If you ever wonder

I would like to be someone you’ll remember
But not someone you can’t forget

Becoming aware of my presence should be like
Taking notice of a gentle breeze passing by

When i am with you

I would like to be as unobtrusive as the faint aroma
Of a freshly gathered bouquet

Waiting quietly to be
Enjoyed

When I arrive
It may be like a kiss from the morning sun
And when i leave

I hope you will be filled with reassurance that
Like the dim light of the moon

The consistency of the cycle is the promise
Is the cure

And all these things that I am

that are in
And of this world

are there
Just to let you know

If ever you wonder … emphatically yes
You are truly loved

Feel the Joy of Your Unfulfilled Desires

You don’t stop very often to think about how you are feeling. And yet, how you are feeling is everything. How you are feeling is your point of attraction. How you are feeling is your asking from the Universe. How you are feeling is everything that is coming to you!

Most of you have not discovered that the Universe is conspiring to assist you. And so you work hard from an attitude of unworthiness, from a feeling that you are not enough, from a feeling that you have to justify. And what I want you to begin to do is recognize that the Universe is responding to the way you feel. So think about the way you feel.

Don’t think so much about what you’re thinking or about what you have or about how you compare with your actions or your possessions to others. Instead, think about how you feel. Ask yourself, “Am I sitting here in a feeling of well-being? Do I feel intimidated? Do I feel self-conscious? Do I feel inadequate? Do I feel unworthy? Or do I feel pretty good? Do I feel cocky? Do I feel full of myself? Do I feel in love with life? Do I feel exhilarated? Am I feeling fun? Am I feeling some passion?” How you’re feeling is what your point of attraction is.

Your Point of Attraction

If you’re feeling unworthy, you can work day and night, night and day, every day, and yet not allow the very things that you want to flow, because your vibration is not allowing it, and the Universe cannot buck your current. How you’re feeling is everything. So if I were standing in your physical shoes, I would let the contrast naturally produce the desire, because it will.

And when I feel a desire within me, I would look at it, I would recognize the weirdness of it, I would recognize how unfamiliar it feels, and then I would do what is my work: I will do the work that I have been born to do: My work is to take that new desire and play with it in my mind’s eye, until it feels familiar, until it feels like the manifestation of it is the next logical step.

The goal must exist to summon the Energy, but the goal can’t matter that much — or it stops the Energy.

Let us bring this to a place that if you get this, you will have quantum leaped into a new place of deliberate attraction: Most everybody stands here, dissatisfied to some degree, longing to be over there. But the whole point of that point of attention to over there is not to get over there. The whole point of the goal or the desire is that the desire summons Life Force through you.

That’s why you’re always wanting another goal, another goal, another goal. That’s why I say you will never get it done. So, “Why do I want that?” It’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? The goal must exist to summon the Energy, but the goal can’t matter that much, or it stops the Energy. You’re wanting the goal for the sake of the Energy that will flow through you, not for the sake of the manifestation.

A woman, one day, said to me, “I don’t think you care if my lover ever comes to me. I think you want me to envision him so clearly that in my mind’s eye, he is real — so real, that it doesn’t matter that he’s not really there.” And I said, that’s exactly right. I know when she feels him in that way, the pain will be gone from her, and the Life Force will flow through her, and all of her goals will be achieved. And I also know, then he must come. But it is not about him coming. It is about him being a goal that is reason for her to focus, that causes Life Force to flow through her. It is about the Life Force flowing through her.

I am delighted that you have unfulfilled goals, because as long as you have desire, Life Force is still flowing through you. From our Nonphysical perspective, I see the unfulfilled goal as the constant summoning of life. You say, “We want fulfilled goals!” And I say, Your goals will all be fulfilled when you get over being so unhappy that they’re not fulfilled — when you start being satisfied in the un-fulfillment!

The Cycle of Creation

Here I am. Here is this contrast that gives birth to a new desire. The new desire feels weird in the beginning, because this is where I’m used to vibrating. So I look at it; I talk about it; I visualize it; I play with it; I imagine it until it becomes familiar — and now it is the vibration that is me. And now we are one.

