We’ve become so afraid, though, of taking self-responsibility, our fear of it has become a large part of our abyss. We fear that if we assume self-responsibility, we will fall right in and be swallowed up whole… It seems like a huge danger to let go of our demand to always have our way… We literally fear we’ll be miserable if we have to give up our demand for Utopia…

We can never be happy because buried in our unconscious is this mistaken concept that happiness requires utter perfection in all ways. Yet none of this true. It’s all part of a grand illusion… We believe that harm can come to us through the arbitrariness of life… This fear is an illusion—it’s an abyss. And the only reason it exists is because of the way we avoid self-responsibility. For if we don’t want to be responsible for our life, someone else must be…

We are only helpless because we make ourselves so when we shift responsibility away from ourselves. When we look at things this way, we begin to see the heavy price we pay for insisting on Utopia. We pay every day with our fear… As we do this work of self-discovery, we want to find the corresponding note in ourselves that is vibrating due to provocation from another. Then we’ll stop feeling like a victim…

Part of being a grown-up and making independent decisions is that we are bound to make mistakes. The child in us who still clings to Utopia, however, believes we must always be perfect. To make a mistake is to fall into the abyss… Life on planet Earth is not Utopia, and we aren’t perfect. This is not a tragedy.

Listen and learn more.

Read Bones, Chapter 19: The Giant Misunderstanding About Freedom and Self-Responsibility

Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #60 The Abyss of Illusion – Freedom & Self-Responsibility

More whole means more happy. Our goal, then, is to unify our whole selves. We do this by folding in the split-off aspects of the Lower Self that remain in separation… Consider the truth that whatever is inside, no matter how painful it might be, cannot be avoided. Rather, it must be expressed and released… And that is what meaningful meditation is all about…

Whenever a creative act takes place and something new manifests, it has come about through the fusion of two principles: the active and the receptive… Which means that both of these principles must be part of our meditation, if we want to use it create good things… To use meditation in a creative way, it needs to include these four stages or phases: 1) Concept, 2) Impression, 3) Visualization, and 4) Faith…

We’ll start to see that these answers, and the enlightenment that comes with them, are pieces of a puzzle. Little by little, they fit together to form a comprehensive picture. Eventually, we’ll learn to rely on this process over anything else… Real faith is a knowing, an inner experience that’s beyond the shadow of doubt. Reaching it requires we have the courage to take chances, to risk finding out the truth…

One of the most important laws, which can also be found in Scripture, states: According to your belief you shall experience… So if we believe that we cannot change, that we live in a hostile universe, and that our ultimate fate is tragedy, guess what. We will—we must—experience just that… But if we believe in the truth that abundance and joy can be ours—that we can change and grow out of our poverty, our misery and our despair—we can’t help but do so…

There is no question, problem, conflict or darkness that we can’t bring into our meditation. We lose sight of how effective it can be for the biggest as well as the smallest issues of life. In reality, there’s no such thing as big or small. Everything is important. Our whole life matters… Moreover, it won’t work to split off and ignore the undesirable parts of ourselves, hoping we can enjoy the Oneness when we are less than whole inside.

Listen and learn more.

Bones, Chapter 18: How to Use Meditation to Create a Better Life

Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #194 Meditation: Its Laws and Various Approaches – A Summary (Meditation as Positive Life Creation)

As we gradually make progress on our path, we become more alive and more honest in our feelings and ability to relate. We “sacrifice” old reactive patterns and discover that nothing good has been given up and plenty has been gained. It’s hard to remain skeptical… At some point in our journey, we are going to run into a wall. It’s made up of our previously concealed but now quite conscious negative intentionality…

In our unhealed psyches, we unconsciously want whatever it is we fear. Further, whatever we experience, we also unconsciously want. All these teachings are built upon these immutable facts. We need to recall this when we come face-to-face with our basic attitude toward life that says no…

So much of the resistance we encounter—in ourselves and our companions—is due precisely to our not wanting to see that a senseless, destructive streak of negative intention is in us… We’d rather hold onto our spite and go on blaming some fate that has befallen “poor innocent me,” than to move from our position… When we do finally see this, it is not a tragedy—it’s a huge blessing…

Listen and learn more.

Bones, Chapter 17: Overcoming our Negative Intention by Identifying with our Spiritual Self

Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #195 Identification and Intentionality: Identification with the Spiritual Self to Overcome Negative Intentionality