Spiritual Wisdom:

"All doubt is evil. But since evil has no permanent substance, you can easily dispel it. You need to bring your positive aggression to bear upon it, which is very contrary to the usual habit. Usually all aggression is put into the service of lower self aims, while an apathetic, passive attitude exists vis-a-vis the good you desire to receive from life. At the same time, it is equally true to state that you are passive and apathetic when you are enveloped in the negativities that stem from your unpurified self and that therefore draws evil forces to you. It then seems much easier to let all aggression out in a destructive way and give in to these negative influences, without using any of your aggressive aspects to either dispel them or to assert the positive forces within and around you." (PL #258)
 

Another manifestation of the new influx I wish to discuss now is exposure. Again you can see this aspect individually and collectively. It can hardly be missed, it is so obvious. Through psychology, and recently through profound spiritual work, exposure of self has reached new depths as never before in your history, with the exception of the initiates, the few minorities in different cultures. Now exposure of deeper levels of self has reached unprecedented degrees. Even the least knowledgeable people have attained a certain degree of awareness that there are deeper levels of being that determine their lives. This is now being taken for granted, but it was by no means always so. This ability to explore the self is a combination of communication and exposure, two aspects of this lecture. The willingness to expose leads to communication, and communication leads to oneness, to alignment with the Christ spirit that sweeps with great force through your world.
 
"The resistance to expose is always present. It is obvious that denial of exposure makes for isolation. When exposure is denied, it always means that there is a stake to maintain a rotten structure, a structure that needs to be eliminated and renewed. Denial of exposure clearly implies the wish to live a lie. Dedication to the truth must bring in its wake the willingness and the courage to expose. If exposure is not undertaken willingly, it will come from outside, by force, as it were, through crises that throw a secret matter to the surface. Once the force of the new influx is set in motion, it cannot be halted. The more it is opposed, the more painful crisis it brings.
 
"In your public life this has also become very obvious. In very recent times, much hidden destructiveness has been exposed and communicated to the public. Again, this has never been the case before in the same way and to the same degree. And it continues, something new has been set in motion. Through communication, the whole world knows of political misdeeds that would previously have remained secret. Through exposure it has seen the light of day in the first place. Through evolving group consciousness, a great interplay and interaction takes place so that all of mankind can participate in the drama of development.
 
"It is important to view world events with this understanding. Is this not exactly the process you follow in this path -- exposure of your lower self and sharing it, communicating it to others? Can you think of a better way to establish love, trust, closeness? Again and again I show you parallels between the development of the individual and of the planet. All the processes you learn to apply happen, in some form, on the collective level. Exposure has never existed in the way it does now. Masks are beginning to fall off, lower self aspects begin to show clearly with less concealment than ever before. Thus events and intentions can be recognized for what they really are, without the camouflages that brought so much lying, so much suffering, so much confusion.
 
"Exposure is very much a part of the new influx. It is a direct expression of the Christ consciousness that sweeps through the inner and outer planes of this planet at this time. Spiritual development without exposure can at best only be a half measure that leads eventually to a stalemate. But exposure must be infused with love, otherwise it becomes self-defeating. It must bear the respect for the person who has the courage to do it willingly. Those who refuse to do it willingly must not be allowed to destroy their environment and to influence events through their concealment. The courage and strength necessary to bring about exposure wherever appropriate and necessary stems from the inner conviction that it is done in the service of a larger cause -- in other words, in love. The more you expose yourself to yourself and subsequently to others, the more will you discover your true, intrinsic worth. You will know that that part that makes the exposure possible is the already developed higher self. It is the same with the planetary entity. All the exposures that occur at this time on the political front are being conducted by the planet's higher self.
 
