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

On this human plane of existence, individual units of consciousness exist and sometimes we all get along. Just as often though, conflicts arise creating friction and crisis. What's the spiritual significance of our relationships with others?

On the innermost levels of our being, we have some bits governing our thinking, feeling, willing and acting that are quite nicely developed, thank you very much. Then again, there are other parts still in a lower state of development. And they like to have their say in things, too…We are all, each and every one of us, living in a house divided. Which always creates tension, anxiety and pain. In short, that’s why we’ve got problems…

So some aspects of our personalities are already in truth. Others, not so much…This results in confusion that leads to disturbances in the force fields of our lives. And what do we usually do about that? We look the other way—away from the dirty laundry and towards the parts that are already tidied up…

This pushing aside of one part of ourselves and identifying ourselves with another, is not—surprise, surprise—a path that leads to unification. Nope. Instead, it widens the gap. So how do we sew up this split? We have to be willing to bring out the deviating side and face it…To the degree we move our feet in the direction of inner unification, to that exact same degree we will know outer peace…

The dissension with others, it turns out, has nothing to do with actual differences, per se. Rather, it's about the differences in our levels of development. Just as within each individual…Relationships, as you may have noticed, create a great challenge for most folks. Here’s why: only in relationship to others do our own as-yet-unresolved problems get activated. And what do we typically do then? We back off. This helps tremendously in maintaining the illusion that the problem lies with the other person…

This is why relationships are, at one and the same time: a fulfillment, a challenge, and an accurate gauge to what’s going in one’s own inner state…If we take the weenie way out, shrinking from this challenge and giving up on intimate contact, many of our inner problems won’t get called into play. Ah, safe…

We need to look at our level of contentment and fulfillment in relationships like a yardstick. They measure our own inner state. And they help point us in the direction we need to go for our own self-development…

When two people interact who are on different levels of spiritual development, the more highly developed one is responsible for the relationship…The more developed a person is, the more they will be willing to search for their own involvement whenever they feel negatively affected. It doesn’t matter how at-fault the other may be. A lesser-developed person always lays the blame at someone else’s feet. This is true whether we’re talking about loving partners, parents and children, friends or business associates…

It’s only through the doorway of self-responsibility that we begin to look for our part in our own problems. Our willingness to change then becomes the passageway to freedom. Relationships then become both fruitful and fulfilling. And that is their deeper spiritual significance…

The bottom line is this. No matter what the other does wrong, if it disturbs us, there is something in ourselves that we overlook…

The blame game is so ubiquitous, we often don’t realize we’re playing it. We're essentially telling the world, “You are doing it to me,” or “You’re making me feel this way”…One person blames another, one country blames another, one political party blames the other…

So why do we do this? Because we get pleasure from expressing our hostility while whitewashing ourselves…This is a lose-lose game that harms all of the players. And we are often not aware of our blind involvement in it…

Without a doubt, intimate sexual relationships ar

In truth, as long as we believe that our substitutes are all the pleasure there is, we’re not able to believe the full pleasure of life is for real. Living a decent life implies living a life of sacrifice. Yuck. But we’ve got this all wrong, because we've got our wires crossed. We can take in genuine pleasure only to the degree we give up all the distorted habitual ways we have found to activate our life force. And for many of us is through negative pleasure. To the extent we cling to these false ways of living, we can’t bear real pleasure.

The vicious circle we're in looks something like this. The less we want to give up our destructive ways, the less we can accept and believe in pleasure. Then the less we believe in real pleasure, the less we want to give up our favorite “pleasure". And the less we want to give up whatever obstructs us from genuine pleasure, the less commitment we have to experience real pleasure. In the end, we’re stuck trying to wring the best life possible from our favorite bad habits—our life-destroying patterns.

If there’s no by-product of pleasure, then being mature, self-responsible people who accept reality as it is, is going to be a tough sell. But then, how much fun is it really to insist on being an irresponsible child? On being someone who makes others pay for our actions or inactions, and who secretly wants to cheat life? The lack of integrity wound up in this is simply never going to feel good.

And if, in our guts, we don’t feel good about ourselves, we’re a far cry from feeling pleasure. We’re just too busy roiling in negative inner energies. But by the same token, if we get a whiff of self-responsibility by way of some self-respect once we’re no longer trying to cheat life, to that same degree we become capable of experiencing pleasure.

If we can start to look forward to a full and pleasurable existence, it won’t be so hard to give up some of our destructive patterns. We’ll be able to stand on our own feet and accept life’s unavoidable frustrations. This equation must always come out even. Without an understanding of this basic truth, we’ll continue to hunt for pleasure in an unhealthy way. We'll look for a reward for the “good child” from some authority we depend on for good feelings.

We need to discover for ourselves the pleasure of self-autonomy, in the best sense of the word, which we have to work for. Once the notion that adulthood is a hardship eases up, we’ll feel less threatened by what self-responsibility entails. We’ll open to its rewards and its inherent pleasure.

Listen and learn more.

The Pull, Chapter 5: Pleasure: The Full Pulsation of Life

Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #177 Pleasure – The Full Pulsation of Life

People may be confused about a lot of different things, but most of us are somewhat confused about love. And sex. And then there’s that erotic spark. What gives? The forces of love, eros and sex are actually three distinct forces, or principles. And they show up, or don’t, differently on all the various levels. Let’s see if we can sort them out.

When it comes to bang for the buck, the erotic force is the most potent. It’s got momentum on its side and it creates impact. If we have done a lot of spiritual development work already, the erotic force will carry us from the short-lived erotic experience into the mighty and permanent state of pure love. So it’s to be the bridge that takes us from sex to love. But it rarely does. After all, eros can only do so much.

