenge for the individu al, for it
is only in relationship to others that unresolved problems still
existing within the individual psyche are aected and activated. Many individuals withdraw from interaction with others, so they
can maintain the illusion that the problems arise from the other
person becaus e one feels disturbance only in his or her presence,
and not when by oneself. However, the less contact is cultivated, the more acute the
longing for contact becomes. This, then, is a dierent kind of pain—
the pain of loneliness and frustration. But contact makes it dicult to
maintain for any length of time the illusion that the inner self is
faultless and harmonious. It requires mental aberration to claim for
too long that one’s problem s in relationship are caused only by
others and not by oneself. This is why relationships are
simultaneously a fulllment, a challenge, and a gauge to one’s inner
state. The friction that arises out of relating with others can be a sharp
instrument of purication and self-recognition  if one is inclined to use
it. By withdrawing from this challenge and sacricing the fulllment
of intimate contact, many inner problems are never called into play. The illusion of inner peace and unity that comes from avoidance of
relating has even led to concepts that spiritual growt h is being
furthered by isolation. Nothin g could be farther from the truth. This
statement must not be confused with the notion that intervals of
seclusion are necessary for inner concentration and self-
confrontation. But these periods should always alternate with
contact—and the more intimate such contact is, the more it
expresses spiritual maturity. Contact and lack of contact with others can be observed in
various stages. There are many degrees of contact between the crass
extremes of total outer and inner isolation, at one end, and the
deepest, most intimate relate dness at the other. There are those who
have obtained  a certain supercial ability to relate but who stillwithdraw from a more meaningful, open, unmasked mutual
revealing. I might say that the average present-day human being
uctuates somewhere between the two extremes. Fulllment as a Yardstick for Personal Development
It is also possib le to measure one’s personal sense of fulll ment by
the depth of relatedness and intimate contact, by the strength of the
feelings one permits oneself to experience, and by the willingness to
give and receive. Frustration indicates an absence of contact, which,
in turn, is a precise indicator that the self withdraws from the
challenge of relationship, thereby sacricing personal fulllment,
pleasure, love, and joy. When you want to share only on the basis of
receiving according to your own terms, and you are in fact secretly
unwilling to share, your longings must remain unfullled. People
would be well advised to consider their unfullled longings from
this point of view, rather than indulging in the usual assumption
that one is unlucky and unfairly put upon by life. One’s contentment and fulllment in relationship is a much
neglected yardstick for one’s  own development. Relatio nship with
others is a mirror of one’s own state and thus a direct help to one’s
self-purication. Conversely, only by thorough self-honesty and self-
facing can relationships be sustained, can feelings expand, and
contact blosso m in long-term relationships. So you can see, my
friends, that relationships represent a tremendously important
aspect of human growth. The power and signicance of relationship often pose severe
problems for those who are still in the throes of their own inner
conicts. The unfullled longing becomes unbearably painful when
isolation is chosen due to the diculty of contact. This can be
resolved only when you seriously settle down to seek the cause for
this conict within your self, without using the defense of annihilating
guilt and self-blame, which of course eliminates any possibility of
really getting at the core of the conict. This search, together with
the inner willingness to change, must be cultivated in order toescape the painful dilemma in which both available alternatives—
isolation and contact—are unbearable. It is important  to remember that withdrawal can be very subtle
and may be outwardly unnoticeable, manifesting only in a certain
guardedness and distorted self-protection. Outer good fellowship
does not necessarily imply a capacity and willingness for inner
closeness. For many, closen ess is too taxing. On the surface this
seems related to how dicu lt others are, but actually the diculty
lies in the self, regardless of how imperfect others may also be. Who Is Responsible for the Relationship. When people whose spiritual development is on dierent levels
are involved with one anoth er, it is always the more highly developed
person who is responsible for the relationship, Specically, that person
is responsible for searching the depths of the interact ion which
create any friction and disharmony between the parties. The less developed person is not as capable of such a search,
being still in a state of blam ing the other and depending on the
other’s doing “right” in order to avoid unpleasantness or frustration. Also, the less developed person is always caught up in the
fundamental error of duality. From this perspective any friction is
seen in terms of “only one of us is right. ” When caught up in
dualistic thinking, such a person, when noticing a defect in the
other party, will automatic ally assume innocence, although in
reality his or her own negati ve involvement may be innitely more
weighty than the other person’s. The spiritually  more developed person is capable of realistic, non-
dualistic perception. That person may see that one of the two may
have a deeper problem, but that does not eliminate the importance
of the possibly  much lesser problem of the other one. The more
developed one will always be willing and able to search for his or
her own involvement whenever he or she is negatively aected, no
matter how blatantly at fault the other may be. A person of spiritual
and emotional immaturity and crudeness will always put the bulk ofthe blame on the other. All this applies to any land of relationship:
mates, parents and children, friendships, or business contacts. The tendency to make yourself emotionally dependent on others,
the overcomin g of which is such an important aspect of the growth
process, largely  comes from wanting to absolve yourself from blame
or extract yourself from diculty when establis hing and
maintaining a relationship. It seems so much easier to shift most of
this burden to others. But what a price to pay. Doing this renders
you helpless indeed and brings about isolation, or unending pain
and friction with others. It is only when you begin truly to assume
