Greetings and blessings for every one of you. Welcome to the many new friends searching for their own inner path. And welcome to my old friends
who are already on the Path. In this lecture I will try to discuss the topic
in such a way that it serves a purpose for both groups of people. Both for those who are here and do not know the material -- in other words, who are new
-- and who are searching for some answer to come to them, perhaps as an initial part of a larger answer that comes gradually, and for you who are already deeply involved in your self-exploration and who need a further clue on your way.
I will now speak about man's innate capacity to create. This potentiality is astoundingly underestimated. It is infinitely
greater than you could possibly realize. Your scientists do not know of
this potentiality, nor do your psychologists or your philosophers. With the exception of a very few enlightened ones, most people do not know of their dormant capacity to create and to recreate their lives. Some may believe in it in theory, but few know it experientially. I spoke of this many times in the past, so some of this will be slightly repetitious. But I will also go deeper and further into this topic, in a more focused way.
When man adopts his body and his ego state in this three-dimensional
world, then he automatically closes off the memory he has of another state
of consciousness in which he is much less confined, in which he is much freer,
to a degree that the human consciousness could not possibly even begin to comprehend. For the power of thoughts, the power of feelings, and the power of attitudes is enormous. This power exists just as much now, in your present state, only you do not make the connections. You do not know that what you experience in this moment you have personally molded in such a precise way that there can be no mistake about it. The sum total of all your conscious, semi-conscious, unconscious, explicit and implicit thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, intentions, feelings, emotions, and will directions -- conflicting as they may be -- creates a definite result. This result is your present experience and the way in which your life is unfolding for you. Your present life expresses exactly -- like a faultless mathematical equation -- what your inner state is. Thus it can be used
as a map into your inner regions. This is, after all, part of the method of
the pathwork.
I have also often stated that the hidden, feared, guilt-producing, and denied thoughts and feelings are more powerful in their negative creation than anything you deal with on the conscious level. For fear and guilt are very potent creative agents. They contain a great deal of energy. On the positive level, enthusiasm, vitality, interestedness, and stimulation are such potent energy agents.
Therefore, a path such as this must be intensely concerned with exploring what you believe, what you feel, what you want, what you assume, and what you intend on those layers of your personality which are not immediately accessible to you. They often create what you do not wish to experience because you do not know what you bargain for and what side effects are attached to your unwise wishes, to your false assumptions, and to your negative intents. You ignore the potency of this psychic material and of how infallibly it translates itself into the creation of matter, the creation of events, the creation of circumstances, the creation of life experiences.
When man adopts this limited ego state, then he does so for specific purposes. He comes into, he manifests, and he expresses himself in this
limited state for the purpose of purification and of unification. It would
be impossible to do this as quickly and as effectively if you were in full possession of your total consciousness and of all your faculties. For your ego personality, as it expresses itself now, consists of several isolated aspects of your total personality. A much larger, fuller, more whole, and more purified part of your total or real self does not manifest overtly. The human personality consists of aspects of consciousness. The manifestation of certain aspects in an isolated form -- in the three-dimensional reality and as an ego -- affords the possibility of focus and the possibility of awareness that are lacking when these unpurified aspects are submerged in the largely purified personality. They can be easily overlooked, but they nevertheless exist as essential hindrances to further developments that surpass by far the scope of the human consciousness. Such developments proceed in spheres of reality that cannot possibly be comprehended by you now.
It is possible to activate the capacities of the larger self. In other words, it is possible to focus in its direction and to be receptive to its ever-present inner voice. Similarly, it is possible to focus on and to be receptive to the negative aspects of your personality that lie deeply buried, but that need to be tackled on your evolutionary road. The path teaches you to contact all these hidden layers and to deal with them appropriately. So, there are parts more developed and parts less developed which are you and which are not manifest. That which is manifest is in the position and has the equipment to explore, to bring out, and then to unify itself with the other parts that are not actualized at this time.
