My doctors appointment yesterday came out fine – at least from how it could have come out. But the lessons in this week of uncertainty between the 4-hour ER visit last Friday night and the appointment yesterday brought blessings. Perhaps the greatest of these was the experience of love – love in me and love toward me. It was great to experience. A time to pause and experience these shifts in me.

Focusing Statement: Pathwork Lecture 80 Cooperation, Communication, and Union, ¶13

In the past, before you really penetrated the hidden regions and motivations of your soul forces, all these inner actions and reactions were unconscious.  At best, you were faintly aware that something like this was happening.  But now, as you continually progress on your path of self search, you have become much more aware.  If you combine this awareness with knowledge of the laws of communication and balance, you will gain even deeper insights.  They will guard you from drawing the wrong conclusion that your “love” is rejected and that, as a result, you are worth nothing.   You will understand that your childish, exaggerated craving has nothing to do with healthy love, and that the former is actually the reason for the unhealthy impact and subsequent rejection.

Isn’t it interesting that this lecture is dealing with love and is right where my life is just now?

I can see how my love has been childish and unhealthy in nearly all of my relationships, especially with women. My “love” has been exaggerated and forcing – selfishly trying to get my needs met. It was not true love at all. I have shame about this since so many women have been hurt by me. And there is much of this with Pat as well – it is so important for Pat and me to have our intensive with Sage and Anthony in July.

Coffee Time with Pat

Pat spoke of the pace of unfolding love in each of us. We are not there yet. She, too, senses she has hurt others with unhealthy love. Pat: To love so many I feel overwhelmed. This is humanly impossible. Gary: Yes, humanly impossible because of our distortions. We think love is something we have to do rather than is something that just IS. Loving another does not mean submitting to their demands or having to live with them! Simply see them for who they are. Again like the video Buck that we watched last night.  He so loved horses and could empathize with their wounding. And so for us with each other.

Pat then shared words from pages 57-59 of Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche’s Healing with Form, Energy and Light. It dealt with the spirit world, negative entities, soul retrieval, and other interesting but someone esoteric topics. It sounded familiar and later I found similar writing in the Pathwork material. I found the parallels, while not perfect, close enough to be interesting. If you are interested you can compare the two: (open Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche quote) (open Pathwork Lecture 15 quote)

Pat and I talked about the universality of paths. It is important for one to find a spiritual path that works for one and then commit to it for 10 to 20 years so that what it offers can be mined and applied to one’s life. Spiritual materialism is the approach of surveying all paths but never committing to one that could work for one’s transformation. As one of the Pathwork Lectures says, “If only 10% of a path is truth, that 10% can resonate with the soul and awaken one into life. On the other hand if 90% is true but it is not sincerely followed, it will not awaken one into life.

Shared in love, Gary

Yesterday I had been quite pleased about my budget work for Sevenoaks – it seemed to come together in a useful way by the time our Finance Meeting was to begin at 2:30.

But in introducing my carefully crafted budget I ran into a buzz saw of ridicule from one of our team members. Not being one who works well with conflict, I backed away, frustrated and angry. I did not know how to engage. I did not even want to engage, feeling dismissed and disrespected. My energy was that of packing up my budget and going home. Not a helpful attitude of course!

I asked one of the team members afterwards how I might have handled things differently. How could this disharmony be reconciled? Helpfully he noted that my ego was not strong enough to hold my ground – not in an argumentative way, but holding strong inwardly, knowing that what I had done was very valuable work, bringing order and understanding to our finances. By my collapsing, and thereby betraying myself, all of my work would be for naught, and it was work that was needed for the good of the organization.  I could see the wisdom in his words. Another version of “Gary, Show Up!” But how?

Later in the day my Pathwork helper Moira built on these comments.  First she noted that I had become attached to my budget, identified with it – I was taking it personally, if my budget was bad, I was bad – I was making the other team member’s accepting and appreciating my budget a matter of life or death for me. I had placed my happiness in his hands.

If I could have stood back from my budget rather than identify myself with it, and could have let him have whatever response he needed to have toward my budget without taking it personally, I could have let his comments slide off like water off a duck’s back.  Can I find my center and simply let him have his reaction?  His reactions can be inappropriate, painful, even vicious, but let them be. It is not about me, but yesterday my egocentricity made it about me. And hence my egocentricity made any criticism very painful. And when I am so identified with my budget and approach, I cannot hear and appreciate others’ points of view objectively, taking in their wisdom and integrating it with my own. I have a lot of shame about my immaturity here, but I am where I am in my development.

Moira and I then turned to the topic of love as it relates to this disharmonious incident. She reminded me that true love is loving another regardless of that other person’s behavior. Be curious about the other’s behavior, let him or her be fully human in whatever gifts or faults he or she has, just as I have human gifts, limitations and faults. She invited me to grow in my openness to loving the other no matter what. If one is being disrespectful or even vicious toward me, as I was experiencing in the finance meeting, in my love, can I weep for the pain he or she must be in? And from that position of loving him or her I can then decide whether or not I want to spend time with said person on this committee.  But stay or leave, I never stop loving him or her. I would be full of love and compassion. The blessing I would receive in this would be in feeling my love for others, no matter their behavior. And love for myself, no matter my behavior.  (Later Pat and I watched Buck, a documentary about a skilled horse trainer. Buck’s love and compassion for the horses was central to his work with them. He saw how scared they were because of how they had been so abused and could create a container where they felt safe with him – he loved each horse unconditionally – he was doing with horses what Moira was inviting me to do with people!)

Moira continued, this time going back to my childhood. She reminded me that I felt unseen and dismissed by Mom and Dad. They did not see or value who I was but had in mind who I should be in order to be successful and happy in the world. In other words, they were human, just like I am human and do not fully value who others are just as they are.

But Moira pointed out that I continue to resent Mom and Dad for not seeing the real me – even though they died nearly 40 years ago. I refuse to accept, forgive, and love them in their humanness. AND to this day I seek to punish them by not expressing my true self (here expressing my “elegant” budget over which I had such positive energy).  Truly expressing myself freely and spontaneously would bring me joy and happiness. But by not expressing myself I was keeping myself unhappy. Yes, I shall punish them by staying unhappy, here by not expressing what has arisen in me: the budget. I can feel the spite in me.

I remember a specific incident in high school where I did not invite Mom and Dad to a band honor’s dinner where I was one of many who were getting some kind of award. I chose to punish them by not letting them see me getting an award. I did not want them to see me happy by meeting their standards of performance. I wanted them to love me irrespective of my performance and so for spite toward them I would not even invite them to the honors dinner.

And there were other ways that I held back sharing positive things that were going on in my life. I resented Mom and Dad and other family members and those in authority who always seemed to see and respect my performance but would not see and respect me — the fat insecure kid that I was. And even though I resented them for not seeing the real me, I internalized this and I myself became identified with my performance and competence rather than with my Essence. Of course this was all unconscious at the time. And I am sure it was not this simple – there were many other subtleties in all of this that makes true understanding of what my motivations for my behavior were back then.  And all of this carries forward to my disharmonious interaction with others today.

Another nuance. So I punish others for not seeing me by showing them how miserable I am in submitting to them rather than manifesting my own essence, which would take me out of misery and make me happy and joyful. Rather, I show them how unhappy I am in obeying them. In this I refuse to be happy, which would happen if only I would choose to be me rather than what I thought they wanted me to be.  So my pattern is to buck up under another and be miserable and then to blame them for my misery! Because God is the ultimate authority, I “obey” God in the letter of the law rather than in the spirit of the law, and then, in my misery (God’s laws are intended to guide us in spirit, not by the letter), I blame God for my unhappiness. I feel spite and anger toward God, even rage. Words come out unconsciously like, “So there, God, I’ve obeyed you and am utterly miserable. I hope you are happy, you %$#&! This has been my case, and it blocks so much joy in my life.

And so based on the energies contained in this attitude I chose to stay for most of my life in a conservative Lutheran Church where the letter of the law was quite clear – the Bible and the several Lutheran Creeds that defined what the Bible really means. Why did I choose to stay in what seemed to me to be a prison? In part perhaps because of my spite toward God. And of course this is not what God wanted at all. But I refused to see things differently because seeing differently would require me to drop my case against God and give up staying unhappy, and give up my spite and hate toward God, parents, and other authority.