self-responsibility by looking at your own problem in the
relationship, and by a willingness to change, that freedom is
established and relationships become fruitful and joyous. If the more highly developed person refuses to undertake the
appropriate spiritual duty to assume responsibility for the
relationship and look for the core of dissension within, he or she
will never really understand the mutual interaction, how one
problem aects the other. The relationship must then deteriorate,
leaving both parties confused and less able to cope with the self and
others. On the other hand, if the spiritually developed person
accepts this responsibility, he or she will also help the other in a
subtle way. If he or she can desist from the temptation to constantly
belabor the obvious defects of the other and look within, he or she
will raise his or her own development considerably and spread
peace and joy. The poison of friction will soon be elimina ted. It will
also become possible to nd other partners for a truly mutual
growth process. When two equals relate, both carry the full responsibility for the
relationship. This is indee d a beautiful venture, a deeply satisfying
state of mutuality. The slightest aw in a mood will be recognized
for its inner meaning and thus the growth process is kept up. Both
will recognize their co-creation of this momentary aw—whether it
be an actual friction or a mom entary deadness of feelings. The inner
reality of the interaction will become increasingly more signicant. This will largely prevent injury to the relationship. Let me emphasize here that when I speak of being responsible for
the less developed person, I do not mean that another human being
can ever carry the burden for the actual diculties of others. This
can never be. What I mean is that diculties of interaction in a
relationship are usually not explored in depth by the individual
whose spiritua l development is more primitive. He or she will
render others responsible for his or her unhappiness and
disharmony in a given intera ction and is not able, or willing, to see
the whole issue. Thus that person is not in a position to eliminate
the disharmony. Only those who assume responsibility for nding
the inner disturbance and mutual eect can do so. Hence the
spiritually more primitive person always depends on the spiritually
more evolved one. A relationship between individuals in which the destructiveness of
the less developed one makes growth, harmony, and good feelings
impossible, or in which the contact is overwhelmingly negative,
should be severed. As a rule, the more highly developed person
should assume  the initiative. If he or she does not, this indicates
some unrecogn ized weakness and fear that needs to be faced. If a
relationship is dissolved on this ground, namely, that it is more
destructive and pain-producing than constructive and harmonious, it
should be done when the inner problems and mutual interactions
are fully recognized by the one who takes the initiative to dissolve
an old tie. This will prevent him or her from forming a new
relationship with similar underlying currents and interactions. It
also means that the decision to sever the connection has been made
because of growth, rather than as a result of spite, fear, or escape. Destructive Interactions
To explore the underlying interaction and the various eects of a
relationship in which both people’s diculties are laid bare and
accepted is by no means easy. But nothing can be more beautiful
and rewarding. Anyone who comes into the state of enlightenment
where this is possible will no longer fear any kind of interaction. Diculties and fears arise to the exact degree that you still project on
others your own problems  in relating and still render others
responsible for anything that goes against your liking. This can take
many subtle forms. You may constantly concentrate on the faults of
others, because at rst glance such concentration appears justied
to you. You may subtly overe mphasize one side of an interaction, or
exclude another. Such distortions indicate projection and denial of
self-responsibility for the diculties in relating. This denial fosters
dependency on the perfection of the other party, which in turn creates
fear and hostility for feelin g let down when the other does not
measure up to the perfect standard. My dear friends, no matter what wrong the other person  does, if
you are disturbed, there must be something in you that you
overlook. When I say disturbed, I mean this in a particular sense. I
do not speak of clear-cut anger that expresses itself guiltlessly and
does not leave  a trace of inner confusion and pain. I mean the kind
of disturbance that comes out of conict and breeds furth er conict. A favor ite tendency among people is to say, “You are doing it to
me. ” The game of making others guilty is so pervasive  that you
hardly even notice it. One human being blames the other, one
country blame s the other, one group blames the other. This is a
constant process at humanit y’s present level of development. It is
indeed one of the most harmful and illusory processes imaginable. People derive pleasure from doing this, although the pain that
ensues and the insoluble conicts that follow are innitely
disproportionate to the puny, momentary pleasure. Those who play
this game truly harm themselves and others, and I strongly
recommend that you begin to be aware of your blind involvement in
this guilt-shifting game. But how about the “victim”. How is that person to cope. As a
victim, your rst problem is that you are not even aware of what is
happening. Most of the time, the victimization happens in a subtle,
emotional, and unarticulated fashion. The silent, covert blame is
being launched  without a spoken word. It is expressed indirectly in
many ways. Now, obviously, the rst necessity is concise, articulate
awareness, for otherwise you will unconsciously respond in equallydestructive, falsely self-defensive ways. Then neither person really
knows the intricate levels of action, reaction, and interaction until
the threads become so enmeshed that it seems impossible to
disentangle them. Many a relationship has faltered due to such
unconscious interaction. The launching of blame spreads poison, fear, and at least as much
guilt as one tries to project. The recipients of this blame and guilt
may react in many dierent ways, according to their own problems
and unresolved conicts. As long as the reaction is blind and the
projection of guilt unconscious, the counter-reaction must also be
neurotic and destructive. Only conscious perception can prohibit
this. Only then will you be able to refuse a burden that is being
placed on you. Only then can you articulate and pinpoint it. How to Reach for Fulllment and Pleasure