"Where you still need to apply more awareness and attention to is how these aspects may be better utilized in your own community life. There still exists too often a blindness to self-exposure and that of others, that fails to bring the truth to the surface. Thereby communication -- and hence love and union -- are being undermined. Communication could be much better if a more profound effort were being made to explain yourself and to help others through a nonthreatening attitude to do likewise. Communication could also vastly improve if you help others to be more receptive to what you know and have to teach and, similarly, to be more open and receptive to where you could learn what others know and have to teach. Only too often a bland, dull numbness encases you into a half-vague, opinionated, incomplete, secretive holding on to assumptions that close all doors. This is where your spirit friends wish you to improve and make of your beautiful, golden, ever growing community a greater glory, expressing the Christ, serving the Highest." (PL #257)

No Parting


 “I will leave you, my dear ones, with a very strong blessing,
with a heavenly light that shines upon each one of you.
Do not despair when you are sad
and discouraged, there is no reason.
For life is eternal, and you are building
your eternal abode in this life,
on the path you are so courageously taking.
In this house, you will be able to live in eternal happiness,
without any woe, without any sorrow, without any parting, ever!
So go in peace, my dear ones, be blessed in body, soul, and spirit.
Be in God!”
 
Pathwork Lecture #46 - “Authority”

"You cannot subsist alone. No creature can. All created beings hang together on a chain of interdependence -- physically, emotionally, and spiritually. When the weight of dependence is put where it belongs -- on God, on His personalized aspect who is personally near you -- then you can create a healthy center of gravity anchored deep within your soul, for that is where He is to be found. His presence merges with your higher self, you truly become one. Thus all interdependence with others will be free from neurotic dependency. It will be healthy interdependence that will give you clear vision, the ability to adjudge realistically where your trust is justified and where not, and therefore a healthy relationship to your leaders and your followers. Without that proper gravity in God, you will always be confused, live in fear, distrust your judgment, become either too distrustful in the wrong place and/or too gullible in the wrong place." (PL #258)

I would like to speak about some specific aspects that are significant for the new age. This word has recently been used a lot by certain groups of people. Some use it in right understanding, some manage to make it a cliche. But this happens with all concepts of truth. There is hardly a protection against this, for the glibness exists in man's mind. It exists because of laziness and a tendency to label so as to avoid feeling the reality of a specific truth. But this must not influence those who do not fall into this trap to give up the truth in question.
 
"At certain intervals in history a new influx comes into your world because humanity has grown sufficiently to make it ready for this particular influx. So it is now. We often discussed this topic in more general terms -- about the meaning and significance of the new age. We talked about the consciousness of the Christ spirit permeating this world, trying to fill the consciousness of individuals to an ever greater degree.

"It is fairly obvious that such a powerful influx must bring in its wake manifestations that are not always pleasant, welcome, agreeable, or even constructive. Many events on your earth are outright undesirable but are, nevertheless, direct results of this influx. In fact, without them the growth and expansion of consciousness inherent in this new age could not take place. Your own mind is still very much geared to the immediate. That which is good and right at this moment is always, in your idea, also ultimately good and right. And the converse is equally believed in although that is hardly always the case. An outright negative manifestation may indeed be necessary for the total development to take place. This applies to the individual as much as it does to the entity mankind or, to put it differently, to the entity earth.

"The new influx sweeps with tremendous force through your world. This is not always recognized in its manifestation. In the first place, it reaches man's inner consciousness. Wherever there is the slightest potential, this consciousness begins to change -- perhaps ever so subtly, ever so gradually; possibly through new ways of thinking about life; or through a desire to find a way to understand self and life in a more profound way.

"The new influx, also called the new age, also effects outer events. Often this happens in a most obscure way. What may appear as an entirely undesirable, negative occurrence is, in reality, a necessity in order to establish new values, to reestablish life based on spiritual premises, truth, and love. In other words, destructiveness that has advanced so far that it can no longer be changed, molded, transformed, needs to be destroyed before a new and better structure can be erected. Many destructive events in your earth are of that nature. You need to learn to distinguish between those events that are outright and directly opposed to life, unnecessary, and the expression of evil and those that fall into the category I now described. This is not always immediately discernible, but as you train your inner vision and become more aware of these processes of creation, your perception will become more accurate.