When an individual undertakes this exploration as his main task in life, then all restlessness disappears and a deep sense of meaning and fulfillment comes into his soul. With that, slowly but surely, life's frustrations begin
to disappear and rich fulfillment begins to take their place. For man
can find his place in life only when he focuses his attention on the reason
for having come into this plane in the first place. There are many
who arbitrarily make a split between what they call living and their spiritual development. They do not want to give too much to the latter because they foolishly fear that this shortchanges the former. The more they concentrate
on outer, material living without bringing it into a cohesive, meaningful connection with wider and deeper considerations, then the more restless and
the more depressed they become.
Whatever divine laws and divine attributes exist in the universe, the moment they express themselves in the isolated ego state -- disconnected
from the deeper inner reality -- then they become distorted, and therefore
are destructive. Let me give you an example.
An infant feels its own omnipotence. This is known to psychology. Psychology and psychiatry designate this expression of the infant's claim to omnipotence as immature unrealism and as destructive egocentricity. And it is that, of course. But it is also much more. It is the memory of another state of consciousness in which thoughts become things and events the moment they are being formed. Since time and distance are part of the three-dimensional illusory state of consciousness, then they no longer exist
in a realm of much more expanded consciousness. The consciousness of the infant is still partially tuned in on the state of his total personality. But in translating this memory into the confined, limited ego state, it comes out in a jumbled way. Since the ego state is a concentration of the less purified state (always in combination with the already developed and already purified aspects which are supposed to come to the aid of the personality in the task of this life), then the power to create takes on a distorted, and therefore undesirable form. The ego lives in the illusion that it is separate from others and in the further illusion that others are essentially antagonistic to its well-being. So everything the ego does is always against others, always in competition with others, or always in comparison with others. This is what creates the destructiveness and the egocentricity. It makes power a dangerous weapon, as you well know. You experience power as something that you fear in others and as something that you feel guilty about in yourself. Thus power is always exclusive of love and of joy, for it is an intensely separating expression.
When you conciliate your ego splits with your real self, the total self,
and you thus discover the unitive principle, then you discover that your own interest is never in opposition to the interests of others -- although on a superficial level it may appear that way at first. In addition, you discover that power and love need not be opposites. Then you can begin to use
your own innate power to create and to re-create both your life and yourself. It is important that you understand why the knowledge of
your innate power to create is dangerous as long as you have not purified
that distorted aspect of you that has found expression in this body and in
this life, and as long as this aspect has not discovered the eternal inner realities, which are much more real than the outer reality that you consider
to be the only true reality.
The infant's frustration when his thought and his wish do not instantly become fact is obvious. Infantile temper tantrums often occur precisely due to this reason. The immediacy of cause and effect -- cause being the thought or the wish and effect being the experience -- is a constant given in the state of consciousness that goes beyond the ego. One of the tasks that
most isolated ego aspects -- human incarnations -- have to learn is trustful patience, flowing with the stream, unwillful receptivity. Hence, the memory of the power to create must be temporarily cut off so that this manifest aspect of the personality can learn what it needs to learn. Through the learning of this lesson the deeper connections establish themselves spontaneously once again. Only it does not seem to be re-discovered memory; it seems like a new discovery. The connecting of thoughts, of wishes, of intents, of feelings, and of attitudes with experience establishes the organic awareness of the power to create. But now there is no longer the danger of using power against others. For now the illusion that self-interest must be against the interest of others has been pierced.
It is a known fact that not only infants make the egocentric, antagonistic kinds of claims to omnipotence, but that undeveloped, immature, and destructive people do, too, and they often act them out.
Unlike what is commonly believed, evil does not exist as a reality in itself. Evil is always a distortion of divine truth. Every destructive, negative attitude can be easily explored to its root manifestation. Then it will be seen that only in its ego manifestation -- in
its separateness -- is it destructive or evil. That same basic trait has
an entirely different effect and meaning if it manifests in the depths of
the unified consciousness. In other words, in the larger, wider reality of
the inner planes. This is the reason why the isolated aspect of the total personality that is incarnated -- and that manifests in a body and as
an ego -- must temporarily forget its total capacity, its real ability, and its complete experience in a state that can be wholesome only when the whole self is involved.