In a relationship that is about to blossom, one must be on the
lookout for this pitfall, which is all the more dicult to detect
because guilt projection is so widespread. Also, the recipients should
look for it in themselves as well as in the other. And I do not mean
here a straightforward confrontation about something the other
person did wrong. I mean the subtle blame for personal
unhappiness. This is what must be challenged. The only way you can avoid becoming a victim of blame and guilt
projection is to avoid doing it yourself. To the degree you indulge
yourself in this subtly negat ive attitude—and you may do it in a
dierent way than the one who does it to you—you will be unaware
of it being done to you and will therefore become victim ized by it. The mere awareness will make all the dierence—whether or not
you verbally express your perception and confront the other person. Only to the degree that you undefensively explore and accept your
own problematic reactions and distortions, negativities and
destructiveness, can you defuse someone else’s guilt projection. Only
then will you not be drawn into a maze of falseness and confusion in
which uncertainty, defensiveness, and weakness may make youeither retreat or become overaggressive. Only then will you no
longer confuse self-assertion with hostility, or exible compromise
with unhealthy submission. These are the aspects that determine the ability to cope with
relationships. The more profoundly understood and lived these new
attitudes are, the more intimate, fullling, and beautiful human
interaction will become. How can you assert your rights and reach into the universe for
fulllment and pleasure. How can you love without fear unless you
approach relating to others the way I have outlined above. Unless
by learning to do this you purify yourself, there must always be a
threat when it comes to intimacy: that one or both will resort to
using the whip  of loading guilt upon the other. Loving, sharing, and
profound and satisfying closeness to others could be a purely
positive power  without any threat if these snares were looked at,
discovered, and dissolved. It is of utmost importance that you look
for them in yourselves, my friends. The most challenging, beautiful, spiritually important, and
growth-producing kind of relationship is the one between man and
woman. The power that brings two people together in love and
attraction and the pleasure involved are a small aspect of cosmic
reality. It is as though each created entity knew unconsciously about
the bliss of this state and sought to realize it in the most potent way
open to humanity: in love and sexuality between man and woman. The power that draws them together is the purest spiritual energy,
leading to an inkling of the purest spiritual state. However, when a man and a woman stay together in a more
enduring and committed relationship, maintaining and even
increasing bliss depends entirely on how the two relate to each
other. Are they aware of the direct relationship between enduring
pleasure and inner growth. Do they use the inevitable diculties in
the relationship as yardsticks for their own inner diculties. Do
they communicate in the deepest, most truthful, self-revealing way,
sharing their inner problems, helping each other. The answers to
these questions will determine whether the relationship falters,
dissolves, stagnates—or blossoms. When you look at the world around you, you will undoubtedly see
that very few human beings grow and reveal themselves in such an
open way. Equally few realize that growing together and through each
other determines the solidity of feelings, of pleasure, of enduring
love and respect. It is therefore not surprising that long-lasting
relationships are almost invariably more or less dead in feelings. Diculties that arise in a relationship are always signals for
something unattended to. They are a loud message for those who
can hear it. The sooner it is heeded, the more spiritual energy will
be released, so that the state of bliss can expand along with the
inner being of both partners. There is a mechanism in a relationship
between a man and a woman that can be likened to a very nely
calibrated instrument that shows the nest and most subtle aspects
of the relationship and the individual state of the two people
involved. This is not suciently recognized by even the most aware
and sophisticated people who are otherwise familiar with spiritual
and psychological truth. Every day and every hour one’s inner state
and feelings are a testimony to one’s state of growth, lb the degree
they are heeded, the interaction, the feelings, the freedom of ow
within and toward each other will blossom. The perfectly mature and spiritually valid relationship must
always be deeply connected with personal growth. The moment a
relationship is experienced as irrelevant to inner growth, left on its
own, as it were, it will falter. Only when both grow to their
ultimate, inherent potential can the relationship become more and
more dynamic and alive. This work has to be done individually and
mutually. When relationship is approached in that way, it will be
built on rock, not sand. No fear will ever nd room under such
circumstances. Feelings will expand, and security about the self and
each other will grow. At any given moment, each partner  will serve
as a mirror to the inner state of the other and therefore to the
relationship. Whenever there is friction or deadness, it is an indicat ion that
something must be stuck. Some interaction between the two people
remains unclear and it needs to be looked at. If it is understood and
brought out into the open, growth will proceed at maximum speed,and, in the dimension of feeling, happiness, bliss, profound
experience, and ecstasy will become forever deeper and more
beautiful, and life will acquire more meaning. Conversely, fear of intimacy implies rigidity and the denial of
one’s own share in the relationship’s diculties. Anyone who
ignores these principles, or who pays only lip service to them, is
emotionally not ready to assume the responsibility for his or her
inner suering—either within a relationship or in its absence. So you see, my friends, it is of the greatest importance to
recognize that bliss and beauty, which are eternal spiritual realities, are
available to all those who seek the key to the problems of human
interaction, as well as to loneliness, within their own hearts. True
growth is as much a spiritual reality as are profound fulllment,
vibrant aliveness, and blissful, joyous relating. When you are
inwardly ready  to relate to another human being in such a fashion,
you will nd the appropriate  partner  with whom this manner of
