Category: Spirituality

Excerpt by Eva Pierrakos, from “Fear No Evil – The Pathwork Method of Transforming the Lower Self”

“When individuals come to the state of deliberately and consciously choosing to commit themselves to the divine will and reality, then the groundwork has been laid for certain vital changes to occur in their inner and outer lives. This is a commitment to the all-consciousness indwelling in every creature. It can be called by any name you choose: God, universal consciousness, the real self, the inner self—whatever name you give to that which transcends the little ego. When this whole-hearted commitment is made totally, then certain things begin to happen in one’s life. Obviously, one reaches this state not by crossing a sharply defined line, but through a gradual process. Before describing this process, I wish to say that you must not be misled by the fact that you may consciously have made such a commitment, and yet find no great inner or outer change occurring in your life.

Some of you may be very committed to God on a conscious level, but you may not realize at all that there are other levels in you where this is not the case. You may find it very easy to believe on a merely conscious level that this commitment to God is what you want. Consciously you may be full of goodwill and really mean it. But unless you have come to experience the contradictory levels within you where you do not wish that, or where you only wish it on your own ego terms which defeats the very act of self-surrender, you will want to balk. Unless you acknowledge your contrariness, fear, selfwill, and pride, your conscious commitment will always be blocked. Unless you own up to the contrary ego level hidden behind your goodwill, you may not even understand why certain results are still lacking despite your conscious commitment to truth, to God, to love. This awareness is extremely important, and the pathwork deals with it in a very intensive way in order to help you avoid one of the most insidious obstructions: self-deception.

We search for and bring out that negative part of the self which says, “I will not.” You will learn the courage, humility, and honesty to expose this part—the part that even says, “I want to resist. I want to be spiteful. I want to have it all my way, or else!” Only when the secret crevices of your psychic substance yield up and expose these areas can you begin—often with a lot of struggle—to change this very negative level, this darker part of the personality. When this part remains hidden, you are split and do not understand why your positive endeavors fail to go further.

Then there comes a point when you have won this particular battle. At this stage you can wholeheartedly embrace and trust the surrender to divine consciousness.

But again, this does not come in one fell swoop. At first this surrender must be fought for every time. You need self-discipline to remind yourself. Although resistance is gone, the outer self is still conditioned to the old functioning and automatically forges ahead on the top level of the mind. At this stage you need to acquire a new habit pattern. It takes time. Perhaps when you are in real trouble, in a state of crisis, you will remember to let go and let God. But in ordinary life, in your everyday chores, this does not yet occur to you. Perhaps you can do it where you are relatively free, but you still find your old obstinacy, distrust, and forgetfulness where problems persist. Only little by little do you reach the state where a new habit pattern is instituted, where the act of self-surrender to the all is actualized, where it manifests and where it permeates all your thoughts and perceptions, your decisions and actions, your feelings and reactions.

First let me speak about the relationship between your inner and outer life. A lot of confusion exists among people about this topic. There are those who claim only the inner life is important. They prohibit the inevitable movement from the inner to the outer life because they do not see the limitation and actual falsity of this idea. If unification and divine process are truly in movement, the inner content must express itself in outer form. In short, the outer life must mirror the inner life in every possible respect. But if your consciousness ignores this truth, or even strongly embraces the opposite belief that the outer does not matter, then you prohibit the flow of the whole process. If this happens, the more radiant energetic matter cannot express itself on the levels of coarser matter and thereby refine it.

The false concept that the outer level does not matter encases the inner spiritual truth and beauty behind a wall, separating it from the material reality. The individual with this false concept begins to see a dichotomy between the two which are really one. Many movements and spiritual schools of thought preach asceticism and the denial of the outer life under the guise that this furthers inner spiritual life. This distortion is a reaction to the equally distorted opposite extreme, which position claims that outer form is more important than inner content, and may even negate that an inner reality or content exists at all. Instead, it asserts that only outer form matters. True inner growth must eventually also manifest outwardly, though not necessarily with the speed designated by the outer-oriented person, who in expecting an instant change is making mistakes in judgment. It is certainly possible to express outer form without it being a direct expression of inner content. You must therefore be careful in your evaluations.

These two distortions are faulty counter-reactions, each one attempting to eliminate the other by misunderstanding its own. This phenomenon can occur on all subjects as long as consciousness is entrapped in dualistic illusion. During different eras and civilizations, and under different cultural conditions, one of these opposite distortions may be adopted until the pendulum swings to the other. Only a truly connected, self-actualizing and unified person expresses outer form as an inevitable sequence of inner content.

