There is a great cosmic pull in this world…The aim of this pull is to move us toward union…But if union is being looked at as a mental process or as a venture with an intangible God, then sorry to say, that’s not genuine union at all. No, there’s got to be real live actual contact…

In truth, life and pleasure are one. Said another way, we can’t live without pleasure…The cosmic plan rolls all this up into one goal: life, pleasure, contact and oneness. Because they’re all one and the same thing. So when pleasure through relationships is missing, there is a disturbance in our life force that comes from being in opposition to the cosmic plan…

We, each of us, oppose this pull out of the wrong thinking that giving into it means we’ll be swallowed whole…But by fearing and opposing this pull, we’re bucking the natural flow…To whatever degree we equate the life force with annihilation, we’re going to have a struggle on our hands…

This is the reason people hang onto the dualistic divide of the body and the spirit. We stamp the body bad, and then claim the denial of our very nature is right and good. Good grief…

When we can’t fully harness this powerful force, part of us moves towards others, accepting our bodily instincts and our basic nature. But another part backpedals, leading to deprivation, emptiness, meaninglessness and a sense of waste…the stronger our resistance to the pull, the more pain and problems we will have. It’s like somehow saying our own basic nature is in opposition to the divine evolutionary plan. What a colossal error…

But although we might block and oppose the pull, we can’t avoid it. It’s a master winch that just keeps on tugging…Usually there’s a slug of opposition, throwing a wrench into the works. Painful contact then ensues. What’s happening here is that the pleasure principle at one time—way back in childhood—got attached to a negative situation. Now, every experience of pleasure is accompanied by the activation of this unwanted negativity. This creates a pull toward contact—Onward!—coupled with fear of the truckload of crap that will come with it. Wait, reverse!...

It’s that last part that carries the stinger. It creates one of two fundamental reactions: either the desire to hurt, or the desire to be hurt…Remember, there’s no eliminating pleasure. But pleasure can be morphed into negative pleasure. Then the pleasure of contact will be associated with hurting or being hurt. Cripes…

We must not get caught thinking that this is who we are, that this is our deepest nature, that this is life. No, this is not the ultimate reality of our instinctual selves. It just may be where we are on the wheel right now…

We need to find the courage and honesty to face what needs facing. Then we can unwind our personal attitudes back to their constructive and trustworthy nature…Finding peace between the body and the soul is a natural by-product of self-realization.

Listen and learn more.

The Pull, Chapter 1: The Cosmic Pull Toward Union

Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #149 Cosmic Pull Toward Union – Frustration

There is a feature in the human personality related to the pull that we tend to trot out on Opposite Day: it’s called frustration…Neither of the frustrating alternatives of denouncing happiness or intensely making rigid demands is going to ring the winning bell…

Let’s link up frustration with the pleasure principle, that innate inner desire we all have to strive towards life, pleasure and wholeness…Babies are hardwired to strive for pleasure. But they aren’t capable of tolerating any frustration—which is what humans experience when gratification is delayed—because they have zero awareness that there is a future…

If the baby psyche doesn’t mature, it will get stuck in this frustrating attitude of “I want it now.” From here we enter into an apparent contradiction: the less we can endure frustration, the less we can have pleasure…

The fact of the matter is this: for us to feel real pleasure, we’ve got to have a relaxed inner state…But if we rebel against any delay in gratification, we’ll end up angry, tense and stubborn—real doggie downers for tapping into life’s pleasure stream…

Here’s the great error in all of this: we believe that what we want is more important and more capable of giving us pleasure than having a peaceful state of mind…Insisting on pleasure with a do-or-die attitude that can’t tolerate even a wee bit of frustration is out-and-out erroneous...

So what’s the way out? We’ve got to learn to let go…Letting go and relaxing is not the same as relinquishing forever…We want to keep on seeking fulfillment, but without hanging onto it for dear life…

Ego, are you listening? You’ve got a job to do here. Yes, the ego must make it its business to constructively let go…Once the ego gets the ball rolling, it’s all downhill from there. The ego will get carried along by the inner forces it activates through the letting-go process…

Tension and resignation are two sides of the same coin. Look for one, realize the other is also there, and then consciously reach for the soothing balm of letting go…It’s just like relaxing into the pleasure of giving up separation. Yet we fight, tooth and nail, in not wanting to give this up, frustrating ourselves on the most important level of living. We are fighting against our own best interest on this…

But love can only grow where there is no fear. So if we fear coming into contact with others, we put up defenses that produce hurt and anger. Now contact feels like pain…When we fear something, we block it. So then we flip over to fearing not getting it. Then we can’t stand the feeling of emptiness, so we battle against feeling frustrated. We pitch a hissy fit and demand instant gratification…

Don’t forget: the pull is always stronger than our pushback. Eventually, pleasure is going to win. This whole thing is rigged—in our favor.

Listen and learn more.

The Pull, Chapter 2: The Counter-Pull: Frustration

Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #149 Cosmic Pull Toward Union – Frustration

Each human soul has a center from which the soul forces flow, and to which others are constantly responding. This is the command center governing the laws of communication and, on a lower level, our ability to cooperate and get along…Let's explore the importance of how we communicate.

So in what ways do we break these universal laws? Turns out, it’s not that hard to do. It’s what happens whenever we are overeager and overanxious—when we don’t just desire communication, we crave it. Then our soul forces get pushy, automatically becoming harsh, pointed and rigid. Their movement is jerky; their impact is too strong. The other person’s soul center will feel like it’s being punched…

If someone communicates in an aggressive way, the other is going to withdraw…Nothing slams the door quicker on another soul than when they catch wind of our unconscious monster cravings. Seeing this can take the sting out of what seemed a personal rejection. Their unconscious soul forces merely did what they needed to do to reestablish a little balance…

This has happened to all of us at one time or another, when we either were on the end of having an exaggerated need, or we felt sucker-punched by someone else’s. Ironically, even if we want to respond with loving communication, we can’t help but repulse such a forward-surging motion...A childish, exaggerated craving is not in the same ballpark with healthy love. Further, the former is the actual reason that we keep striking out when we go to bat for the real thing...

We often waffle back and forth between the extremes of exaggerated need and withdrawal. Oddly, we sometimes try to pursue both alternatives at the same time. Just, you know, to be on the safe side. No wonder we feel torn in two, with our strength sapped. No wonder we’re not walking on sunshine…

We blame outer events for our hopeless situations, when they are the natural result of our inner state which we ourselves have put into play…We’ve got to ferret all this out personally, seeing how we’re the ones who are disrupting benign laws that seek nothing more than to keep us walking in a straight line…

We can follow the breadcrumbs of our inner wounds to see how they originated in this lifetime from early disappointments. It’s because we haven’t come to terms with them that we are still trying to overcome them…Once we see and understand all these puzzle pieces, we’ll be able to let go of the exaggerated need. We’ll find that it was an illusion all along…

Learning this is a game-changer. It repositions us from being dependent and needy, to be being ones who begin to genuinely communicate.

Listen and learn more.

The Pull, Chapter 3: The Importance of How we Communicate

Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #80 Cooperation, Communication, Union