Struggle: Healthy And Unhealthy

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest, dearest friends. God's blessings for each and every one of you. Love and strength are pouring forth. Open your hearts so that you may tune into this force.

Not one of you has to ever encounter a difficulty that he is not strong enough to surmount. Do not doubt the resource of strength that exists in your soul. Reach for these inner resources. This will give you strength, rather than depending on receiving it from the outside. Blessings and divine help of any kind are possible only through you, through your own strength, that already exists in you, that lies dormant within yourself. It can never be added on to you. It is a force that flows from within, never from the outside.

Depend on this inner strength, a strength that you have the power to liberate. Man often reaches for outside strength -- in other words, for outer intervention -- while he has but to realize that nothing can come to him from life when he does not have the inner equipment to use it, and thereby become stronger and wiser. With this attitude, your self-confidence and your self-respect will be strengthened. If you are helped outwardly, then the help may be pleasant momentarily, but it will not increase your self-confidence, your self-reliance, your independence, and your self-respect. So reach inside. Realize that the universal laws are made in such a way that nothing could possibly be beyond your strength, beyond your capacities. If sometimes it seems so, then it is only because you doubt, or because you ignore what resources exist in you.

So often man says that life is difficult, that life is painful, that life is an ordeal, that life is confusing, that life is puzzling, that there is no meaning to it. In this attitude and this belief he pretends that he and life are two separate factors. They are not. Whatever life is for you, that you are yourself. Whatever your life appears to you is an exact facsimile of how you experience yourself. Your personal life -- as it manifests for you -- is a conglomeration of all your attitudes and traits. It is the greatest error possible, and one of the most fundamental ones, to believe that you are one thing and that the life you are put into is another. This is not true. When these words that I am uttering now will have an inner meaning and a reality for you, then you will have reached a state of development when you no longer have to fear, when you no longer are a helpless straw in the wind. As long as you separate what your life is for you and what you are, you are not only in illusion, but, because of it, you are in fear and in disharmony. Whatever confidence you have in yourself -- in your capacities and your potentials -- that very same confidence you will have in life. The joy that exists in your heart, and your ability to experience that joy, will be your life. As you experience the ability you have to cope with setbacks and with disappointments, and the ability you have to relinquish your will if need be, then the possibility that life will frighten you will decrease. Once you examine yourself and your life from this point of view, then you will have taken a further step towards the unification and the integration that is your goal.

I think that this particular topic is bound to bring up a number of questions, provided you take the trouble of really pondering over it. So prepare your questions for the discussion of this lecture. It will be very helpful to raise all your doubts and all your confusions into clear consciousness.

Life is also struggle. But, as in everything else, there is a healthy and constructive struggle as well as an unhealthy and destructive struggle. Let us try to understand a little more about this. Various philosophies and religions ask that you "give up struggling." This is a truth. But it is often misunderstood, and therefore applied as though it meant giving up, giving in, resigning, not asserting one's rights. It is interpreted as though you had to become passive and apathetic, and thus no longer try to fulfill yourself and your goals. It leads to indifference, to sloth, to stagnation, and even to masochism. It leads to the cruelty of not caring to better conditions that can be bettered -- both in yourself and in the world around you.

Healthy struggle never exhausts your energies. It is never futile in principle, although it does not always reap success in a direct manner. Healthy struggle is composed of relaxed activity; of the ability to accept defeat; of well-defined aims with healthy underlying motivations; and of being concerned with the issue itself, rather than using the issue to cover up hidden psychological deviations. In healthy struggle you never fight against yourself. Overcoming impurities and immaturity does not mean struggling against oneself, but rather letting these aspects reach your surface awareness so that you can understand them and come to terms with them. This is the way to overcome what is disturbing and destructive, not by struggling against it.