Now I have a new platform from which to examine contrast, which gives birth to another desire, which is also weird in the beginning. I’m a failure’ again; I haven’t succeeded. But I look at it; I visualize it; I find the feeling place of it; it gets familiar; I imagine it; and it becomes the next logical step. It manifests, and now here I am again… You never stop that cycle so long as you all shall live — which is forever.

You should say, “I will go forth into this physical time/space reality, because this is the best environment that I know of that will keep producing new desire within me. And nothing in all of the Universe is more delicious than to have new desire within me!”

Celebrate the desire that is within you, and stop cursing the fact that it isn’t fulfilled! It is the desire that is within you that is worth everything — it is life itself! You keep thinking that it must be manifested before you can feel good, and that is backwards. The fact that it exists is the reason for the Life Force.

There isn’t anything that you want or have ever wanted, or anybody has ever wanted or ever will want that is for any other reason than this: You want it because you think, in the having of it, you will feel better. And I am here to say to you, you want it because in the wanting of it, Life Force is summoned through you — and you are more alive. You are in the flow.

Being In The Flow is having goals that cause Energy to flow through you. It is being in such a place of expectation and acceptance of your eternal motion forward, that you are eternally in the flow. So people say, “How are you doing?” And you say, “Great!” And they say, “Well, is there anything not going well with you?” And you say, “Everything always goes well with me!” And they say, “Oh, but I see there are all these things incomplete in your experience.” And you say, “Yeah, isn’t it great? That means I’m still alive. I still have wanting, I’m still summoning life. That means I still have the future ahead of me. That means Life Force is still flowing.”

Have you ever found yourself eating an ice cream cone and wanting to make it last? Do you find yourself ever in a sexual interlude or in a delicious book, wanting it to last? You can tell you’re getting to the end of it, and you don’t want it to be over? You know that feeling of savoring? That’s the way we’re wanting you to be with your goals. And that may be why you’re not so eager to get on with the completion of everything. You’re recognizing that you have all of this life before you — so much wonderful stuff to do — never getting it done.

Where you now are is the perfect place to be, the perfect place to move from, the perfect place from which to attract. Nothing is inappropriate with where you are. There’s not one reason in this world for you to feel anything but proud about where you are and eager about what it will produce for you.

All things are possible. Oh, you can’t even begin to get your thoughts around what is before you! But you see, none of you are ever asked (and it’s a wonderful thing) to stand here and plan everything forevermore. Just stand where you are and let the natural desire that is born out of that come into alignment with you. That’s your work: Contrast produces it. You feel it, recognize it, and then line up your Energy with it.

You are born into an environment that will produce the goals. Your work is then to choose from those goals, focus, as the creator that you are, and in your focusing, allow the Energy to flow to the completion of those goals. There are endless possibilities.

So many of you spend your lifetimes arguing about what is an appropriate goal. I’m not kidding when I say you cannot get it wrong. There are no actions that are deemed inappropriate as such. Sometimes people say, you scare us, because as you talk about absolute freedom, we are afraid that you might give people permission to do bad things to other people.

Whether I give them permission or not, everybody’s going to do what they’re going to do, and you can’t get enough laws into place to keep that from happening. But I promise you, no one would ever do anything bad to any other at the same time they were connected to Source Energy. You never connect to Source Energy and lash out against anyone else.

As you are pushing against wrongdoers, even though they might be really doing wrong, your pushing against them disconnects you from any real power. You think the strongest one wins. But your pushing against them is dis-empowering you, and their pushing against you is dis-empowering them. So if your opponent wins, it is actually because you pushed against hardest.

When you are pushing against someone –you are weakening yourself. “My adversary won because I did a better job of disallowing my well-being. I pushed harder against him.” I’m just wanting to get a little twist on this, so that you can give up all that pushing against, because it never helps.

There has been co-creating here that has taken this thought beyond that which it has been before. Once you have an opportunity to review this, you will realize that together, we will have achieved a sort of quantum leap in understanding.

Live in Joy!
Lilly

Thought and Character

The aphorism, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” not only embraces the whole of a man’s being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.

As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them. This applies equally to those acts called “spontaneous” and “unpremeditated” as to those which are deliberately executed.

Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry.

Thought in the mind hath made us.
What we are By thought we wrought and built.
If a man’s mind Hath evil thought,
pain comes on him as comes the wheel the ox behind.
If one endure in purity of thought,
Joy follows him as his own shadow – sure.