But still, “Why choose this imprisoned life?” There are likely many reasons.  But one might be that because in a warped kind of way I find a kind of “happiness” in my proving to God that the life he has given me is miserable. In holding onto my rage and resentment toward God I find a weird kind of “joy.”

And this applies not only to God but also to the world around me. In proving to the world that the world is screwed up I find a sick kind of pleasure, negative pleasure if you please. And this is my work, to purify all the false beliefs, images, wrong conclusions about God, life, and the world and come into the Truth of God’s Love, the Love that wants all of my real self to manifest freely, that wants me to come out of my self-made prison of images, patterns, and webs of endless confusion, and that wants me happy.

Focusing Statement: Pathwork Lecture 80 Cooperation, Communication, and Union, ¶12

Try to visualize this strong, forward-surging motion, with all the impact of the forcing current, and you will fully understand the inevitable response.  Visualize the soul forces, and then remember incidents in which you were involved on either end.  On some occasions the exaggerated need surged out of you and was repulsed; at other times, such forces were directed at you, and in spite of your desire for love and communication, you could not help but repulse it.  Such observations will broaden your understanding and will prove very beneficial for you.

Where was I on the receiving end of such forcing currents? Well I guess Mom, Dad, church authority, teachers, and eventually I even saw God in this way. Authority supposedly coming at me in love but this love seemingly packaged with the law with its demands for perfection and with its punishment for imperfection. And so with those who trigger me today, strong personalities who say they love me but at the same time dismiss my creativity and Essence, people who want to point out my problems and take on the job of fixing me, all under the guise of “doing Pathwork.” And likewise I trigger them by trying to get them to agree with and comply with my view of the world, be that in budgets or overdone PowerPoint presentations of Pathwork concepts. Yes this focusing statement truly applies to my life!

In an Executive Committee meeting just before my session with Moira, I had another opportunity to see how these patterns play out in me. I had this beautiful idea arise during meditation of our entire Pathwork Council and also our faculty and other helpers taking the graduate program that will be taught by Erena Bramos beginning in November. I held lots of excitement about this idea that had arisen in me. And with this excitement I shared it with the other two members of the Executive Committee, hoping they would sign up with this “beautiful idea.”

But again I was attached to this idea, and when one of the Executive Committee members expressed caution about this idea, suggesting that not everyone in leadership would be interested in such a program, I again felt the pain of his input, while practical and helpful, devastating.  Again I had taken it personally. And my reaction was, “OK, fine. We’ll just drop the entire graduate program idea.” Could I rather be detached from the idea? Could I let my idea have its own life? And that doesn’t mean backing away from opposing views. Rather, let all views be there. Share my passion about this idea of a strong graduate program. Nurture the idea along. If it doesn’t work, that is fine, but I’ve been involved from my Essence.

But Moira helped me see that I have an intention NOT to manifest my vision of a strong graduate program under Erena.  Although this graduate program would give me great pleasure, part of me does not want my vision to manifest. Why not? In order to spite my parents – and God. I’ll punish them by failing to manifest what is alive in me.

So my happiness is in my hands. If I overcome my spite toward Mom and Dad, and God, and open to manifest what wants to flow through me, I shall find happiness – even if in the end, for other reasons, the graduate program does not manifest or the budget doesn’t work. The happiness comes from the energy flowing through me, irrespective of what happens. But I have to stay detached from outcomes and simply feel the positive energy of creativity and joy flowing out of me.

Once again there is a lot here to be with. And in it, though at times complex and paradoxical, I find joy – the joy of growth and personal development.

Shared in love, Gary

Many thoughts were arising in meditation. Initially these were thoughts related to the Sevenoaks budgets I shall review with the Finance Committee this afternoon. I have lots of energy for making this budget clear, systematic, and organized in a way that makes sense and that can be used for understanding our business and making decisions on goals, pricing, and so on.

Then memories arose from a Monday conference call when one of my group of three Pathwork buddies spontaneously began weeping to learn of tests I am to have on Friday – and my sitting in the profound unknown, the Mystery of it all. The tears were of sadness, yet she said they were beautiful tears because they came out of such deep love. This is the price of love – and it is worth the price. I was touched and felt my longing for these same depths of love feelings to arise in me. Why cannot I surrender to my deep feelings and ride their waves? Something pushes them down and I become blank, numb, and stone faced. But as I sit with what might come up as I visit the doctor tomorrow I get tastes of the heart-opening experience. I am curious about this and long for continued unfolding. I am scheduled to be with my two Pathwork buddies Jenny and Mary next week. I can just imagine bathing in the energy of this space we shall have together.  I imagine Jesus feeling the richness of his own love for his friends and how that would change near the end of his short life with them.

Then the bird songs penetrated my consciousness. This lovely time of sunrise on the deck with hundreds of birds greeting the morning with their songs touches me each morning I am out here. How precious.

Focusing Statement: Pathwork Lecture 80 Cooperation, Communication, and Union, ¶8

All universal laws tend to work freely when the human entity is in harmony with them.  However, if the human being is in disharmony with these laws, because of ignorance or lack of development, then the laws become broken, twisted, and distorted, and communication cannot take place.  Thus the path to ultimate union is blocked until the harmonious laws are restored within the entity.

This paragraph struck me. It states the importance of being in harmony with Universal Laws – and for this harmony to come about how I have to come out of ignorance through my commitment to my own personal and spiritual development.

And then thoughts related to Erena’s graduate program arose – thinking how wonderful it would be if our Pathwork Council and our faculty overall for that matter could sign up for this four-session program next year. How better, as a leadership group, could we come out of ignorance about all that is in us regarding ourselves and our work together? I could feel the positive enthusiasm on this idea, and just let the arising happen. These matters, added to the budget ideas, enliven me, inspire me, and fill me with enthusiasm.

But then my enthusiasm wanes. Is this vision for the helper community to grow together by joining in the graduate program true “Wisdom” from within? Though it feels like it is arising from deep within, I so easily back off. I can feel my fear for offering leadership. And pride also comes up. I go back to Lecture 203 on pride. How can I hold in humility and dignity my wisdom, and yet not be humiliated by those who resist nor prideful in overly pushing my ideas?  Praying for courage and wisdom.

Shared in love, Gary

Last night after an engaging and inspiring conversation with Steve, our Sevenoaks intern, I felt sadness, pain, shame and guilt for my not having shown up more over these past few years in the leadership roles I have been in at Sevenoaks. Yes, I have held positions of leadership, but I have served more as administrator than as leader. As I contemplate this realization I surmise that I am too frightened, too lazy, too uncertain of myself and uncertain of HOW to lead. With these obstacles, I back away rather than step forward, rather than fill the shoes of leadership I am being offered, rather than really stepping forward and leading from that place within that knows what we need to do. I seek harmony, and in the process of realizing harmony I compromise my truth. While I do not want to be a bull in the china shop, I do need the courage to stand up and lead when leadership is needed.

Steve’s and my conversation covered many topics, but a key one was on marketing Pathwork. And by marketing we meant 1) Identifying those categories of folks who could most benefit from Pathwork, 2) Understanding specifically how they would benefit from Pathwork, 3) Understanding which aspects of Pathwork were and are the greatest program features for students realizing these benefit (the lectures, helper sessions, specific Pathwork helpers and teachers, the peer groups, the Pathwork community, the type of programs we offer, all of these factors taken together, etc.), and 4) With this understanding, having a systematic way of igniting potential students’ passion for entering and staying with the Pathwork we offer.

There is nothing new here! I know intuitively that these marketing tasks are absolutely critical to our answering our Call as Mid-Atlantic Pathwork. But, for whatever reason, I do not lead us into these spaces where, as a community, we can engage with each other around these critical marketing issues. I shirk this responsibility and go along with the crowd – excusing myself on the basis that I believe in participative management and that there is no room for authority or individual leadership in such a model, or I succumb to letting others whose personalities are stronger than mine lead as they see fit, even when it seems to me we have lost our vision, mission, and identity.

And quite frankly I do not know how to enter a role of leadership in a way that is helpful, constructive, and inspirational. I feel intimidated by other of our leaders, and I back away rather than staying to engage with them. And when I do engage it comes across as the Quaker Oats “Shot from Cannons” approach to communications, which of course is resisted and dismissed by other leaders as “Gary’s ranting.”

