Pathwork 101

Pathwork teaches us about the 3 parts of each of us. There’s the Higher Self part of us that is a gift from God/Spirit/the Universe (whatever word works for you). We don’t do anything to earn this gift, and it becomes who we are inside. We have different amounts of each of the three gifts: Courage, Love, and Wisdom. These gifts are present to guide us in everything we do including the choices we will make in life.

The second part of us is called the Lower Self. It’s the part of us that holds our negative ways of thinking, believing, and acting. We all have this part. We have taken little pieces of the Higher Self and twisted those pieces into distortion. Courage, for example, gets twisted into negative self-will. Here in the Lower Self, we can use one emotion to deflect us from another emotion or we can withdraw into thinking and reasoning to prevent feeling.

The third part of us is called the mask self. Here we use a way of being that we believe will make us acceptable in the world. Here we cover who we really are because we believe that part of us is not good enough. The Pathwork shows us that there is aggression, submission, and withdrawal—the masks most often used.

In Pathwork we pray for and allow ourselves to drop deeply within into our spiritual selves. In addition, we practice working with the Lower Self energy by facing it and giving it a voice while we hold ourselves with compassion. We can face our negativity and then allow it to dissolve. As we continue to practice being real in our negativity, we are on the way to finding our true Higher Selves. Thus, we can untwist the Lower Self energy allowing it to return to its original Higher Self form. It is a gradual process or a sudden shift depending on what that young part of us needs.

Can you risk letting yourself see the negativity that is in you so that you can begin to heal it? We are working to develop a way to hold ourselves compassionately when we notice that the Lower Self in us has been “triggered.” Perhaps you have notice that you still continue to behave in ways that are less than loving, in ways that are not in the best interest of anyone, or in ways that you regret later even with all this compassion and holding.

At this point, it is time to begin to look at what we feel when we are letting our Lower Selves rule. Is our attention heightened or less aware than usual because we are so busy thinking? Are our muscles demanding that we move? Are we in a peak awareness state? Notice if there is a way that we even like the peak awareness state even though we may or may not like the situation that has caused it. Can we admit to ourselves that we like our negativity? Could it be?

Let me repeat…do we enjoy the results of our negativity? Do we get more adrenaline from it? Do we get a feeling of justification? Do we get to avoid the negative results of our actions or inaction when we are focusing on what others have done, said, are doing? This, in Pathwork, is called negative pleasure. And this negative pleasure is part of the reason we don’t want to change.

Admitting to ourselves that we enjoy the feelings that accompany our negativity is a huge step in the healing process. Can you allow yourself to feel it? Are you willing to risk admitting this to yourself?

Finally, we return to our Higher Selves. We return to that part of us that is always present, always available to us. Can we allow ourselves to sink into this part of us that is who we really are? We are spiritual beings here on Earth in human bodies. Let us live more and more from the spiritual being and less and less from the negative parts of us.

Julia Jensen

The Will to Change

I’ve been thinking lately about defense systems that we set up early on in life, before we are old enough to have a mature brain with the ability to reason. These defense systems are held deeply within us, so deeply that we don’t even realize that they are there. When situations happen to us, it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under us—we can go into reaction and the defense system gets activated.

The Pathwork Guide tells us about three catagories of defense systems: the system of aggression and will; the system of submission and using one emotion to hide another, deeper emotion; and the system of withdrawal and reasoning instead of feeling. We can have a favorite or use them interchangeably. We expect our defense system to make us safe, to bring us love. Each of the defense systems, feels superior to the other two.

Suppose you choose two of them: aggression/will and submission/emotion, for example. That means we must get our way using our will all the time at the same time that we submit to others and act loving all the time! What an impossibility that is…

It seems important for us to identify which defense system we are using so that we can test out if it works. I’m sure you will find that none of these defense systems work to bring us safety and/or love. In fact, they bring the opposite most of the time—attack or withdrawal of love from us. That’s exactly what we don’t want.