Where there are misconceptions, where there is ignorance, where there are false ideas, where there is witheld emotional matter, where there is spite, where there is stubbornness, where there is rigidity, and where there is inertia there exists stagnant energy that must create further disturbance. It must create negative experience. As I said, it is very potent energy. Only when you release it directly and honestly can you transform this energy.
You who follow this Path have experienced the tremendous energy that permeates you when you release the stagnant matter of your pent-up negative feelings. When you -- physically, emotionally, and conceptually -- express your rage, express your hate, and express
your fury, then you make new connections about yourself that give you a new understanding about your role in life and why you are where you are. But this released energy is also highly potent creative stuff. The time
has now come for you when you can convert negative energy and negative consciousness into a positive manifestation. This is what you can do now. To some extent you have actually begun to do so, but you are not yet sufficiently aware of the power of this energy which you have just released. You can bring a new creation into your life if you can reconvert into a positive channel the energy that has left your system and that begins to flow. In other words, in that moment you can transform it or re-channel it.
The foregoing will help you to understand how much power to create there exists in you. But just reading these words will not convey the truth to you in a real way, unless you have overcome certain negative attitudes -- the existence of which in you would make this knowledge dangerous both for you and for others. But those who are totally committed to their innermost being -- to the path into their own inner regions with all its apparent hardships of self-revelation and of self-confrontation -- by virtue
of this act and of this attitude become increasingly more aware of spiritual reality. That is, of the state of their eternal being that cannot die. At the same time, they also become aware of the power of their thoughts, of the power of their intents, and of the power of their feelings. They learn to be careful of what thoughts they think. But they neither repress nor suppress their undesirable, destructive thoughts. They know that this does not help. They learn how to deal with such thought material. First they challenge the accurateness of such thoughts and then they open themselves up for other alternatives. They learn to understand what it is in them that makes them want to think that way and what is the price they really pay. They begin to see their creation because the relationship between the still separate cause and its effect becomes more apparent.
As this growing process proceeds, then re-creation can take place. It is not a reward for good behavior. It is a simple act instituted by the self that now is in a much increased state of awareness,
and therefore knows precisely what it is doing and why.
Many of my friends on the path have begun to experience this process as an ever increasing living reality that can be absolutely trusted. It is unfailing in its lawful process. But neither creating nor re-creating can ever be a willful act. It must never be used while bypassing anything within your own psyche. There are metaphysical and spiritual orientations which know of and which postulate this creative thought power. But they often overlook the danger of bypassing and of skipping steps within the psyche. They become hypnotized by a truth they have discovered: the truth of self-creation. As a result, they can create and re-create where their psyche is relatively free from obstruction. But where this is not the case, then self-creation is blocked and therefore the stagnant energy becomes even more potent. Thus a conflict is being created that tears the soul apart. The soul does not develop harmoniously in that way. The personality builds on that which is already free and neglects that which needs all the focusing. In that state the use of power -- even if not overtly expressed against anyone -- becomes so dangerous that it may lead to a personal crisis. Such crises could be avoided if the personality would focus on the undeveloped part.
This is the reason why this specific Path requires a lot more courage and
a lot more honesty than most other orientations in practice today. But it is a safe and truly unifying path that leaves nothing limping behind. It makes for real harmony of the soul, just because the process is slow and there are no quick, magic results, no panaceas. For a long time the focus must be
on those dark areas. And that is for your own protection, my friends. Nothing could make you as safe as that, because in this way you avoid a splitting off process, a splitting off that defeats the task for which you
have come into this life. You have come to fulfill your task and to concentrate on and to deal with precisely those aspects that you feel least inclined to deal with. That is the reason why you squeezed yourself into this narrow, uncomfortable, confining, and often painful state in which you dwell temporarily. Only aspects of you are here to be sure, but that which identifies with these narrow aspects must suffer when the total reason for being in this human ego state is not yet conscious. The reason why you came must become known to you. The task that you have to fulfill must become known to you. The negative aspects that you have to deal with with must become known to you. What is the weakness you have to bring out? What is the ugliness you do not want to see? These are the obstructions that cannot make you create freely. You could create consciously, wisely, beautifully, and satisfyingly even now. Of course, not to the same degree as when you are free from the ego-body state, but nevertheless infinitely more than you do now. That is, you create constantly, whether you know it or not. The trouble is that you do not know what creations you produce unwittingly. You create with every breath you take, with every thought you think, with every attitude you display. These are powerful creative agents, and you had better know what you are doing and how you create. Your disconnection from the creative seeds you plant and from their results is what causes you so much unnecessary pain and so much frustration. Often you see the results only much later, without the slightest awareness of what in
you has produced them. But this awareness can be recaptured if you so desire.