Man is a growth by law, and not a creation by artifice, and cause and effect is as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realm of thought as in the world of visible and material things. A noble and Godlike character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of ong-cherished association with Godlike thoughts. An ignoble and bestial character, by the same process, is the result of the continued harboring of groveling thoughts.

Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself. He also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength And peace. By the right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to the Divine Perfection; by the abuse wrong application of thought, scends below the level of the beast. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and master.

Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul which have been restored and brought to light in this age, none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this – that man is the master of thought, the molder of character, and maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny.

As a being of Power, Intelligence, and Love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative which he may make himself what he wills.

Man is always the master, even in his weakest and most abandoned state; in his weakness and degradation he is the foolish master who misgoverns his “household.” When he begins to reflect upon his condition, and to search diligently for the Law upon which his being is established, he then becomes the wise aster, directing his energies with intelligence, and fashioning his thoughts to fruitful issues. Such is the conscious master, and man can only thus become by discovering within himself the laws of thought; which discovery is totally a matter of application, self-analysis, and experience.

Only by much searching and mining are gold an diamonds obtained, and man can find every truth connected with his being if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul. And that he is the maker of his character, the molder of his life, and the builder of his destiny, he may unerringly prove: if he will watch, control, and alter his thoughts, tracing their effects upon himself, upon others, and upon his life and circumstances; if he will link cause and effect by patient practice and investigation, utilizing his every experience, even to the most trivial, as a means of obtaining that knowledge of himself. In this direction, as in no other, is the law absolute that “He that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened”; for only by patience, practice, and ceaseless importunity can a man enter the Door of the Temple of Knowledge.

As A Man Thinketh by James Allen

Emotional Dependency

Greetings, my dearest friends. Again, I shall try to help those of you who are on the path to move forward from where they may be stuck. Although each of you may have a different problem to encounter in himself at this moment, this article will converge into the one point all of you now need in order to proceed without too much hindrance from within yourself, So, let us understand certain fundamental factors, as they exist in yourself and in the universe.

It has been said by all great spiritual teachings that creation is infinite in its possibilities and that man’s potential to realize these infinite possibilities of happiness exists in the depths of his being. Almost all of you have heard these words. Some of you may believe them, at least in principle. Others may have their doubts about accepting them, even in theory. Let us now try to overcome some of the difficulties in this respect.

It is, first of all, necessary to understand that no one creates anything new by himself. Nothing new ever comes into existence. This would be an impossibility. But it is possible to make manifest something that already exists. It is a fact that everything, absolutely everything, exists already. The word everything cannot convey the scope of this concept. When one speaks about the infinity of God, about the infinity of Creation, this is part of the meaning.

There is no state of being, no experience, no situation, no concept, no feeling, no object, no manifestation — in whatever variety, or type, or degree — that does not already exist. It exists as a potentiality, and already in that potential lies the finished product. I can see that this idea is not easy for man to embrace, for it is so contrary to the way of thinking, being, and experiencing on the level of consciousness he generally lives in. But the more you can deepen your thoughts on that subject, the easier it will become to perceive, to sense, to grasp this truth.

Nothing is created anew, all exists already. It exists on another level of being, of experience, of consciousness. It can be found right now, immediately — if and when specific obstructions are eliminated. Knowing and understanding this principle of Creation — that all exists already and that man can make these existing possibilities manifest — is one of the necessary prerequisites.

Before man can create new possibilities of unfoldment and entirely new ranges of experience in his personal life, it is necessary that he first learns to apply these laws of Creation to his problem areas: to those aspects of life where he is troubled, limited, handicapped — where he feels trapped. Healthy unfoldment follows the creation of a healthy personality. The learning and comprehension of the laws of Creation can take place only if one applies them first to the afflicted area of the personality.

Whatever possibility you can conceive of, you can realize. Suppose you are in a conflicting situation from which you cannot see a way out. As long as you do not conceive of a way out, you truly cannot realize the already existing possibility. Or, if your concepts about the way out are hazy or unrealistic, so will be the temporary solutions that will appear as the only possibilities. The same applies, of course, to your life as a whole, as well as to specific areas. If you truly comprehend that an infinite number of possibilities exists in any given situation, you can find solutions where it was hitherto impossible to do so.

