Compulsion To Re-Create And Overcome Childhood Hurts

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless all of you. May the divine blessings extended to every one of you help to you assimilate the words I speak in this lecture, so that this will be a fruitful experience for you.

Our last discussion was about the fear of loving. The subject of love was presented at great length and from various angles in past sessions. I have frequently mentioned how the child desires to be loved exclusively and without limit. In other words, the child's desire to be loved is unrealistic. Yet, it is also true that the child would be satisfied with mature love. In fact, if mature love were given, then the unrealistic demand for exclusive love would be diminished considerably. However, the human capacity for tendering genuine love is rare.

Since children seldom receive sufficient mature love and warmth, they continue to hunger for it throughout life, unless this lack and this hurt are recognized and properly dealt with. If they are not, then they go through life unconsciously crying out for what they missed in childhood. This causes in them an inability to love maturely as adults. So you can see how this factor spreads from generation to generation.

The remedy cannot be sought by wishing that it were different and that people would learn to practice mature love. The remedy lies solely in you. True, if you had received this love from your parents, then you would not have this unconscious problem -- a problem of which you are not fully aware. But this lack need not trouble you or your life if you see it, if you become aware of it, and if you rearrange your former unconscious wishes, your regrets, your thoughts, and your concepts about love. As a consequence, not only will you become a happier person, but you will also be able to extend mature love to others -- to your children, if you have any, or to other people in your environment -- so that a benign chain reaction can start. This is contrary to your present inner behavior, which we shall now consider.

This factor is greatly overlooked by all humanity, even by the few who have started to explore their own unconscious mind and emotions. Few people first realize and then personally experience -- theoretical knowledge notwithstanding -- the strong link between the child's longing and unfulfillment and their own present difficulties and problems as adults. It is important to become aware of this link.

There may be isolated exceptional cases where one parent is somewhat capable of mature love. But even if one parent loves maturely to some degree, then it is likely the other does not. And since mature love on this earth can only be found to a degree, the child will suffer from those manifestations wherein the loving parent is bound to fall short.

More often both parents are emotionally immature, and therefore cannot give the love which the child craves -- or they can give it only to a limited degree. During childhood this need is rarely conscious. Children have no way of putting their needs into thoughts. They have no point of reference; they cannot compare. They do not know that something else might exist. They believe that this is the way it should be. In extreme cases, the child feels especially isolated, believing that he or she is the only one who feels that way. Neither attitude is according to truth. In both cases the true motivation is not conscious, and therefore it is not recognized and then properly evaluated. Thus children grow up neither understanding why they are unhappy nor realizing that they are unhappy. Many of you look back to your childhood convinced that you had all the love you wanted just because you actually did have some love, but rarely did you have all the love that you wanted.

There are a number of parents who give great demonstrations of love. They may spoil or pamper their children. This act of spoiling and pampering may be an overcompensation and a sort of apology for a suspected inability to love maturely. Children feel the truth very acutely. They may not think it, they may not consciously observe it, but inwardly children keenly feel the difference between mature love, genuine love, and the immature overdemonstration offered instead of it.

Security and proper guidance are a parent's responsibilities, and this calls for authority on their part. There are parents who never dare to punish or to exert their healthy authority. This is due to guilt that real giving, warming, comforting love is absent in their own immature personality. Other parents may be too severe, too strict. They exert a distortion of authority by bullying and thus not allowing the individuality of the child to unfold. Both groups fall short as parents. Their wrong attitudes will be absorbed by their children and will then result in hurt and in unfulfillment.

In the case of strict parents, the resentment and the rebellion will be open and therefore more easily faced. In the case of lenient parents, the rebellion is just as strong, but it is hidden and therefore infinitely harder to trace. If you had a parent who smothered you with affection, or with pseudo-affection, yet who lacked in genuine warmth; or if you had a parent who conscientiously did everything right by you, but who was lacking in real warmth, then unconsciously you knew it when you were a child and you resented it. Consciously you may not have been aware of it because, as a child, you could not pinpoint the lack of warmth. Outwardly you were given everything you wanted and needed. How could you differentiate in your intellect the subtle, fine-borderline distinction between real affection and false affection? The fact that something bothered you without your being able to explain it reasonably made you feel guilty and uncomfortable. Therefore you pushed it out of sight as much as possible.