Focusing constructively -- and that is different from doing it in a maudlin way -- on the undeveloped aspects in you means that you fulfill the task for which you came into this particular world. It means that you unify yourself so that you can actualize your potent creative power. Then you can use it consciously and deliberately.
The creative process and the specific techniques to be learned are given
to you slowly. I show you some of the techniques in connection with meditation. When you meditate, you create. In this concentrated, relaxed state energy and consciousness focus in such a way that powerful creative
seeds are being released. But meditative and creating techniques must, perforce, be a secondary preoccupation, for the reasons just mentioned. However, when a certain foundation of inner self-purification and of self-awareness exists, then these techniques can be expanded. Then it will be safe from the point of view of this spiritual path. For then your being will
be grounded in reality and grounded in a unifying process, so that no aspect that you came to fulfill will remain unattended to.
The process of creative meditation -- learning how to re-create your life experience -- will come organically. It will be a spontaneous intuitive byproduct of the expansion of your consciousness. Just as you will intuitively understand cosmic reality in an experiential -- as opposed to a theoretical, intellectual -- way, you will learn to avail yourself of your innate power and of your innate resources as you expand into another state
of consciousness.
There is an inner mechanism that is extremely important for you
to understand and that now I would like to tell you about. Some of
you working on this path must have experienced that your helper suggests to
you a specific meditation and a specific commitment in meditation to a
positive self-expression that you deeply desire, that you long for, and that you commiserate about because you miss it. As you go about trying to do it,
you inexplicably experience a resistance to follow through. Something in you seems to stop you. As a result, you cannot bring yourself to do it. Or you may forget to do it when you are on your own. It does not occur to you. Or your thoughts have no energy, no conviction, and no clarity. They are diffuse and therefore you feel that they have little effect. At times, you
may even consciously experience an outright resistance to meditate for the
very thing which you most desire. What is this block?
Let us suppose that you are lonely and that you long for a full and fruitful partnership experience. In other words, for an abundance of joy, of mutual exchange, of mutual sharing, of mutuality on every level. You really have a birthright to experience this, as well as many other fulfillments. For the abundance of the univere is there for everyone. No one is excluded. Nevertheless, it may never occur to you to actively
-- consciously and deliberately -- sow the seed in meditation, which means creating it, by a clear, definitive thought in that direction, by a commitment to wanting it, to wanting to experience it, to wanting to realize it. In other words, a commitment to bringing this experience into actuality. You may be perfectly aware of the principle of such a meditative practice, nevertheless you desist from employing it. What is even more significant is that when, upon your helper's suggestion, you do formulate the creative thought pattern, then you find in you a strange and inexplicable reluctance. It is as though there were a wall in you that prevented you from the clear, concise commitment to what you most ardently yearn for. You want something desperately and you believe that it could exist for you. You accept the principle of creating with your own mind. In other words, of meditation. Nevertheless, you find yourself strangely paralyzed in your mind to let go of your thoughts. In other words, to send your thoughts into the fertile soil within you. That is, into the creative substance -- or what I also call the soul substance -- where any seed that is planted will grow to fruition.