When the outer form exists without the inner content, it is a temporary cover that must break down, even though it resembles the glorious perfection of divine reality and its expressions. Again, this is a process that repeats itself in many areas throughout human development. However, it is an ongoing law that all false covers must crack and crumble. When outer form exists unconnected with an organic inner content, it must disintegrate. If it exists on faulty premises based on appearance, on confusing the outer life with the inner, then the outer form must first crumble before it can be rebuilt as an organic expression of the inner movement and content. Only when the outer form has crashed and the inner chaos been exposed and thoroughly eliminated, can inner beauty build outer beauty, inner harmony build outer harmony, and the inner abundance build outer abundance. A clear vision of this principle is also necessary for creating a visualization of your own movement which can then manifest in your outer life as a result of your inner process.

I shall now discuss specific manifestations that take place in a person who is already deeply anchored in the process of actualizing the divine life into his or her ego consciousness. What are the inner and outer attitudes, manifestations, and expressions of such a person? All decisions, big or small, are made on the basis of self-surrender, where the little self surrenders to the godself. It steps aside and allows the inner wisdom to permeate it. In this process the personality realizes that there is nothing that is unimportant. Every thought, every opinion, every interpretation, every mode of reacting is given a chance to be permeated by the greater consciousness.

At this stage the resistance to pay attention to everything that occurs is overcome; a new habit has been formed so that the divine process is now self-perpetuating. It is so much part of the whole person that it operates even on those rare occasions when the personality forgets to establish the contact, when, perhaps, an old raw area might still flare up and push the personality in the wrong direction. The inner self is sufficiently freed to manifest so that it can send forth warnings, disagreement, advice—and then leave the decision of whether or not to follow such advice to the outer personality. This is already a state of grace.

Confidence and trust have been established as a result of repeated proof that divine reality brings truth, wisdom, goodness, and joy. At first, the divine will is not trusted. It is confused with untrustworthy parental authority, which may often have proclaimed something as good for the child that really proved not to be so. At the stage in question this confusion no longer exists. The self is fully aware that divine will is truly in accordance with all that the heart may possibly desire. This trust grows gradually every time you overcome your resistance and go into the apparent abyss of surrender, giving up narrow selfwill.

This self-perpetuating divine process brings a vital revolutionary change into the entire person. I can touch upon only a few of its manifestations. Thoughts of truth will be sent forth into your being, notwithstanding the limited thoughts you still habitually follow. You will hear an inner voice instructing you with a wisdom and a unifying spirit that your outer self cannot possibly produce.The answers and revelations will show the oneness and unity of all, which will completely eliminate fear, anxiety, friction, and despair.

Surrendering the knowledge of the limited ego to the knowledge of the deeper self, so as to exert all energy, courage, honesty, and self discipline toward making the deeper knowledge self-perpetuating, leads to ultimate fulfillment. Without this as the essential foundation, no joy, pleasure, or fulfillment can exist for long. Even while they do exist, the fulfillment becomes unbearable and finally cannot be accepted.

You will find an immense security. This is a security you can only gain when you discover the reality of the spiritual world within you and operative around you. You will then know the deep peace of the meaning of your life and of all life. You will intuitively know the connections and be permeated by a sense of fulfillment and safety that surpasses all words. All this will then no longer be a theory or belief that you cling to or deny, but an experiential fact which you can recognize again and again. There is always a way out of every darkness and therefore never a reason to despair. You will know that nothing happens without good cause and that you are always capable of using whatever you experience to heighten your blissful life. Dark spots become opportunities for further light and no longer need to be avoided, whether they be pain, guilt, fear, or whatever. Again and again you will experience the wide open system of creation.

You will know and make use of your own creative powers, rather than feeling a helpless object in a fixed world. Peace and knowledge of the rightness of life come from realizing that your world, your experience, your life is your creation. This opens many new doors. You no longer live in the two-dimensional world of either/or. You avail yourself of the many-faceted reality at your disposal.

The confidence and fearlessness in which you then live necessarily release an immense amount of energy and joy. As you lose your fear of pain because you can experience pain, your pain ceases to exist. As you lose your fear of anger and hate because you can accept your own anger and hate, they no longer exist. The energy is now free for other, better expressions. You now become capable of pleasure and joy and no longer need to reject them. Instead of creating loneliness, you can create relationships: the bliss of the most intimate relationship with one mate, and the satisfaction of deep, open friendships. Your every pore and every cell are expressions of a consciousness which is now in harmony with your god-consciousness.”