"Many of you already see that new values are springing up all over, working their way laboriously through the thicket of the old weeds -- obsolete values, negative and destructive attitudes and behavior toward life. The new values are still small and delicate plants that need nurturing, courage, commitment to the larger cause of life, and the ever necessary self-honesty that fosters development and expansion of individual consciousness. The more of you who follow this road, the stronger the plants will become on your planet.

"It has often been mentioned that the new age, or as it is also called, the Aquarian Age, brings about group formations, group consciousness. This has not existed in the same way before. Of course, mankind as a whole is a group on a larger scale. Society could not exist unless group consciousness would not be cultivated to some degree. But until now, individuals were mainly concerned with themselves, their own interests, regardless of how this effects the rest of the world. Not that this attitude has now disappeared -- far from it. But a new awareness is growing in which man begins to see that if he pursues only his self-interest to the detriment of others, it goes far beyond violating moral and spiritual laws and values. He begins to see that he must suffer from it eventually as much, if not more, as those whom he disregards with his shortsighted selfishness.

"The human family could not exist without a group spirit. But the general establishments of society have not yet put sufficient weight on spiritual values. They are unaware of any new influx, and they proceed by old standards, values that are often based on expediency only and on the most shortsighted goals. It is surely no coincidence that in your time new groups, communities of all sorts, are growing all over. Many of them are misguided; many succumb to the influence of destructive forces and evil spirits. This can never be different on this plane of consciousness. Wherever there is divine influx, the demonic forces send out their own influences to corrupt those who are not purified, to tempt and to destroy. But this does not change the fact that new communities must spread which represent the new values and which become models for new ways of life. The question is always to be wakeful and never neglect the work of self-purification. This is the only key of safety. If this is followed through painstakingly, in the spirit of service to fulfill God's will, the evil forces cannot confuse you. You will always know, you will find the answers, you will stay clean, even if there must be temporary manifestations of your lower self. 

"When you think of the new age, it is necessary that you do not only think of it as a general, vague force. It is necessary to imagine that specific aspects manifest in various parts of your earth as the need arises. The new age is not a vague thing. It is a consciousness by and in itself. As all consciousness, it consists of many aspects, completing a harmonious whole. In this lecture, I discussed three particular aspects: (1) communication, (2) group consciousness, (3) exposure." (PL #257)

"Spirit in the highest degree of development combines the male and the female aspect. There is no separateness. I have also mentioned this at the beginning of this lecture. That man and woman exist on earth as separate entities is, as you will readily understand now, a result of this splitting. Therefore, each being has its counterpart. Man's urge to find the right partner is nothing else but the deep longing for reunion with the separated other part.

"Every being passes certain incarnations with his true double, or counterpart, because through the thus resulting happiness this entails, lies a duty to fulfill something. And certain other incarnations have to be gone through without this counterpart. In that, also lies fulfillment of a different sort. However, the latter does not mean necessarily to lead a life of celibacy. There may be other partners with whom not only great happiness can be built but with whom other duties may be fulfilled, karmas paid off, and so on. So if you pass an incarnation without your true double but have another partner with whom you have something to fulfill, do not think that your counterpart in the spirit world will be hurt or jealous because of the love you may give to your present partner. Oh no, things do not work out in this way in absolute reality. If you learn to give love, you come a step nearer to God, to your fulfillment, to your liberation, and thus also to your counterpart, no matter how you learn it. Sex -- the urge for this kind of love -- is, in short, the longing for union with your counterpart so as to become whole again. It only depends upon how you direct this force." (PL #20)

"When these worlds of unhappiness gradually came into existence and the separation from God took place for a great number of beings, as I said before, Divine Law provided for the possibility to regain the happy state of existence these beings once were in. But certain decisions and changes had to be made, always according to the free will of the fallen spirits, either individually or as a group. This was also foreseen by God and provided for and left open at the time to effect at the proper time. All this is part of the plan of salvation for which God enlisted the help of all spirits who remained faithful to Him, as well as those who reached and are still reaching sufficient development after their fall, to help along." (PL #20)

