My Plight

I stand for the testimony of my Life.

I am nothing more than filled with strife.

A survivor of the whip,

intolerance and the Sith.

My adversaries declare the wrongs.

While versing all that are not strong.

Within your soul, find your right,

for you will fall, if you don't fight.

Shock of words, spoken deep.

Will often fill you with what will creep.

Look away and you shall say,

no more, no less on a given day.

I have a friend in Worlds play.

Dark and dreary is our way.

He does not know of my exist,

disappointment therefore cannot come hist.

Free from guilt, I go the built.

To Stone Henge, where its on the tilt.

The day is near, to keep it pure,

so sing the song of Quilt.

A county not, to save the spot,

of English and the like.

For I did have, at ages...; Plot!

a lot for all that try.

Do you turn? Close the burn?

Or can you see the sight?

I am alone, in one fell fight,

for choice will set my plight.

Karen A. Placek

The Embered Fire Of Truths

Ancient spake: A Knight declared,

we can do it on Our own!!

No God in Sight,

a given plight from the demise,

of a Spiritual truth,

the Law of Dual!!

The view of eternal,

lost in a night of despair,

Heaven Fell and know One cared!!

The earnest appeal,

a rumble of real,

the crash of done,

makes Earth the Perish,

man has been Terraced.

The Balcony of what was Theirs,

brought to Team as Demons stared,

to identify the need to view,

I blare!! this is...,

Know Fare!!

The Toll of the midnight Sight,

woke-me to this plight,

I watched to See,

Humanity is not Rite!!

You relish what cannot be,

as if forgiveness needed knees,

but Death is ready,

and the fodder are the lies you lead.

So easily you point,

the danger is Old and therefore Told,

preparation for this journey,

a trip is not a stay,

the luck you'll need is the directive too See.

No Sight makes evident,

Blind Wrath is relevant,

the Dead become the Livings plead!!

Coordination of Facts,

are the Lies that are floated to enrage more Stats.

Benevolence, Know, I Knew, "It's True"

To 'Remind' myself of 'Times' I'm not, I remember.  I abandoned this place with the "I" in Me.

A thought.

Can Not Take, the Strife, the Hate, so I left, I walked a Lot.  Never minding this Journey, a shot to Places that...

You'd pay to see,

I am sure: I was curious, it was my cure.

I was Four upon my Stay. I got lost and to this day, I know that none of them were You.

I found "New Views," like 'Old School' belief in teaching.  Training and 'Not Blaming.'  

As I Found Myself, without You, I stayed True to Me, a wealth of more, I never did snore.  The Reasons,

for the words you pour, Me, Myself and I, do not abhor, it is just such a Chore!  An Ignition, to Recognition,

of...

upon my return to this plane, Ten Years, had passed, My-Self was Wrath, the Me, in I was Confused,

a try,

Integration a Lie?

I tried to refuse however Training in Depths, Dimensions true.  More, a Type of Understanding, loosed.  At Fourteen, still in the Past I realized, Time had lapsed.  But, I was still, Trashed.

In Open Forum never changing, Years had made Worse, and recognition of what sounds perverse,

my Mother said,

UN-rehearsed;

"OH!! Look She's back"

I Thought: "Oh, Wow, that's bad."  To think upon these fragments of Moments Past, I Shake with Anger,

I never laugh, all because my Age did Last.

Relieved I was to realize, this absence did not take Height.  An interesting plight which I did not fight.  I knew now that they had Insight, into what was missing, the "Me" in "My-Self."  Strangely, I made this Association;

In just Four Years, an Odd Coincidence, (I think not) I'd be Eighteen, 'a legal-split' from that House, this was it, I will persist.

Aware of this Loss of Time, they knew, I new, for myself, dimensions crossed, little cost, to Me at least,

to venture out and feel released.

I'll bet, my Family, does truly rue!!

These odd days, you can't UN-do.  Today's Date, Yesterdays News, I feel Present, how 'bout You?  How do You rate the Math it Takes, to understand I'm stuck at Four.

Death is a Door, I do not abhor, simply put, it is just "A Chore."  March You're Due, march you will, losing Choice, gaining "Bill," to express you're Self, not Me, 'cause I was lost, and for My-Self, I do see their Plan.

"Do You 'See'?"

Stare You won't, glazed eyes of shown, New Belief, Yours do Roam.  Wild Lies, you will Profess, in the Presence of what is Next!

To bad that not 'A Person' Sees, for this does increase your Needs, making possible this Claim of Mine....

'The Impossible, is the Possible, just Waiting to Happen." too.

To Shutter of the Ends you'll meet, don't worry so much, it is a Feat.  Although you never shut-up, 'cause what you Preach is only a reach.  You know, I Know, at least for Myself, that the Testimony to the Words you Bleed, otherwise known as Christianity, has no-given source to lean, or Origin to spot.

It is just a Plot to Destroy and give License to any One Individual, with a malignant motivation, to Lie, to Loot, to Rape You of, Independent Thought, a progression if sought.

I have Listened, I have Learned, I did stop!! In this, I turned away from what was, 'A Life' I guess.

Confused?

No!!

I was Used and as I do not Speak, I write inStead.  I Draft my Prose to remind, to alert, my Given Mind,

that in 'Lost Time', I learned, I was, I am, I'm Knot and, I will be again despite this cruel begin.  I was fine, not blind, not deaf, and now, not Mute.

I guess there is more, rating Age with a door, stinging verse, this is 'no-stage' of resist. Just a time, a given Sage, to Telltale's of 'What is, What was,' "Lost in Age!"

Do not Over-Tax your Own thinking, I see so many blinking as Comprehension taxes your Retention of difference, not Rote.

To Expand,

Character in Thought,

takes no imagination.

Liken to Litigation, a reason of amazing 'vs' dull, dazed and repeatedly "Hazed," because you are progressing, while Most are Addressing, what has already been written, not what should be Said or Done,

in advance of.... I Shun not to run, I have already begun an assault upon the brutality of All that has Happened so I may achieve what "I 'See'," and what, "I 'Know'."

In Order to grow in the understanding of, My-Self, as 'to-be' Wise and with "Apparent Ties," and not placate Malicious Lies. A Must!!

To Advantage a Trust, so I may be, "The Me, I was born to Be."

I am only the Evidence of All the Ones, You Wiped-OUT.  Who have not agreed or Whom stood as a Pagan like I.

In a World that is 'Meant to Be' I Seethe and open the Door to Diversity, not Perversity.

However, History proves and in this the World will lose it's Innocence to nothing more than you knew.

~

Insight to the Age of Sage

You Read, I'll Right, then "I'll read what I write," to know "My Plight,"  you're Fright!

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 199

March 24, 1972
by Eva Broch Pierrakos 

Greetings. Blessed be all of you, my beloved friends. The force of love and truth, elicited by your seeking, is pouring forth to forge another link in the chain, to give you what you need at this juncture in your path.

The average state of the human mind is only a fragmented piece of total consciousness. In this fragmented state you are cut off from reality. You inevitably live in fear and limitation. Yet you believe that this is all there is to your life and you frantically clutch at this limited fragment. You resist the natural inner movement of the soul to go beyond, to expand this state, because the split-off ego-consciousness fears that doing so will annihilate you. You ardently protect this limited consciousness, yet this very limitation creates fear and suffering.

This is, broadly speaking, humanity’s plight. It is your task, in the cycle of incarnations, to reintegrate this split-off ego-consciousness and to regain forever wider and deeper portions of your real self, your cosmic existence, with its infinite possibilities for experience, joy, and creation of the self.