Healthy struggle will make you forever stronger. In healthy struggle you do not swim against the stream. Hence it will not consume you and leave you depleted. It does not require effort -- or struggle -- to allow to the surface what is in you. In fact, man uses and wastes so much energy in preventing this and then he wonders why he is tired. After having reached a certain age, he no longer possesses sufficient energy to cope with the necessary struggle in life. If this energy current were reversed, then life would become very different. With all his might, man struggles and fights against awareness of what is in him. He constantly stems the flow of his emotions. This is the unhealthy struggle. If he would give it up, then he could easily struggle where it is useful, meaningful, and productive. When energy is used in its proper channel, then it replenishes and regenerates itself automatically. But when it is used in a channel not destined for it, then it does not. So, when you reach a certain age, then there is not enough energy left to defend yourself against being taken advantage of, to develop your potentials, and to work toward your aims. Taking care of all this is a natural byproduct of ceasing the struggle against your hidden attitudes, which you believe are eliminated by keeping yourself from being aware of them.

In healthy struggle there is no anxiety, no fear, no uncertainty, no doubt. Whenever you struggle for an apparently "healthy" aim but you register any of these negative emotions, then you can determine by this fact that unhealthy struggle must exist in some way. In some hidden way you must struggle against yourself -- perhaps against a doubt or against your selfishness or against some attitude that hides a lack of integrity -- for otherwise these negative, depleting emotions could not be felt. This is the time when you must stop struggling against yourself and allow the stream of your hidden emotions to reach the surface.

All human attitudes, trends, and feelings can be compared to streams. There is the stream that comes from inside of you and there is the stream that comes from outside of you. It is a cycle in which inside and outside interact and influence one another. But the controlling factor always lies in the self -- inside -- and never outside the self. In trying to shift the control by hoping and expecting damage to be repaired from the outside, while simultaneously preventing the free flow through his struggle against awareness, man separates himself more and more from the real control that he has at his disposal, the only meaningful control: complete awareness of the self.

When man either does not like or fears certain feelings and attitudes in himself, then he blocks awareness of them. This amounts to barricading the stream that should flow freely. The essential idea in this analogy with the stream is not new. But it requires ever new approaches and symbolic representations so that you can truly visualize the damage that is done by repression. You need a new impetus so as to be newly inspired to remove the blocks and barricades. So, try to actually visualize each feeling, each emotion, each inner attitude, and each response as a stream. If you barricade a stream, then what happens? It is possible to dam up a river or a stream. The water will flow up to the dam and then will be stopped, so that its flow does not continue beyond the dam. But the more the water accumulates behind the dam, the stronger the energy of the accumulating water will become, until it overflows, it bursts the dam, and it destroys not only the dam itself, but all the natural and healthy vegetation in its path and the structures alongside. To destroy the dam, the barricade, in such a violent way is not necessary. The dam never needed to be erected. But since it was built, then it has to go. You can use your efforts in gradually and systematically removing it. Waiting until nature takes it course, against your will as it were, means that the barricade is swept away by the force of the waters. When life handles you roughly -- in other words, when the accumulated destructive attitudes whose origin lies behind the barricade finally break loose -- then man experiences crises and breakdowns of different kinds and degrees.

By not damming up the river, the dirt and the residue in it would float freely to the surface, and therefore could be eliminated. The forever regenerating water, in its purity and freshness, will finally have the force to rid the river from the debris of a shipwreck. Is this not a fact in nature? The same applies to your soul currents. By fearing the debris of your past childhood hurts, and their subsequent destructive tendencies, you merely accumulate them behind the barricade, where they are bound to swamp you one day when you cannot control what happens. But there will be nothing to fear when you merely allow this debris to reach the surface. That is why when you begin to remove the blocks, you first experience predominantly negative emotions, such as you had never consciously felt before. Then the temptation is to put the lid on again. Beware of this temptation! The warm, positive, generous, loving, unselfish feelings must follow suit eventually. And the negative feelings will no longer be detrimental to you with the awareness of what exists in you anyway. Not wanting to see the negative does not eliminate its existence, as you unconsciously believe.