It is man’s prerogative to make use of these laws of Creation and to reach out for these infinite possibilities to unfold and partake of life’s offerings. If man’s life seems so limited, it is only because he is convinced his life must be limited. He cannot conceive of anything more than what he has experienced until now, and what he is experiencing at present. This is precisely the first handicap. Therefore, in order to expand your own possibilities of happiness, your mind must grasp this principle: you cannot bring to life what you cannot conceive.

This sentence should be truly meditated on, for the understanding of it will open new doors. And you should understand that there is a vast difference between conceiving of further possibilities of expansion, of happiness, on the one hand, and of daydreaming on the other. Wistful, resigned daydreaming that grabs the fantasy as a substitute for a drab reality is not at all what is meant here; such daydreaming is really a hindrance to the proper conceiving of life’s potentials.

What I mean is a vigorous, active, dynamic reality concept of what is possible. When you know that something you wish to bring about exists in principle, you have made the first step toward its realization.

Therefore, I invite everyone of you to contemplate what you truly conceive of as possibilities for your life. If you examine yourself closely, you will find, primarily, that you conceive of negative possibilities, which you naturally fear and wish to avoid. You defend yourself against negative possibilities. You use the main part of your psychic energies in order to defend against negative possibilities.

Negative motivation does not necessarily mean a destructive intent. For that matter, a positive motivation, in this context, could mean a very destructive intent or aim. The avoidance of a feared possibility means negative motivation. Upon close examination of your mental and emotional processes, you will find that you are negatively motivated to a considerable extent.

This is one of the first obstructions which encloses you in an imaginary and needless prison. This applies, of course, to all levels of your personality. It applies to the mental level, where you cannot really envisage the infinite vistas of experience, of expansion, of stimulation, of all sorts of wondrous and happy possibilities you have a prerogative to achieve in this life. It exists on the emotional level, where you do not allow the spontaneous and natural flow of your feelings. You fearfully, anxiously, and suspiciously hold back this spontaneous flow of what you really feel. And it exists physically, where you do not permit your body to experience the pleasure it is destined to experience.

All these are limitations which you artificially and needlessly inflict upon yourself. The next hindrance and obstruction in connection with expanding your life and creating the best of all possible lives for yourself is a cluster of misconceptions widespread in the world. We have discussed them in the past and in various other connections. Briefly recapitulating, they are: “It is not possible to be really happy; man’s life is very limited; happiness, pleasure, ecstasy are frivolous, selfish aims the truly spiritual person must abandon for his spiritual development, which must consist of sacrifice and renunciation.”

We do not have to elucidate these deeply lodged misconceptions, which are often more in the unconscious than in the conscious mind. We discussed this sufficiently in the past. But it is necessary that you discover the subtle way in which you abide by such concepts, no matter what you consciously believe. You may discover these subtle reactions by observing the reluctance which you feel against realizing a perfectly harmless and normal fulfillment, a genuine need, a truly constructive aim.

You feel as though something were holding you back, paralyzing your effort. Although there are often a number of other reasons for this reluctance as well — some of which we shall discuss shortly — it is also often true that you simply have accepted a negative idea that really makes no sense and has no good purpose.

Fear of happiness, of pleasure, of wide expansion in one’s life experiences is based on ignorance that such fulfillment could exist. On ignorance that you possess all the powers, faculties, and resources to create and bring about what you wish. On misconceptions, such as that pleasure is wrong, that it is selfish to want personal fulfillment. On fear of being annihilated and dissolved if one trusted the flow of the universal forces and went with them. Such trust necessitates letting go of the ego-will and the ego-forces and surrendering to the beneficial forces of your deep nature.

Every single human being in this world harbors an attitude of fear and weakness. This corner of the personality usually induces a strong shame, so that it is kept secret, often even from the conscious mind. Many different devices are invented in order to hide this weak, dependent area in which one feels utterly helpless, dependent, unable to assert the self, unable even to protect one’s truth and integrity. Here one is constantly compelled to sell out, to betray oneself, in order to ward off disapproval, censure, rejection.

The need for such acceptance by others is mostly less shameful than the measures to which the personality goes in order to submit, to placate, to appease. We did discuss some of these aspects in the past, of course, since they are psychologically so fundamental that we could not have gotten so far in our work unless considerable work had already been done in this respect. All the defense mechanisms you have discovered and, perhaps to some extent, begun to remove, are nothing but either ways to obtain this apparently vital acceptance from others, and/or ways to hide this shameful submission.