Humanity believes that this split-off ego-consciousness is the real self. You identify with your brain, your outer intelligence, your will, your mind, all those faculties immediately available, not realizing that to whatever degree you now possess these, it was you who in the past made them available for yourself through a deliberate effort. For there was a state in which you possessed much less awareness, less power to create, less ability to experience joy. Your consciousness was much more limited and confined. You had to use whatever consciousness you had to enlarge your faculties and to avail yourself of dormant possibilities. This process must continue until there is no longer any split-off fragment and humanity has reached cosmic consciousness, which means that humanity itself has become one with ultimate reality. The process of self-enlargement, of making apparently foreign territory your own domain, constitutes the Pathwork — any valid pathwork.

Ego means fragmentation. As I mentioned, it is the task of all beings who are caught in this fragmentation, and that means anyone in the cycle of being born and dying, to enlarge their field of operation, their perception, their awareness, and their power to create. The problem is that in the limited state of the separated ego, enlargement appears, contrary to reality, to be annihilation of your very existence, of your sense of self. To penetrate this illusion, you need all the force, commitment, goodwill and help available — help that you must want and request.

This is truly humanity’s search and struggle. Only as you venture forth step by step, overcoming the inherent resistance to transcend this separated state, do you find out gradually that there is another life beyond the ego state. You then find out that this other life is reality and that this reality is not to be feared. It is good; it is to be utterly trusted. It means that there is ongoing life, self-awareness, and ever-increasing joy. You find out that the limited ego state you have so ardently protected is an illusion: the illusion of death and aloneness.

Awareness has to be fought for. It does not come easily, nor gratuitously. Remaining in the isolated ego state may appear safe and easy, but it leads to stagnation and death — ever recurring death.

The ego uses any number of tricks in order to maintain its separated, limited state and to avoid moving beyond it. I would like to show them to you.

In the first place, the ego uses every conceivable negativity known to humanity; any fault; any violation of integrity, truth, love, and divine law. Since all these negativities can be summed up in the triad of pride, selfwill, and fear, I shall show how the ego uses these traits to avoid self-transcendence.

The ego fears losing its present state, meaning its self-awareness, so much that the fear displaces the instinct of self-preservation. The ego misuses this instinct to preserve its present awareness. Fear always distorts truth and reality. Thus the ego maintains itself with pride. It maintains its separateness by creating an artificial conflict between the self and others. It says, “I must prove to the world that I am admirable and better than others; I must outdo others; I must not be worse than others; my interests counteract those of others, and vice versa.” All these attitudes are pridefully put in the service of maintaining the ego’s separation. It is always “I versus you,” and this inevitably creates a spirit of one-upmanship. Whether or not in your current incarnation your development happens to be ahead or behind another’s, to use this as a wedge between your own ego and those of others, is completely missing the point. For, in principle, there is no difference. It does not even take very long on this path to find out that one’s interests conflict with those of others only on the most superficial level. What is really right and good can be seen just beneath the surface. According to divine law this deeper good is right for all concerned. Therefore all comparing and competing to best others increases the separation and sharpens the illusion that this pitiful existence is all there is to life.

People’s prevalent tendency to live for the sake of appearances, rather than for the sake of truth and of real feelings and interests, is also caused by pride. The illusion of separation is so strong at this point that it seems more important to people to create an impression than even to consider what a tragic, wasteful sacrifice you make to achieve an entirely imaginary gain.

All masks and defenses, pretenses and false shame of exposure, embarrassment about real feelings and one’s inner reality regarding the spiritual self, belong in the category of pride; they are tricks of the ego to maintain its limited state.

Selfwill comprises stubbornness, resistance, spite, defiance, rigidity. All these attitudes connote a stiffening against change, against expanding into new spiritual territory. These traits express the attitude, “I will stay where and as I am.” This ego-trick makes rigidity appear desirable and makes open, flexible movement appear threatening and/or humiliating. Pride and fear are necessarily coupled to selfwill, just as selfwill must be present where either of the other two dominates. Each of these attitudes harbors the other two as well.

The refusal to move may be evaluated on a more superficial level in terms of personal idiosyncrasies and neuroses, as spite against a specific person or people — let us say parents or parent substitutes or general authority figures. Or there might be a spiteful attitude toward life itself. But on a deeper level the ego’s trick is to remain isolated.

Under the category of fear belong all worries, anxieties, and apprehensions. The ego’s trick is to make change appear threatening and life-annihilating. Worrying and anxiety also prevent you from attaining joyousness, peace, and freedom — the cosmic reality that opens up when the present state is expanded.

Negative intentionality is also part of the ego’s trickery to preserve your present limited state. Whatever the specific negative intention may be, it always indicates spite — hence selfwill, which always blurs and falsifies reality, denying all desirable life experience.

Other ego tricks that serve to maintain its present “safe” position are: denying pleasure, bliss, joy, expansion, and creative movement into life. The fear of experiencing all these states is obviously also a trick of the ego. This is a well-known phenomenon applying to all human beings and is easy to observe. More such tricks of the ego are: inattentiveness, lack of concentration, abstractedness, absent-mindedness. These attitudes prevent the focusing necessary for the ego to transcend itself. To transcend its present limited state, the ego requires a good deal of one-pointed focusing, of being all there, as it were. Laziness, tiredness, and passivity are, too, tricks of the ego. They make movement impossible, undesirable, and exhausting. We shall come back to this later.

Fear of exposure and denial of real feelings not only stem from pride but also directly perpetuate isolation and are therefore used as ego tricks to deny oneness with others. Negative reactions to the negativity of others is another trick of the ego to maintain its isolation. The moment negativity appears, the energy system begins to function to deny the ego’s expansion, which would effect self-transcendence. The ego denies the joyousness of true being by making something more of other people’s behavior than necessary. It cuts off the vision of real life that exceeds the limited present state. Only the isolated ego-bound entity experiences the terror of finiteness. Distrust and suspiciousness are not only part of the general fear that makes the ego wish to remain immobile and resort to trickery in order to defy the natural movement toward the being’s ultimate fate. While distrust caused by fear is the motivating force, the ego simultaneously uses the distrust as a trick to stop the movement toward union.

The ego assumes a preposterous and paradoxical position. It is intrinsically unhappy, precisely because of its finiteness, or what seems finite in its present limited state. It is self-evident that the ego can see only what is within its present scope of awareness. And what it sees is, to varying degrees, limited and falsified. Hence the ego sees and experiences only finiteness: the disconnected, meaningless universe in which it is senselessly suffering and powerless. This perception of life can alter only to the degree that the ego overcomes the temptation to stay put. But the paradoxical position of the ego is that it fights to remain in the very state that often makes your life unbearably lonely, fearful, and meaningless.

Unfathomable death is terrifying, and although it is possible to deny this terror, it cannot be dissolved as long as the ego remains within its present narrow confines. Sooner or later everyone is faced with this terrifying illusory end, both their own and others’. But even if this terror is not acute, it remains a gnawing force in your soul, a force that must always exist until the ego gives up its resistance. In spite of the ego’s extreme discomfort, it clings to that very condition, the very state that makes true vision beyond the imaginary line of demarcation between life and death impossible. This is the sickness of the ego state and the perversion of it — to cling to the very thing it battles against.

All my friends can easily recognize themselves in this description, for the pathwork makes this incongruity very obvious. I believe it will greatly help you all to see your plight in this light and to know that this is a universal state which you are called upon to transcend. On this path you must be concerned with, and grope for an understanding of, how to transcend the ego, and what that really means.