For example, when you struggle against your inner insecurity by denying its existence, then it mounts up behind the dam, like swelling waters. As long as the dam holds, you will feel a vague discomfort that you cannot place. You will feel inhibited without understanding why. You will sense that some of your best potentials are unutilized. But, on the whole, you will not have a grasp of the situation, nor will you feel the full force of the existing insecurity that becomes stronger because it mounts up behind the barricade. Then one day the measure will be full. This will take the shape of certain outer events that will swamp you with all the despair of the helplessness and the insecurity that you had never dared to face. So by struggling against your inner insecurity, you really increase it. By denying its existence, you make it bigger and stronger than it would be otherwise. The same holds true of any other emotion or attitude. Fear, doubt, hostility, or whatever, the principle is the same. The natural laws apply to all the created forces, whether they be the material rivers or the rivers and streams of feeling.

Is it not much wiser and more beneficial to go about removing the barricade? Waiting until nature breaks it down without your lifting a finger will render you helpless. The feelings will swamp you and you will not understand their meaning because their accumulated momentum has become too strong. Do not wait until such times! All too often man waits until a crisis before he is willing to take stock of himself.

It is our aim in this work to avoid the futile struggle, to remove the barricade before it removes itself; to allow the flow to bring out what is inherent in it; to see and to face those very feelings that you would rather evade. These are the doubts, the aggression, the jealousy, the possessiveness, the self-centeredness, the self-importance. In short, all that in you which is the hurt child.

Why does man resist becoming aware of these emotions? When we speak of resistance, then let us be clear about what it means. It does not merely indicate that you do not want this work. You would not mind this work if it would not require your removing the barricade of the stream. There is not just one stream in you. Since man consists of many attitudes and feelings, there are many streams. A few of them, fortunately, are not barricaded. Those that are free create a healthy and constructive attitude towards yourself and towards your life. There are other streams where the barricade is not too strong. There, the resistance is not too difficult to overcome. But then there are a number of streams which you have deliberately cut off because you thought these to be a protection for you. When you start this work, the conscious self does not realize that this forbidden area has to be touched because the conscious self totally ignores the existence of these taboos. Only when the work approaches these areas will the resistance come forth, without you even knowing it consciously. With some this happens at the beginning of their self-search. With others the work may have progressed well for some time and minor barricades may have been eliminated, freeing these particular streams, while the forbidden area is untouched upon until much later.

The areas which you do not wish to look at -- the forbidden areas -- are not necessarily ugly or wicked in an extreme sense. In the final analysis, arrested growth is always life-defeating and self-centered. The emphasis may not be on selfishness, but rather on false self-preservation. Put differently, the resistance is a defense against exposure, against hurt, against vulnerability.

More and more of you need this understanding, regardless of where you stand. It is of the utmost importance first to become aware of and then to look at your resistance. You will corroborate these words if you look at certain stages from this point of view. Then you will recall that every major liberation was always preceded by a resistance to looking into yourself, no matter what form this resistance may have taken. You always had to overcome it with the best of will, with summoning all of your desire to look at yourself in truth. This had to be the strongest and the most important aim. Otherwise you could not have succeeded. But do not for a moment believe that because of these past efforts you will not have to go through the same healthy struggle again: The healthy struggle to overcome the unhealthy struggle against recognition.

Learn to discover the signs of such resistance to the removal of the barricade. The signs are manifold. But once you focus your attention on them, you will not miss hem. You will learn to take the seemingly legitimate excuses with a grain of salt.

If some of what I say here is repetitious, then it is necessary because some of you are now ready to understand and live these words in a far more vital way. This happens through your progress and your increased understanding. But not because you have read more lectures, but because you have more self-knowledge. Layers of your psyche that were closed up before are accessible to you now. Thus, now these words can be utilized as they could not have been before.

