The Text - Section 195
195. IDENTIFICATION AND INTENTIONALITY: IDENTIFICATION WITH THE SPIRITUAL SELF
TO OVERCOME NEGATIVE INTENTIONALITY
Blessings and greetings for every one of you here. Let the power of spirit enliven you, live
and manifest through you. Then you will be in the real world and your life will have meaning.
Every step you take in this direction generates new energy. You who truly want to find out who you
are, and are prepared to make the sacrifice of giving up old destructive patterns of thinking and
reacting, will discover the incomparable treasure within you. Then the word sacrifice becomes
indeed ludicrous, for you give up nothing to gain everything.
In the last few months a powerful new energy has been generated by the efforts of each
individual as well as by the group as a whole. You have set in motion something that is indeed
greater than the human life you know. This has become noticeable to all who want to see and
perceive. It would require a deliberate insistence to blind oneself not to be aware of remarkable
progress in you; new movement in your inner and outer lives; renewal of feelings and depth of new
experience. You all have become much more keenly aware of yourselves and consequently life
begins to open up more and more. Similarly, this same new influx is certainly apparent in the life of
the group; in the dynamics and in the feeling experiences, in the honesty of feelings and the more
intimate relating among yourselves. What is more, the spiritual force is now so great as a result of
your efforts and progress, that even the most skeptical among you begin to see that their skepticism
is in itself an adopted defense. At this point the validity of this pathwork is no longer a theory or a
philosophy. It has become a reality and an experience that can no longer be questioned.
As you become more perceptive and attuned as a result of your accelerating development, you
know that the reality of spirit is much greater than that of the things you touch and see. The
spiritual energy that is generated by you becomes self-perpetuating. This is noticeable in your
personal lives as well as in your undertakings with others. Of course, even after making great
progress you still have to deal with your defenses and undissolved negativities, your resistances,
distortions, and darkness. Hence we must plough ahead in our work, to make more spiritual
strength available for eliminating the negative aspects in your personality: more of the unreality, and
more of the mask. As usual, these aspects must first be fully acknowledged and accepted before you
can give them up. It is impossible to let go of something you do not know you have or will not
express.
Once again I should like to find the common denominator of where most of you are at this
time. This applies only to those who truly follow the path in all ways, with all available help. For
those it will immediately become apparent that right now you find yourself at the crucial point which
I shall discuss tonight. Some of you may already have made some steps to pass this point. Others
may still struggle to verify this point of self-awareness, but will sense that they are on the threshold.
But most of my friends are exactly at the point I shall now discuss.
Now I should like to speak about the need to be aware of your previously concealed but now
conscious negative intentionality. In the past you may have accepted the theory that you, too, have a
lower self, that you have faults and character defects. You may have even faced many of them and
dealt with them honestly and constructively. But this is not the same as finding your negative
intentionality, although there exists a connection between the latter and character defects, images,
misconceptions, and destructive feelings.
It is an important fact of human psychology that whatever people fear, they unconsciously
want; that whatever they experience, they also unconsciously want. The entire pathwork is based on
this true fact of life. Now many of you are truly face to face with a basic negating attitude toward
life: an attitude that expresses no desire to give, to love, to contribute, to reach out, to receive, or to
live well and fruitfully. This may sound preposterous to the conscious mind that wishes for nothing
more than any and all fulfillments imaginable. But there is this other part of the soul, in a hidden
corner of the psyche, which says just the opposite. It wants to hate, to be spiteful, to withhold --
even if this causes suffering and deprivation.
Recognizing this part of the soul is of paramount importance. It need not be the major part
of the self. In fact, it may be that a relatively small part of your consciousness is locked into
negation, while a much more substantial part of the self strives for the opposite. But no matter how
small in relationship to the liberated, positive aspects of self, the negative part holds a magnetic
power over the life of the individual precisely because it is not being consciously recognized.
When full awareness of this negative intentionality surfaces, it begins to dawn on you how
strong a grip this devastating attitude has on you. In spite of knowing how destructive and senseless
it is, you still find yourself unable, or rather unwilling to abandon this attitude. A great effort to
overcome resistance is necessary before you can accept this, at first shocking, realization about your
life. As a matter of fact, much of the resistance you encounter in yourself and your companions is
based precisely on not wanting to see the existence of such senseless destruction and negation
within you.
But when you finally do see it, it is a blessing. You can then deal with this negation of life.