Isolation and separateness are, without a doubt and without exception, tragic and ironic; tragic because unnecessary, and ironic because the ego clings to what it hates and what hurts it most. It lacks the discipline and the perseverance, the commitment and the faith to venture beyond its present scope of awareness. Suffering must exist as long as you cling to this state and indulge in it. As long as all the tricks of the ego are acted out, rationalized, denied, perpetuated and nurtured — as is usually the case — you cannot help but suffer.

You all know, my friends, and many of you have indeed experienced it, that every step forward on the path reveals new vistas that are very real, much more real than the previous state that you thought was the ultimate reality. Every step of the way this newly gained reality opens to a life wider and fuller for you. The result is more joy, more peace, more consciousness, more understanding of the beautiful deep meaning of life, more creativity and more intrinsic knowledge of life’s eternality versus the illusion of death, the illusion of finiteness.

But every one of these steps could have been won only by a tremendous amount of investment on your part. Whoever still wants indulgence and easy, cheap results can never, never attain this new state. You will look wistfully at the possibilities yet doubt that anything else could exist that would warrant the effort and the lowering of your pride. This doubt then becomes the excuse for the artificially maintained status quo. This is the sin against life, defeating life’s natural movement toward evolution and unification.

Discipline, courage, humility, and the ability to commit yourself — these are not attitudes you do not possess, my friends. Everyone of you possesses every conceivable attribute in the universe. The question is, do you wish to avail yourself of these potentials within you, or do you wish to claim that you do not possess them and that someone has to “give” them to you magically?

You often hold the misplaced and confused idea that self-discipline hampers your freedom, and, conversely, that a free person does not need self-discipline. Nothing could be further from the truth. Freedom, in its real sense, is unthinkable without discipline. And, conversely, the people who indulge themselves and who reject discipline are inevitably dependent, weak, powerless, and consequently afraid. They lack freedom. Freedom can be gained only to the degree one uses voluntary self-discipline — uses it for one’s own sake and not to appease and appear good in the eyes of others. The latter attitude often leads either to actual or imaginary discipline being imposed upon the person by others. When such imposition happens — and this is of course undesirable — it is always a result of the denial of voluntary self-discipline, which goes together with self-responsibility.

Every expansion must be fought for with self-discipline, by overcoming the embedded resistance against expansion. The discipline must be used for stringent recognition of the ego tricks and against giving in to them. This expansion is always a step beyond a known territory. The ego has evolved to its present state, which varies, of course, from person to person, as a result of what humanity has already achieved. The “territory” people have gained determines their degree of functioning, the scope of their experience and awareness.

When I speak of “territory,” I mean a state of awareness, creative life force, and influx from the real world, all of which make experiencing life deeper and more meaningful. The word “territory” is thus not to be understood in a geographical sense, but in a total sense. The fences around this territory indicate the degree of the ego’s self-transcendence.

Every incarnation, on whatever level, requires increasing the scope of one’s “field of operation.” To widen the fences around the fragmented ego, to bring in more reality from the world beyond the illusory confinement is the task. Indirectly, this applies to all levels. Even the most mundane, outer, physical and intellectual knowledge and skills to be acquired increase in some way your present ability to function and experience life, and thus indirectly contribute to the ultimate task of self-transcendence. The acquisition of new knowledge and skills also demands the cultivation of the attitudes necessary for self-transcendence. Every bit of new knowledge or a new skill yields, directly or indirectly, more spiritual power and awareness, more experience of joy and realization of your own adequacy and your potential.

To acquire new knowledge or skills, on whatever level, always means overcoming laziness. It means self-discipline: the more desirable a new aspect of life is, the more real and durable it is, the more you must invest in it. It means trial and error, and the ability to convert failure into success. It means perseverance, patience, faith. It means overcoming fear until the new thing becomes one’s own natural possession, until it becomes part of the personality, second nature, so to speak.

The ego’s task is always first to accept the difficulties, the hardships of the learning process. Only when the ego has learned the more mechanical aspects of this process can the influx of the spiritual self make the new acquisitions a spontaneous, living, effortless experience. Ego means effort; spiritual self means effortlessness. This desirable effortlessness is not given by magic, however, for this would mean that the ego is not being transcended but avoided. The ego must change its lazy, resistant attitudes in order to transcend itself to become able to unify with the cosmic, greater self. The ego must lay the arduous groundwork until the real self can come through. This can be noted in every activity or skill. First there is always effort. It becomes pleasurable only when it seems, and actually is, “happening through you.”

If you are learning a manual task, the manual rules have to be learned until they become part of the ego; if a mental task, mental knowledge has first to be painstakingly acquired, often through quite mechanical processes. Then the new knowledge will become the person’s own and the spirit can use this newly expanded vision, knowledge, skill, energy, and accomplishment to play creatively. An artist who wants to bypass the effortfulness of learning the ground rules can never unfold any creative ability, no matter how real it may initially be. These creative abilities will wither because that person wants to cheat life.

The spiritual path itself demonstrates the identical principles. As mentioned before, the ego must learn and adopt attitudes compatible with the universal, divine ones. This is, as you know, not easy. The inspiration of the spiritual self is blocked off to the degree the ego is blindly involved in its negativity, including laziness, pride, selfwill, fear, wish to cheat life, and escapist tendencies. But as these tendencies are honestly recognized and gradually given up, the influx of the world of eternal truth, love, and beauty becomes possible.

The arduous task of making the ego flexible always comes first: teaching it, bending, changing it; making it receptive and vibrant; letting new life energy and creativity flow through it by identifying and abandoning the ego’s tricks. Whether it takes shape as new knowledge, new skills, or a new attitude toward life and the universe, this change always means a new territory has become your own.

People truly wither away when they remain in the narrow confines of their present state because they feel it is safe and they think they have eliminated the need for effort and investment. They do not permit life to regenerate them. Regeneration can happen only where inner movement exists. It always seems frightening at first to go beyond the ego’s present confines. The new territory is foreign, unknown. People want to avoid the unknown, and they would rather cower in fear of it than have the courage to learn about it and make it their own. To make the unknown known, outside as well as inside, is the beauty of the spiritual path.

The ego is under the illusion that to stay in the stagnant, narrow confines of the already known territory — for regardless of how much wider it may be compared to the territory of others, it is still narrower as compared to one’s potential — is easy and relaxing. To pull yourself up by your bootstraps and move beyond seems terribly tiresome. This feeling is illusory because the stagnant state is really a contraction, and contraction is by no means relaxing and restful, although it may seem so to the confused mind. True restfulness is always alive and effortlessly moving. This is impossible in a state of contraction. You can verify this by looking around you. The people who do the least are always the most tired. And the people who do most are always most energized and relaxed — provided their activity does not serve as an escape from the self.

Harmonious movement is not tiring or exhausting, although you may experience such symptoms at first, because to go from stasis to motion on any level first requires accepting a temporary effort with self-discipline, faith, courage, and humility until the effort becomes effortless. Spiritual movement is effortless. By spiritual movement I mean the movement of ultimate reality, of the totally unified entity. The stagnation is really very effortful, because it requires an enormous and often unconscious effort in order to sustain the resistance against the soul’s natural inclination to follow its destiny. This unconscious effort then manifests as tiredness, exhaustion, weakness, which furnish the excuse to remain still longer in the status quo. The ego uses the results of its own errors as tricks.

All life is movement, and movement is not effortful when the entity is in harmony with life. But movement seems temporarily effortful until this harmony has been established by reorienting the ego. You then move within the rhythm of your own life stream. When you can feel the rhythm of your life stream, you have already acquired a certain amount of self-awareness and you are already within the expansive movement.