Resistance exists not only because your ideal of yourself does not correspond to the reality you find beyond the barricade; nor is it sufficient to say that the barricade serves as a supposed defense against the hurts of life. This is too general. We need to have a more specific understanding about this. One hidden reason for keeping the barricade is that the psyche hopes against hope that the person can remain a child. A child seems to have the supposed advantage of being given what he needs in order to be happy and secure. He can avoid the effort of obtaining it himself. This seems very tempting. The child is entitled to just obtain, without making the effort to stand on his own feet. The recollection of this time combines with the fear of the afflicted areas of past or childhood hurts. Thus the subsequent defenses against them are strengthened. But this aspect of wishing to avoid effort has to be understood as a separate aspect. Because the psychic forces have tended in the direction of deliberate helplessness, the ego has remained weak. Therefore, it cannot trust itself. This, in turn, furnishes a reason for depending upon others for one's needs. Man does not wish to give up the false belief that happiness, fulfillment, and security can come from others. He clings to this false hope because this is what he would like. This is one of the main reasons for resisting removal of the barrier. By removing it, he will know that he clings to an unjustified hope. But he does not wish to acknowledge this fact. He does not wish to go through all the effort of having to be responsible for his life. He does not want to shoulder the brunt of having failed in this respect up to now.

To depend on others for one's needs may take many forms and it may apply to many different aspects of outer life attitudes and inner life attitudes. You yourself have to find out in what respect this applies to you.

Just as a child is helpless, so is an invalid. They both depend on others. The resistant psyche is not only the child that has not yet grown, it is also a deliberate invalid.

On the one hand, man is afraid of his helplessness and does not give himself the chance not to be helpless, nor to test it and see whether or not his helplessness is real. On the other, he is afraid of the very opposite, that he is not helpless: that he actually has many more resources than he likes to admit -- perhaps because admitting them demands certain obligations and responsibilities towards himself. He would rather assume false responsibilities that are not his own, because that seems much easier or more laudable than assuming those responsibilities that are really his. This, too, can be verified in subtle, hidden specific areas. They are not easy to find unless you have already gained considerable self-knowledge.

Let me summarize. The prohibition against allowing the flow of your life stream into your conscious mind is due to the following reasons: a) the fear of imperfection; b) the fear of having to shed means that supposedly protect one from hurts; and c) the insistence on remaining a child because then others are responsible for your needs, for your happiness, for your safety. I have to admonish you that determining these aspects is not easy. Many emotions must have reached surface awareness already. If you persevere, then you will come to find your fear of helplessness, as you simultaneously fear your non-helplessness. You fear the fact that you need not be helpless, if you do not wish to be. You also fear having to give up the childish desire for the instant gratification of all your wishes.

These are the resistances that cut you off from your life stream, even if this life stream brings in its wake some debris at the beginning. But is it not much better to let this debris flow freely where you can see it? By seeing it, you have the means of removing it. Otherwise it will build up behind the barricade as the water mounts and the debris gains momentum by the increased force of the cut-off stream.

Recognize the signs of the resistance. Observe yourself. See how you are always tempted to shove away an unpleasant feeling in the false hope that it will go away. Observe how you try to find easy explanations that do not really satisfy you. Observe how you make excuses for not looking at these disturbances, how everything else seems more important. Beware of the easy rationalizations, for they are the most dangerous ones. Rationalizations that are untrue and preposterous -- and they exist even with the sanest people -- are much easier to cope with because it requires less effort and cultivation of truthfulness to penetrate the guise. But the seemingly valid ones require a most sincere effort and the cultivation of truthfulness. They are the real dangers that you must try to find in you. Each one of you who is so ardently concerned with his spiritual development -- with his inner growth -- may pose the following questions: "What is most important for me and my life in order to reach the maximum self-honesty possible? Which of my activities helps me most in this? Do I deceive myself when I wish to believe that any activity other than self-recognition can bring me the spiritual development I wish? Is growth and development possible without it? Are my efforts in this respect sufficient, or could more be done by me? If more could be done than I am doing, then why do I permit this? Could it be that I cultivate self-finding only in those areas that do not hurt, that do not create anxiety in me? If this is so, then I must consider the fact that I, too, resist knowing what is in me. What is my attitude toward myself in this admission? If I want to persist in my resistance, then is it not better that at least I know that I lack the courage to look at myself, rather than pretend the opposite? Do I have the courage for this admission? Can I envisage that in certain areas of my being I am courageous and utterly willing to look truthfully at myself, while other areas may exist where the opposite holds true?" Ask yourself all these questions and then listen carefully into yourself. Pray that you should not wish to deceive yourself about these answers. If you do this, then it will mean more than you can possibly believe at this time. Once these questions are answered really and truthfully, you will also experience the difference between healthy struggle and unhealthy struggle.

