"This happens with each one of you, with every human being: Wherever there are faults, weaknesses, blindness, according spheres come into existence. Wherever you are pure and purified, beautiful spheres are being created by you. And you will not only own the best, but also the worst you have built... The so-called hells are constituted not only of one sphere of only dire darkness and misery, but, as there are many gradations in the divine spheres, the same holds true for the luciferic ones." (PL #22)
"You will need will power and self-discipline in order to battle all your faults, which can never happen by pushing them into the subconscious, by merely covering them up so that they do not show on the surface. For do not believe that something you are unaware of does not exist. The process of eliminating your faults, which is the next step after self-knowledge is a very different one. Briefly speaking, the process is to watch yourself first as you really are, without vanity, without wanting to be better or more than you are at this point. Simply take stock of yourself and get, for the time being, accustomed to see yourself where you really are and not where you want to be. Accept this temporary reality for two reasons: (1) you have to be unemotional and undisturbed about what you are before you can change yourself; and this needs the new habit of seeing yourself clearly for a while without any false motives and excuses and blindness; (2) this will also teach you the necessary humiliation that is a major requirement of spiritual development and true detachment. This acceptance does not mean that you should remain that way. The goal must be to ultimately change these trends, but this cannot be done before you have learned this stage entirely. Thus observe yourself daily when and how your faults manifest, not only outside, but in your feelings. Observe your reactions. By this reaction, you will learn to judge how far you have come in accepting yourself without embellishment. When this is mastered, then the next stage will begin by meditating on what the opposite of this particular fault really is, how you might react and feel if you had already acquired this. If you do this with the help of God, asking for inspiration, for help and strength, you will, after doing this faithfully for some time, begin to feel differently, to have new inner reactions that will leave you so free, so wonderful! You may also meditate how each of your particular faults is a direct hindrance of the unfoldment of love. For each fault is just that. It blurs the love force in the soul. If you proceed in this way, God will inspire you and guide you, you can be quite sure of that. But, as I said, it is a difficult path. But blessed are those who take it; who have the courage and the wisdom to do so." (PL #21)
"Make a list of your faults. And if you can think of only two or three, then you have proof that you do not know yourself. Then you can avail yourself of the opportunity of self-purification and self-knowledge by doing what seems at first so difficult. Ask the people around you to tell you what your faults are. This will give you knowledge about yourself, and this will teach you the humility you need. For as long as it is difficult for you, it is a telling sign that you need just that very badly. If it is easy for you, if you do not feel resentment, resistance, or any kind of heaviness within, then it is not important anymore. But it does not matter what you try to tell others, it matters how you feel when someone tells you your shortcomings. If you observe clinically what you feel when that happens, if you do not want to fool yourself about it, you will know where you stand spiritually, because this is the only way you can really be detached, my friends. When your own shortcomings in the eyes of others do not matter anymore, when your humiliation does not matter anymore, then you are detached! -- not when you avoid the things that bother you." (PL #21)
"When you consider your individual faults, try to find the original divine aspect of it. For no fault could come into existence by itself. It is only a distortion of something that was once divine. You can find this divine aspect of your faults. Thus it will be so much easier to purify it, and, at the same time, you will lose your hopelessness about yourself. You will lose your inferiority complexes. But in order to do so, you must first find out what your faults are and face them courageously." (PL #20)
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© 1999 The Pathwork Foundation. Note: The designation PL # indicates the Pathwork lecture from which the quote has been derived. The full text is available on the web at www.pathwork.org under Pathwork lectures unedited edition. An excellent search engine to use for key words in the lectures can be found at www.pathworklectures.com