As long as this hurt -- this disappointment and this unfulfilled need from your early years -- is unconscious, then you cannot come to terms with it. No matter how much you may love your parent, you still harbor unconscious resentment, and therefore you cannot forgive for the hurt. You can forgive and let go only if you recognize this deeply hidden hurt and the resentment. As an adult human being, you will see that your parents were just human beings. They will not be as faultless and as perfect as the child thought and had hoped. Nor are they to be rejected because they had their own conflicts and immaturities. The light of conscious reasoning has to be applied to these emotions that you never allowed yourself to be aware of to their full extent.

As long as you are unaware of this conflict, of your longing for perfect love from your parents, you are bound to try to remedy the situation in your later years. This may manifest in various aspects of your life. You run into problems and into repeated patterns that have their origin in your attempt to reproduce the childhood situation so as to correct it. This unconscious compulsion is very strong. But it is deeply hidden from your conscious understanding.

The compulsion to remedy the situation often manifests in your choice of love partners. Unconsciously you will know how to choose in the partner certain aspects of the parent who has fallen short in genuine affection and real love. But you also seek in your partner aspects of the other parent who has come closer to gratifying your demands. Important as it is to find both parents represented in your partners, it is even more important and more difficult to find in them those aspects that represent the parent who has particularly disappointed and hurt you -- the one who was more resented or despised, and for whom you had little or no love. So you seek the parents again -- in a subtle way that is not always easy to detect by outer similarities -- in your marital partners, in your friendships, or in other human relationships. The following reactions take place in your unconscious. Since the child in you cannot let go of the past, cannot come to terms with it, cannot forgive, cannot understand, and cannot accept, this child in you always creates a condition similar to the original situation in a desperate attempt to win out in the end, to finally master the situation. To the child in you it seems that succumbing, losing out, means being crushed. And this must be avoided at all costs. The costs are high indeed, for the entire process is unfeasable. What the child in you sets out to accomplish can never come to realization.

This entire procedure is utterly destructive. In the first place, it is an illusion that you were defeated. Therefore, it is an illusion that you can be victorious. Moreover, it is an illusion that sad as the lack of love may have been when you were a child, it represents the tragedy that your unconscious still feels it to be. The only tragedy lies in the fact that you obstruct your future happiness by continuing to reproduce and then attempting to master the situation. It goes without saying that this process is unconscious. Of course, nothing is further from your mind in your conscious aims and wishes. It will take a great deal of digging to uncover the emotions that lead you, again and again, into situations in which you wish to remedy your childhood woes.

In trying to reproduce the childhood situation, you unconsciously choose a partner with aspects similar to those of the parent. And these aspects will make it just as impossible to receive the mature love that you rightfully long for now as they did then. You blindly believe that by willing this love more strongly and more forcefully, the parent/partner will now yield. In reality love cannot come that way. When you are free of this ever-continuing repetition, then you will no longer cry to be loved by the parent. Instead, you will look for a partner -- or other human relationships -- with the aim of finding the maturity that you really need and want. In not demanding to be loved as a child, you will be equally willing to love. However, the child in you finds this impossible. No matter how much you may be capable of love due to your development and progress, this hidden conflict eclipses your otherwise growing soul.

If you already have a partner, then the uncovering of this conflict may show you his or her immaturities, and therefore the similarities to your parents. But since you know that there is hardly a really mature person, then your partner's immaturities will no longer be the tragedy they were when you sought to constantly find your parents again, seeking to fulfill the childish demand that this time around you will be loved exclusively and completely. This can never come to pass. By coming face to face with your existing immaturities and your existing inabilities, you will see yourself in reality and you will be able to build a more mature relationship, free of the childish compulsions we are talking about here.