Those who are on paths such as yours will find that some parts of them are already joining the cosmic movement; other parts still resist and stagnate. Your moving parts are the aware parts. These parts are capable of recognizing the significance of the resistance. These parts can meditate on seeking a deeper understanding of your task in life; on the meaning of your life in the light of this lecture. You will find greater motivation to request guidance so that your stagnating parts will yield to the moving parts. Little by little you will energize the contracted consciousness that has separated itself from the whole.

When I speak of ego, I do not wish to imply that it should be totally negated, denied, and insulted. The ego is part of divine consciousness and holds all aspects of the greater self from which it has separated itself, even if they are distorted and misused. The basic energy and consciousness of the ego is made of the same substance with which you ultimately reunite.

The ego must be healthy in order to venture beyond its present confines, to transcend itself, and learn and own as yet unknown spiritual territory. It needs to expand its knowledge, experience, and creative potential. In order to do this, the ego must adopt attitudes compatible with its original nature. All the tricks of the ego, all the negativity and evil that are embedded only in the ego, have to be recognized with a very incisive, sharp self-honesty for what they are. Denial, rationalization, and projection must be given up. The searchlight must be ruthlessly turned on the little self. Only when you use your ego consciousness to put the strong light of truth on other areas of your ego consciousness can you adopt healthy, truthful attitudes. Only a healthy ego can transcend itself and unify with the naturally healthy divine consciousness.

The weak, sick, distorted ego very often wants to give itself up simply because it cannot bear itself any longer. It adopts various forms of escape, such as drugs or other means of false transcendence. But such ego transcendence is highly dangerous and is just a variation of insanity. For insanity itself is the attempt of the ego to lose or transcend itself because it can no longer bear itself. In all these false and dangerous attempts, the entity always seeks to avoid effort, pain, inconvenience, and those aspects of life with which it does not agree or which it does not understand. It seeks to cheat, using shortcuts, which can never work and which exact a very high price. Consequently, the entity may hold on even tighter to the immobile, rigid state, perhaps for many incarnations, thus making healthy ego transcendence as impossible as the false kind.

You can succeed only by using the healthy part of the ego to shed light on the sick part; to use the honest part of the ego to shed light on the dishonest part. Then ego transcendence takes place in the safest possible way. Then you acquire new territory: a territory that was at first frighteningly foreign, unknown, and apparently dark but will become familiar and light. With this new safety, a sense of eternality is created in the self. The deepest feelings, knowledge, and experiences of life’s continuum will grow and automatically eliminate an enormous amount of pain and fear. But this growth cannot come cheaply. It requires full investment and commitment on your part. And whoever does this genuinely must reap the fruits in a most concrete way.

The greater your efforts become, the more of a spiritual force you lawfully elicit and make your own. Every step of truth and goodwill activates automatically and inexorably the power and creative spiritual force within and around you.

Blessings and love for all of you, my dearest ones.

1996 Edition

An End To A Means In The Defined

There were 'These Gates' that I have seen,

I walked through much like you,

in a Life I can't explain,

'cause lives before are abhorred.

As I know "Gates Magnificent"

'They' were built with what is different,

Open, Closed, I did stare,

for it seemed no-one was there.

The Workings 'Of' seemed to be,

a measure of eternity,

as if the balance was a Quest,

I watched 'Them' move with such great breath!!

Not Ornate but obviously Placed,

the Weight of Such showed such grace,

as 'They' opened Awe in Space,

I could not help but stay that day.

As I know you don't believe,

lives before can be a lead,

to a dream of what so naturally,

is progression for All to See.

In such sight,

my Third-Eye now,

I looked to See,

and it's not right.

The "Gates of Many" no-longer there,

I cannot believe I just stare,

'A Kingdom' fell to Earth in Night,

these 'Thresholds' are the truth of sight.

The emptiness I taste in fright,

do you know of this plight?

Could it be a Prophecy,

that the Heavens fall to All of Thee?

If 'These' riches now under feet,

reside in Whole to Total Rite,

are you aware of this Meet?

My sadness comes in Third-Eye sight,

why the fall in Just of night?

There is no residence in this place,

to be the host of such disgraced,

for most deny an Inner-Eye,

lacking ability to even try.

Who will know this Treasure lost,

as it fell at such cost,

not one did stop, surely this is a wicked plot,

as I witness this kingdom sought.

Religion is a Life to me,

I swore to "Know good"

I stood to be.

Never did I venture thought,

to believe in less than Wrought,

but if All has fallen to this earth,

than what I know is more than work.

I am not familiar with most ways,

it seems my birth just created Waves,

not Hello's but Tornado's stayed.

Upon arrival I felt wrecked,

the sight of family was so direct,

my Life I found in Their death threats.

I've had my breath taken from me,

I've had my small frame raped,

in dead of night and in plain sight.

I've witnessed horrors that change your mind,

I grew to know this life of mine,

as an adult I felt still jolts,

of men in want and so they took,

as I laid still and in one look,

ventured back in sight to stay put.

As I know I've learned "Not right"

but it seems that if you fight,

you will be hurt for just spite.

So as I state that life has raped,

me of more than a body sore,

my mind is in more pain,

at the sight of G_d's Kingdom,

falling in vain.

In the End, I guess it's all a sin,

but no one believes unless they have been,

in lives that trouble them from begin,

enhancing Senses to the fear when it's near.

The excuse that I hear,

resounds in silence of grinding gears,

for if Heaven resides here,

than 'All' that was imprisoned,

in Minds, in Cell, in Time, in Place,

will be free to join this Human Race.

No censure, no writ of order,

will come from what fell to earth,

only the grave of Death,

will know absurd,

as He rises upon your turf.

Do you know that Heaven was Closed,

so long ago that what fell had wings,

to settle in upon this place,

as if this Plan had an element of Ancient grace.

The "Gates of Mention" had shut,

in 'Their' dimension,

putting off man's ascension,

to places of no retention.

So as the dead do rise,

within your Life as lives you've been,

in denial of your sin,

within these makings I see a trend.

Leading to a bitter end,

delivering to you,

the City of which you seek,

as being beneath your feet.

No rotting Corpse to offend in present sight,

but the stench of ignorance seems your delight,

for the flesh of mind is an awakening of a different kind.

It is Real and in plain sight,

in every day reveal,

a 3-D dimensional field,

the only way for you to believe,

that in this Continue,

not everyone leaves.

Wretched are the ways of Man,

that merely reside in the land,

with no more knowledge of a plan,

than you ascend to a place,

that no-longer stands.

So as an out-reached hand,

is closed to determine move,

it will be inevitably set on each Horizon.

The trust to believe in what is greater than Thee,

will remain as a guide,

in light I see the dim view,

of the disaster that will befall you.

In a tempered violence,

numb to the Numbered kills,

the invasion will almost seem still,

overwhelming you in the night of Their Will.

As in History Civilizations do fall,

in absence of what is Natural,

communication is denied,

as sight in real proves the lines have been cut.

With the outage,

the Wire and Echo,

the satellite unknown,

directed by Done,

you may shout,

but there will be no where to run.

Belief will be waning,

as Innocence continues weighing,

the Rights and the Wrongs,

of Faiths that keep saying,

"Do it this way or We will kill you!!"

In every Belief or Religion in thee,

there is an unwritten rule:

Stand for the Belief of Another,

for it may not be Yours,

but it is Your duty and a grave sin if You turn Your back on them.

For you do not have to accept that path,

but you must respect the road traveled,

even in difference the claim,

nine times out of ten,

leads the same way.

