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What Is the Path?
 
A journey through the known into the unknown regions of the soul is similar to the quest told in fairy tales. The ignorant hero or heroine sets out from the familiar, everyday world because of a longing to find a greater life than the ordinary routine of a limited existence. Frightening encounters, tests of all kinds follow. If you pass the tests, you find happiness. The reward is wealth and a life partner; you become king or queen: a fulfilled adult.
 
The inner quest, if taken seriously, also takes courage, also traverses dark regions, and also leads to maturity—and the trea sure is also always found. Just as in the fairy tales the hero doesn’t sneak around the dragon but fights him, and doesn’t run away from the old witch but befriends her, you, too, must meet the destructive forces within yourself and deal with them.
In this lecture the Guide shows how to follow the longing and liberate the dormant powers within yourself, so that you come upon the treasure of your wise, loving, inner Godself.
 
 
Greetings and welcome, my friends. Blessings for every one of you. In this lecture I would like to discuss the path to the fulfillment of your deepest longings.
 
Longing for a Larger and More Fulfilling State of Consciousness
 
Every human being senses an inner longing that goes deeper than the longings for emotional and creative fulfillment, although these are, of course, part of the deeper and more essential desire. This longing comes from sensing that another, more fulfilling state of consciousness and a larger capacity to experience life must exist.
 
As you translate this longing into conscious terms, you may become involved in confusion and contradiction. Confusions and apparent contradictions come from the dualistic consciousness of the human mind. The dualism is always present, for humans perceive reality in terms of either/or, good or bad, right or wrong, black or white. This way of perceiving life is at best only half true: One can perceive only fragments of reality; the full truth can never be found. Truth always comprises more than what the dualistic way of seeing reality can grasp.
 
One confusion might be: “Am I longing for something unreal? Would it be perhaps more realistic and more mature to give up this longing and accept that life is just this flat, dismal, gray place? Do we not hear over and over that acceptance is necessary in order to be at peace with oneself and life? Therefore I should really abandon this longing.”
 
The way out of your confusion can only be found when you take a step beyond the dualism implicit in this dilemma. It is true that you must accept your present state. It is true that life, as it manifests, cannot be perfect. Yet this fact is not what truly makes you unhappy, rather it is your demand that life should be perfect and be handed to you in its perfection that creates a problem. If you go deeply enough, you will inevitably discover that there is a part of you that denies pain and frustration; a place where you are angry and spiteful because there is no loving authority who will eliminate undesirable experiences for you. Thus it is true that your longing for this utopian kind of happier state is unrealistic and should be abandoned.
 
The False Desire
 
But does this truly mean that the longing per se stems from immature, greedy, or neurotic attitudes? No, my friends, it does not. There is an inner voice telling you there is much, much more to your life and yourself than you are capable of experiencing at this time.
 
How then can we find clarity about what is real and what is false about your deepest longing? The desire is false when your personality wishes love and fulfillment, perfection and happiness, or pleasure and creative expansion without paying the price of strictest self-confrontation. It is false when you do not assume the responsibility for your present state, or the state you long for. For example, if you feel sorry for yourself because of your unfulfilled life, and if you in any way blame others for your present state, no matter how wrong those others may be, whether your parents, your peers, your associates, or life as a whole, then you do not assume responsibility. If this is the case, then in some way you also wish to receive the new and better state as an unearned reward. You may try to be a good little obedient follower of a powerful authority figure in order to be rewarded. Since the reward in reality can never come from the outside, no matter what you do, you must feel disappointed, resentful, cheated, and angry, and you will resort again and again to your old, destructive patterns that are in fact responsible for the state that creates your unfulfilled longing.
 
The Realistic Longing
 
The longing is realistic when you start from the premise that the clue to fulfillment must lie in you; when you wish to find the attitudes in you that prevent you from experiencing life in a fulfilled and meaningful way; when you interpret the longing as a message from the core of your inner being, sending you on a path that helps you to find your real self.
 
However, when the inner message of longing is misinterpreted by the negative, greedy, ungiving and demanding personality, confusion sets in. The longing is then put into channels of unrealizable fantasies of magic. You believe fulfillment is supposed to be given to you, rather than attained through the courage and honesty of looking at yourself as you now are, even at areas you would rather avoid. If a life situation is painful and you react with rage, complaints, and other defenses against cleanly experiencing this pain, you are not in truth about your present state. But if you just let the pain be and feel it, without playing games like “it will annihilate me,” or “it will last forever,” the experience will release powerful creative energies to increasingly work for you in your life and open the channels to your spiritual self. Feeling the pain will also yield a deeper, fuller, and wiser understanding of the connections between cause and effect. For instance, you will see how you attracted this particular pain. Such insight may not come immediately, for the more you force it, the more it will elude you. But it will come if you stop the inner fighting and resisting.
 
Do not abandon the longing itself. Take it seriously. In fact, cultivate it and learn to understand it, so that you will follow its message and take the inner path to your core; go through that part which you want to avoid, which is the real culprit solely responsible for your less than fulfilled and joyful state.
 
Do not abandon the longing that comes from the sense that your life could be much more, that there is a state in which you can live without painful, tortured confusions, where you can function on a level of inner resilience, contentment, and security, where you are capable of deep feelings, of blissful pleasure and can express them, where you are capable of meeting life without fear because you no longer fear yourself. You will, therefore, find life, even its problems, a joyful challenge. If your inner problems can become a challenge that gives spice to your life, the ensuing peace will be all the more sweet. The tackling of these problems will give you a sense of your own strength, resourcefulness, and creative ability. You will feel the spiritual self flowing through your veins, in your thoughts, in your vision and your perceptions, so that decisions will be made from the center of your being. When you live this way, occasional outer problems are the salt of your life and become almost pleasurable. But the times of outer problems will become less frequent, and peaceful, joyous, creative living will become the norm.
 
Learning to Endure the State of Bliss
 
Right now, the saddest part of your longing is that deep inside you know how your own body and soul are not even capable of accepting and sustaining intense pleasure at this time. Pleasure exists on all levels: spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental. However, spiritual pleasure, separated from the levels of everyday functioning, is an illusion, because true spiritual bliss encompasses the total personality. The personality must therefore learn to endure a state of bliss. This it cannot do unless it learns to endure whatever is locked inside the psyche now: pain, meanness, malice, hate, suffering, guilt, fear, terror. All these must be transcended. Then, and then only, can the human personality function in a blissful state. Your longing to experience more pleasure is a message for you to embark on a road that affords you the possibility of being in bliss.
 
The state of existence I described need not be given up as unrealistic or wishful thinking. It need not be given up because you will earn it and make it your own by going through whatever in you prevents you from experiencing it. This state already exists as a dormant potential within you. It is not something that can be given to you by others, or acquired through learning or effort. It unfolds organically as a byproduct of your going on a path such as I am privileged to show you.
 
This brings us to the whole question of what this path is. This path is not new: It has existed in many different forms for as long as human beings have lived on this earth. The forms and the ways must change as humanity evolves, but the fundamental path remains the same. The particular path—the “Pathwork”—in which I guide you is anchored in ancient and perennial wisdom and yet it is also new. It offers help for your psychological and spiritual growth at this present, critical stage in humanity’s evolution.