The reason for this reluctance is the following. It is the same finely calibrated self-protective mechanism that knows that there is something in you that is not yet ready for this experience. You yourself have put obstructions in the way. Perhaps there is an unwillingness to give. Perhaps there is an unwillingness to accept reality on your level. Perhaps there is a concealed negative attitude toward the other sex which you do not wish to deal with because you simultaneously wish and need too much, and therefore you are not prepared to solve this conflict in you. Whatever the obstruction is, it should be confronted, explored, understood, and dissolved. If it is not and you nevertheless create because you have a strongly focused mind and will, then the superimposed outer will must also have its effects. It is a
willpower construction that conflicts with the inner denial, with your obstruction. In such a case, the denial to meditate -- to create -- is
very meaningful. Therefore, it should be heeded. For it will reveal
the nature of the obstruction which then can be be eliminated. Otherwise you create willfully on an ego level, and that cannot satisfy the heart and the soul.
The ego mind has the power to create. It does so continually. But if it creates separately from the inner being, then the results must be disappointing at best. Willpower -- the outer will -- can be effective up to a degree. It creates matter, sub-matter, and outer experience, but not always to your blessing. It creates with a willfulness that lacks wisdom, full view, understanding, vision, and depth. It lacks inner connectedness and wholeness, so that what it constructs is often more painful than it is desirable. In the example we have chosen, this would manifest in your practical life by creating a partnership in which primarily those areas in the self that have been neglected would color and affect the relationship, thereby poisoning it, as if from undergrournd.
When you find your inner voice that resists the creative thought process, then this should be a sign for you that there are steps to be taken inside of you. What are these steps? You must shift the focus of your creation to exploring the meaning of your reluctance to create what you long for. In other words, you have to find out what stands in your way. Instead of creating the desired experience, you must create first an awareness of and
then a comprehension of your obstruction to what you want. This will eventually dissolve your reluctance. As a result, you will be free to plant a new creative thought into the fertile soil of your soul substance.
You cannot create anything that does not already exist in the universe. Everything exists already. It exists within you. All the answers exist within you. All the knowledge exists within you. The power to create exists within you. The ability to feel exists within you. The ability to enjoy exists within you. The ability to experience exists within you. All the worlds exist within you. For the true universe is inside, while the exterior world is but a reflection, like a mirror image. Everything you need to know about yourself exists within you. Everything you want to know about your life exists within you. This knowledge can be actualized if you want it. You have to learn to focus on it, to aim for it, and to commit yourself to it. This is how you create it. Some of the answers exist on more superficial levels, in the so-called subconscious. Others are on much deeper levels. But it is all accessible if you undertake the necessary steps.
So both creation and re-creation are primarily a focusing. If
you want to create from your inner being, then it must be a relaxed focusing. If you create from the ego level, then it will be a tense, anxiety-producing focusing. If it is a relaxed inner focusing, then it will be relaxed precisely because you do not skip any steps. Listen into the responses of your inner self. If you detect any obstructions, then you must first heed them and then deal with them. Thus you create the condition in you that is necessary in order to comprehend your obstructions.
This is one aspect of the creating and re-creating process. It is a very important aspect that can be used not only by those who are already on the path, but even by those who just enter such a path. You can listen into yourself and you can ask your innermost being where to go,
in which direction to focus. But to learn how to listen is an art in itself and it often comes later on the path. For it requires some degree of self-knowledge. And this is not easy to summon up for the novice. But it
is possible to temporarely lay aside the selfwill and to open up to whatever
the inner voice sends forth. It requires awareness of your wishful thinking, awareness of your stake in wanting a certain answer and not another, awareness of your fear of getting a certain answer. All these attitudes and feelings may be subtle and therefore either well concealed or rationalized. So some degree of self-discernment is necessary before the divine voice can be free. You will trust the divine voice to the degree that you have freed yourself. Each time that you consciously and deliberately lay aside your selfwilll, that you state how it manifests, that you state what you want to hear and what you do not want to hear, and you nevertheless express your trust in the divine voice, then you will become stronger and freer. Thus your faith will stand on a firm, realistic foundation.
To the degree that you are aware of wanting one answer and not another,
to that degree you will avoid confusion and diffusion. Otherwise you delude yourself into believing that you receive divinely inspired answers. In reality, they are nothing more than your ego's wishful thinking. Only when you have attained a state in which you are aware of the personal stake of your ego in wanting a certain thing in one way and not in another way can your inner answer be reliable.