"The disharmonious worlds coming into existence through this division from God, through the so-called fall, are also called hell. These worlds simply reflect the state of mind of the creatures living there; that is, these spheres came into existence as a direct result of the state of mind of these beings. But hell is not just one sphere, but there are many spheres there just as there are many spheres in the divine world, or so-called heaven. When the fall took place, not all who participated came into an equal state of disharmony and evil. The degree was very individual and different. Thus, again as an automatic result, different spheres came into being within the world of darkness, always corresponding to the individual's state of mind. But on the whole, one can say that every divine aspect turned -- here more, there less -- into the opposite." (PL #20)

"Spiritual worlds existed for a very, very long time where all created beings lived in a state of bliss as you cannot imagine. For all creatures, the possibility existed, ever since their coming into existence, to choose freely to either live within divine law or to act against it. At one time, one spirit fell under this temptation. Symbolically you explain this in the story of Adam and Eve in Paradise. Actually this happened in a very different way although the idea was there. Perhaps you can comprehend some of this when you imagine that you may have a great power. You may know that to use this power in a certain way might be dangerous for you. As long as this power is not exploited, you may feel a curiosity as to what would actually happen if you did use it. This temptation becomes stronger and stronger. The stronger it becomes, the less you can think of means to counteract this temptation. You will not even have the intention to continue using it, you just want to try a little bit, just to see. And all theoretical knowledge you may have -- once tried, you may not find it possible not to be swept away by it -- dissolves under the growing weight of the temptation. Once this one spirit succumbed to this temptation, he set something in motion that he could not change anymore, just as he had once known that it would but did not wish to remember when he did give in. The result was not an immediate change, but a gradual one. The change from harmony to disharmony took place just as gradually and slowly as your change from disharmony into harmony. The latter is evolution, the former could be called an evolution backwards -- and neither can ever happen suddenly. Here I would like to give you another example that may help you to understand by trying to feel when thinking of this example. Let us suppose a person is tempted to take a drug. He does not have the intention to succumb to it entirely. He, too, knows, as everybody does, that this would mean his ruin in every respect. But he thinks he can try just once, to see what it is like. But after this once, he cannot escape anymore. He is caught. This is a mild example of what I am trying to tell you, but the same principle reigns here. The same principle holds true to everything opposed to divine law. This one spirit who succumbed first, generated a power running in the opposite direction of divine law, but it was still the same power, only used differently. And with this power he could affect and influence many other spirits little by little -- but not all spirits. There was a division between those who succumbed and those who did not. With the former, the so-called fall of the angels thus began. In this process, every divine aspect turned into its opposite nature: harmony became disharmony, beauty ugliness, light darkness, wisdom blindness, love hatred and fear and egotism -- and union became separateness. Once wholeness split further and further, the more this "pull" proceeded. Thus evil came into existence." (PL #20)

"Jesus, the man, was the incarnation of the Christ .. the highest, the most exalted of all created beings. He is the first direct and inborn creation of God. His substance is the same as the substance of God. All of you have some of this substance, that which I call the higher self or the divine spark, that which has to come out through spiritual development gradually. But no other created being has this substance to quite the same degree as Christ. And there is the difference.
 
"I can see again and again that human beings think or feel: "Why He? If He is the Son of God, so are we sons of God. Why should He be better? Or more exalted or higher? Why? This is not just." These thoughts and feelings are often lurking in the soul of man even if he does not dare to make that thought conscious. In this very same thought lies the germ of the fall of the angels. This very thought, this very attitude started once long before the material earth existed and caused the coming into existence of disharmony and of evil. Certainly, none who had ever thought so realized at the time the danger of such an attitude or realized what lay in it, realized that in this, let us call it jealousy, actually lies a lack of faith in God, in his capacity of love. For even though God created in His first Son the highest of all beings and gave most of His substance to Him, if you will have the trust and faith the Creator deserves, you will not think that this is unjust or that you will lack anything. Oh, nowadays people do not go so far in thinking through these thoughts, but that slight feeling of resistance against Christ in a number of people represents the germ of the fall, the germ of evil. This is the way it all started." (PL #19)