Well perhaps I could start today. I have a conversation scheduled to talk with Erena about the graduate program she is beginning in the fall. I have a lot of passion for participating in this graduate program, to be in the presence of Erena’s energy and wisdom. Today she and I have to resolve the mechanics of this program, but more importantly I need to engage Erena on the above marketing factors. 1) Who would benefit most from participating in this graduate program? 2) Specifically, how would they benefit? 3) What features of the graduate program would be most essential for students realizing said benefits, and 4) In what way could we ignite potential students’ passion for entering this program in the fall? It is far more important that I engage Erena in these marketing questions than in the administrative aspects of the program.

And I need to establish a similar process for the Pathwork workshops and the Pathwork Transformation Program. This could be done by interviewing current students and Helpers as to those factors that most attracted them to Pathwork and those factors most responsible for keeping them in Pathwork. Where is their inspired passion for Pathwork most evident within them? We cannot build workshops or the Pathwork Transformation Program without understanding these four marketing questions.

Last night Steve also encouraged us to look outside ourselves to see what is going on in the world of spirituality and to see where we as Pathwork sit at the table of spiritual and personal development. He reminded me that Pathwork is not the only avenue available, and we need to understand in what ways Pathwork is similar to and different from these other ways. Taking the four marketing questions, how would they apply to other spiritual paths? How would a Buddhist sangha answer these four questions in a way that would be different from or similar to Pathwork answers? Steve noted that he himself teaches about dealing with feelings and emotions in his spiritual community – so how is Steve’s teaching similar to or different from Pathwork? It is important to have such an exterior context in which to understand Pathwork.

And I have a sense that if I do not come to grips with how I can show up to lead us through this process of a deeper understanding of who we are, Sevenoaks and Pathwork at Sevenoaks will die. This is not my prideful ego speaking, but something much deeper Calling me forth to SHOW UP. How to do this effectively and without pride, self-will, and fear to block my effectiveness are the two issues I need to work on with Moira, Ed, and others in my community.  I need support. I need prayer. I need to surrender. I need to die to having to know.

As Steve and I talked I was again seeing clearly how important his role and his particular unique gifts are to the success of Sevenoaks. And by “success” I mean to the faithful answering of our Call in our role in the Plan of Salvation. From a financial perspective it feels like a stretch to take him on in a way that is at all fair to his nominal financial needs. Yet not to do this just feels wrong. So I would say our first Critical Success Factor for this next fiscal year is to assure we bring Steve on in some leadership capacity on staff.

A second Critical Success Factor is to build a successful graduate program under Erena. I have 12 students in our budget. My vision is for 25 students. I see this opportunity as critical, not only financially but energetically, enlivening Pathwork in our midst.

A third Critical Success Factor for next year is to understand our Pathwork served market – understanding a segmentation that would capture our key audiences and then answering the four marketing questions posed above for each market segment.

In this, I do not know how to show up, but showing up seems critical to me. I feel my confusion, but I also sense my openness to help, and I pray for wisdom and courage to see and answer my Call in all of this.

Focusing Statement: Pathwork Lecture 80 Cooperation, Communication, and Union, ¶7

There is in the human soul a center out of which the soul-forces flow, or to which another person responds.  This center governs the laws of communication, and, on a lower level, of cooperation.  However, we shall not discuss cooperation now, since its nature will become evident when you have understood communication.  Cooperation is simply a more superficial form of communication.

I am inspired by this paragraph to ask, “So, Gary, from your center what soul-forces are flowing? How do people respond to your soul-forces? How could your soul-forces be more pure, less contaminated by distortions of pride, self-will, and fear? How could your soul-forces be most easily received by others, inspiring them and their soul-forces in a way that, cooperatively, plays into the Plan of Salvation for the benefit of all beings?”  I ask for your prayers.

Shared in love, Gary

May has been a hard month due to sickness arising. A week ago being dealt a blow by the news of a dear friend’s prognosis with her battling cancer, then last night being informed of another dear friend having surgery in her battle with cancer, and this morning receiving the news of another friend’s mom falling and breaking her pelvis in two places – a terrible road of suffering ahead. On Friday I too entered this fray of the unknown and perhaps in the next few days will undergo a set of tests with totally unknown prognosis at this time. So here we all are in the Mystery. Already I am aware that sickness has a way of helping us set priorities and focus on what is important. Or, said another way, makes it very challenging to focus on what suddenly seems unimportant.

And yet life goes on. In these other areas of my life I find I am unsure on many fronts. How are we to move forward with the Mid-Atlantic Pathwork (MAP), even with the issues of the future of Pathwork itself over these next few years as it faces a need to change how it operates. And fiscally, facing the challenge of running a Retreat Center in a sustainable way seems ever present to us in leadership. Then, more personally, there is the dilemma of how to support in love my three children in their challenges of day-to-day living, and prioritizing my longing to grow closer to Pat and other friends. Yes, the agenda of life is rich, challenging, and long.

In this I am drawn to the suffering of Jesus. I have often wondered why such large sections of the canonical gospels deal with the suffering of Jesus. Perhaps the reason is that the inevitable suffering we face in this earth existence is where we do our most meaningful growing, and Jesus was modeling this for us.

Jesus’ modeling includes staying present through it all, being fully human through it all – staying in our own truth, even if our truth in moments means doubting the very presence of God at those most agonizing times, rather than faking an idealized version of how we would want others and ourselves to see how, in our spiritual maturity, we face suffering in courage and trust. Jesus’ modeling also includes praying for deliverance and help yet surrendering to what is, honoring with dignity all involved in the process – even those who have, in their humanness, done less than their best or even done needless harm. And finally, having compassion for ourselves in our humanity – holding ourselves in dignity despite our human weaknesses and foibles. Yes, Jesus modeled this all for us.

One aspect of which I am aware is that these experiences pull us out of our heads and into our hearts. Even with the few short days that I have sat with my own state of not knowing what will come I would say I see the movement toward more heart connection unfolding for me.

Focusing Statement: Pathwork Lecture 80 Cooperation, Communication, and Union, ¶6

Understanding the need for communication and cooperation on the physical level will make you realize that mental, emotional, and spiritual subsistence is necessarily just as dependent on cooperation and communication.  You know that the same laws hold true for all levels of existence.  It is one of the great errors and tragedies of the human race that this truth is ignored.  If people were taught to understand this truth your world would be very different.

I find these words truthful – the need I now have, in working with so many others around me in various capacities, to be pulled into deeper levels of communications and cooperation. How can we more deeply hold each other? How do we connect, truly connect, not only in meeting physical needs, but also mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Expanding the dimensions of connection among us seems like a rich and fulfilling pursuit. My awareness of this has grown in these few days.

For me this awareness of a broader set of connections opens up beautiful possibilities. I barely connect mentally with others. My “Puffed Wheat Cannon” style of communicating via explosive bursts of words and ideas needs to be slowed down to connect even on a mental level. But what would it be like to go more effectively into the other dimensions of communication and cooperation – to connect in the dimensions of our physical, emotional, and spiritual subsistence? Perhaps this is what I and what others in my circle of friends shall learn in days and weeks to come.

And as I enter this Monday morning with the uncertainties of what will arise I am moved to pray.  As with Jesus, I pray that those of us involved in this phase of life’s journey be spared suffering. But also, as with Jesus, I pray the following for myself and for others on this journey…

1) I pray that I may grow through this experience – especially in my depth of connection on the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels – including, of course, with God.

2) I pray that a spirit of love, dignity, acceptance, and honor emanates from me for all involved in this process.

3) I pray that I may remain in the truth of my experience as a human being with human limitations, and that I may have compassion on myself in those times when my truth is to cry out, “My God, my God, Why have you forsaken me.” I pray to know that it is OK to be fully human and to be in that truth of doubt when in fact I doubt.

I invite others to join in with such prayer for all of those who may be suffering in whatever way.

Shared in love, Gary

If this turned out to be my confirmation verse I was feeling divine providence in that this verse was so appropriate for my life. Its meaning for me today was not in the way I or my parents would have understood the verse 56 years ago. Back then I would have taken it as a command to stay faithful to my set of beliefs given me in my church – faithfulness to the bible and to the creeds of the Lutheran Church, which back then would have meant faithfulness to the Book of Concord written during the 1500s during the time of the Reformation led by Martin Luther.

But what does faithfulness mean to me today? What I saw was my faithfulness to Life, to my sense of my Call in life, my undaunted pursuit of Truth in matters spiritual, in pursuit of the meaning of my life and the lives of all others on the planet, and the meaning of life of the Cosmos and of all the levels of consciousness toward which we seem to be evolving, my pursuit for the meaning of the Grand Mystery. To this pursuit I have certainly been faithful for much of my life! I found this realization that my life of 69 years ties back to my confirmation verse enlivening for me.