Should you dismiss, ignore or persist,

in the Wipe-Out of this simple notion,

than what You hate will not rule You,

but come to be as the utter truth,

the origin of man will expose itself,

in it's wealth it will be the most hated religion,

on this Earth.

It is the karma of this law,

that what is hidden,

are secrets kept by instruct,

an Ancient Script.

As You play to an other's roar,

You will identify Yourself through strange actions,

and the Plenty of Your Kills.

The Veil will not be lifted,

for the persecuted bears no curtain to hide 'The Truth.'

The Secret is,

to know the wealth,

for the riches of Whomever this may be,

will exceed the limits of Humanity.

Their accountable will show,

in the persistence of the message that must flow,

without hatred, rage or wrath of an end that has No Go.

In their Letters it will worry of hope,

the chance of a whole,

produced by the payment of sum,

in total and not some strange run,

where burden is not Yours to shoulder.

The Words will produce in plain english,

that Their wish is not to deny but to invite,

to ignite better,

Two will Song,

the hymn of belong.

It will spell out the difference between,

Imagined, Expected and Delivered,

the Construct will just be,

intended not interpreted.

For in the Inscription there will be,

a Clear and Concise design,

that clearly You will deny,

and point it out as lies,

should it not be the Lair of Your Guise.

But because of this Erupt,

it will only further the Whipping of this Law.

Your religion or belief will begin to unravel at Your feet.

A prequel will be identified as;

"Stolen to Embolden"

this mere Text will cast your Translated opinion,

upon that which will prove to have been before.

The scarred remains of more will be found,

to brace the ground upon which You left,

the impaled remains of Men.

The burnt Scores will point to a greater Store,

an Entombed Title,

on a Rock with such apparent impact,

that You will fall to Your knees,

not for prayer but from Your own beguiled disbelief,

that in Antiquities are found,

the Ancients believed!!

Wisdom in Keeps,

of More than Minds,

but in Actual, in Original, In-Place,

a Scroll of know delight,

for it will also increase the plight of any Religion,

pointing at another and stating;

"FEAR!!"

It will come down to the most simple,

yet complex fight,

to ever display a War of Light,

and the answer remains,

in the dark!! 

A Crush

Alright, I admit. My crush is for Him.

Why not? It's the first one my family can't rot.

Up to me, my decision. To choose not a pigeon.

Has been a rough patch,

I'm caught.

He is a Man I won't meet; Impossible feat!

The safety of which felt so neat.

He cannot go cheat! Disappointing me; reap.

So clarity finds that Blunt is a relief.

From Family attacks, of sisters that rack,

any man, any guy that I might.....; Flee!

Each one that I met, was just their next bet,

of how long it took to bed him; Accept.

So, I did give it up. It was not my cup,

of tea, or coffee or sup.

One day I did hear, five years ago Dear,

a song that annoyed me so much.

Oh Beautiful rang, again and you sang,

of perfume I wear, I give up!

Este Lauder named fragrance,

that I did wear only, for year, upon years, I erupt!

Who is this man?

He is singing with band,

a song of mine to annoy?

Why did you rip off, the name it's a Tip off,

of what to do next, I declare!

I did not know your fame,

for it just came to name,

a Wedding Song? I replied in my hide.

No!! A Funeral Tune, Oh yes, it's full of gloom.

On did I trudge, through the store, didn't budge,

before I did claim your CD.

Low and behold, your name did not hold,

a memory of fame that I knew.

Excitement, I roared, inside I was bored,

I listened to it straight on through.

Again and again, a month spent on him,

to annoy the man in my home who would not move.

Freedom did come, my sister did run,

to aid me in the latest removal of him.

Mistake did she make, when she hit her take,

on someone that simply wasn't him.

Again, I did shout, "Get back!," I do doubt,

that this is the man for you to demand.

Now present at large, was one at no charge,

but anger did fill that sweet day.

I laughed and I played, that CD away,

she raged down beneath such display.

But onwards we marched, across the sweet marsh,

landing in Texas, Oh May.

Wrong time it was, she left me because,

dear Bluntie was still on display.

At stores, that would bore,

I had to abhor, my sister left me for Jamie's repore.

In the middle of no where,

I sat and I said,

"You've got to be kidding, its clear."

On "My Space" I saw, Bluntie's favorite hooray,

oh Beautiful sang it was clear.

There were songs that did play,

his face on display,

of all that this girl did fear.

I thought to myself,

oh,my, I did stealth,

a joke on a guy that I hear.

I thought it might pass, but to my aghast,

my other sister did near.

Again there goes Bluntie, upon what is funny,

Help Me! I'm laughing, oh DEAR.

My family is crazy, they do what to me? their lazy.

Go find your own man,

or your own CD plan.

But release my dear Jamie,

He isn't so plainly,

the guy that I'll meet in this year.

On went this insanely, for months I did jeer.

Please, find repose, I insist this, this year!

Oh NO, it got worse, I found I was cursed,

by a guy that rehearsed in a bathroom, not Hearst.

Although I was glad,

that my Soul Mate did have,

a problem with toilets and sinks.

I found that he copied,

my ways I did think; the obvious became so clear.

I kept right on walking, without me talking,

to watch how badly this seared.

The ones that thought,

I would near this man who is singing this year.

Don't you wonder, why they plunder,

on a guy I simply revered.

Almost to day, a five year tape,

of life that we're living not near.

Back to my story, for it is the glory,

of forgiveness and trouble I see.

I met a guy in random reply,

on notes to a dungeon, first year.

I took the date, for I wanted no rape,

at a place that Bars were a fear.

So off we did go, on that night I did show,

that Bluntie was the force of the year.

I thought it would work,

 to free me from quirks,

of men I felt sad for each year.

It simply must be the Blunt Force to thee.

Using again, what became a dear friend,

it did not work and I fuddled the gear.

This jealousy witnessed,

I had to be fitness,

for fucking got boring; a tear.

Dear friend I don't know,

a ready reply flowed,

on Internet access and safety he showed.

No response ever, no meeting was planned,

it's over, I'll move on from here.

Now I was stuck, in a bit of muck,

the shit did pile way up.

But, the teasing was clearly,

so pleasing and weirdly,

I think I did fall for this game.

However I thought, I just couldn't stop,

the morass of the illness was like.

They're jealous of all, you may have to fall,

for sisters did claim,

 we're Angels of Lear.

Such command of a Man,

that is free of this hand,

it's poker, I'm betting the band.

Everyone was on stage for the plan.

I had to stop writing, my written reverse,

I erased and deleted my words.

Treated with wishes of Lords and the like,

I trucked it all off in only one night.

The website did close,

the rules of repose,

didst change the way it did write.

I felt bad and uptight!

I got kicked off of J.B.'s site,

somehow I felt it was right.

Oh Well, it's not mine,

it's the Blunt Force behind.

A total truth would be,

a fight you see,

between what she said to me.

Blogging is difficult,

when you come from a cult,

and anger or rage you may see.

Innocent Me!!

LOL!!

I did retreat, for Billy declared,

I was a menace to the closed society,

of the Bluntie Board web site and more.

So off I went, in a huff that's not tough,

I'm free from all blame of thee.

(My dear Jamie)

Why use his name,

when it's just a game,

to catch my dear sisters in sheer.

That plainly play on my life,

with real proposed strife,

to kill me in Spirit and Soul.

Now I did come up missing,

my Heart did some glistening,

in another I found myself sound.

What a disaster,

I fell for a pastor,

of song and prose of the know.