If we understand this problem, we begin a journey deep within, into the world of feelings that are real and true during the time that we are in reaction. When we let ourselves feel these feelings, we gradually come to accept that we are safe when we don’t block off from what is real in us.

That gives the capability to open more to loving others no matter where they stand on matters important to us. We learn to be true to us and accept that others must make their own decisions, walk their own path. We can still keep our hearts open. We’ll never get it perfectly but can breathe more freely and love more openly.

What is My Soul’s Purpose?

What Was I thinking when I chose this life?

by Julia Jensen

I’ve been thinking lately about how important family is to me while a recurring theme in my life is feeling abandoned and alone, without a caring supportive family. Now I’m wondering what kind of lesson my soul needs to learn that is being brought to my attention. Here’s how I believe it works—the soul decides what lessons are needed and then finds a way for us to learn those lessons. We can look at those issues that seem to continue to come up in life, the ones that we find so difficult to change, the ones that we are sure are never going to come up again. Then once again we find ourselves experiencing the same theme.

Are we right back to square one? Did we do something wrong to have this same issue show up over and over? I think it’s much more complicated than judging ourselves. I believe that if we could fix it easily, we would have done it already. We would not have had to dedicate a lifetime to fixing this issue. The question then becomes, “What is the lesson that I need to learn?”

I’ve been reacting to the issue as I judged myself harshly for not having solved it. For me, it seems to be the theme of no one there. Now I’m looking at it with different eyes. What if that is not the question I should be asking myself? What if the question is more along the lines of putting myself out to all of you, or me giving a part of me from the heart? Would you even want my heart energy coming in? Would that action on my part send me into a “family?”

My reaction, over the years, to feeling alone has even gone into despair as my family seems to be busy living their lives. I felt abandoned. It happened with the immediate family I was born into—an only child with older parents who did not take care of themselves and passed away when I was in my twenties. It happened when my first marriage ended and ultimately led me into a new way of being that meant finding my adult “sea legs” and my positive attributes but at the time it felt like I was abandoned.

I’m wondering now about the spiritual significance of this issue of feeling alone. The Pathwork teachings are clear that we come into life with a mission that needs to be resolved. Is this mine? How do I resolve it? I immediately know the answer is to feel it. I wonder if I could be the one doing the abandoning. Could I have reached out more? Was it me?

I think it’s a real possibility. I’m going to have to spend some time with this. The Pathwork teachings let us know that whatever issue we are bothered by in others is probably in us.

I’d love to know what issue you see as recurring. Or am I the only one?

The Heart sees Reality. The Mind lives in Duality.

The Heart is an organ of perception.

It has a perspective and a quality of seeing that is very different from the mind.  Actually, it is the heart that can restore the mind to its proper function in a world where the mind has divorced the heart and sees a world of separation through the lenses of pride, self-will and fear.  

The mind lives in a separate state.  It is in duality and duality sees things in black or white, good or bad, right or wrong, and it suffers greatly in this battle of opposites.  We feel we have to defend and control so we don’t suffer, but that actually magnetizes what we are trying to avoid.  We can escape the vicious circle when we realize it is just one perspective, one way of looking at things.  

I am sure you are familiar with the teaching story about the Grandfather, his Grandson, and the Stallion (the energies and events of life) that unfold.  First, the Boy finds the horse and brings him home to the applause of all the village and the expectations of a greater future, but then the stallion runs away and this is a great loss, and then the stallion returns bringing a herd of mares with him yet fortune seems to swing again.  As the boy tries to ride the stallion he is thrown and breaks his leg and this is automatically seen as bad fortune but when the soldiers come to conscript the young men, he is unfit for duty and gets to remain in the village rather than go off to war. 

This is life from the perspective of the dualistic mind swinging always back and forth between pleasure and pain, good and bad, right and wrong.  There is another way and it doesn’t involve conquering the vagaries of life.  It involves simply being with what is without judging, knowing it always is a double-edged sword, and knowing that life as a soul journey brings us into this plane for purposes beyond satisfying our personal self’s longing for perfect happiness.   Ultimately we came to work.

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By Darlene Rollins