There are a number of "reasons" for negativity, if we may call them that, of which you are already
quite conscious. Nevertheless, you may find that you still cannot move from this point. Yet the
mere fact that you know that you are the one who wants isolation, loneliness, lovelessness, hate, and
spite, instead of blaming some fate that befalls the innocent you, is a key to finding the next link in
the chain of your evolution.
At this point, it would be useful to make a clear distinction between negativity and negative
intentionality. Negativity comprises a wide range of feelings including faults, hostility, reality-
distortions, envy, hate, fear, pride, and anger, to name a few. But when we speak of negative
intentionality, we mean expressly the intention to hold on to the state of negating life and the self.
The mere word intention connotes that the self is in charge, and makes a deliberate choice,
intending to do, act, and to be in a certain way. Now even when you own up to the destructive,
cruel, and brutal attitudes, you always give an impression that you cannot help being the way you are.
However when you ferret out your negative intentionality, you can no longer deceive yourself that
negativity just "happens" to you. You must sooner or later come to terms with the fact that your life
is the result of your choices. And choice implies the possibility of adopting another attitude. In
other words, you can truly discover on a deep level that you are free. Even your present narrow
confines are the result of a freely chosen course you follow and will continue to follow until you
choose to change this course.
To the conscious mind, such negative intentions may appear preposterous, but rest assured
that negative intentionality indeed exists. To admit and to deal with this fact extensively and
profoundly takes considerable struggle, effort, and patience as well as an inner overcoming of
resistance. I do not talk about an occasional vague hint of a recognition that is then left to itself.
Truly dealing with one's negative intentionality is a major crisis in one's life and signifies a basic
transition. It is not something that anyone can easily come by.
Let us now look at certain fundamental stages and progressions of this transition. You can
start out on such a path without any awareness of your stubborn negative intentions. As I said
before, if you were to be confronted with this fact, you could not believe it, let alone feel and
observe it within you. You might be aware of some faults and destructive attitudes, of some
neurotic behavior and feelings, but I cannot sufficiently emphasize that this is not at all the same as
being aware of your negative intentionality.
When your pathwork progresses well and you gain deeper and more honest insight into
yourself you can accept more of your good as well as your painful feelings. You gain strength and
objectivity. By your renewed commitment to facing the truth in yourself over and over again, which
activates the purest spiritual energies, you finally come to discover your intentional negation of all
the good things in life. You will find that the more frustrated you feel for not attaining what you so
ardently desire, the greater your inner negative intention and the less inclination you have to deal
with it. This correlation is extremely important. The same applies to doubts: the more you fear
that what you want will not materialize, the less faith you have in your life, and the less connected
you are with your own negative will.
That the self deliberately chooses a course of denial, spite, and hate even at the price of
suffering is tremendously difficult to admit. But once this is done, the door opens to freedom, even
before one is actually ready to step through it. Even before the self is ready to make a new choice,
the mere availability of another road, another approach to life and to reinvesting one's energies and
resources, brings hope -- not false hope, but realistic expectation.
You pin so much on false hopes, my friends -- so much! You actually invest your best
energies into neurotic solutions based on unrealizable hopes or on sheer illusion. But there exists a
real, realistic and realizable hope: a hope that is not bound to wind up in disappointments and
disillusionments. This hope slowly but surely grows into manifest reality and fact, resulting in self-
fulfillment and the realization of the best within you, and therefore access to all that life has to offer.
Just think of all the potentialities life has to offer. They are endless and they are yours for the
asking.
However, important as it is to discover the existence of your negative intentionality, awareness
is not the same as giving it up. You who have arrived at this point have found this only to be too
true. It is possible to fully recognize and admit negativity and yet not be at all ready and willing to
let go of it. Sometimes it can happen that realizing a destructive or distorted attitude automatically
eliminates it, but this is not always true. It becomes evident again and again in almost everybody's
work that in spite of knowing how senseless and destructive one's negative intentionality is, more
than just recognizing it is required before the mind, the will, and the intention can be changed.
There are many reasons for this difficulty. Some of the major fears are: fear of the unknown,
fear of being hurt and humiliated, fear of and refusal to experience past and present pain. A
negative attitude functions as a defense against real feelings. Holding on to negative will direction is
also the result of a refusal to assume self-responsibility, or to deal with less than ideal circumstances.