If you are already aware of the stake you have in your inclination to distort and of your stake in your inclination to be partial rather than impartial to the answer you wish to get, then by that awareness you create
a new channel of truth into your inner reality. Then you may perceive
a deep inner voice that speaks the truth. Then your focusing will be meaningful, relaxed, and yet concise enough to create new thought forms, and therefore new desirable experiences.
A second important aspect about re-creation is the time element that you have to deal with on the level of the ego. Impatience is another distortion from a fuller state of consciousness in which creation is immediate. In other words, the thought produces the form the moment it is uttered. Impatience is the memory of this experience, but without the connectedness
with the inner being, so that the lesson which the ego has to learn is not comprehended. Only on the ego level is everything separate: effect from cause; soul from soul; form from thought; experience from thought; inner from outer; etc. Life itself appears to you as a static, objective fixed thing into which you are put. In other words, it seems totally separated and disconnected from your inner processes. These are the same illusions as your concept -- and therefore your experience -- of time, of distance, and of movement. They are all byproducts of the limited, separated ego state. In reality, your life is a subjective expresssion of you. In other words, it is not a fixed, objective, immovable reality. Everything that you experience seems to exist only in those seemingly objective terms of the ego. The more you focus into that direction, the more it will seem that way to you. But once you learn to be more focused into your inner reality, then you will gradually perceive this other, fuller reality. It is a reality in which all the separated aspects move together in a wonderful meaningful web of interaction and of wholeness.
Part of the creating process is the patience to let be so that you learn the trust that is necessary in order to allow life to express back to
you what you have put into it. In other words, the seeds that you have planted into it. In order for the seed to grow, a waiting period is required. How do you wait? Do you wait in doubt? Do you wait with impatience? Do you wait in fear? Do you wait in tension? Or do you wait in quiet trust? Or is your trust a gullibility and an expression of your wishful thinking, so that you cannot possibly trust your trust? Do you want whatever you want so badly that a forcing current is being created which then prohibits
the fulfillment because its tension and its emotional and mind content defeat creation? If your waiting is relaxed, then you will have no doubt about the fulfillment. You will know that the seed will eventually grow into
a wonderful plant.
That re-creating process unfolds forever more when the ego personality unites with the other aspects of the self that had not previously manifested
on the surface. The more this happens, then the more joyfully you will create. It may sound confusing when I say that you have to learn not to cringe away from pain, and then I say that it is your birthright to be in a state of joy. It may sound like a contradiction when I say that you have to be willing to give up -- at least for the moment and in that spirit
-- what you wish to create and what you must have faith in being able to create. But these are contradictions only on the most superficial ego level where duality -- either/or -- reigns supreme. In reality these are mutually interdependent principles that must unite in harmony. If you cramp yourself into a desire that is too strong, then you close the door to
joy and to a relaxed inner creation. The cramp always indicates that somewhere in you there is a negation, a doubt, or a negativity that must be unearthed and specifically dealt with.
In the delusion of the ego, you perceive life as being foreign to you, therefore as being your enemy, and hence as being antagonistic to you, while you are its victim. In that delusion you cannot create. Your realization on this path of how you yourself create your suffering will inevitably free you to create your happiness.
Let me close by saying to all of you that you are a great deal more than you can possibly believe. If you walk in the direction of finding this real self -- through all the layers of your darkness -- and if you seek to identify with it, then you must discover the unending beauty of
the universe. With every breath you take, you imbine its potent love
and its infinite wisdom. There is nothing that surrounds you and that permeates you that does not express the magnitude of a divine and benign creation. The more aware you become of it, the more joy and the more gratefulness must spread in your heart. The unending beauty of the universe can be experienced as real -- as opposed to as a theory -- only
when you work your way through your dark areas.
Be blessed, every one of you. Feel the love that is extended to you from a realm in which you have many friends who have guided you here. Be in peace.
February 9, 1973
Copyright 1973 by Center for the Living Force, Inc.