Its momentum will carry a soul just so far and no further. It’s up to the personality to learn how to love. Without this, eros is destined to dissolve. But if one has learned to love, then voilà, the spark of the erotic force lives on. Left all on its own, however, without love to keep it company, it will burn itself out. Pffft. So goes the way of so many marriages.

In many ways, eros looks a lot like love. It conjures up impulses in people that might not surface otherwise. Bursts of unselfishness and affection surge into existence that were unrealized before. So we get confused. Isn’t this love? But eros also looks a lot like the great urge of the sex instinct. Yet it’s not quite the same thing.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the purpose and spiritual meaning of the erotic force. For surely, without eros, many of us would not get a taste of the marvelous feeling and beauty contained in real love. Fear would trump desire and down we’d go in flames.

Listen and learn more.

The Pull, Chapter 6: The Forces of Love, Eros and Sex

Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #44 The Forces of Love, Eros, and Sex

Everything we do, whether it comes from our innate, natural Godself or from our less-than-perfect humanity, has a deep spiritual significance. In fact, all of our experiences have a symbolic aspect in which there is a wider, deeper, fuller meaning. And so it is with spiritual significance of sexuality.

So what’s the deeper meaning of the sexual experience? What does the urge to unite physically with another signify? Sure, there’s the need to propagate the species. And yeah, there’s a genuine need for pleasure. But these are only partial answers, and fairly superficial at that.

When we are attracted to someone, there is a yearning to know the other. There is a desire to reveal oneself to the other—to let ourselves be known and found. And we want to find the true being of the other. It is this revealing of ourselves that allows us to enter the full dimension of the other person’s self, who is also seeking to know us. There is an involuntary force that energizes this mutual desire and creates an electrifying blissful feeling and longing.

If this attraction stops short at the physical level without the other levels coming into play, at least to some degree, the sexual experience is going to fall short. So disappointing. It will only be an itty-bitty fraction of what the soul truly longs for, but is too blind or immature to go after. Because full union with another soul requires doing some personal housework to clean up distortions and unify split-off aspects.

Instead, what usually happens is that we grope in the dark, not attracted to the other actual person but to a fabricated image in our minds of what the other should be in order to make us happy. The real person then is totally ignored and blindly denied. To top this off, we get angry when the illusion doesn’t come true. Usually, both parties are equally adept at playing this game. But they don’t know it.

We can use our measure of fulfillment as a good gauge of how much we are seeking the real person. No bliss? Probably not so real. We’re likely superimposing another person, such as one of our parents, over the real person. But if the attraction is genuine and real, we’ll want to reveal ourselves in the most intimate and real way. We’ll desire the closest connection we can get.

Listen and learn more.

The Pull, Chapter 7: The Spiritual Symbolism and Significance of Sexuality

Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #207 The Spiritual Symbolism and Significance of Sexuality

Nothing can be created unless there is mutuality. This is a spiritual law. It means that two apparently different entities come together to form one whole. They open toward each other, cooperating and affecting each other in such a way that something new is created. It is mutuality that bridges the gap between duality and unity. It’s the movement that eliminates separation.

Make no mistake, this applies to every-stinking-thing, without exception. Whether we’re creating a work of art, composing a symphony, painting a picture, writing a story, cooking a meal, discovering a scientific breakthrough, healing an illness, building a relationship, or developing ourselves on a path of self-realization, the law of mutuality is in play.

For any self-expression, the self merges with something beyond the self and something new comes into being. First there must be creative inspiration and imagination. The mind extends itself beyond what it previously knew existed and a plan forms. Then this creative aspect cooperates with the second aspect of mutuality, which is execution. Implied in step two are effort, perseverance and self-discipline.

So the creative idea and these more mechanical, ego-driven activities must work together in harmony for some type of creation to take place. We must follow step one with step two in order to ease on down this road. This is true even though these two steps seem alien to each other. Creativity is free flowing and spontaneous. Execution comes from determination, which is under the direction of the ego’s will; it’s laborious and needs consistent effort. Not the same mojo as the effortless influx of creative ideas.

When people struggle with creativity, they either lack the self-discipline they need to follow through on their ideas. Or their contraction is too great for them to open their creative channels. In the former case, the person childishly refuses to be bothered by the trials and errors of the creative process. In the latter, they lack inspiration.

When we do the work of personal development, resolving our inner conflicts, we can bring this lopsidedness into balance. By restoring health, we open up to finding personal creative outlets that yield deep satisfaction.

An imbalance in these two aspects of creation is especially striking when it comes to couples. The spontaneous and effortless experience of attraction and love that brings two people together is not uncommon. In fact, it happens all the time. But rarely is this connection maintained. We have lots of excuses and explanations, but mostly what happens is that people neglect doing the work of dealing with the inner dissensions that arise.

There is often a childish notion that we shouldn’t have to work at it and that once the initial fireworks go off, we’re powerless to determine the course of the relationship. We treat it like a stand-alone entity that for better or worse is going to run its own course.

In fact, mutuality is a steppingstone on the path to unity, but it is not yet unification itself. So while we’re on the bridge to unity, we’re going to have some work to do. There will need to be a harmonious interplay between effortless creative imagination and execution—which means labor, investment, commitment and self-discipline. We need this forward-moving, effortful aspect of mutuality to get across the bridge to unity.

For there to be mutuality between two people, there must be an expansive movement flowing from each toward the other. There must be both giving and receiving, and mutual cooperation. Two Yes-currents must move toward each other, nice and slow. This allows us to gradually increase our ability to accept, bear and sustain pleasure. Believe it or not, this is one of the hardest things for us to do. It depends directly on how whole and integrated we are. It depends on our ability to say Yes when a Yes is offered.

Listen and learn