But was this my confirmation verse? As I recalled the verse was written on the cover page of the leather-bound bible my parents gave me on my Confirmation Day. But last Wednesday I searched in vain for my confirmation bible in the storage shed. In the process of searching however I found 20 or so bibles from different times of my life – the New American Standard, the Amplified Bible, the Thompson Chain Reference Bible, the New International Version. Each of these had served me. Several I had read cover to cover over a period of a year in my devotional time in the morning. Several I had used during my time as bible class teacher at St. Paul Lutheran Church and at a bible class at the SDRC office where I worked. Looking back I saw that these were fond memories. I was not reading these scriptures out of a sense of duty but more out of a sense of devotion and pleasure. And these teachings inspired and grounded my life.

During my 30s and 40s I had several copies of the bible on tape and would play these tapes while driving to and from the office. For ten years I also listened to the sermons of the rising Evangelical Free Church pastor and eventual author Chuck Swindoll and also of John Mitchell from the Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Oregon. I could not get enough of this Bible-based material. It fed, nurtured, and grounded my life those days.

And how interesting that this same energy has risen and even more so in my work with the Pathwork Lectures this past decade – even my taking on the task of recording all 258 of the lectures. Yes, there is a faithfulness to Truth as it arises in me through my resonance with these materials. So, indeed, if Revelation 2:10 turned out to be my verse, it will have been prophetic and fitting for my life.

But again, was it my verse? Something told me that my verse was from the Psalms and not Revelation. How could I track this down since I was unsuccessful in finding my confirmation bible at the storage shed? I recalled last summer when Pat and I visited St. James in Quincy. A secretary there was kind enough to show us the records they kept of all the confirmation classes – photos of every class for many years back. So on a lark last Thursday I called St. James Church. To my surprise the pastor answered the phone. I made my strange request and he responded that sure they keep such records. He would look into it and get back to me. I was touched by his willingness to do this.

In a half hour he called back. Indeed he did find my confirmation verse. It was, in fact, as I had remembered, from Psalms and not the Revelation passage above. It was Ps 37:4: “Delight thyself also in the LORD, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” I shared this with Pat on Friday morning, and she saw the verse as one that fit my life perfectly, and I could see this as well. And we both noted that what was promised as we found our delight in the LORD were answers to the desires of our hearts, not to the desires of our heads or our egos.

But again “delighting in the LORD” was not in the way I or my parents would have held this verse back in 1956. Back then I would have seen as more of a command: “Thou shalt” delight in the LORD (Hebrew Yahweh, or YHWH – the Tetragrammaton). But today I see my delight has been an organic arising within me for matters spiritual, for matters of meaning and purpose, and Truth.

My long history of bible reading, sermon listening, and scripture studying was all a joy. And today this same energy, with even more intensity, arises in me when I spend time with the Pathwork Lectures. Yes, I delight in the wisdom contained in the Pathwork Lectures. Reading them fills me with joy overflowing, inspiring me and nurturing me. So YES this verse from the Psalms given to me 56 years ago defines my life. I do indeed delight in Truth, in wisdom, in all that resonates with that which is deep within my soul, with my divine essence that is my core or real or divine self.

As I began my meditation this morning another verse so familiar to me floated up: Hebrews 11:6 “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” So, again in my own way, this verse fits – not as a command but as an organic arising of my faithfulness to my Call, to that which is most alive in me, that within me which has so resonated with the Pathwork Lectures for this past decade of my life.

This also set up those teachers that I most resonate with – here especially looking to my Pathwork helper Moira Shaw and the Mid-Atlantic Pathwork Director of Training Erena Bramos. I had a rich conversation with Erena yesterday, and again find myself inspired by her passion for these Pathwork teachings and her sense of their truthfulness. She was speaking of the three phases of Pathwork – which she herself learned from Moira Shaw and Moira’s husband Bert: Phase 1) One’s relationship with God – that is, the Pathwork begins with GOD, Phase 2) One’s work of Purification, and Phase 3) One’s return to God, to where one began the spiral of growth. Here in Phase 3 one experiences the Grace of Transformation, does the deep work of facing hopelessness before God (not the child’s hopelessness, but one’s adult human hopelessness) and the transformation of negative intentionality to stay separate from God into positive intentionality of uniting with God. I am not even entirely sure what Erena meant by these words, or that I got them down right, but I know intuitively that I want to spend time with such a teacher who holds such wisdom.

And in our call yesterday I could see and share with Erena my sense of this same sequence of teaching Pathwork: beginning our work with Stage 2 Pathwork (The Spiritual/God material), then Stage 1 (The child work, the psychological and feeling work, the work of purification) and then, our vessel emptied of Untruths, a return to Stage 2 where we fill ourselves with Truth and with God.  This is the three-stage truth I tried to capture in my PowerPoint Presentation of Pathwork Lecture 131 – Interaction Between Expression and Impression (this presentation can be downloaded in three parts – due to length – Part 1,  Part 2,  Part 3). Erena could celebrate with me that I “got” this key approach to the Pathwork teachings: Beginning and ending with God.

Erena is preparing a workshop at Sevenoaks in August (Living Fearlessly, Loving Unconditionally – August 3-5) — I have already signed up, of course. In addition to this Erena is preparing an advanced Pathwork series of four weekends for this next school year beginning in November – and again, how could I not take these!  For me Erena represents a source of wisdom that I want to be around. Answering my Call, being faithful to it, means showing up here with Erena. And I know that I shall delight in being in her teaching space, even when I do not understand her teachings.

With this, I turned to my focusing statement from the Lectures, as is my custom in meditation.

Focusing Statement 1: Pathwork Lecture 80 Cooperation, Communication, and Union, ¶4

The highest and most desirable state in the whole plan of evolution is union.  Union on this earth plane does not exist.  Some people have a vague idea of union, and in isolated moments they sense or feel the significance of that state of being.  But then the moment passes.  Since union simply is, it exists outside the law of cause and effect.  Therefore there is no point in my discussing it.  You could not possibly comprehend me and I could not find appropriate words in the human language to convey what it is.

Perhaps my delight in the Pathwork material and people like Moira and Erena is evidence of my Union with the Divine – a Union which just IS, though I experience this only rarely. Let me just slow down here and be with this as a possible facet of Truth…

Focusing Statement 2: Pathwork Lecture 80 Cooperation, Communication, and Union, ¶5

I will, however, discuss two preliminary stages in the evolution toward union.  These two stages do exist on your plane of existence and consciousness.  They are, at the lower level, cooperation, and, at a higher level, communication.  No living creature can exist without cooperation and communication.  Even on the material level humanity could not survive without them.  Food, drink, shelter — all that you need for your physical survival — depend on cooperation and communication,  although their form and practice may vary.  They take a different form in a primitive society where people organize their own communication with nature and the elements.  As development proceeds further and the community increases in size, people have to organize communication with their fellow creatures accordingly.  The better people get along with each other through proper cooperation and communication, the better will the community’s life function on the most basic material level.  This is so obvious that I need not discuss it at greater length.

In dealing with some of my struggles with Sevenoaks I see this paragraph as so key to our very survival – a spirit and attitude of cooperation and communication. And I see movement in our community in this regard. As does Erena.

But in our phone conversation yesterday Erena threw in an appropriate “However.” And her “however” has to do with authority. This is especially important for how we develop our teaching. Teachers cannot teach simply what they want. Rather there has to be some general agreement about what the core Pathwork teachings are and how they are to evolve in a student’s growth through the three stages that Erena identifies for the work of Pathwork. To this end she sees a need for continuing education for teachers – a requirement for CEUs to teach in MAP – a commitment to learning ever more deeply the core teachings of Pathwork, integrating them, and living them from ever deeper levels of consciousness.

As an example of where confusion sets in, Erena offered the following observation for our beautiful Leaders Retreat. Yes, the Leaders Retreat was wonderful and she got a lot out of it – but, in her opinion, it did not go as far as it could have. Yes, we got to our Lower Self aspects on Saturday afternoon – and did so in a profound way. “However” identifying our lower self aspects is not the same as changing our negative intention, which is to stay imprisoned by our lower self aspects, to hold on to being separate, to stay hopeless and helpless. Changing our negative intentionality to positive intentionality is the point of transformation, and for this transformation work we call upon the Divine for help. Although at our Leaders Retreat we spoke briefly of prayer, thereafter transitioning to the higher self ritual in the evening on Saturday, Erena’s wisdom was that we needed to do this transition from lower self to higher self much more slowly.