In this article we shall go into this topic with a still closer scrutiny, especially from the point of view of realizing life’s possibilities. We are less concerned here with ways in which you hide this shameful area — often by an apparently opposite attitude, such as indifference, hostility, compulsion, and blind rebellion, over-aggressiveness, and so forth.

Few things give man as much pain and shame as this weak spot in himself, which makes him feel impotent and compelled to sell out. We already know, my friends, that this area has remained a child. The child does not yet know that the whole of the personality has grown up and is, indeed, no longer helpless and dependent. An infant or a young child truly is helpless and dependent on the parents. But in this corner of your being that is still a child you either do not know or do not want to know that this is no longer true, that you are no longer helpless and dependent, that you are an adult.

To briefly recapitulate: the child is dependent on the parents for everything: shelter, food, affection, protection, and last, but not least, also on the so necessary supply of pleasure. For man cannot live without pleasure. It is one of the most harmful errors to deny this truth. Body, soul, mind, and spirit wither without pleasure. As the adult is able to establish conditions by his own forces and resources to provide shelter, food, affection, and safety, so is he able to do the same about pleasure. In all these areas he must have contact, cooperation, and communication with others — in varying degrees.

He cannot provide for himself any of these necessities without interplay with other people. But this interplay, or interaction, is entirely different from the passive, weak, dependency of the small child. The thoroughly adult person uses his own best forces, his intelligence, his intuition, his talents, his observation, his flexibility to get along with others in giving and taking. His sense of fairness makes him sufficiently pliable to give in. And his sense of self makes him sufficiently assertive not to be stepped on and abused.

The often fine balance in these forces of communication cannot be taught; it is an awareness that comes through personal growth. The child is incapable of this. He is rigidly one-sided in his insistence to receive, for this is his need. The same applies to pleasure. The child must have the parent’s permission, as it were, to have pleasure. The adult must have his own permission to establish and utilize the source of all pleasure deep within himself.

Through his own permission, he will have the force and security to make meaningful contact. If he first needs the other person to approve before he can allow himself to experience pleasure, he is still in the position of a child, or even of an infant. I repeat, this never implies that one can do without others. But the emphasis is shifted. The adult finds in himself a well of inexhaustibly wonderful feelings. Insecurity and weakness are not possible when these feelings are activated.

When man is distorted in this respect and part of his development is arrested, he waits for another person — a parental substitute — to make it possible for him to realize this deep source of his own rich feelings. He knows of them and yearns for them. But he does not know that he is no longer a child who is dependent on others for being allowed to feel them, for being able to activate and express his feelings. This is his tragedy, for he thus moves into a vicious circle. Whenever a misconception is adhered to, immediately a vicious circle comes into being, which paralyzes the pleasure forces, a good part of energy, and thus makes life dull and lusterless.

To deny the intense pleasure of being, the pleasure of the energy flow of man’s body, soul, and spirit, is to deny life. When a child suffers such a denial, his psyche receives sort of a shock — perhaps by repeated absence of pleasure and unfulfilled yearning. This shock prevents growth, so that the personality grows lopsidedly. In his conscious mind, man ignores the fact that in him exists a crying, claiming, angry, and helpless child.

He believes himself entirely grown. Yet on the unconscious level, where this child exists, he is unaware that he has not grown up, and no longer needs the parental permission, or, even more, the parent (substitute) for the source of pleasure and life. He does not know that he is free to move toward pleasure, toward his own fulfillment, toward the realization of his own powers to obtain whatever he wants and needs. This is one of the most fundamental splits in man’s personality.

Let us now look a bit closer at this hidden corner, where man has remained a child. Let us see where his consciousness ignores this and where the child ignores the rights and powers of the adult state. The particular vicious circle I mentioned before is this: not knowing that all exists already, so that it can be (re)created as a manifestation in his life, makes him dependent on an outside force, another authority, for all his wants and needs. In this distortion of facts, he waits for fulfillment from the wrong source.