You have no idea how preoccupied your unconscious is with the process of re-enacting the play, so to speak, hoping that now it will be different. And it never is! As time goes on, each disappointment weighs more heavily and your soul becomes more discouraged.

For those of my friends who have not yet reached deep into their unexplored unconscious, this may sound preposterous and even contrived. But those of you who have come to see the power of your hidden tendencies, the power of your compulsions, and the power of your images not only will readily believe it, but you will experience the truth of these words in your own personal life. You already know from other findings how potent the working of your unconscious is, how shrewdly it goes about in its destructive and illogical way.

If youy learn to look at your problems and at your unfulfillments from this point of view and by the usual process, then you will allow your emotions to come to the fore, and you will thus gain much further insight. But it will be necessary to re-experience the longing and the hurt of the crying child that you once were, even though you were also a happy one. Your happiness may have been valid and without self-deception. For it is possible to be both happy and unhappy. You may be perfectly aware of the happy aspects of your childhood, but that which hurt you deeply, that certain something that you greatly longed for -- you did not even know what -- you were not aware of. You took everything for granted. You did not know what was missing, or even that there was something missing. This basic unhappiness has to come into your awareness now if you really want to proceed in your inner growth. You have to re-experience the acute pain that you suffered once, but that you pushed out of sight. Now this pain has to be looked at with this new understanding that you have gained in mind. Only by doing this will you see the reality value of your current problems in their true light.

How can you manage to re-experience the hurt of so long ago? There is only one way. Take a current problem and strip it of all the superimposed layers of your reactions. The first and most handy layer is that of rationalization, that of proving that others or situations are at fault and not your innermost conflicts, which make you adopt the wrong attitude to the actual problem that confronts you. The next layer might be anger, resentment, anxiety, and frustration. Behind all these reactions you will find the hurt of not being loved. We went into this thoroughly in a previous lecture. When you experience the hurt of not being loved in your current problem, then it will serve to re-awaken the childhood hurt. With the present hurt in mind, think back. Try to re-evaluate the situation with your parents in your mind. "What did they give you? How did you really feel about them?" You will become aware that in many ways you lacked something that you never clearly saw before -- you did not want to see it. You will find that this must have hurt you when you were a child, but you may have consciously forgotten this hurt. Yet it is not forgotten at all. The hurt of your current problem is the same hurt. Now, re-evaluate your present hurt and compare it with your childhood hurt. Finally, you will see how it is one and the same. But first you have to feel the similarity of the two pains. This requires considerable effort, for there are many overlaying emotions that cover the present pain, as well as the past one. Before you have succeeded in crystallizing the pain, you cannot understand anything further in this respect.

Once you can synchronize these two pains and you realize that they are one and the same, then the next step will be easier. By reviewing the repetitious pattern in your various problem, you will learn to recognize the similarities between your parents and the people who have caused you hurt or who are causing you pain now. When you experience these similarities, then you will have taken a step further on the road of dissolving this basic problem. Mere intellectual evaluation will not yield any benefit. When you feel the similarities, while at the same time experiencing the pain of now and the pain of then, then you will come to understand how you thought that you had to choose the current situation because deep inside you could not possibly admit defeat.

Many people are not even aware of any pain, either past or present. They are busy pushing it out of sight. Their problems appear not as pain. For them, the first step is to become aware that this pain is present and that it hurts infinitely more as long as they have not become aware of it. Yet, many people are afraid of this pain. They like to believe that if they ignore it, then it is not there. They choose such a path only because their conflicts become too great for them. How much more wonderful it is for a person to choose this path in the wisdom and the conviction that a hidden conflict in the long run does as much damage as a manifest one. Such a person will not fear uncovering that real emotion and he will feel, even in the temporary experience of acute pain, that in that moment it turns into a healthy growing pain, one that is free of bitterness, fre of tension, free of anxiety, and free of frustration.