Get out I did say, my heart its away,

give what is mine, did you find it Bluntie that's coming from behind?

Now do we applaud,

what was simply a nod,

a game to find out the truth about,

a family's reprise on the one with no eyes,

that is me.

For I never was, made 'ware of the joke,

that seemed to be happening back there.

A scapegoat I was,

it's my fault, I accept,

it's my job since whenever, who cares?

Why would I object?

I didn't know till five years ago, 

that all the disaster of family I held.

Unaware of my plight,

I take some delight,

in ignorance of mind; it's alright.

To not point the finger,

without factual ringer,

to bell with the sound of I might.

So, Mr. Blunt really,

became what is surely,

a knight in armor so bright.

Protecting a girl with a problem in Worlds,

of Family, and Sisters and Friends.

The laughter for them,

still doesn't end,

but in the here-after,

where funeral are nigh,

the voice that you'll hear cannot be denied.

The sound of a Muse is not I.

I've got two weeks,

to be what is weak,

on streets and in lines,

for cots and the signs,

to sleep the night for free.

It's all so exhausting,

this girl that is tired,

of all the ones,

that make her run,

accept the guy that is truly so fun.

Thanks for the show,

for I really do know,

we'll never meet, it's a "no go" to speak.

For Twin Souls are very simply a no.

Can I have my heart,

not on a chart,

just release what did start,

for a Man and this Tart.

No reply needed,

it's an address of the treated,

so cruelly and without what is right.

But it is my Life, and I do not mind,

the walk to the ones below,

they are tight.

So, 666 says, "Good Nite!" 

to find love.

It is just like a glove,

that hits you into a plight.

The pain of which is not for me,

to real, to long, I'm tired, I'm wrong.

To know what is right,

is to stick to the night,

where I scream in my mind,

for a door from behind,

to open and show,

a day without terror and smite.