sharing is possible. It will no longer frighten you, will no longer
beset you with conscious or unconscious fears when you use this all-
important key. You cannot ever feel helpless or victimized when the
signicant transition has taken place in your life and you no longer
render others responsible for what you experience or fail to
experience. Thus growth and fullled, beautiful living become one
and the same. May you all carry with you this new material and an inner energy
awakened by your goodwill. May these words be the beginning of a
new inner modality to meet life, to nally decide, “I want  to risk my
good feelings. I want to seek the cause in me, rather than in the
other person, so that I become free to love. ” This kind of meditation
will indeed bear fruit. If you carry away a germ, a particle, of this
lecture, it has truly been fruitful. Be blessed, all of you, my dearest
friends, so that you become the gods that you potentially are. OceanofPDF. com8 
Emotional Growth and Its Function
“If I didn’t feel anything, I wouldn’t suer. ” Most people are
trying very hard not to feel in the mistaken belief that then they
could avoid being unhappy. Haven’t you had such a thought. We
think it is only a thought, but this wish has its consequenc e: the
numbing of our feeling capacity. Yet, the repression of feelings does
not alleviate suering; on the contrary, it increases the pain. Feelings need room to grow, just as our minds and bodies do, so
that we achieve  a higher emotional state in which we can dare to
love. Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless each one of you, blessed
is this hour. In order to know yourself on a deeper level, it becomes
increasingly necessary to allow all emotions to reach surface
awareness, so as to understa nd these emotions and to enable them
to mature. Most of you have a great resistance to letting this
happen. You are unaware of the obstructions you put in the way of
your own growth. Hence it is necessary that I discuss the mechanism
of your resistance. Let us rst be clear about the unity of the human personality. Human beings  who function harmoniously have developed the
physical, ment al, and emotional sides of their nature. These three
spheres are supposed to function harmoniously with one another,
each helping the other, rather than one faculty subduing another. Ifone function is underdeveloped, it causes a disharmony in the
human structure, and also cripples the entire personality. Now let us understand what causes human beings to particularly
neglect, repres s, and cripple the growth of their emotion al nature. This neglect is universal. Most human beings look mainly after the
physical self. They do more or less what is necessary to make it
grow and remain healthy. A good portion of humanity cultivates the
mental side. In order to do so you learn, you use your brain, your
thinking capacity; you absorb, you train your memory  and your
logical reasoning. All this furthers mental growth. But why is the emotional nature generally neglected. There are
good reasons for that, my friends. To gain more clarity, let us rst
understand the function of the emotional nature in human beings. It
includes, rst of all, the capacity to feel. The capacity to experience
feeling is synonymous with the capacity to give and receive
happiness. To the degree you shy away from any kind of emotional
experience, to that extent you also close the door to the experience
of happ iness. Moreover, the emotional side of your nature, when
functioning, possesses creative ability. To the degree you close yourself
o from emotional experience, to that very degree the full potential of
your creative ability is hindered in manifesting itself. Contrary to what
many of you may believe, the unfolding of creative ability is not a
mere mental process. In fact, the intellect has much less to do with
it than may appear at rst glance, in spite of the fact that technical
skill also becomes a necessity in order to give the creative outow
full expression. Creative unfoldment is an intuitive process. Needless
to say, intuitio n can function only to the degree that your emotional
life is strong, healthy, and mature. Therefore, your intuitive powers will be hindered if you have
neglected emotional growth and discouraged yourself from
experiencing the world of feeling. Why is there such a predominant
emphasis in your world today on physical and mental growth and a
conspicuous neglect of emotional growth. Several general
explanations could be advanc ed, but I would like to go immediately
to the root of the problem. Numbing of Feelings to Avoid Unhappiness
In the world of feeling you experience the good and the bad, the
happy and the unhappy, pleasure and pain. Contra ry to just
registering such impressions  mentally, emotional experie nce really
touches you. Since your struggle is primarily for happiness, and
since immature emotions lead to unhappiness, your secondary aim
becomes the avoidance of unhappiness. Unhappy circumstances
exist in every child’s life; pain and disappointment are common. This creates the early, mostly unconscious, conclusion: “If I do not
feel, then I will not be unhappy. ”  In other words, instead of taking the
courageous and appropriate step of living through negative,
immature emotions in order to aord them the opportunity to grow
and thus become mature and constructive, the childish emotions are
suppressed, put out of awareness and buried, so that they remain
inadequate and destructive, even though the person is unaware of
their existence. Although it may be true that you can anesthetize your capacity
for emotional experience, and therefore cannot feel immediate pain,
it is also true that you dull your capacity for happiness and pleasure
while not really avoiding the dreaded unhappiness in the long run. The unhappiness you seem to avoid will come to you in a dierent
and much more painful, but indirect, way. The bitter hurt of
isolation, of loneliness, of the gnawing feeling of having passed
through life without experiencing its heights and depths, without
developing yourself to the most and best you can be, is the result of
such a wrong solution. Using such evasive tactics you do not experience life at its fullest. By withdrawin g from pain, you withdraw from happiness and, most
of all, you withdraw from experience. At one time or another—and
you may never remember the conscious declaration of intent—you
withdrew from living, loving, and experiencing—from everything
that makes life rich and rewarding. The result is that your intuitive
powers are dulled together with your creative faculties. You only
function to a fraction of your potential. The damage you haveinicted upon yourself with this pseudo-solution, and go on
