Am I Doing My Pathwork?
I have been working with Pathwork as my primary spiritual path for 13 years. I have taken all the courses (10-years worth) offered. I have taught four years in the transformation program at Sevenoaks. I have recorded all 258 of the Pathwork lectures. I regularly listen to the lectures, I study the lectures, I do daily review, I meditate, and excitedly take the graduate program taught at Sevenoaks by Erena Bramos. I have regular helper sessions with top-flight helpers. Pat and I work biweekly with a Pathwork helper team. Pat and I have our daily coffee time – an expanded “daily review” of our respective lives and our relationship. My Pathwork buddy Jenny and I have biweekly in-depth conversations regarding our Pathwork and our lives. And yet I ask, “Am I doing my Pathwork?”
What would bring up such a question? I have started doing expanded interpretations for a few of the lectures – breaking them down phrase by phrase, even word by word. The words are going into me on a deeper and deeper level it seems. Perhaps into my heart, even. And as I do this I realize that I have but a cursory idea of what Pathwork really is!
For example, I’ve spent the better part of two days with a part of Pathwork Lecture 111 Soul Substance – Coping with Demands. First, it thrills me to spend such quality time with this lecture (freed up time from Pathwork administrative tasks) and to create an expanded and interpreted version of parts of this lecture – including a few diagrams. As I do this I seem to “get” the material, and at a new level. But also as I do this I find I have to ask myself, “Gary, have you been asleep through all your Pathwork classes – as student or teacher? This lecture (like all lectures it seems now) is so basic! How could these words and phrases now open doors that seem so new and well beyond how you are living your life? How can it be that you are just now getting the very basic ideas of Pathwork?”
I would like to be specific and share some of what I have learned in this pass through Pathwork Lecture 111, but that would get away from the lecture itself. And the lecture itself is where the power is. But let me try. Here are the questions that I feel confront me as I read this lectures: “Gary, what are the unresolved problems that you brought into this lifetime?” “What pseudo-solutions have you used to reduce the pain of these problems?” “In what ways have you built a wall around yourself to protect you from pain – specifically?” “In what way have you been overwhelmed by the pain and now see this pain everywhere, filtering all of life through this pain?” “How have your problems with Pat, your problems with others in leadership, your problems in teaching or helpership, your problems in finding your Call in Life been a result of your unresolved inner problems?” This is more than enough inquiry. I get the point. I have not really tackled these questions with a degree of earnest. So in this sense I have not been doing my Pathwork.
Perhaps I can take these questions up with my helper or my Pathwork buddy Jenny or with Pat, though Pat is not technically a Pathworker. Or perhaps Jenny and I could tackle, say, Pathwork Lecture 111 in my expanded version and see what insights arise as we both work with this material.
In the meantime I invite you to look at what came up in me in my expansion of Pathwork Lecture 111 (open this expanded quote). Remember, Pathwork is not a religion. The points the Guide raises are relevant no matter what one’s belief system is. As my business card says, “A shared life of curiosity, wrestling & exploration… Inviting Conversation” — and thus I am. Comments and conversation welcome.
Shared in love, Gary