Karen A. Placek 



S;DIUGGGGG VOZJ;ORiurC p:,

Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 199 An Unedited Lecture March 24, 1972 THE MEANING OF THE EGO AND ITS TRANSCENDENCE Greetings, blessed be all of you, my beloved friends. The force of love and truth, elicited by your seeking, is pouring forth to continue the sequence, to forge another link in the chain, to give you what you need at this juncture of your path. Man's average state of mind is a fragmented piece of consciousness. In this fragmented state he is cut off from reality. He inevitably lives in fear and limitation. Yet he believes that this is all there is to his life, and he frantically clutches at this limited, fragmented state. He stems against the natural inner movement of the soul to go beyond, to expand this limited state, because the split off ego consciousness fears that doing so will dissolve his life and annihilate his existence. He ardently protects this limited state of consciousness, while it is this very limitation that creates fear and suffering. This is, broadly speaking, man's plight. It is his task, in the cycle of incarnations, to reintegrate this split off ego consciousness and to regain forever wider and deeper portions of his real self, his cosmic existence with its unlimited, infinite possibilities for life experience, joy, and creation of the self. Man believes this split off ego consciousness to be his real self. He identifies immediately with his brain, his outer intelligence, his will, his mind, all the faculties immediately available, not knowing that to whatever degree he possesses these, he has in the past made them available for himself with effort and overcoming. For there was a state in which he possessed much less awareness, power to create, ability to experience joy. His consciousness was much more limited and confined. He had to use whatever consciousness he had to enlarge his faculties and to avail himself of as yet unused potentials and dormant possibilities. This must go on and on until there is no longer any split off fragment and until man has become one with ultimate reality and cosmic consciousness. The processes of this enlargement of self, of making apparently foreign territory his own domain, are the pathwork any valid pathwork. Ego means fragmentation. As I mentioned, it is the task of every entity who is caught in this fragmentation, and therefore in the cycle of being born and dying, to enlarge his field of operation, his perception, his awareness and his power to create. The difficulty of doing so is that in the limited state of the ego separation, enlargement of the ego, contrary to reality, appears as an annihilation of the ego -- that is, of man's very existence, of his sense of self. To penetrate this illusion, he needs all available force, commitment, good will, and help -- help that he must want and reach for. This is truly man's search and man's struggle. Only as he ventures forth step by step, overcoming the inherent and innate resistance to go beyond this separated present state, does he find out gradually that there is another life beyond the ego state. He then finds out that this other life is reality and this reality is not to be feared. It is good, it is to be utterly trusted. It means thatPathwork Guide Lecture No. 199 (An Unedited Lecture) Page 2 of 9 there is ongoing life, self-awareness, and ever increasing joy. He finds out that the limited ego state he so ardently protected is illusion, the illusion of death and aloneness. Awareness has to be fought for. It does not come easily nor gratuitously. Remaining in the isolated ego state may appear safe and easy, but it leads to stagnation and death -- ever reoccurring death. The ego uses any number of tricks in order to maintain its separated, limited state and in order to prevent moving beyond it. I should like to show what these aspects and tricks of the ego are. In the first place, the tricks of the ego are every conceivable negativity known to mankind: any fault, any violation of integrity, truth, love, and divine law. Since all these negativities and faults, as I have often pointed out, can be summed up in the triad of pride, self-will, and fear, I shall show how the ego-tricks use these traits in order to prevent self-transcendence. The fear of the ego to lose its present state of existence, i.e., its self-awareness, is so great that it displaces the instinct of self-preservation. The ego uses this instinct in the battle to preserve its present awareness. Fear always blinds and distorts truth and reality. Thus the ego maintains itself with pride. It maintains its separate state by creating an unreal, artificial conflict between the self and others. "I am better than you," "I am more than you," or "I must prove to the world how admirable, that is, better than others, I am," "I must outdo others," "I must not be worse than others," "My interests counteract those of others, and vice versa" -- all these attitudes are pridefully put into the service of maintaining the separated state of the ego. It is always "I versus you," and this inevitably creates a spirit of one-upmanship. Whether or not an individual happens, in his present incarnation, to be further in development or lagging behind another, to use this fact as a wedge between one's own ego and those of others is completely missing the point. For, in principle, there is no differentiation. It does not even take very long on the path to find out that it is only on the most superficial level that one's interests conflict with those of others. What is really right and good can be seen right underneath the surface. According to divine law, this is right for all concerned. Therefore all measuring, comparing, competing, striving to up others makes the confinement of separation even tighter and increases the illusion that this pitiful existence is all there is to life. Also, man's prevalent tendency to live for the sake of appearance, rather than for the sake of truth, for the sake of his real feelings and interests goes under the same category of pride. The illusion of the separated ego state is so strong at this point that it seems more important to man to create an impression than to even consider what a tragic, wasteful sacrifice he makes for an entirely imaginary gain that can never, never be made. All attitudes of mask and defense, of pretense and false shame (shame of exposure, embarrassment about real feelings and one's inner reality regarding the spiritual self) belong to the category of pride; they are tricks of the ego to maintain its limited state. Under self-will belong all aspects of stubbornness, resistance, spite, defiance, rigidity. All these attitudes connote a stiffening up against change -- this is against expanding into new spiritual territory. These traits express, in effect, "I will stay where and as I am." The trick of the ego is to make this appear as desirable and to make open, flexible movement appear threatening and/orPathwork Guide Lecture No. 199 (An Unedited Lecture) Page 3 of 9 humiliating. Pride and fear must necessarily be coupled to self-will, just as self-will must be present where either of the other two dominates. Every one of these aspects harbors the other two as well. The refusal to move may be evaluated on a more superficial level and by dint of more personal idiosyncrasies and neuroses as spite against a specific human being or human beings -- let us say parents or parent substitutes or general authority figures. Or there might be a spiteful attitude toward life itself. But on a deeper level it is the ego's trick to remain in the isolated, separated status quo position. Under the category of fear belong all worry, anxiety, and apprehensiveness. The fear exists not only in preventing the going beyond the limited, confused state, per se; the trick of the ego is to make this move appear threatening and life-annihilating. Worrying and anxiety are also ego-tricks in that they prevent the joyousness, peace, and freedom of the cosmic reality to be gained when the present state is expanded. The entire topic of negative intentionality we have recently explored is part and parcel of ego-trickery to preserve the limited present state. Whatever the specific negative intentionality may be, it always indicates spite -- hence self-will, which always blurs the real view and falsifies the situation, so that all desirable life experience is denied. Other tricks of the ego to maintain its present "safe" position are to deny pleasure, bliss, joy, expansion, creative movement into life. The fear of all these positive states is obviously also a trick of the ego. This is such a well-known phenomenon, applying to all human beings, that it can easily be observed as applying to the common state of mankind. Other tricks of the ego are: inattentiveness, lack of power of concentration, abstractedness, absent-mindedness. These attitudes deny the focusing necessary for the ego to transcend itself. To transcend its present limited state, the ego requires a good deal of one-pointed focusing, of being all there, as it were. Laziness, tiredness, passivity are tricks of the ego. They make movement impossible and make it appear as if movement was undesirable and exhausting. We shall come back to this later. Fear of exposure, denial of showing the real feelings do not only go under the heading of pride, but they directly perpetuate isolation and therefore are being used as ego-tricks to deny oneness. Negative reactions to the negativity of others is another trick of the ego to maintain its isolated state. The moment there is negativity, the energy system functions in such a way as to deny the expansion of the ego which would effectuate self-transcendence. It denies the joyousness of true being by making something more of other people's behavior than need be. It cuts off the vision of the real life that is beyond the limited present state. Only the isolated entity experiences the terror of finiteness. Distrust and suspiciousness are not only part of the general fear that makes the ego wish to remain in the unmoving, present state and resort to trickery in order to defy the inherent naturalPathwork Guide Lecture No. 199 (An Unedited Lecture) Page 4 of 9 movement toward the entity's ultimate fate; while fear (distrust) is the motivating force, the ego simultaneously uses distrust as a trick to effectuate its wish for nonmovement. The ego assumes a preposterous and paradoxical position. It is intrinsically unhappy just because of its finiteness, or what seems finiteness in this present limited state. It is self-evident that the ego can only see what is within its range, within its present scope of awareness, within its present field of operation. And what it sees is, to varying degrees, limited and falsified. Hence it sees and experiences finiteness, the disconnected, meaningless universe in which the little ego is powerless and senselessly suffering. This perception of life can only alter to the exact degree as the ego overcomes the temptation to stay put. But the paradoxical position of the ego state is to fight for remaining in the very state that is often unbearably lonely, fearful, and meaningless. Unfathomable death, at the end of each living period, is terrifying, and although it is possible to escape from and deny this terror, it cannot be dissolved as long as the ego remains in its present narrow confines. Sooner or later everyone is faced with this terrifying illusory end, both with his own and with that of others. But even if this terror is not acute and man escapes from it, it remains a gnawing force in his soul, a force that must always exist until the ego gives up its resisting position. In spite of the extremely uncomfortable and undesirable position of the limited, confined ego, it clings to the very condition and to the very state that makes true vision beyond the imaginary line of demarcation impossible. This is the sickness of the ego state and the perversion of it -- to cling to the very thing it battles against. All of my friends can easily recognize themselves in this description. For the pathwork makes this incongruity of the human state very obvious. I believe it will help you all greatly to see your plight in this light and to know that this is a universal state which you are called upon to transcend. On this path, you must be concerned with and grope for an understanding of how to transcend this ego state, and what it really means. Isolation and separateness are, without a doubt and without exception, painful and tragic -- tragic because unnecessary and ironical because the ego clings to what it hates and what hurts it most. It lacks the discipline and the perseverance, the commitment and the faith to venture beyond its present scope of awareness. Suffering must exist as long as you cling to and indulge in this present state. As long as all the tricks of the ego are acted out, rationalized, denied, perpetuated, and nurtured -- as is usually the case -- man cannot help but suffer. You all know, my friends, and many of you have indeed experienced it, that every step forward on the path reveals new vistas which are very real, much more real than the previous state that you thought was the ultimate reality. Every step of the way, this newly gained reality opens life wider and fuller for you. The result is more joy, more peace, more consciousness, more understanding of the beautiful deep meaning of life, more creativity, and more intrinsic knowledge of life's eternality versus the illusion of death, the illusion of finiteness. But every one of these steps could only have been won by a tremendous amount of investment on your part. He who still wants indulgence and easy, cheap results can