There are also those who tolerate the pain, but in a negative way, always expecting it to be remedied from the outside. In a way, such people are nearer to the solution, because for them it will be easy to see how this childish process still operates. The outside is the offending parent, or both parents, projected onto other human beings. They only have to redirect their attention from the outside -- the offender, the parent -- to the inside, themselves. They do not have to find their pain.

Only after experiencing all these emotions and synchronizing the now and the then will you become aware of how you tried to correct the situation. Then you will see the folly of this unconscious desire, the frustrating uselessness of it. You will survey all your actions and all your reactions with this new understanding and with this insight. Whereupon you will release your parents, you will truly leave your childhood behind, and you will start a new inner behavior pattern that will be infinitely more constructive and rewarding both for you and for others. In other words, you will no longer seek to master the situation that you could not master as a child. You will go on from where you are, forgetting and forgiving, inside of you, without self-deceptively thinking that you have done so. You will no longer need to be loved as you needed to be loved when you were a child. First, you will become aware that this is what you still wish, and then you will no longer seek this type of love. Since you are no longer a child, then you will seek love in a different way: by giving it instead of expecting it. But it must be emphasized that many people are not aware that they expect it. Since the childish unconscious expectation was often disappointing, then they made themselves give up all expectations and all desires for love. This is neither genuine nor healthy, for it is a wrong extreme.

To be fruitful and to bring real results, this knowledge must go beyond mere intellectual understanding. You have to allow yourself to feel the pain of certain unfulfillments now and also the pain of the unfulfillment of your childhood. Then compare the two until, like two separate photographic slides, they gradually fade into each other, move into focus, and then become one. The insight that you gain -- once you feel this experience exactly as I describe it here -- will enable you to take the further steps that you need to take.

All of this is of great importance for some of my friends who are advanced in their own work. They need this instruction to give them a new outlook, to present further clarification beyond the point they have arrived at, and to enable them to proceed in the proper direction. For others who are not yet that far advanced, or for new friends in the group who have not really begun their self-search, these words may be a little obscure. Or else, they may understand them intellectualy, but they will be unable to apply them to their own emotions and to their life problems. Nevertheless, think about it and the time will come when you will glean a new understanding about yourself from these words. An occasional glimpse even now, a temporary flickering emotion that these words may cause in you, will open a door toward knowing yourself better. These words will help you to evaluate your life in a more realistic way, with a more mature outlook.

Now, are there are any questions in connection with this lecture?

QUESTION: There is something very difficult for me to understand here. The fact that one continually chooses a person or a love object who has exactly the same negative trends that either one or the other parent had -- is it really a factor that this particular person has these trends? Or is it a projection and then a response?

ANSWER: It can be both and it can be either. In fact, most of the time it is a combination. Certain aspects are unconsciously looked for and then are found. And they are actually similarities. But these existing similarities are exaggerated by the person. They are not projected -- that is, qualities seen that are not really there -- but they are qualities that are latent to some degree but are unmanifested. These are encouraged and strongly brought to the fore by the attitude of the person who has an inner problem that is unrecognized and therefore unchecked. In other words, you -- I do no mean you personally -- foster something in the other person by provoking him to react that way. The provocation, which is entirely unconscious, is a strong factor here.

The sum total of a human personality consists of many factors. Out of these many factors three or four are actually similar. The most outstanding factor would be a similar kind of immaturity and a similar kind of incapacity to love as in the parent in question. That alone is sufficient and potent enough in essence to reproduce the same situation.

The same person would not react with others as he or she reacts with you, because it is you who provokes your mate constantly into reproducing similar conditions for you to correct. Your fear, your self-punishment, your frustration, your anger, your hostility, your withdrawal from giving out love and affection, all these trends of the child in you constantly provoke the other person and enhance in him or her that which is weak and immature. A more mature person will affect others differently and will bring out in them whatever is mature and whole. For there is no person who does not have some mature aspects.

QUESTION: I am very confused about thought control. I find it terribly tiring to be constanly alert during the entire day and to live in the immediate here and now. Yet in my work I am entirely submerged, absorbed, and wholly concentrated. I can remain concentrated even for hours. But afterward I find it relaxing to let my mind wander and not use it like the beam of a spotlight on everything that happens around me.