inicting upon  yourself as long as you adhere to it, is one that
eludes your comprehension and evaluation at the present time. Isolation
Since this was your defense against unhappiness to begin  with, it
is understandable that unconsciously you ght tooth and nail
against giving up what seem s to you a vital protection. You do not
realize that not only do you miss out on life’s richness, life’s
rewards, your own full potential, but you do not really avoid
unhappiness. This painful isolation was not willingly chosen by you
and therefore it is not accepted as a price to be paid. Rather, it came
as a necessary byproduct of your pseudo-solution, and with this
defense mecha nism at work the child in you hopes and ghts for
receiving what you cannot possibly receive. In other words,
somewhere deep inside, you hope and believe that it is possible to
belong and to be loved while you dull your world of feeling into a
state of numbness and thereby prohibit yourself from truly loving
others. Yes, you may need others and this need may appear as love
to you, but now you know that it is not the same. Inside, you hope
and believe it possible to unite with others, to communicate in a
rewarding and satisfying way with the world around you, while you
put up a wall of false protection against the impact of emotional
experience. If and when you cannot help but feel, you are busy
hiding such feelings from yourself and others. How can you receive
what you yearn for—love, belonging, communication—if you
neither feel nor express the occasional glimpses of feelin gs that the
still healthy part in you strives for. You cannot have it both ways,
though the child in you never wants to accept that. Since you “protect” yourself  in this foolish manner, you isolate
yourself, which  means exposing yourself much more to that which
you strive to avoid. Hence you miss out doubly: You do not avoid
that which you fear—not really and not in the long run—and you
miss out on all you could have if you would not run away fromliving. For living and feeling are one. The love and fulllment you
must increasingly crave for makes you blame others, circumstances,
the fates, or bad luck, instead of seeing how you are responsible for
it. You resist such insight because you sense that the moment you
see it fully, you will have to change, and you can no longer cling to
the comfortable but unrealiz able hope that you can have what you
want without meeting the necessary conditions to get it. If you want
happiness you must be willin g to give it. How can you give it, if you
are unwilling and unable to feel as much as you are capable of
feeling. Realize that it is you who caused this state of unfulllment,
and it is you who can still change it, regardless of your physical age. The Need to Exercise the Emotions
Another reason for resorting to this unsuccessful pseudo -solution
is the following: As in everything else, feeling and emotional
expression can be mature and constructive or immature and
destructive. As a child you possessed an immature body and mind
and therefore, quite natural ly, an immature emotional  structure. Most of you gave your body and mind a chance to grow out of the
immaturity and to reach a certain physical and mental maturity. Let
me give you an example on the physical level: An infant will feel the
strong urge to use its vocal cords. It has an instinct with the function
of prom oting the growth of certain organic matter through strong
use of the vocal cords. It is not pleasant to hear a baby screaming,
but this period of transition leads to strong healthy organs in this
particular aspect. For the baby, not going through this unpleasant
time by suppressing the instinctual urge to scream would eventually
damage and weaken the respective organs. The urge to indulge in
strong physical exercise has the same function. All this is part of the
growing proce ss. To stop the growing process with the excuse that
there is a danger in overexertion would be foolish and damaging. Yet this is done with your emotional self. You stop its functioning
because you consider the growing transitional period so dangerous
that you proceed to stop growth altogether. You not only hinderexcesses as a result of this reasoning, but you also hinder all the
transitory functioning that alone can lead to constructive, mature
emotions. Since this is more or less the case with every one of you,
the growth period of experiencing and maturing has to happen now. When your mental processe s mature, you have to go through
transition periods too. You not only learn, you are also bound to
make mistake s. In your younger years you often hold opinions
which you later grow out of. While later you perceive that these
opinions are not as “right” as they seemed to you during your youth
and see another side that earlier eluded you, it was nevertheless
benecial for you to go through those times of error. How could you
appreciate truth if you had not gone through error. You can never
gain truth by avoiding error. It strengthens your mental faculties,
your logic, as well as your range and power of deduction. Without
being allowed to make mistakes in your thinking or your opinions,
your mental faculties could not grow. Strangely enough, there is much less resistance in human nature
to the necessa ry growing pains of the physical and ment al sides of
the personality than to the growth of the emotional nature. Hardly
anyone recognizes that emotional growing pains are necessary too,
and that they are constructive and benecial. Without consciously
thinking about it in these terms, you believe that the emotional
growth process should come about without growing pains. Most of
the time it is completely ignored that this area exists at all, let alone
that it needs growth; neither do you know how such growth is to be
accomplished. You who are on this path ought to begin to
understand this. If you do, your insistence on remaining deadened
and dulled will nally give way and you will no longer object to
going through a period of growth now. Allowing Immature Feelings to Surface
In this growing period, immature emotions have to express
themselves. Only as they are allowed expression for the purpose of
understanding their signicance will you nally reach a point whenyou no longer need such immature emotions. This will not happen
through a process of will, an outer mental decision which represses
what is still a part of your emotional being, but through an organic
process of emotional growth wherein feelings will naturally change
their direction, their aim, their intensity, their nature. But this can
only be done if you experience your emotions as they exist in you
now. When you were hurt as a child, your reactions were anger,
resentment, hate—sometimes to a very strong degree. If you prevent