If there is doubt in you and you struggle against the doubt by denying its existence, then you do not remove it. But this is exactly what your resistance -- your barricade -- does. It is a make-believe, a pretense of not doubting. It is not the reality. Doubt is one of many emotions. There are clusters of negative emotions combined in certain attitudes that you resist recognizing. Stop the resistance, let the negative emotions float freely to the surface, and you will see that you have nothing to fear from them.

Unhealthy struggle is resistance. Both are futile because your fight is directed into making yourself believe what does not correspond to reality. It is as simple as that, and necessary to be recognized in these terms.

Understandably, my friends tend to forget all this. So, it is my task to see that they are reminded of it at appropriate times. It is also my task to furnish you with the equipment you need. Part of these tools are reminders and strong visual examples that approach the same problem from a new angle.

So do not struggle against that which is in yourself, regardless of what it is. For in the struggle of denial, you consume your energies. You perpetuate your self-deception, and you do not achieve the result you wish. Learn to accept the fact that you are only human and that you are not despicable because you harbor the same human weaknesses that all your fellow human beings have. Thus you will be kinder towards yourself and this, in turn, will enable you to face all that is in you. Harsh unkindness with oneself is not a virtue. It is quite the opposite, because it is proud, arrogant, and it breeds self-deception and untruthfulness.

Those of you who have moved upwards -- who have grown -- will surely read something new and different in my words, even though there is no new idea as such presented in this lecture.

I also want to remind you that when you feel an inner discomfort, then it is not sufficient to look for the deeper meaning as such. It is also necessary to see when you felt in a similar way as a child. Then synchronize these two feelings. But it is necessary to have made some progress on this path before this is meaningful and liberating. Otherwise it will merely be an empty, although perhaps interesting, speculation. Do not ever forget that it is the childhood hurts that you have not yet come to mature terms with that cause you to barricade the stream, that cause you to resist, that cause you to be untruthful towards yourself, that cause you to be in destructive patterns, and that cause you to be in a state of inner fear and insecurity. It is these that cause you to struggle in the wrong direction, which puts you into disharmony with the flow of life, with the flow of time. Only as you understand this can you put yourself into the stream and flow with the tide of time, of space, and of movement. In other words, be in harmony with the universal forces.

He who has never found and consciously acknowledged a specific resistance in himself -- in other words, who believes that he does not have any resistance -- still has much to learn. He is way behind those who can freely admit their resistance, and thus cope with it.

If there is a spontaneous question regarding this lecture, then please ask it now. There is sufficient material in this lecture to bring forth many other questions, after you have meditated about it, so that there should be enough material for the discussion.

QUESTION: If someone has repressed fear and then has come to realize it, and this realization makes the fear overflow -- you discussed today that whenever there is an overflow, there is a struggle -- how can he cope with this?

ANSWER: It is an error to believe that just allowing yourself to become aware of the fear will cause the overflow that you cannot cope with. It is not the awareness that causes this difficulty of coping with the fear, but the attitude towards the existence of the fear, and what lies underneath it. The wrong attitude is that a struggle against the fear exists, a struggle in the unhealthy way. By struggling I mean the attitude in you that says: "I should not be in fear. I do not want to have fear because it is unpleasant." This is a fight against a part of yourself, against that part that happens to be in fear now. The feeling of being flooded by fear comes from bracing against the wave of fear. You do this even though your defenses against self-recognition have been weakened and parts of the stream of fear penetrate in spite of your stemming against it. You have partly removed the barricade because you realized that it cannot bring the development you aspire to, but only partly so. Your other half bargains and wants to have the fear removed before it is fully out of hiding, with all its ramifications. If you stop stemming and struggling against the fear -- in other words, if you can say, "I, a human being like many others, am now in fear" -- then you will finally float with the wave, you will rise on the wave, rather than being immersed in the wave of fear. You will swim IN the fear. This will eliminate the feeling of danger, although the fear will still be present. But now it will be experienced in a different manner. Immersion is due to stemming against the wave, struggling against it. Swimming in it does not mean drowning; it is the opposite. The fear of drowning prevents a person from swimming, although he has a perfect capacity to swim. Only when you swim can you come to see what is behind the fear. The nagging, persisting, enduring fears are the unrealistic ones that you do not cope with properly, regardless of what the issue may be. Underneath these fears, you will always find other streams of emotions that are blocked from flowing. These other emotions may be manifold. Some of them are hostility, humiliation, pride, shame, hurt, arrogance, self-importance, self-pity, the insistence on unreasonable demands, and many more. These feelings are there. But you struggle against them -- just as you struggle against the fear. Often the first layer to be found underneath the fear consists of strong hostilities that are particularly taboo. If they are allowed into the fresh air of consciousness, then the fear will cease automatically. I promise that this will be so. This has been corroborated by my friends who have already gone through this phase.