ANSWER: There is a misunderstanding here. I never implied that you should constantly have your mind poised, let alone be tense in your mind. You do not have to concentrate steadily on a particular subject. That is not the way to go about it. If you can bring yourself to engage in this five-minute exercise every day, in the most relaxed way, then you will find that gradually you will become more alert and more awake in a natural way, not in a forced way. It is a gradual process of growth that happens without direct volition. In other words, without forcing. If you relax and let your mind wander after a strain, then that is fine. There is nothing wrong in that. I never said that you should do these concentration exercises twenty-four hours a day. I said that you should try it for about five minutes a day. Then you will begin to function better in many ways. The fact that it makes you tired to be "right here in the now" and that your spirit has to wander away is a sign of some mismanagement in your inner make-up. Every person needs an occasional rest, during which the spirit leaves the body. This happens regularly during sleep. But if the spirit has to wander away during waking hours in order to be relaxed, then it means that there is something that is not proprly managed between the spirit, the body, and the mind. This has many damaging effects. It makes you miss out on life; it makes you not see and not perceive reality; it makes you not observe people around you. But in order to remedy the situation, you should not forcefully concentrate during all your waking hours.

Many psychological factors play a role in bringing about this mismanagement. Your further development in that direction will be of major importance. But, in addition, the five-minute exercise wll be of help.

One of the psychological factors responsible for the tendency to let the spirit wander is fear. It is the fear of life, therefore the fear of being in life -- the present reality of life. It is the fear of coping with life. There is also a certain egocentricity. There is a lack of interest in what is really going on and finding it more pleasant to wander in the clouds. But, I repeat, this process cannot be changed by forcing yourself to constantly occupy your thoughts and your mind with things that do not interest you. This must be a natural process, developing organically. In doing the concentration exercises, you will eventually discover a gradual and slow change in that you become naturally more alert to the present. In other words, more observing. You will take an interest in what is around you without feeling tension within yourself.

QUESTION: You have stated that emotional maturity is the willingness and the capability to love. It seems to me that intellectual maturity must mean something else. How do the two intrplay and influence each other?

ANSWER: Both are necessary functions of the healthy individual. As I once put it, they are like the two legs that you need in order to walk through life. Intellectual maturity is your capacity to think, to judge, to evaluate, to discriminate, to form concepts, to plan, to use your will, to use your mind, to make decisions, to utilize your assets, to direct your life, and, last but not least, to re-educate your childish emotions by implanting the proper concepts -- this time your own -- which you have arrived at independently by thinking things through. In other words, not because others said so, but because you deliberated on them and they are your own. Thus, your intellect can influence your emotions by your capacity to think. On the other hand, unchecked and childish emotions can influence your thinking capacity by coloring your views, and thus by making you lose your objectivity. Intellectual maturity is your your capacity to think. The way you manage your emotional reactions, your feelings, and your instincts determines your emotional maturity, or the lack of it.

QUESTION: Might a person be developed much further in one direction than in the other?

ANSWER: Indeed, often there is an imbalance between these two "legs," with one leg being more developed than the other. This imbalance causes a lack of integration in the human being. Among other aspects, the purpose and the aim of this work is to achieve a proper balance. In many areas a person is more developed in one direction -- in one area of his or her personality -- with an imbalance in the other. Many who do not pursue a path such as yours continue to nurse and cultivate the aspect that is already overdeveloped. That is not healthy. It does not bring the harmony and the balance desired. It is done because most people prefer to think of their strengths rather than of their weaknesses.

QUESTION: Would you say that the lack of emotional development is indicated by particular likes and dislikes without discriminating as to what the values are? We use the wrong yardstick. Instead of measuring and discriminating, we are either for or against something because we "like" or "dislike" it, regardless of its intrinsic merit.