The origin of this negation of life is in childhood. It is now your inner insistence on forcing your
"bad parents" to become "good parents" out of guilt, using your misery as a weapon against them.
Negative intentionality is also a means to punish life in general. Some of you may have amply
explored, verified and worked through these feelings, reactions and attitudes, yet you still insist on
holding on to them. Why?
Often it is a child's only way to preserve its selfhood. If the child's inner resistance to letting
go of this intent is not maintained, the personality feels threatened: the child equates giving up the
resistance with capitulation, with giving up his individuality. Many of you are aware of this and
know the inappropriateness of carrying a once valid position into the present where it is no longer
valid and downright destructive.
It may seem almost inconceivable to those of you who have not yet made the self-discovery
that one can admit to a downright senseless, wasteful attitude that does nothing but bring
undesirable results, and yet insist on maintaining it. Why does this apparently senseless refusal exist,
even though you know it only causes you and others pain? It makes you miss out on living fully and
joyfully and it causes you severe guilt and self-punishment. There must be a powerful reason that
obviously goes beyond any of the aforementioned causes -- true as they are in themselves. Many of
you are stuck at this particular point and need help to get beyond it.
What truly prevents you from saying, "I do not want to hate, I want to love. I do not want to
withhold any longer, but want to give the best of myself to life. I do not need my spitefulness and
truly desire to give it up. I want to reach out and give to life and receive equally the best life has to
offer?" This lecture hopefully will help you further to understand this resistance.
In order to deal with this bottleneck, the question of identification has to be focused on.
What part of yourself do you identify with? Such identification is not something the conscious ego
chooses. Once again, it is something that must be discovered by your observing mind. In what way
are you identified with the different parts of your being?
For example, if you exclusively identify with the ego -- that conscious, willing, acting part of
you -- it is automatically impossible to bring a change that lies beyond the province of the ego. Inner
change of the deepest attitudes and feelings of an individual cannot be brought about by the very
limited functions of the ego. One must be identified with a deeper, broader, and more effective
aspect of the self in order to even believe in the possibility of such a change. Any profound change
comes about by the ego committing itself to wanting the change, and trusting in the processes of the
involuntary spiritual self to bring it about. If there is no identification with the spiritual self, such
trust and the necessary climate of unpressured positive expectation cannot exist. And if it does not
exist, the person cannot even want it, for the conviction of failure would drive home the
powerlessness of the ego in too unpleasant a way. Thus it is preferable for the limited ego to say, "I
do not want" than to say, "I cannot."
On a superficial level, the exact opposite situation exists: "I won't" is denied with "I can't."
On a deeper and more subtle level it is reversed, simply because the ego does not want to admit its
limitations, and yet the self has not found the way to identify with the spirit.
Identification can exist in a most positive and constructive way or in a most negative,
obstructive and destructive way. The difference is not determined by your identification with one or
the other of the various personality aspects -- as if one would be good, the other bad. Identification
with any aspect of yourself can be either desirable, healthy and fruitful, or the opposite. For
example, you might think, "How can it be destructive to identify with the higher self?" Or,
conversely, "How could it be desirable to identify with the lower self?" I say it can be either.
If you identify with the higher self or your spirit, without truly being aware of your lower self,
mask self, your defenses, your dishonest devices, and your negative intentionality, then your
identification with the higher self becomes an escape and an illusion. Under these circumstances it is
not at all a truthful or a real experience. It is much more like paying lip service to a philosophy you
believe in on the purely intellectual level. It is all very well to know that you are a divine
manifestation with potentially limitless power to change yourself and your life, that you are the very
spirit of the universe in manifest form. This is true. And yet it is a half-truth when this kind of
identification overlooks the part of you which needs your scrutiny and candid attention.
By the same token, identification with your lower self can be desirable or undesirable.
Perhaps we can best put it this way: It is one thing to identify with your lower self or your mask self,
but to observe and identify it, is another. When you are identified with the lower self, you believe
that this is all there is to you. When you identify it, observe, admit, and tackle it, you do not believe
that this is all there is to you. If it were, you could not identify, observe, evaluate, analyze and
change it. For that part of you which is doing all this watching is certainly more in charge, has more
power, and is more active and real than the part that is being observed, evaluated, or changed. The
moment you identify something, good, bad or indifferent, the identifying part is more you than
whatever is being identified. In other words the observer is more real and in charge than the
observed. This is the vast difference between identifying something and being identified with it.