yourself now from consciou sly experiencing these emotions, you
will not get rid of them; you will not enable healt hy mature
emotions to follow in their place, but you will simply repress
existing feelings. You will bury them and deceive yourself that you
do not feel what you actually still feel. Since you dull your capacity
to feel, you become unaware of what exists underneath. Then you
superimpose feelings that you think you ought to have but that you
do not really and truly have. You all operate—some more, some less—with feelings that are not
genuinely yours, with feelings you think you ought to have but do
not have. Underneath, something entirely dierent is taking place. Only in times of extreme crisis do these actual feelings reach the
surface. Then you believe it is the crisis that has caused these
reactions in you. No: the crisis reactivated the still immature
emotions. It is the eect of the hidden emotional immaturity, as
well as of the existing self-deception. The fact that you put raw, destructive, immature emotion s out of
sight instead of growing out of them and then deceive yourself,
believing you are a much more integrated and mature person than
you actually are, is not only a self-deception, but it also leads you
more deeply into isolation, unhappiness, alienation from yourself,
and unsuccessful, unrewarding patterns that you repeat over and
over again. The result of all this seems to conrm your pseudo-
solution, your defense mechanism, but this is a very misleading
conclusion. Immature emotions earned you punishment as a child; either they
caused you actual pain, or produced an undesired result when youexpressed them. You lost something you wanted, such as the
aection of certain people, or a desired goal became unattainable
when you expressed what you really felt. This then became an
additional reason for you to hinder self-expression. Consequently, as
you perceived such emotion s to be undesirable, you proceeded to
whisk them also out of your own sight. You found it necessary to do
so because you did not want to be hurt, you did not wish to
experience the pain of feeling unhappy. You also found it necessary
to repre ss existing emotions because the expression of the negative
produced an undesirable result. You might say that because the latter is true, your procedure is
therefore valid, necessary, and self-preserving. You will rightly say
that if you live out your negative emotions, the world will punish
you in one form or another. Yes, my friends, this is true. Immature
emotions are indeed destructive and will indeed bring you
disadvantages. But your error lies in the conscious or unconscious
thought that to be aware of what you feel and to give vent to it in action
are one and the same. You cannot discriminate between the two
courses. Neither can you discriminate between a constructive aim—
for which it is necessary to express and talk about what you feel, at
the right place, with the right people—and the destructiveness of
heedlessly letting go all control, of not choosing the right aim, the
right place, and the right people, of not wanting to use such
expression as would yield you insight into yourself. If you merely let
go because you lack disciplin e, or an aim, and expose your negative
emotions, that is indeed destructive. Try to distinguish between constructive and destructive aims, try
to realize the purpose of exposing your emotions, and then develop
the courage and humility to allow yourself to be aware of what you
really feel, and to express it when it is meaningful. If you do this,
you will see the tremendous dierence between merely allowing
immature and destructive emotions to come to the fore in order to
relieve yoursel f of pressure and give them an outlet without aim or
meaning, and the purposeful activity of reexperiencing all the
feelings that once existed in you and that still exist in you. What has
not been properly assimilated in emotional experience but hasinstead been repressed will constantly be reactivated by present
situations. These remind you in one way or another of the original
“solution” that brought on such unassimilated experience in the rst
place. Such a reminder may not be factual. It can be an emotional
climate, a symbolic association that lodges exclusively in the
subconscious. As you learn to become aware of what is really going
on in you, you will also notice such reminders. With this may come
the realization that you often actually feel very much the opposite
of what you force yourself to feel. How to Activate the Growth Process
As the rst few tentative steps are taken in the direction of
becoming aware of what you feel and expressing it in a direct way
without nding reasons and excuses, you will gain an understanding
about yourself such as you never had before. You will feel the
growing process at work, because you are actively engaged in it
with your innermost self, not merely with outer gestures. You will
not only come to understan d what brought on many unwelcome
results, but how it is in your power to change them. Understanding
the interaction between yourself and others will show you how your
unconscious, distorted pattern has aected others in exactly the
opposite way to what you originally wanted. This will give you an
inner understanding about the process of communication. This is the only way emotions can mature. By going through the
period that was missed in childhood and adolescence, the emotions
will nally mature and you will no longer need to fear the power of
those emotions that you cannot control by merely putting them out
of awareness. You will be able to trust them, and to be guided by
them—for that is the nal aim of the mature and well-functioning
person. I might say that this has happened to all of you to some
degree. There are times when you allow yourself to be guided by
your power of intuition. But it happens more as an exception than
as a rule. It cannot happen as a rule as long as your emotions
remain destructive and childish; they are unreliable in this state. Since you discourage their growth, you live by your mental faculties
only—and they are secondary in eciency. When healthy emotions
make your intuition reliab le, there will be a mutual harmony
between the mental and emotional faculties. One will not contradict
the other. As long as you cannot rely on your intuitive processes,
you must be insecure and lacking in self-condence. You try to
make up for this by relying on others, or on false religion. This
makes you weak and helpless. But if you have mature, strong
emotions, you will trust yourself and therein nd a security you
never dreamed existed. After the rst painful release  of negative emotions, you will nd a