ANSWER: Exactly, I spoke about that in one of the lecturs. That is the subjectivity that arises out of the childish emotions. Of course, a halfway intellectually mature person will find adequate reasons to hide this emotional reaction and his subjectivity. That is what is called a rationalization. An intellectually mature person will find reasons and explanations for his irrational, emotional, subjective behavior or attitude.

QUESTION: At one time you said that you could hear the soul scream. Does that also work between the different unconscious mind of one human being and another? Does one unconscious hear the screaming of the other? Is that why one feels the hostility emanating from the other person?

ANSWER: Yes. That is why I always say that your unconscious affects the unconscious of the other person. You go through life resenting other people because they do not respond to your outer actions. You yourself are unaware of what your inner actions are. Your inner actions -- your reactions -- are accurately perceived by your fellow human beings, and they react to that part of you. Their souls hear that voice, or they perceive it with other inner sense organs of hearing, of seeing, of smelling, and of tasting. That is why the unconscious of one affects the unconscious of the other.

Often people feel unjustly treated when they know that their actions were right. They concentrate on their outer right actions, butt they leave out their inner motivations -- which exist in addition to the conscious and proper outer ones. If you learn to be utterly honest with yourself and to acknowledge your hidden motivations and your true feelings, then you will understand why other people react to you as they do, and therefore you will no longer consider yourself to be the victim of injustice.

QUESTION: How can I make the distinction between whether the other person provoked me or I the other person?

ANSWER: It is not necessary to find who started it, for this is a chain reaction, a vicious circle. It is useful to start by finding your own provocation, perhaps in response to an open or to a hidden provocation of the other person. Thus you realize that because you were provoked, you provoke the other person. And because you do so, then the other again responds in kind. But as you examine your real reason -- not the superficial one -- for being hurt in the first place, and therefore provoked -- in the sense of this lecture -- then you will no longer regard this hurt as disastrous as it had appeared before. In other words, you will have a different reaction to the hurt. As a consequence, the hurt will diminish dramatically. Also, as the need to reproduce the childhood situation decreases, you will become less withdrawn and you will hurt others less and less, so that they will not have to provoke you. And even if they do, now you will understand that they are reacting out of the same childish blind needs as you do. As you gain a different view of your own hurt, by understanding its real origin, you will gain the same detachment to the reaction of the other person. You will find exactly the same reactions going on in you as in the other. But as long as that conflict remains unresolved in you, then the difference seems enormous. You ascribe a different motivation to the other person's provocation than to your own, even when you realize that you actually initiated the provocation. Thus you perceive reality, whereas before you did not. And so you begin to break this vicious circle.

As you begin to perceive the mutual interplay, you will start to feel relieved of the sense of isolation and guilt that all of you are burdened with. You are constantly fluctuating between feeling guilty and accusing those around you of injustice. The child in you feels itself entirely different, in a world of its own. That is such a damaging illusion. As you resolve this conflict, your awareness of other people will increase. You are unaware of the reality of other people. On the one hand, you accuse them and you are inordinately hurt by them because you do not understand yourself and therefore you do not understand other people. At the same time, you refuse to become aware of it when you are hurt. This seems paradoxical, yet it is not. As you experience for yourself the factors set forth in this lecture, then you will find this to be true. While at times you may exaggerate a hurt, at other times you do not allow yourself to know that it has happened at all, because it may not fit the picture that you have of the situation. In other words, it may spoil the idea that you have constructed in your mind. It may not correspond to your desire at the time. If the situation seems favorable and fits into your preconceived idea, then you blot out whatever jars you, thereby allowing it to fester underneath and create unconscious hostility. This entire reaction inhibits your intuitive faculties, at least in this particular respect.

This constant provocation from one human being to another, which is hidden from your awareness now, is a reality that you will come to perceiv clearly. This will have a liberating effect both on you and on your surroundings. But you cannot perceive it unless you understand your inner reactions that I discussed here.