When the mask and lower self, or the negative intentionality and dishonest games are being
identified, there is room for real feelings, including pain, to be honestly experienced, and the pain no
longer needs to be denied. This is so because the energy no longer invested in denial will bring you
to the truth. And when you can truly feel your feelings, you can then identify with the spiritual self.
The lower self should be identified; the spiritual self identified with. The ego makes the
identification, but gives itself up voluntarily so that it is integrated into the spiritual self.
When giving up negative intentionality, you already experience yourself as something more
than the lower self whose energies should be dissolved in their present form, and be reconverted
and channeled in a new and better way. But when you reaffirm the senseless refusal to give up
negative will, it is because you are totally identified with this aspect of the self. This must be so
regardless of the developed aspects of yourself where this may not hold true at all. In other words,
this is not a total condition: It is not true that either a person is entirely identified with the lower self
or no longer at all. You are all invariably a combination. Some aspects of the self are free and there
a deep spiritual identification may be sensed; at the same time, the as yet unidentified lower self
aspects and unfelt feelings partially create a climate of submersion into the lower self and the self
fears this to be its only reality. A third identification can also exist this time with the ego believed to
be the only valid, reliable function. This is the way people are split in regard to identification.
When a secret, albeit partial, identification with the lower self exists, giving it up appears as
self-annihilation to that part of the self which is destructive, cruel, hateful, spiteful, and soon, this
seems the real self. The other seems unreal -- perhaps even phony. This seems true especially when
an actual phony veneer is used to cover up the reality of the lower self. Giving up hate, spite, and
negative intention seems like giving up one's very being. Such apparent self-annihilation cannot be
risked, even for the beckoning promise of accruing joy and fulfillment from this sacrifice. At best,
whatever joy there is appears to exist only for someone other than the familiar you. What good do
joy, fulfillment, pleasure, self-respect, and abundance accomplish if they can only be experienced by
someone other than you? This inarticulate feeling or climate existing within you is the most difficult
part to overcome -- or rather perhaps, the second most difficult part.
The first difficult part is to make the initial commitment to find out the truth about yourself.
This includes mentally observing and admitting your real thoughts and feelings, experiencing all your
feelings, owning up to them on all levels. Then you need to answer the question, "How am I going
to extricate myself from my identification with my lower self?"
When you experience yourself as real exclusively in the lower self, to whatever degree this may
hold true, you cannot give up the lower self. The refusal to do so is the misplaced will to live. You
live in the illusion that beyond your most negative aspects nothing of you exists. You feel real and
energized only when negativity and destructiveness manifest, no matter how much the environment
curtails it and forces you to experience this energy as existing only inside of yourself. The outer
deadness and numbness seem the result of having "given up" evil; but it has not been given up at all;
nor do you have to. The same energy can be reconverted once you have stopped denying it.
My friends, let this sink in: Your resistance to giving up what you hate most in yourself is due
to a false identification. At this point many of you are puzzled about yourselves. You do not
understand why you do not want to budge from this extremely uncomfortable and undesirable inner
position. You know that there is a beautiful world waiting outside. And if you deny this fact, you
do so to justify your position: if all is dismal anyway, then there is nothing so strange about your
state. So you often make yourself believe in a terrible, senseless universe. Or, if this is not the case,
you cannot bring your belief in the good and beautiful universe to bear on the negative
intentionality.
The way you are bound and frozen into this position of resisting to let go of the negative
intentionality is not only obstinate and spiteful. That would be too stupid. But the obstinacy and
spitefulness harden your position, so that your fear of annihilation that would follow if you gave up
the lower self grows stronger and the negativity becomes self-perpetuating. You then live in a small,
self-enclosed world in which the worst of you seems to be your reality.
How are you going to find your way out? The first thing to do would be to question yourself,
"Is this really all I am? Is it true that my reality ceases to exist when I give up my negative intention
and will? Is this all there is to me?" The mere fact that you raise these questions honestly will
already open a door. Even before the answers come -- and they will eventually pour forth -- the fact
that these questions are raised will permit you to come to the second stage in this progression where
you realize that the part which asks the question is already beyond your assumed identity. Thus you
already establish a new bridge. From there on it will not be quite so difficult to find a voice in you
that answers in a new way, beyond the limited scope of the lower self which you used to protect so
jealously.