certain relief in the realization that poisonous matter has left your
system in a manner that was not destructive for you or for others. After thus having gained insight and understanding, new warm,
good emotions will come out of you that could not express
themselves as long as the negative emotions were held in check. You
will also learn to discriminate between genuine good feelings and
the false good feelings that you superimpose out of the need to
maintain your idealized self-image: “This is the way I should be. ”
Because you cling to this idealized self-image, you canno t nd your
real self, and do not have the courage to accept that a comparatively
large area of your persona lity is still childish, incomplete, and
imperfect. What Is True Security. To acknowledge this is the rst necessary step to destroy your
destructive processes and to build a real solid self that will stand on
rm ground. For only in the mature emotions, in the courage to
make this maturity and growth possible, will you gain the security
within yourself you so ardently hunt for elsewhere. So, build your true security. You have nothing to fear from
becoming aware of what is already in you. Looking away from what
is does not cause it to cease to exist. Therefore, it is wise on your
part to want to look at, to face, and to acknowledge what is in you—no more and no less. To believe that it harms you more to know
what you feel and are than not to know is extremely foolish. Yet to
some degree that is exactly what you all do. That is the nature of
your resistance  to accepting and facing yourself. Only after you face
what is in you will your much more mature intellect be able to
make the decision as to whether these inner behavior patterns are
worth keeping or not. You are not forced to give up what seems a
protection to you, but look at it with the clear and lucid eyes of
truth. That is all I ask you to do. You have nothing to fear from it. And now, my friends, let us consider this subject in the light of
spirituality. You all have come originally with the idea of growing
spiritually. I might say that more or less all of you hope to
accomplish this without tending to your emotional growth. You
want to believe that the one is possible without the other. Needless
to say, this is a complete impossibility. Sooner or later all of you
will reach the point where you have to make up your mind as to
whether you really want emotional growth or you still want to cling
to the childish hope that spiritual growth is possible while you
neglect the world of feeling and allow it to lie dorma nt without
giving it the opportunity to grow. Let us examine this for a moment,
my friends. If the Feelings Are Stunted, Love Cannot Grow
You all know, regardless of what religion or spiritual philosophy
or teaching you follow, that love is the rst and the greatest power. In
the last analys is, it is the only power. Most of you have used this
maxim many times, but I wonder, my friends, if you ever knew that
you were using empty word s, always veering away from feeling,
reacting, and experiencing. Now, how can you love if you do not let
yourself feel. How can you love and at the same time remain what
you choose to call “detached”. That means remaining personally
uninvolved, not risking pain, disappointment, personal involvement. Can you love in such a comfortable way. If you numb your faculty
of feelin g, how can you truly experience love. Is love an intellectualprocess. Is love a lukewarm matter of laws, word s, letters,
regulations, and rules you talk about. Or is love a feeling that
comes from deep within the soul, a warmth of owing impact that
cannot leave you indierent  and untouched. Is it not foremost a
feeling, and only after the feeling is fully experienced and expressed,
will wisdom, and perhaps even intellectual insight—as a byproduct,
so to speak—result from it. How can you hope to gain spirituality—and spirituality and love
are one—by neglecting your emotional processes. Think about this,
my friends. Begin to see how you all sit back, hoping for a
comfortable spirituality that leaves out your personal involvement
in the world of feelings. After you see this clearly, you will
comprehend how preposterous this attitude is. Your conscious or
unconscious rationalizations in still denying the awareness and
expression of your emotions, even though they are at the moment
still destructive to quite a degree, will take on a diere nt light in
your own eyes. You will look upon your resistance to doing what is
so necessary with a little more understanding and truth. Any
spiritual development is a farce if you deny this part of your being. If you do not have the courage to allow the negative in you to reach
your surface awareness, how can healthy, strong emotions ll your
being. If you cannot deal with the negative because it is out of your
awareness, this very same negative element will stand in the way of
the positive. Those of you who now follow this path and do what is so
necessary will rst experienc e a host of negative feelings. But after
these are dealt with and properly understood, mature, constructive
feelings will evolve. You will feel warmth, compassion, and good
involvement such as you never thought possible. You will no longer
feel yourself isolated. You will begin to relate to others in truth and
reality, not in falsehood and self-deception. When this happens, a
new security and respect for yourself will become part of you. You
will begin to trust and like yourself. QUESTION : Is a faith in God and love without emotional maturity
possible. ANSWER : That is impossible, if we speak about real love, the
willingness to be personally involved, and not about the childish
need to be loved and cherished that is so often confused with love. For real love and real, genuine faith to exist, emotional maturity is a
necessary basis. Love and faith and emotional immaturity are
mutually exclusive, my child. The ability to love is a direc t outcome
of emotional maturity and growth. True faith in God, in the sense of
true religion as opposed to false religion, is again a matter of
emotional maturity because true religion is self-dependent. It does
not cling to a father-authority out of the need to be protected. False
faith and false love always have the strong emotional connotation of
need. True love and true faith come out of strength, self-reliance,
and self-responsibility. All these are attributes of emotional
maturity. And only with strength, self-reliance, and self-
responsibility are true love, involvement, and faith possible. Anyone
who ever attained spiritual growth, known or unknown in history,
had to have emotional maturity. QUESTION : If someone doing this work nds wild emotions going back
to childhood, how is it possible to handle them and substitute for them