This keeps the need perpetually unfulfilled. The more unfulfilled he is, the more urgent the need becomes. The more urgent the need, the greater his dependence, his hope, his attempt to please whomever is supposed to fill it. He becomes desperate. Desperate because the more he tries, the less the need is fulfilled, as it must be in this unrealistic attempt. Consciously he knows nothing of this, he does not know what forces drive him — not even in what direction. And he is desperate because, in his urgency to have the need fulfilled, he betrays himself, his truth, his best.

Both his frustrated striving and his self-betrayal create a forcing current. This forcing current may manifest in a very subtle way. It may not be overt at all, but the emotions are all cramped up with it and it must inevitably affect others and have its lawful and appropriate consequences. Any forcing current is bound to make others resist and shrink back, even if what they are forced to do were for their own benefit and delight. Thus the vicious circle continues.

The continued frustration, believed to be caused by the mean refusal of the other to cooperate and to give, brings rage, fury, and perhaps even vindictiveness, and also varying degrees of cruel impulses into the soul. This, in turn, weakens the personality even more, for guilt comes up. The destructive feelings must be hidden, so as not to antagonize the “source of life.”

The net of entanglement becomes tighter and tighter, the individual is completely ensnarled in this trap of his own misconceptions, distortions, and illusions, with all the destructive emotions that follow suit. He finds himself in the preposterous position of craving for the love and acceptance of a person whom he hates and resents for having left him unfulfilled for so long.

This one-sidedness — this insistence to be loved by a person one deeply resents and wishes to punish — increases guilt, for the ever wakeful presence of the real self flashes its reactions into a mind that is unable to interpret and sort out the messages of the real self from those that come from the child inside.

The fact that this need is not fulfilled by the other also weakens man’s conviction that he has a right to the pleasure he so much desires. He vaguely suspects that he may be wrong to want this. Thus he begins to displace the original, natural need and desire, he conducts them into other channels, where they are “sublimated.”

More or less compulsive other needs come into existence. All the while he is torn between the force of the deeply hidden original need and the doubt that he has a right to it. The more he doubts, the more dependent he becomes for reconfirmation by an authority person — a parent substitute, public opinion, certain groups of people who represent the last word of truth.

The more the vicious circle goes on, the less pleasure and the more unpleasure exists in the psyche and the more such a person must despair about life and doubt that fulfillment is possible. There comes a point when a person inwardly gives up.

There is not a single human being who does not harbor, in some way and to some degree, such a weak area within. In this secret corner he feels not only helpless and dependent, but deeply ashamed for the means he employs in order to placate the person who, at any given period, is supposed to fulfill the role of the authority to grant him what he needs in pleasure, safety, and self-respect.

The forcing current says, “you must.” It makes demands on others to be, feel, and do what the person needs and desires. This may not at all manifest outwardly. In fact, on the surface it may have the entirely opposite effect. Man’s inability or difficulty to healthily assert himself is a direct result of hiding the shameful and threatening forcing current. It is threatening because the person knows quite well that if it shows openly, it will evoke great censure and disapproval and possibly even overt rejection.

I invite all my friends to vigorously face this feared area in themselves. Some of you have done so already, others are still struggling with it and have only half-heartedly admitted its existence. Perhaps some of you may still have to face up to it. But all of you must tackle it if you wish to realize life’s and your own best potentials, if you wish to discover your own infinite powers to create infinite goodness in your life.

The stronger the “must” is secretly and inwardly thrown at others, the more man inactivates his own powers and the more paralyzed and inactive he becomes in body, soul, and mind. This inactivity exists, on the one level, where he does not move into his own nucleus, where all realistic promise lies, where all potential for every kind of fulfillment and delight exists. He inadvertently makes himself hang on to others, which must elicit hate. Finding the treasure of one’s nucleus, on the contrary, makes one free, and contact with others becomes a delightful luxury that elicits love.

By continually using inner, covert pressure on others, because he believes himself dependent on them, man diminishes his available energy supply. If energy is used in its natural, correct, meaningful way, it never exhausts itself. There are innumerable means man uses in order to send forth this forcing current. It may be from every degree of compliance, passive resistance, spite, withdrawal, the refusal to cooperate, forceful outer aggression, the attempt to persuade through false strength, and assuming oneself a kind of authority role, intimidations, etc., etc. They all mean, deep down, “you must love me and give me what I need.” The more he is blindly involved in this way of being, the more man weakens himself, and the further he alienates himself from the center of his true inner life, where all is found that he needs and can ever want.

