And here we come to another basic teaching. The Universe is an energy system permeated by consciousness, or, rather, energy and consciousness are one, although this is a difficult concept for us to understand. However, the energy of life that is in every cell of our body, that is our consciousness, is good, creative, wise, and abundant. It is this same positive energy that we distort, in our ignorance and ill will, into evil, into pettiness, into hatred, into cruelty, into withholding, into destructiveness. Underneath our pain which we feel when what we want is not given to us, there is a negative intentionality which deliberately distorts and deflects what originally was positive. We can find this - intentional negativity in ourselves when we dig deep enough. We find that we want to hurt, to withdraw, to get only, but not to give. This negativity is embedded in what we call our lower self. This lower self is selfish, self centered. It doesn't trust in people, in being open, in the Universe. It wants to grab everything to itself. It has three basic characteristics: self-will, pride, and fear. It must have everything its own way, right away. It is proud of itself, it sets itself above others. But it is also fearful, because its self-will is constantly in jeopardy, its pride is constantly in danger of being hurt. This is a very childish and underdeveloped part in all of us. This is the part in which our ugliness is lodged and which we cover up with our mask self. In this work we expose our lower self to each other and take responsibility for it. We do this in our private sessions and in bioenergetic groups, but very much so in our pathwork groups. We will have such a group tonight. In these groups we don't employ particular techniques. We let the process organically take its course, and we all help each other. Often two people who have some conflict will confront each other to find out what is really going on, and the process will often start with blaming each other, then continue with exposing in ourselves how we really want to put down, or hurt the other person. We get in touch with the pain we are causing and with the pain we have in ourselves; we own up to our destructiveness and see where it comes from: from the frightened, negative lower self. As we release these negative feelings, almost miraculously a change takes place and we get in touch with our softness, our vulnerability. As we accept in ourselves, and in each other, the negative, so we also experience that when we expose the vulnerable, soft part that we have covered up, nobody is going to hurt us. And even if we are hurt, as is sometimes inevitable, we can take the pain. To defend against the pain is the real pain. To let in the pain is a beautiful feeling. It is soft and soothing and regenerative.

The greatest pain is caused by denying in ourselves what is best in us. To repress our love, our giving, our trust, our compassion, our creativity. Because then we go against life. However, we all do this to the degree we repress our negative feelings. It is a law, again, that it is not possible to repress one kind of feeling without repressing the others. Therefore, when we begin to hold in our hatred, our insincerity, our manipulations, our cruelty, and so on, we also put the lid on our good feelings. The more you cut yourself off from your negativities, the more you cut yourself off also from your life-affirming feelings. It cannot be otherwise. The lid fits tight. And this leads into another basic principle: to recognize our feelings, take responsibility for them, but not act them out. What does this mean?

For instance, I'm irritated by somebody, I think he is doing it to me. Then, in the course of my pathwork, I realize that I'm really very jealous of that person, for my own reasons, and that I hate him. I want to hurt him, and this is the truth of the moment. I recognize this, but what now? If this person is in this work, I can go up to him and say, I'd like to work out something with you in group and there it is possible to express the hatred, the jealousy, the insecurity underneath, and work out the problem. This is a safe situation. But obviously, I can't go up to somebody in my office and say I hate you, or just go and hit him on the head. Neither would I want to continue acting out my hatred towards him by covering it up and getting him in other, more subtle ways, as I used to. Either way would be acting out. But by recognizing the feeling I can use my good will and say to myself: I want to kill him, but it is because I have rage and hatred and jealousy in me. He could be the way he is, but if I didn't have my negative feelings, I couldn't want to kill him. His behavior may trigger these feelings in me, yet they are my feelings. He is not causing them. When we reach this point, we are one step higher on the ladder toward self-purification.

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