We needed to feel our insistence for staying separate, our refusal to grow up out of childhood. We do not get to higher self by mere ritual alone. We must go through our negativity, not around it, and this takes time. This transition needs to be felt quite profoundly. Again, while I could not follow all of what Erena was sharing nor do I necessarily have it right, yesterday in our call I was intuitively saying “Yes” to her wisdom on these points.

Erena said she would love to teach what she knows about these Pathwork teachings as well as what she knows about group work – the work she taught her helper training class in March. And as Director of Training she is certainly in a position to do this. But to do this she said yesterday that there needs to be some acceptance of and respect for her leadership and authority within our faculty. While I have that respect for Erena in spades, coming from a deep Knowing, others may not. Some even seem to resist Erena for reasons I do not understand. Some it seems see Erena as bringing in “New York” Pathwork to Sevenoaks and “contaminating” our Sevenoaks Pathwork approach.

What is the Truth here? Can we, as a community, have this conversation? But the faculty has to be open to this conversation. Erena and I both feel a resistance here to take this on and really look at how we teach the core Pathwork principles. And we are challenged by how to handle our end of “communications” – helping ourselves to be heard by those who may not be on the same page that we are on.

I struggle in that I am not even a helper. I give myself this “non-helper status” as an excuse not to lead the faculty, even though, as Chair of the Pathwork Council, this leadership is, in fact, my role. I tend to give everyone their voice, even if I am not in agreement from what I Know from the inside is a higher Wisdom. I am not sure how to offer that wisdom. And when I dare to offer it, often it comes out as in the old Puffed Wheat boxed cereal emblem of the 1950s – “Shot From Guns!” The image compliments of Quaker Oats is complete with a picture of a cannon with puffed wheat being shot out. I become a cannon with my sense of Truth. I go too fast, with too much energy. This cannon shot approach to sharing is, of course, resisted. So once again, feeling non-acceptance for my “cannon” approach to Truth sharing, I back off and withdraw from leadership. As I have always done in my life, I shirk from true leadership, from leading from within. As a result I am not really providing the leadership that perhaps I am being Called to offer the MAP community.

So again I am brought to a place of helplessness – not knowing how to lead. At this point Erena encouraged me to show up just as I am, in my helplessness, as I did on Sunday at the Leaders Retreat when I confessed I did not know what to do – that I felt we were in a state of “Humpty Dumpty having a great fall, and all the kings horses and all the kings men could not put Humpty back together again.”  Erena said “Yes! Die into this real helplessness in the face of God. Going through this stage of utter helplessness is the way to true power and true leadership.” Again, not understanding all of what Erena was saying, I had an intuitive feel that this was Truth I need to assimilate. I pray for strength, humility, and wisdom to carry forth with the courage to Show Up, to discern and answer my Call. Can you please join me in this prayer.

Shared in love, Gary

In my session with Ed I described a number of my experiences from the Mid-Atlantic Pathwork Leaders Retreat this past weekend. The first was that in response to my deep and vulnerable sharing two participants commented on how my sharing had brought them, and maybe the group, into a deeper and more intimate space of connection and sense of belonging. This touched me in the moment in the workshop, but only for a moment. I quickly let it go. But Ed would not. He slowed me down.

“So how did it feel to have someone share how you affected them and made them feel more deeply connected?” I paused to consider what this really had been like. “It felt warm, but in fact a little too good to be true – as if it was meeting my unconscious deep need for connection. It actually brought a little fear. Can this really true – that people were affected positively by my sharing?” I would quickly run away from that possibility and its ramifications.

Ed wondered if perhaps this experience, brief as it was, could have been a touch of love – something I say I don’t really experience. My response, “Well of course. Love is the word that fits this experience perfectly.” I somehow Know that, but do not know why I Know that. But can I just slow down to take this experience in, even if I do not know whether or not it is love? And why do I run away from love, if it is love?

Dignity was another aspect of this connection. I had shared these things from deep in my shadow and so I was quite vulnerable. Yet at least these two people mentioned above saw me as I really am and did not judge me. Quite the contrary. They held me in dignity. I was not humiliated by them in any way but rather truly accepted in dignity. One of the two even commented later on how this sharing demonstrated a kind of leadership for us. I was not at all sure that I understood what this meant.

And yet in other experiences over the weekend I did not feel held in dignity but rather felt humiliated. Words like condescending and patronizing come to mind. In these experiences in the leadership group I was left feeling demeaned and less-than in stature and personhood to the well-intended folks wanting to help me. And here there was a difference I noticed. With the two who commented on the value of my earlier sharing I felt treated with pristine respect throughout the weekend. With others not so much.

But the beauty of this experience regarding dignity vs. condescension was that it helped me see that I do not hold myself in dignity but rather rely on others to establish my dignity. Even in my deep sharing of faults and foibles there is a kind of dissociation from what I am sharing rather than honestly seeing, embracing and accepting what I am exposing about myself. Instead of humbly sharing my foibles and weaknesses while yet maintaining a high sense of dignity, I can enter the field of self-humiliation. In this move toward self-humiliation I “demand” that others rescue me and restore my sense of dignity – “Tell me I am not so bad, etc.” So condescension from others gets amplified into a huge emotional reaction or trigger due to my own self-condescension. All grist for the mill.

Ed mentioned that we sometimes resist judgment from others, even positive judgment. Why would one resist positive feedback? Positive feedback can set up a pattern of expecting the positive feedback to be followed by negative feedback, so one resists both negative and positive feedback.

I shared with Ed that my experience with this was a little different. I did not want positive feedback because I found it dehumanizing, reducing me to a human doer or human performer having these assets and strengths on the one hand and on the other hand another set of liabilities and weaknesses. I resented being seen as a human doer or performer on somebody’s scorecard and wanted to be accepted and loved simply as the human being I am – to experience love between two imperfect entities. Unconsciously I suspect that I have this as a deepest longing.

And here again it is I who is at the center of this issue. For whatever reason I resist valuing myself as a human being whose Divine Rays seek to emanate outward to all around me. Rather, I seem to value myself only as a productive and competent human doer and performer. As a child I learned that it was much safer in the world to be the human doer and performer others wanted me to be rather than to let whatever was my Essence flow freely from my being irrespective of what others, especially those in authority, thought.

Ed and I also discussed the beautiful relationship I have with my brother Paul. For over 20 years Paul and I have met for up to two hours 2 or 3 times a month, and the conversations over coffee are always deep and enlivening. People wonder how this can be seeing that he is a solid conservative Lutheran and I am a freelance Pathworker.

I shared with Ed how meaningful it was to me when the day before Paul and I discovered at least a piece of the heart of our mutual acceptance of each other. Both of us trust that Spirit is alive in both of us and moving each of us in an appropriate way and at an appropriate speed. We trust each other’s and our own integrity, search for meaning and Truth, and openness to an evolving sense of Truth. It is not appropriate to rush Spirit. Spirit is moving each of us at the perfect pace for our role in the cosmos.

There is no judging who is “ahead” or “behind.” How would we even know? If, for example, either of our relationships with Jesus Christ were to change and we we were to become closer on that basis, that would be fine. And if not, that too would be fine. We do not hold much anxiety for the “wrongness” or “rightness” of the other’s or even our own journey. Yes, we hold each other with dignity and honor, as a vessel of Divine Essence, at least on some Mysterious level. And Ed stepped in again, reminding me that perhaps this, too, was a taste of love.

Then came coffee time with Pat this morning. We tackled this love topic among others. Pat offered: Could you consider your deep sharing as generosity, and a gift from your heart, a gift that changes the field with the other or with a group? I felt seen and affirmed by Pat’s observation. Could this, too, be a taste of love?

We went on to talk about my motivation for deep sharing. Was I doing this from my deep heart and its longing to connect, its longing for Union, its longing for the experience of Love? Or am I sharing out of pride or for other egoic reasons? Always a mixture of both of course.

And here again I have such resistance to seeing where possibly I do love, or am loved, and where I may even love deeply from my heart and be loved deeply from the heart of the other.  Why would I not want to see these love qualities within that are actually there in Truth? Is a part of me still judging the loving heart as “merely” being when what another part of me thinks what is needed is doing and performing? In so doing am I devaluing the best of who I truly am?  I can feel some sadness here, but it does not seem possible to simply snap my fingers and let the situation resolve. Or is this “snap-of-the-fingers” possible? And why do I resist even considering that it may be possible? Loving the journey!