and let them disintegrate without the person who helps in this work right
there. At the time, let us say twice a month, when we have the
opportunity to express them with a helper present, we may not feel such
emotions, while we strongly feel them at other times. If one is on one’s
own, what is the right way to handle these emotions at the moment they
come up. ANSWER : In the rst place, it is signicant if emotions only come
out when one is not active ly doing this work with the so-called
helper. This in itself points to a strong resistance. It is the long,
drawn-out result of consistent repression. Due to such repression,
the emotions that come out rst will appear at inopportune
moments and will be so stron g as to confuse the person. But after acomparatively short time, with the inner will truly determined to
face the self in its entirety, destructive emotions will not only
appear at the proper time and in the proper place, but you will be
able to handle them with a meaningful result. The state of resistance
points to the fact that inward struggle and hate still exist along with
the child’s desire that manifest conicts should be resolved while
the basic defense-mechanism is left untouched. If destructive
emotions govern you, instead of your being able to govern them
without repression, it is a form of temper tantrum in which the
psyche says, “You see, you have forced me to do this, and now see
where this leads to. ” If such subtle hidden emotions can be detected,
it will alleviate any danger of negative emotions taking on a power
that the personality cannot handle. In the second place, it is important that you do not feel guilty
about the existence of such emotions, which are probably
incompatible with the image you have of yourself. If you learn to
accept the reality of yoursel f instead of your mistaken self-image,
the strength of negative emotions will abate. Yes, you will, of
course, experie nce negative emotions, but you will never fear that
they can lead you into losing self-control. Let me put it this way:
The strong impact of negative emotions, to the point where you fear
that you are unable to handle them, is due not so much to their
existence per se  but due to the lack of accept ance on your part of the
fact that you are not your idealized self. The negative emotions in
themselves would be much less disturbing if you did not cling to the
idealized self while strugglin g to give it up. Once you have accepted
yourself as you now happen to be, and have made the inner decision
to part with the illusion of yourself, you will feel much more at
ease. You will become capab le of experiencing negative emotions in
a way that promotes growth. You will derive insight from them,
even if you are alone at the moment. Moreover, emotions  will come
up during working sessions and will yield even greater  insight if
they are expressed and worked with. So, I cannot give you rules to observe. I can only point to the
reason behind  this manifestation. If you truly absorb it, wish tounderstand it, and go on from there, this will help you a great deal. Of course, this is addressed to all of my friends. QUESTION : That means that the emotions  as such are not dangerous,
but it is our disappointment in ourselves that makes them so powerful or
dangerous. ANSWER : Yes, that is right. But they need not be dangerous, if you
do not want them to be. If inner anger is not properly understood
and released in a constructive way, such as you learn on this path, a
so-called temper tantrum takes place and the child in you lashes
out, destroying  others and the self. Find the child who wants to
strike out and you will be in control of evolving negative emotions
without repressing them, but expressing them constructively and
learning from them. Find the area in which you resent  not being
taken care of, not being given all you want. Once you are aware of
the reason for all this anger, you will be able to humor yourself
because you will see the preposterous demands of the child in you. This is the work you have to do in this particular phase. It is a
crucial and decisive mileston e on your road. When you get over this
particular hump, the work will proceed much more easily. Whenever you are afraid of losing control, I advise you to think of
the image you have of yourself, of what you think you should be, as
opposed to the emotions that actually come to the fore. The moment
you see this discrepancy, you will no longer feel threate ned by the
negative emotions. You will be able to handle them. This is the best
advice for you in this respect. Find in yourself where you are angry
at the world for not allowing you to be your idealized self-image,
where you feel it prevents you from being what you could be
without its interference. Once you are aware of such emotional
reactions, you will again come a great step forward. You see, my friends, your misunderstanding is that you think the
harm comes from the existen ce of the negative emotions as such. It
does not. It comes from your non-acceptance of your real self, from
the blam e you throw into the world for not allowing you to be whatyou feel you could be if the world would let you. This is the nature
of such strong, powerful emotions, and they can endanger you only
as long as you are unaware  of their nature. Therefore, seek their
meaning. Seek their true message and you will never have to fear. With this, my dearest, dearest friends, I go from you. Blessings for
each one of you. May you all gain further strength, furth er wisdom
to conduct your life and your inner growth so that you do not stand
still. For this is the only thing that gives meaning  to life—
continuous growth. The better you accomplish this, the more you
will be at peace with yourself. Blessings with all strength, love, and
warmth are given unto you. Be blessed, be in peace, be in God.
The primary cause is not actual differences among individuals, but rather differences in the development of the universal consciousness.
What is the primary cause of dissension and conflict in relationships?
Approaching and accepting one's inner self, and then applying the principle of unification.
What is the key to a meaningful and effective relationship?
No, emotional maturity is a necessary basis for real love and true faith.
Can a person truly love and be in a relationship without emotional maturity?
They often repress their emotions and deny their own responsibility, leading to feelings of loneliness and frustration.
Why do people often neglect their emotional growth?
Overcoming resistance to recognizing and admitting one's own false needs, and then seeking to fulfill one's own real needs.
What is the key to overcoming the pain of unfulfilled legitimate needs?