Reach out with tentative questions, questions asked with good will and in good faith. This is
the very first step to find your way out of your prison of unnecessary suffering. When you do this,
you are no longer identified with the lower self which knows nothing beyond these confined walls
and derives its identity, or reality, from being negative. Instead, you come to the point when you can
identify it and be its observer. Identifying with the observer then becomes a first step away from
and a first extension beyond your familiar self-experience.
Let us assume, for example, that you have grown accustomed to experience yourself as
haughty, cold, and contemptuous. Giving up this attitude seems like dying. But dying into what?
Dying into your true self where your real feelings and your real being are. If you are willing to feel
your feelings regardless of their nature, you will know who you are. If you are not willing, you must
remain that hard, stiffened, limited "self." Here lies your choice.
It cannot be claimed that when you give up your negative intentionality you will instantly
experience universal bliss -- or even earthly bliss. You will experience your real feelings, some of
them quite painful. But the pain will be so much easier to bear than the position you now maintain.
In its flowing nature it will carry you into new and better states, like the river of life itself.
The commitment must always be to the truth of the self -- what it really feels and thinks and
is. If commitment to the self is the aim, then you cannot fail to realize yourself. You will experience
new depths of feelings. You will even welcome the pain for it is real and flowing. It is moving and
is totally you.
The first answers you will receive to your questions may not even come from your deeper,
spiritual self as yet. You may not experience magical revelations, visions, and mystical inspirations.
The first answers may come from your conscious mind. Your ability to formulate new possibilities
and answers and to use the knowledge of truth that is already integrated into your consciousness will
feel safe and very real. At the same time, it will give you a new key to use the equipment at your
disposal in ways other than your habitual old groove.
Such new thoughts may take into consideration that trying out a positive intentionality could
be interesting and desirable for you. You could play at first with forming new thoughts, weighing
new possibilities and alternatives in the way you set your thinking apparatus. This is an exciting
endeavor and one that does not in principle oblige you to follow any course of action. It merely
means giving a new scope to a very set mind. You can always exert your right to go back where you
were, you are never coerced by life or anyone else. It is always your choice. This knowledge will
make the apparent risk of trying out a new thought-direction seem less final. Just investigate how it
feels to set a positive intentionality in motion. As you avail yourself of this new freedom, you build
another bridge to a greater expansion of the self. Little by little you can become calm, and listen
into yourself. You will perceive the ever present, ongoing voice of truth and God. It will increase in
intensity and frequency until you realize that you are everything that exists. There is nothing you are
not, my friends. This may sound very far off, but it is not as far away from you as it may now seem.
Can you try to take this step after hearing this lecture? Maybe you can meditate together, as a
group, and help each other to take this step. This step needs to be repeated many times, like the
initial commitment to finding the truth inside of you. But every little step liberates more energy and
makes the successive steps easier. This process could generate tremendous spiritual energy through
your meditation and commitment.
You who make yourselves available to new possibilities in conceiving, perceiving, and forming
new inner attitudes will experience the richness of the universe, the richness of its innermost being.
New action and new outer experience stream forth from that. You who stay confined within your
old possibilities must stay in an unsatisfactory condition no matter how developed you may be
relative to others. There is no standing still. If you stand still you confine yourself. Only when you
continue to expand can you truly become yourself.
A beautiful golden force wants to work its way through the clouds. The clouds disperse more
and more. To whatever degree you take a step toward merely wanting it, the clouds become thinner.
To whatever degree you hide behind negation and doubt, which are the strongest defenses against
coming out of your hold, the golden sun and force cannot come through. But it is there.
Do not believe that you have to become a different person. You become the best that you
already are. When you become it you will recognize it, you will experience its familiarity and you will
feel how safe it is, how much you it is! It is the best of you. You do not betray your reality, you do
not become something that you need be ashamed of. Try to believe this. Those who are here, let
go a little. Let the light come into you and accept that reality is not all dismal. It is indeed a
beautiful reality. The universe is full of love. Truth is love and love is truth. The freedom of your
own spirit will be found in truth and love. Be blessed, all of you!
* * *
What followed cannot be transcribed. It was an extremely moving experience. Strong energy
was generated, which propelled a few of our friends to take this step. This led to deep feelings and
crying, but we helped each other with affection and love in a deep and genuine way. The whole
group was lifted up into a new and freer liberated state. Unfortunately such experiences cannot be
conveyed by words. But at least we want our friends who were not present to know what is
happening.