QUESTION: Is it possible in some way to make a truce, for even two or three minutes, between one's own unconscious and the unconscious of the other person? Sometimes you see the reality intellectually, but by the time you order your unconscious to do something, it is already in revolt and has made the other person unhappy, and then you are unhappy too. It might all have been avoided if there had been a few minutes of truce.

ANSWER You see, my dear, in the fist place it is not a question of "ordering" your unconscious. You cannot order it. That is impossible. As long as you attempt such commands, then it will resist. Or else it may deceive you, so that you then deceive yourself. The unconscious can be reeducated only by the slow and gradual process pursued in this work. The most important thing is that you become fully aware of what you really feel. Most of the time you are only half aware of your emotions. So you resort to superimposing on your real reactions another set of feelings. These may be other negative emotions, or if they are positive, then you are deceiving yourself even more. Only by stripping away all these superimpositions can you understand the reason why your unconscious is often so stubborn. If it continues to resist your good efforts, then it means that there must be something present that you have not yet connected with and then understod. When this connecting happens, then you will not need a short truce. You will have real peace with yourself, and therefore with others. While you may command or force a truce in your outer actions, through your words or even through your thoughts, the unconscious does not respond to such discipline. It goes on in its own way until it has really changed.

Aas you see it, a trucecannot really work. If you attempt to question it, then you will see that it is entirely unreal.

QUESTION: Suppose a person is able to bring his house to order. Will he or she then eliminate provocations in the other person?

ANSWER: You do not even have to bring your house to order to the extent of being fully mature and more or less perfect. This perfection hardly ever exists in the human sphere. But the awareness of your immaturity -- really understanding it and having a clear insight into those of your reactions and feelings that cause the provocation -- will weaken it sufficiently, and you will progress until you will finally cease to bring on provocations and, in turn, will not be provoked by others in the same way. As you gain a certain healthy detachment from yourself, the smoldering unhealthy drive -- the force -- will be taken out of your emotional reactions. In fact, I would say that this is the only kind of valid "truce" that can be accomplished. Allow yourself to see what you really feel and know why you feel it. When you have an overall view of your emotions, without any further subterfuge and self-deception, then you will feel at peace. In other words, then the knowledge of your existing immaturity will no longer disquiet you. It will have a very calming effect on you. You will have made peace with yourself by accepting your still-existing imperfections. Consequently, you will not try to push yourself into a perfection that you cannot possibly attain at the moment. Once you accept the reality of your imperfect self, then the hurts resulting from such imperfection will no longer be serious and tragic. You will accept them as an inevitable consequence of your imperfections -- which now you can observe calmly while gaining more understanding about them, thus coming closer to perfection and to maturity. In this way your hostility will vanish and your provocations will cease as well. Although relapses will occur, now you will accept them with a realistic outlook. You will derive further insight from them, knowing that ithey take place because something has not yet penetrated deeply enough, so that it has to be found again so as to be assimilated on deeper levels of your being.

Hostility exists because you are unaware that you are hurt and why you are hurt. Just think of the times when you are really aware of a hurt without anger and without feeling hostile. You may feel sad, but feeling sad seems to many people so humiliating that they prefer to be angry, and therefore hostile. That is a particular kind of childishness that exists in everyone. You think that it is superior to be angry and hostile than to be sad. So you suppress your real hurt. But the hostility has to be hidden, too, because it makes you feel guilty for other reasons, so that it comes out in a devious, hidden way, which, in turn, again brings on further provocations. The provocation is a result of unaware or unconscious hostility, of suppressed hostility, and the hostility results from unaware and suppressed hurt.

For next time prepare sufficient questions to allow for an entire session of questions and answers. But, on the spur of the moment, we may even then decide to change and give a lecture again. We shall see. We shall leave it open to meet the need.

Go your way, my dearest ones, and may the blessing that we bring to all of you envelop you and penetrate your body, your soul, and your spirit so that you open up your soul and thus become the real self, your own real self, on the laborious path of becoming aware of all the negative aspects in you. By allowing yourself this awareness, you will grow out of them. Be blessed, my friends, be in peace, be in God.

November 11, 1960