QUESTION: And if it is not a psychological fear, but a physical fear?

ANSWER: The attitude towards a physical predicament does not preclude psychological deviations. A realistic fear will be coped with in the best and the most reasonable way possible. If the unpleasant result that one fears is not eliminated by these activities, then acceptance of the unpleasantness must finally come, provided it is coped with maturely and realistically. But this acceptance is impossible to attain as long as one struggles against the non-acceptance. The mind is divided. Part of the mind says "I should accept what cannot be altered." Another part of the consciousness says: "I do not want to accept it." When a real situation results in enduring, nagging, drawn-out fear, then it means that this division exists but it is not recognized. Moreover, the same underlying negative emotions are still kept in hiding. They simply make themselves known with a now real outer reason. But the existence of the outer reason does not eliminate their presence. The inevitable difficulties of life can be met only if the psychological deviations are recognized. If a real outer fear immerses you, then you struggle against you in life. And here we come around full circle to the beginning of this lecture.

If you are afraid of certain happenings in your life, then ask yourself: "Are you not doubtful of your strength and of your resourcefulness to go through with it? Tackle it from there. A final word regarding this topic. The doubt in your own resources has to do with your childish insistence on having to have your way. In other words, with your inability to relinquish what you want. The more you must have what you want, the more you will be in fear, and the more you will struggle against the knowledge of this fear and against the knowledge of this childish insistence. The emotional maturity that we seek to attain is the ability to tolerate frustration. In other words, to accept the fact that everything does not always go one's own way. That will enable you to finally master yourself -- and therefore to master life -- because you will float with the wave, instead of stemming against it. If you can accept and live with not having what you want -- whatever it may be at any given time -- then that ability to accept frustration will give you the trust in yourself that you truly deserve. But if you must have what you want without being able to provide it for yourself, then you will be helpless, dependent, and therefore insecure. If you can accept a frustration because you yourself are unable to obtain what you want, then you will have the confidence of knowing that you can cope with life. My dearest friends, ponder over and meditate deeply about these last two sentences. Then you will come to see that the event which you fear is much less fearsome than your helpless dependency on having to have what you want; on denying your own limitations and life's limitations that make this impossible.

Be blessed, all of you. May the strength and the love that are pouring forth not only fill you with the courage that comes from knowing that you have all that you need within yourself in order to master any situation, but may this also give you the strength, the wisdom, and the inner willingness to really understand what I said here. For this would mean such a liberation for you. It would make a huge difference between living fully and only half-living. You cannot do enough to ponder over this lecture. Whatever is obscure or flat or merely words, ask about it here at the period of discussion. Try to make it a lived knowledge by applying it to yourself personally, rather than possessing it intellectually. At the discussion reserved for this lecture, bring your personal problems. In that way not only will you help yourself but also others. Be blessed, all of you. Receive our love and our blessings. Do not fear! You have nothing to fear. If you pursue this work, then you will become forever stronger, forever more creative, and forever more harmonious with yourself and with your life. You will become more alive than you ever thought possible. Be in peace. Be in God.

April 26, 1963