Shared in love, Gary

The Sun

On Saturday morning we began with getting in touch with the “Sun behind the clouds” – remembering that indeed the Sun is behind the clouds, as Pathwork Lecture 131 reminds us. For this we did a meditative walk on the land, taking in Nature, putting one foot down at a time on the land. I was struck by the Majesty of the Pine Forest, but I was also aware of how challenging it was not to let thoughts creep in. Thoughts like, “is this OK?” “Are people getting what they need from this exercise?” “Why cannot I be more present?” “Oh, there’s a car parked illegally under the oaks!” Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts – but penetrated from time to time by the feel of Nature around me.

We then came inside and began moving to music. I love movement, so this experience was beautiful, taking me more into my body. The day before it came to Karen, one of our three fellow organizers of the Retreat, to print out a series of beautiful sunrise/sunset photos. After the dancing we were asked to pick a sunrise/sunset photo that most spoke to us and then, in a meditative state, name or draw what the Sun – God within – represented for us.

To this I drew a series of wavy lines – being in the Now, movement, nowhere to go, nothing to produce, Trust, being in the Flow of Life. I could be relaxed from here. I was feeling inspired, enthused. I was feeling the joy that comes over me as I work on mining the Truths from the Pathwork Lectures, the Joy I feel when doing my website, my presentations, or my blog entries. The feelings of freedom and joy were palpable. Yes, these are the feelings of Stage 2 Pathwork – the Spiritual side of Pathwork – that fills me with inspiration. A rich experience from my inner being that I could settle into.

Having said this, however, I realized that although I was feeling such Joy around the arising of Truth, I was not feeling love arising.  Love is simply not in my palette of consciousness as of yet. And I was not yet able to take in fully the Joy of Nature all about me on our walk, another limitation of my consciousness palette. I am not feeling the deep connection, the oneness of all that is. I was not depressed or concerned about these temporary deficiencies in my consciousness palette, but rather just noticing where my energy was (Wisdom, Truth) and where it was not (Love, Connection to Nature).

The Clouds (Effects of unconscious Causes)

The second half of the morning we worked with our clouds, those feelings that are disharmonious, troublesome, and stress producing – feelings such as doubt, helplessness, hopelessness, guilt, unworthiness, and the like.  The idea was to enter whatever feelings typify our daily disharmonies, or are with us in this very moment, and to be with them rather than to run away from them. Yes, they block the Sun, but they also hold the key for leading us into the next steps of clearing the clouds away. Going around the clouds to get to the Sun just doesn’t work.

The Cloud experience began with a meditation. The clouds that floated up for me began with anxiety – that familiar low-level stress that makes me nervous about life itself. Then there was doubt – am I wrong, wrong about Life, about God, about me being in the world? And this quickly dropped to fear, existential fear; it felt like a profound fear – fear of love, fear of connection, fear of Life. I was even feeling fear about meditating about feeling fear and disharmonies.

At this point there was no task of defending against the fear but rather just being with the fear, feeling the fear. I know intellectually that fear cannot be Truth, but that intellectual knowing does not disburse the dark clouds of fear separating me from the Truth, that is, from the Sun behind the clouds. The only way is to be in and go through the clouds.

The lesson imparted by this experience is that fear and other disharmonies are OK, they will not kill me since I am an adult and not the child I was when my cloud-defense system was built in order to protect me from any and all pain. Experiencing disharmonies is part of being human. It is part of my inherent dualistic consciousness. Just feel the disharmonies, Gary, that was my job in this exercise.

Images, Misconceptions, Lower Self Defenses (Causes of Clouds)

The afternoon was devoted to exploring some of the Causes behind our disharmonies, our clouds. This was very powerful for me. It began with having an hour on our own to just be with ourselves to see what awareness came up regarding our Images, Misconceptions and Lower Self defenses.

Where I began, however, was awareness of Truth arising from my Higher Self aspects – that unmistakable Joy that fills me when I have an experience of connecting the dots of Life and thereby gaining an insight that fills me with positive energy and enthusiasm. This enthusiasm arises whenever an elegant and comprehensive budget comes into place on my computer after hours or days of working with numbers, or when a strategy for our Sevenoaks business becomes clear, or a Pathwork concept or Truth becomes conscious. I could feel the energy for the rightness of Truth no matter the form, and yet I knew of my flexibility in search of still deeper truths when someone else has a different idea that is obviously true at perhaps a higher level. This is Joy of engagement regarding Truth. That this awareness of these Higher Self aspects would arise when I was supposed to be looking at Images and Lower Self defenses felt strange to me, but it is what happened.

And of course this arising was perfect for my experience at this time. Earlier in the weekend I was captivated by the Question and Answer given in Pathwork Lecture 131 dealing with fear of self-responsibility (click here to open this quote). And just at this point in my reflection time of Causes for Clouds a realization came to me that the Guide’s answer applied to me. Yes, I have fear of self-responsibility. The visual that came to mind was fruit on the vine: My fruit (all the insights and truths that arise in me from my Higher Self aspects) dies on the vine, un-harvested! I won’t push to harvest the fruit so that it can be eaten and nourish others, but rather just generate more fruit, which, of course, also dies on the vine.

And what is behind this visual of my fruit dying on the vine? Three things came up.

1) Doubt – is this fruit really Truth? Am I not just delusional? Others may not see things my way – does that not make my way, my fruit, wrong? Often I know my way holds wisdom, but I won’t push it as such against the tide of others’ sense of truth. I back off almost immediately rather than engage and wrestle down perhaps an even higher truth.

2) Laziness – I am too lazy to deal with all the frustrations of manifestation. I count on others to see the wisdom that arises in me, to recognize and appreciate my “brilliance” and carry forth its execution.  Don’t get me involved in the actual work of implementation with all the frustration that manifestation will inevitably bring.

3) Selfishness – I do not really care if others are nurtured from the fruit of my vine. I just want to bathe in the praise of being brilliant and in the Joy of the insights that have come forth on my vine.

Then some other awareness came forth. In my pride I see myself as separate. I do not have the felt experience of a love connection. What happens here is the arising of my insatiable need for praise and approval – my cheap substitute for the love I really want. I demand that you praise me for my brilliance. Without praise and approval I think I shall die. And from here I don’t really collaborate very well, unless, of course, my collaborators acknowledge my brilliance.

Then I saw that I don’t care if my fruit dies on the vine. In fact, I hold the negative intentionality of wanting my fruit to die on the vine. If I harvested my fruit and nurtured others or the organization with my fruit, my facet of Truth, this would be too much work (I’m too lazy for this), and besides I really do not care if others get nurtured by facets of Truth arising in me (I’m too selfish to care about others). Finally, in nurturing others with my fruit I would risk exposure that my truth may be proven wrong (my doubt as to my facet of truth’s truthfulness). But I can’t take all this failure of self-responsibility, so I blame others – it is their fault that my fruit rots on the vine.

Because I need to see myself as productive and contributory, but am too unwilling to harvest my own fruit, I hook on to the causes that are not my own – organizations, the church, businesses, and the like. This way I do not have to worry about whether or not my truth is truth, rather I can blame them if their truth turns out to not really be right. And all along, from my Higher Self aspects, I know that their truths are not totally right and that it is not my Call to advance others in their respective Calls. My Call is to harvest my own fruit! I fail to take on self-responsibility for harvesting my own fruit.

This was a lot to be with, but I was so grateful for the arising of what seemed to be clarity for me. There was time left in my hour, so I turned to harder area: Love. The line of reasoning that arose went as follows. Love energy is not in my consciously felt experience. To step into the unknown of what true love may feel like requires more trust than I am willing to risk. I’ll settle for a love that is more characterized by a “Mutual Admiration Society” model – I’ll admire you and you admire me.

Well it is not really mutual. I’ll let you be the boss, the authority, and I’ll be submissive.  And here my three previous aspects come up again:

1) Doubt – I doubt that love really exists or that the feeling of love is worth whatever the price might be.

2) Laziness – it would take too much energy to step up to a truly mutual engagement and meet another as equals. No, I’ll let you be boss.

3) Selfishness – I really do not care about you, so if you think I am going to invest in a strong, mutual love relationship you have another thing coming.