never, never gain this new state. He will look wistfully beyond, yet doubt that anything else could exist that would warrant the effort and the lowering of his pride. This doubt becomes then the excuse for thePathwork Guide Lecture No. 199 (An Unedited Lecture) Page 5 of 9 status quo that is artificially maintained. This is the sin against life, defeating life's natural movement toward evolution and unification. Discipline, courage, humility, and the ability to commit yourself -- these are not attitudes you do not possess, my friends. Everyone of you possesses every conceivable attribute in the universe. The question is only, do you wish to avail yourself of these potentialities within you, or do you wish to claim that you do not possess them and that someone has to magically "give" them to you? You often have the misplaced and confused ideas that self-discipline hampers your freedom, and, conversely, that the free person does not discipline himself. Nothing could be further from the truth. Freedom, in its real sense, is unthinkable without discipline. And, conversely, the person who indulges himself and who rejects discipline is unavoidably dependent, weak, powerless, and consequently afraid. He lacks freedom. Freedom can only be gained to the degree one uses voluntary self-discipline -- uses it for his own sake and not in order to appease and to appear good in the eyes of others. The latter attitude often leads to either actual or imaginary discipline being imposed upon the person by others. When such imposition happens -- and this is of course undesirable -- it is always a result of the denial of voluntary self-discipline which goes together with self-responsibility. Every expansion must be fought for with self-discipline, by overcoming the imbedded resistance against expansion. The discipline must be used for stringent recognition of the ego-tricks and against giving in to them. This expansion is always a step beyond a known territory. The ego in its present state (which varies of course from human being to human being) is a result of what man has already gained. The "territory" he had gained determines his degree of functioning, the scope of his experience and of his awareness. When I speak of "territory," I mean a state of awareness and of available creative life force and influx from the real world, all of which make experiencing life deeper and more meaningful. The word "territory" is thus not to be understood in a geographical sense, but in a total sense. The fences around this territory indicate the degree of the ego's self-transcendence. Every incarnation, on whatever level this may pertain, requires the entity to increase the scope of his "field of operation," to widen the fences around the fragmented ego, to bring in more reality from the world beyond the illusory confinement. Indirectly this applies to all levels. Even the most mundane, outer, physical, and intellectual knowledge and skills to be acquired increase in some way the present scope of operation and life experience and thus indirectly contribute to the total task of self-transcendence. The acquisition of new knowledge and skills also demands the cultivation of some of the attitudes necessary for self-transcendence. And every bit of new knowledge or a new skill, in one way or another, yields, directly or indirectly, more spiritual power and awareness, more experience of joy and realization of your own adequacy and potentiality. To acquire new knowledge or skills on whatever level always means overcoming laziness, the temptation to succumb to the line of least resistance. It means self-discipline; it often means hard work (the more desirable the new aspect of life is, the more real and durable, the more investment of work is necessary), trial and error, the ability to convert a failure into success. It means perseverance, patience, faith; it means overcoming fear until the new thing becomes one's own, natural "possession," until it becomes part of the personality, a "second nature," as the saying goes.Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 199 (An Unedited Lecture) Page 6 of 9 The ego's task is always first to accept the difficulties, the hardship, the overcoming, the learning process. Only when the ego has learned the more mechanical aspects of the venture can the influx of the spiritual self make the new acquisitions a spontaneous, living, effortless experience. Ego means effort; spiritual self means effortlessness. However, this desirable effortlessness is not given by magic, for this would mean that the ego is not being transcended, but avoided. The ego must change its own lazy, resistant attitudes in order to transcend itself and become compatible to unify with the cosmic, greater self. The ego must lay the arduous ground work until the real self can come through. This can be noted in every activity or skill. First there is always effort. It becomes pleasurable only when it seems, and actually is, "happening through you." If it is a manual task, the manual rules have to be learned until they become part of the ego. If it is a mental task, mental knowledge has to be painstakingly acquired first through often quite mechanical processes. Then the new knowledge will become the person's own, and the spirit can use this newly acquired expansion with its accompanying wider vision, knowledge, skill, energy, and accomplishment, to play creatively. An artist who wants to by-pass the effortfulness of learning the ground rules can never unfold his real creative ability, no matter how real it may initially be. These creative abilities will wither because he wants to cheat life. The spiritual path itself demonstrates these identical principles. As mentioned before, the ego must learn and adopt attitudes compatible with the universal, divine ones. This is, as you know, not easy. The influx and the inspiration of the spiritual self are blocked off to the degree the ego is blindly involved in its laziness, pride, self-will, fear, negativity, wish to cheat life, tendency to escape, etc. But when these tendencies are being honestly recognized and gradually given up, the influx of the world of eternal truth, love, and beauty becomes possible. So what comes first is always the arduousness of making the ego flexible; teaching it, bending and changing it; making it receptive and vibrant; letting new life energy and creative flow come through to it by identifying and abandoning its tricks. Whether it be a new knowledge, a new skill, a new attitude toward life and the universe, this changing of the ego always means that a new territory has become your own. He who withers in the narrow confines of his present state because he feels this is safe and thereby eliminates the need for effort and investment, truly withers away. He does not permit life to regenerate him, which can only happen when inner movement exists. It always seems at first frightening to go beyond the present ego-confines. New land is unaccustomed, foreign, unknown. Man wants to avoid the unknown and rather cower in fear of it than have the courage for making it known, making it his own. To make the unknown known, outside as well as inside, that is the beauty of the spiritual path. The ego is under the illusion that to stay in the stagnant, narrow confines of the already known territory (regardless of how much wider it may be compared to the territory of others, it is still narrower as compared to one's potentials and the waiting task) is easy, relaxing, restful, effortless. To get yourself up by your bootstraps and moving beyond seems terribly tiresome. This feeling is an illusion because the stagnant state is really a manifestation of contraction, and contraction is by no means relaxing and restful although it may seem so to the confused mind because of its immobility. But true restfulness is always alive and moving -- effortless moving! AndPathwork Guide Lecture No. 199 (An Unedited Lecture) Page 7 of 9 this is impossible in a state of contraction. You can verify this by looking around you: the people who do least are always most tired. And the people who do most are always most energized, restful, and relaxed (provided that their activity does not serve as an escape from the self). Harmonious movement is not tiring or exhausting, although the first manifestations may indeed give such symptoms to you, because to go from an unmoving state to a moving state -- on whatever level -- requires at first the acceptance of temporary effort with self-discipline, faith, courage, and humility until the effort becomes effortless. Spiritual movement is effortless. By spiritual movement I mean the movement of ultimate reality, of the totally unified entity. The stagnant state of nonmovement is really very effortful because stagnation requires an enormous amount of (often unconscious) effort in order to sustain the resistance against the natural inclination of the soul to follow its destiny. This unconscious effort then makes itself known as tiredness, exhaustion, weakness, which furnish the excuse to remain even more in the status quo. The ego uses as tricks the results of its own errors. You know that all life is movement and movement is not effortful when the entity is in harmony with his life. But it seems temporarily effortful until this harmony is being established by reorienting the ways of the ego. You then move within the rhythm of your own life stream. When you can feel the rhythm of your life stream, you have already acquired a certain amount of self-awareness, and you are already within the movement of expansion. Those who are on a path such as yours will find that some aspects of yourself are already within the cosmic movement; other aspects still resist, stagnate, and hold. The moving part of you is also the aware part. That part is capable of recognizing the meaning of the resistance to movement. That part can meditate in the way I just explained: on seeking a deeper understanding of your task in life; on the meaning of your life in the light of this lecture. You will find greater motivation to request guidance so that the stagnating part in you will yield to the moving part. Little by little you will energize the contracted consciousness that has separated itself from the whole. As I speak of ego, I do not wish to convey that the ego as such is to be totally negated, denied, and insulted. The ego is a part of divine consciousness and holds all aspects of the greater self from which it has separated itself, even if they are distorted and misused. The basic energy and consciousness of the ego is made of the same substance with which you ultimately unite once again. As I said elsewhere in a different context, the ego must be healthy in order to transcend itself, in order to venture beyond its present confines and make known and your own the as yet unknown spiritual land, knowledge, experience, creative potentialities. In order to do this, the ego must adopt attitudes that are compatible with its original nature. All the tricks of the ego, all the negativity and the evil that are imbedded strictly in the ego, have to be recognized for what they are with a very incisive, sharp self-honesty. The indulgence of denial, of glossing over, of rationalization and projection must be given up. The searchlight must be ruthlessly turned onto the little self. Only when you can put the strong light of truth -- with your ego consciousness -- on other aspects of your ego consciousness can these other aspects adopt healthy and truthful attitudes. Then the ego gradually becomes healthy, and only the healthy ego can transcend itself and unify with the of course always healthy divine consciousness.Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 199 (An Unedited Lecture) Page 8 of 9 The weak, sick, distorted ego very often wants to give itself up just because it cannot bear itself any longer. The burden of itself is too heavy. Then various forms of ego-escape, such as drugs or other means of false ego transcendence, are being adopted. But such ego transcendence is highly dangerous and is just a variation of insanity. For insanity itself is the attempt of the ego to lose or transcend itself because it can no longer bear itself. In all these false and dangerous attempts, the entity always seeks to avoid effort, pain, inconvenience, and those aspects of life with which it does not agree or which it does not understand. It seeks cheating short cuts which can never work and which require a very high price. The subsequent reaction of the entity may be to hold on even tighter to the immobile, rigid state, perhaps for many incarnations, thus making healthy ego transcendence as impossible as the false one. The only way is to use the healthy part of the ego to shed light on the sick part, to use the honest part of the ego to shed light on the dishonest part. Then ego transcendence takes place in the safest possible way. Then new territory is being acquired -- territory that was first frighteningly foreign, unknown, and apparently dark will become known, familiar, light. With this new safety, a sense of eternality is being created in the self: the deepest feeling, knowledge, and experience of life's continuum grows and thereby an enormous amount of pain and fear are automatically eliminated. But this cannot come cheaply. It requires every investment and commitment on your part. And he who does it genuinely must reap the fruits in a most concrete and tangible way. The greater your efforts become, the more of a spiritual force you lawfully elicit and make your own. Every step of truth and good will activates automatically and inexorably the powerful and creative spiritual force within and around you. Blessings and love for all of you, my dearest ones.