I could see that the resulting cloud in regard to love relationships in my life would be hopelessness – a genuine and authentic love relationship is a hopeless unachievable fulfillment for any longing I may have for this.  I’ll settle for being recognized for my brilliance.  The Untruth in me that is the root cause in my psyche is that at my core I am unworthy of love. And since this is so painful to accept (and remember it is an untruth), I resort to generalizing and projecting out the image that no one, especially those in authority over others, ever really loves anyone. And of course this would apply to God as the maximum Authority.

We each shared what arose in us during this Saturday afternoon session. It was a rich experience to be open to each other at this level of self-honesty.

Prayer

In the evening the room was set up with four altars – masculine and feminine, heaven and earth, spirit and nature, and space and time. The room was lit by the four candles on each altar. Before entering the room each of us had an opportunity to write a short prayer. Having recognized from the afternoon’s work that we could not possibly go on on our own and that we needed help, we were brought to a state of humility where we could surrender and call upon God. My prayer was that I might Care, Dare, and Show Up fully. All the prayers were put into a basket for use later in the evening.

Each person was blessed as he or she entered the altar room (the Sun room). We spent about half an hour walking around and sitting in front of each altar as we saw fit. We then reconfigured the room into a circle and passed the basket of prayers around. Each person took one and then each one was read – but not by the person who wrote it. We closed by standing in a circle, holding hands. Mine, and the others,’ attitude was one of gratitude.

The next days

How would the next day, our second day (up until lunch) unfold? For me it involved a processing scene around truly showing up – even if that meant being angry and expressing anger. I could see where perhaps my fruit on my vine was in fact needed and I left the retreat with the intention to harvest my fruit and let it nurture the community and others.

But over the following days this has not been easy. My style and way of thinking are not like those qualities in others in our leadership group in many ways. The issue is how to show up without being arrogant.  How to be part of the team and yet carry my own voice. And how not to retreat if I think I have a piece of the Truth that is needed but fear it would be disagreed with. I feel like a kid learning to ride a bike, so we’ll see how this goes. For sure it takes humility to truly integrate facets of truth that at first seem disparate.

Shared in love, Gary

This question of “Pathwork Target Markets” was alive in my meditation this morning and several thoughts came up that helped to clarify this for me.  I invite you into this conversation, especially those of you who are involved in Pathwork. What were your symptoms that led you to consider Pathwork as a possible tool for support?

Here is my story. Many years ago I read Balancing Heaven and Earth, a book by the Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson. In his counseling practice he said two types of people came to him: Those in their twenties who were not able to get their life together in their relationships, career, finances, and life in general. They were not coping well with life’s basic challenges. Their needs were for strong ego development – the task, in Jungian terms, of the first half of life.

The second group of people who came to him were in their late thirties and beyond. Typically they would have been successful in their lives – enjoying a “good enough” or even “much better than average” family life, career, financial stability, church life, social life, etc. – but were in what one would call, in the popular jargon, a midlife crisis. While “successful” in all the ways that the culture and even their religion defined “success,” they were, at a deep and almost unconscious level, ill at ease, not sure of the meaning of it all. Their needs, again using the Jungian ideas, were to transition into the second half of life, a spiritual journey that would transcend their already strong-enough ego.

The most challenging group for Johnson were those in their late thirties and beyond who had not developed their ego sufficiently enough to navigate the first half of life successfully and so were not really grounded in life, and yet were hit with the questions of meaning and purpose of it all, issues that come up in the second half of life. They were, in effect, having to do the first half of life (ego development) and the second half of life (transcending the ego by entering a spiritual path) at the same time – a most challenging and frustrating situation.

My journey into Pathwork fits this traditional mid-life crisis model. I had had a good enough career, family life, church life, and was financially sound, but something I could not name but which seemed to be of profound importance was missing. In the words of Joseph Campbell, I had climbed the ladder of success only to find that it was up against the wrong wall.

The first clarity I got in all of this did not happen until I was in my early fifties. At 53 I was drawn to a graduate-level course taught at a local Catholic Seminary. It’s title: The Psychology and Spirituality of Mid-Life. It was taught by a PhD nun who was by then a known author and workshop leader in the field of spirituality within the Catholic tradition.

I had no idea what this course would be about, and yet, though I was not Catholic, I just had to take it – this psychological and spiritual nature of midlife issues so fit my sense of my “problem.” The course and what followed changed my life forever, eventually opening me up to Pathwork five or six years later.

This interim between taking my first course in psychology/spirituality and finding Pathwork was a time of great wrestling for me and had led me to seek spiritual direction, to take all the courses that Barbara Fiand taught (courses like Experiencing God, Walking With the Mystics, etc.), and to my own self-created crises in leaving my marriage, church, and career.

In 2000, at the age of 58, I participated in a personal reflection retreat during which I had as my spiritual director Julie Murray who, though it meant nothing to me at the time, was on the faculty of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing. On the first day of this personal silent reflection retreat I met with Julie.  After this first session with her I fell apart, becoming full of confusion and self-loathing, somehow coming to realize that my problems now were very real and very deep.

On the second day I met with Julie again, sharing my collapse of the day before. Her words were clear: “Gary, you are very serious about your spiritual path, and you need an incredible amount of help. The only place I know where you can get the level of help you need is the Sevenoaks Pathwork Center in Virginia.” As they say, the rest is history.

While people come to Pathwork for a variety of reasons, this business of dealing with midlife crisis certainly was my reason for working with Pathwork.  Helping those struggling with midlife issues of meaning and purpose is, it seems to, a major target market for Pathwork. As I did, I sense that people struggling with midlife issues would find effective tools in Pathwork. These tools would allow one to transition from a “good enough” or even “much better than average” life, secure, stable, and happy as it may seem, to an outstanding life, a life filled with profound purpose, meaning and fulfillment, a life rich with personal and spiritual growth as well as a life rich in its impact on others. I am told that perhaps only 5% of those who get to this point of awareness actually do take the leap, but for those of us who do, Pathwork is an incomparable set of tools to work through the issues of transition and transformation.

There are other groups of people who could be helped by Pathwork in a profound way. One such group is the group of people who have been active in a 12-step recovery program like AA or its counter part Al-Anon. These people have faced their demons and are rebuilding their lives in many ways. For these people Pathwork becomes a way of deepening their process for psychological healing as well as of grounding and enriching the spiritual dimensions of their life. It is an opportunity to grow within a group of people who are equally committed to personal and spiritual growth. But again, perhaps only a small percentage of this group take this plunge into deeper waters of their psychological and spiritual second stage of life.

These are two “target markets” for Pathwork.

Are there groups of people for whom Pathwork may not yet be a best fit? While Pathwork can help people in many life situations, some may need a year or more of preparatory work before entering an intense personal growth program such as Pathwork. This preparatory work could be psychotherapy or private work with a Pathwork helper. One group not yet ready for Pathwork is the group of people who are still caught in addictions and who need the preliminary work of a year or two in AA or in therapy of some kind before entering Pathwork. Finally, sometimes younger people need real help with ego development as they get their lives grounded on the various fronts of career, family, social interaction and finance. Pathwork may be premature for them, tempting them to bypass needed ego development. Perhaps they would be better served by a nurturing job environment, peer support community, and/or guidance services of life-coaching, therapy, or relationship or career counseling.  Of course they could do both.

Each life is unique, and these categories get blurred and nuanced in real life. The purpose of having a “Target Market” is not to exclude people but to help us as a Pathwork organization committed to helping people via Pathwork to be focused on reaching those people who may be most profoundly helped by the teachings and practices of Pathwork.

What is your reaction to these ideas? I invite you into the conversation.

Shared in love,

Gary

Pause and Consider: Daring to be My Real Self, But Being Flexible As To How I Show Up…

As I began my meditation this morning it suddenly dawned on me that I had so quickly forgotten that the “sun is behind the clouds” of my daily disharmonies of these past few days. This forgetting reminded me of my patterned resistance to do this Pathwork – this sun-behind-the-clouds concept being one of the central ideas that impacted me so profoundly in Pathwork Lecture 131 just a week or two ago. I forgot that God, through the Spiritual Laws of the Cosmos, wants each of us to be happy and fulfilled in ALL aspects of our lives, and gives us the tools to realize said fulfillment and happiness.  For me ALL aspects includes happiness and fulfillment in my inner life, my relationship with Pat and with so many others, including my family, and my work for Mid-Atlantic Pathwork, including my preparation for the upcoming MAP Leaders Retreat over which I have allowed so much angst into my life these past few days. Let me just pause and take this in! Yes. The sun is behind the clouds. God does want and has provided tools for my realizing happiness in each moment of life!

As I sat with this I noticed that I seem to have a predisposition to cloudy days – that my conscious longing for the sun notwithstanding – I am somehow drawn to cloudy days – days of inner disharmony, guilt, anxiety, fear, and the like. Cloudy days, unhappy days, at least in some key areas of my life (like relationships, spirituality, etc.), are somehow more familiar to me than are happy days of rich abundance in these areas. I have developed a complex and pseudo-effective web of defenses to live comfortably in these spaces of unhappiness. I am somehow more “satisfied” with clouds in my life in these particular areas than with the sun’s bright rays. And in general, I am more comfortable doing something I think I ought to be doing (meeting the needs of others and of organizations to standards of perfection beyond my natural talents) rather than tending to things that nurture my Soul and which are aligned with my Soul’s central purpose in this life.

Coffee Time with Pat

Pat: There seems to be a certain rigor to doing spiritual practices – and I associate “harsh” with rigor. I wonder, can rigor be kind and compassionate? Gary: I would use the word discipline. And there is a certain discipline required to master an art, or perhaps to master life for that matter. My sense is that discipline could come from various motivations. One might have discipline motivated by one’s the love of the art – like a person with musical talent spending time mastering finger exercises in order to give his best to his piano playing.  I would call this devotion to one’s art. While difficult, in a way the devotion and love for the art, or piano in this case, make the practicing and other disciplines required to further that art effortless effort.

The same discipline could come out of a more compulsive/addictive energy. One could be devoted to one’s practice, say, of saying the rosary five times a day. This could be an automatic habit or this could, perhaps, be deeper.  But either way it certainly would be a kind of devotion. Pat: To “wake up” takes more than habitual devotion it seems. One has to do one’s work, and often that is the hard and often painful work of self-inquiry. And I notice that I do not know the gentle space of inquiry. For me inquiry has more of a feel of the chopping block examination by a harsh judge. I’m fonder of the word “pondering” when it comes to this self-examination – pondering my foibles feels softer, and as such can safely lead me to a deeper place of inquiry.

Gary: (sharing from my meditation) In my own inquiry I, too, notice my own predisposition to being on the chopping block rather than simply being curious about what is going on in my life motivated by images and distortions. Being curious about some of the root causes of my anxiety, disharmonies, etc., or even the root causes of my predisposition to unhappiness – well while I talk this game, emotionally my judges are more at work in this inquiry practice.

This predisposition toward unhappiness would be my negative intentionality. Unconsciously I intend to be unhappy – for I know how to live from this familiar space of semi-conscious unhappiness – I have built up an elaborate web of defenses, both Lower Self aspects and Mask Self aspects, all based upon a set of unconscious images (wrong beliefs). I have a sense that these defenses sort of work for me and bring me a modicum of happiness, albeit a pseudo-happiness. I do not at all know if letting go of my defense network would work to bring me true joy, peace, love, and so on, or would lead to a further collapse of my life. Dare I strip off my defense armor and jump into the abyss?! Part of me sticks with pseudo-happiness as a safer bet.

So from these patterned choices I have an “OK life.” I am somehow “satisfied” in living in a less abundant way with you, with others, with my Pathwork, with Mid-Atlantic Pathwork. I assess that now, after having left my earlier life in corporate America, my family and my church, and now living with you where we can have our coffee times as a top priority, having done over 12 years of Pathwork, yes now certainly I have enough “joy,” “peace,” “security,” “love,” “creativity,” “manifestation of life,” etc. One more time it is the old “bird in the hand being worth two in the bush!”   Dare we, you and I, continue this lifestyle of abyss jumping? Cannot we just stay in the relative safety and comfort of our still-existing patterns and images? But we seem to be more the intentional abyss-jumpers.

At this point I sketched out in my journal what seemed like an appendix for my presentation of Pathwork Lecture 131 – and again the juices flowed within.  Then Pat and I continued our conversation. Pat: What are the keys that will work for each of us for our awakening – the correct ingredients in the correct amounts? And again I face self-hatred coming up – resistance to doing the work. I “sort of” do the work, but gloss over so much it seems. Gary: This is what I see in me as well – somehow trying to be ahead of where I am – wanting to avoid the deeper steps.  I have my own version of unconscious self-hatred underneath my veneer, unconscious self-hatred that blocks even doing the work – the “I’m not worth it,” or “I just can’t do it.”  Yet until these unconscious untruths get mined, placed on the table for examination, and emptied out of my psyche, I cannot add the truth of the sun being all around and within me.

By the end of our Coffee Time I felt so full. This mining operation, this curiosity about life, truly inspires my life – and, fortunately, Pat’s life!

Time with my “Pathwork Buddy” Jenny

For longer than either of us can remember – but probably over five years now – Jenny (who is a 28-year Pathworker) and I have enjoyed biweekly 90-minute Pathwork phone conversations. We do not talk theory, but rather applications – how is our Pathwork helping us, what patterns and images are coming up, and so on. Both of us love this time of sharing – encouraging, and inspiring one another in the work of Pathwork. Today was such a session.

Today we acknowledged that Pathwork is hard – and having a buddy is helpful. As a spiritual path, Pathwork is like trying to be one of the Navy SEALs in the military – and yet we resist the “training.” It would be like a military man wanting to become a member of the select SEALs but not wanting to do pushups!  We laughed with each other in seeing some of the truth in this.  Then my side of our sharing focused on my preparation for the Leaders Retreat coming up later this week.

I shared the joy I have had in working with our preparation team and in preparing my presentation of Lecture 131, though I am not sure whether or not I shall actually present the latter. I shared that neither Julia nor Karen had responded to my presentation and where that takes me. “I must be wrong, I’m naïve, etc.”

But Jenny helped me see what my presentation was all about for me. In developing this presentation I so enjoyed the exploring, the insightful input I got from Karen and Julia and subsequently incorporated into the presentation. Jenny: So this is all about applying the Pathwork Lectures – individually and collectively as a community. Gary: I inwardly acknowledge and own how I have been inspired by being on this preparation committee – feeling Spirit and Truth arise amongst us – and how deeply the words and ideas of the Lecture resonate with me. I really want to share what has come alive in me and what has deepened my already profound passion for Pathwork. The energy that arises in me in this process feels like the voice of my Calling.

Jenny: So if you are not enthusiastically received by the others, what is the truth for you? Gary: I’m bad, the presentation is bad, or they are bad. Jenny: Can you step back from this dualistic assessment and simply TRUST and STAND BY your passion, which is REAL – can you trust what arises in you as useful, even though you (and others) do not know in what way or how it is to be used? Gary: Let me pause. I see my sense of vulnerability in this – like a singer who puts his or her very self into a performance – can the singer know and own the quality of his or her performance but let the chips fall where they will as to how others relate to the performance? Can I just put my all into this – as I am inspired – and simply share how this material has landed in me? Can I be authentically me – in my passion and inspiration – and let go of outcome?

Jenny: Last time we talked you mentioned the MAP budgets – how you had put your all into them but were not seemingly attached to how they were received. I mirrored back to you the amazing freedom you have in that detachment from outcomes relative to how you and your budgets are received. This seems the same for this presentation and your role in the Leaders Retreat. You can have such freedom in, as it was for your “elegant” budgets, not being in anyway tied to response.  Can you have faith in what you know, and trust what you know as truth that has arisen in you from this lecture and your engagement with your preparation team?

Gary: Beautifully said. Thank you. And if my passion is not met with engagement, I have the choice of my actions.  … But I also notice another angle. Yes I have passion for this presentation, but what if I am being Called by Spirit to another role? Can I let go of my feelings around this presentation and with equal commitment go on to take on another role, if that is where Spirit seems to be moving me or us as a group? Can I let go of control? Can I be open to Spirit, knowing that either way this goes holds value for us all. Jenny: Yes, discernment. The challenge of not being run by your feelings! What does Spirit want – a moment-by-moment discernment.

I am taken back to Bert Hellinger’s piece Pausing Before the Mystery one more time. Yes, the presentation is done. The material is in my cells. It may be used, or I may be used in another way. Can I now let go and let God? This would be my prayer. And in this surrender I see that I find peace.

Shared in love, Gary