In order to re-orient and re-condition the soul forces into health and into their true nature, the following must happen: man must let go of the particular person or persons of whom he expects his life fulfillment and whom he, simultaneously, resents for this very fact. He must recognize that he extends expectations to and makes demands on others that no one else can fulfill but himself, for himself.

The real love you all need and long for can only come when your soul is fearless and when you know that the material to love with — the strength of your feelings, with which you can give and receive — is found within you. For as long as you hang on to another in the ways of a child, denying the adult you are, you enslave yourself in the true sense of the word. The more you do this, the less you can either receive or give; the less real feelings of any sort, feelings about any vital experience, can find a place within you.

For fear and anger take up most of the “room” in your psyche. This is why it is so essential to let out these negative emotions, in the way you learn to do on this path, where no one is harmed. Letting out makes room for the good feelings. Here so many of my friends are still locked and paralyzed. It is the last thing you want to do.

Even if you admit such negative emotions in principle, you still prefer to act them out rather than express them and take the responsibility for them onto yourself. You still claim a false perfection, which you do not really believe to exist in yourself any longer, in order to favorably dispose others toward you. Also, you cling to the negative emotions for dear life because you fear the positive feelings.

The less you are responsible for yourself in the deepest possible sense — concerning the negative feelings you still possess, as well as your possibility to create happiness — the more you must live in fear. Consequently, the more you must “do” to eliminate that fear. Thus negative motivation comes about.

You live in a makeshift life of avoidance, rather than unfoldment and expansion, of positive experience and pleasure. You aim to avoid the threat of your own negative feelings, which would spoil your aim of obtaining from others that which you must obtain from yourself. You stake your salvation on others, from whom it can never come.

Apart from recognizing all these aspects, which is the fundamental necessity, the reorientation must always begin by the willingness to let go. This cannot be forced upon one who has not been made aware of the dependency itself in very exact ways. But once this is the case, it becomes possible to give up what one so tightly holds on to.

This loosening up must occur in order to bring about a change in the balance structure of soul forces so that benign circles are set into motion. You must also be willing to dispense with your rationalizations that make your “case” seem so right. For you can always succeed to present it to yourself and to others as though your wishes, your needs, and your demands on others are not only justified, but that there is nothing wrong about them, that, in fact, they are also beneficial for the other.

This may even be quite true, as far as it goes. What you want, in principle, may indeed be good and legitimate. But in a hidden, emotional forcing current you go about it in the wrong way and you do not grant the other person the freedom you wish for yourself. You do not give him the right to freely choose whom to love and accept, you coerce him; you feel rejected and hated when he asserts this freedom; you refuse him the right to be wrong without being hated and totally denied.

This is a freedom you very much wish for yourself and you deeply resent it when others do not grant it to you. You are unable to defend yourself adequately in such cases, only because you do not grant this same freedom to others on certain emotional levels. When you look very closely, you will find this to be true. And when you do so, your sense of fairness and objectivity will help you to give up what you so desperately hold on to, even while you emotionally still believe that your life depends on getting the other to feel and do as you wish.

Once you have learned this initial condition — surely with a number of inevitable relapses, that must forever be newly observed and dealt with — you will take a vast step towards the source of your inner being, where you are not chained in weakness and anxiety, in fear and anger. You all chafe at the leash around your neck that keeps you dependent and anxious in a situation in which you cannot find the strength to assert yourself; in which you find yourself absolutely caught and cannot see a way out, for each possibility seems wrong.

None of the visible alternatives give you that good feeling about yourself, that resilient strength and well-being, in which even different steps become feasible because you know they are right for you. Most of you have, at least occasionally, experienced this. It is that your real self is freed and is operative through you. It is our aim to bring it out completely. In order to do so, this weak point must be found so that you can eventually let go of it.

The weak point is where you are most bound and anxious. Ask yourself what it is that you want from the other person — where you are bound, resentful, afraid, weak, and unable to assert yourself? This is your leash, which can be given up only when you stop wanting from others what you must supply from yourself. Whatever it is you find you need from others, verbalize it concisely to yourself.

This will bring you nearer to letting go. You will then know that this is precisely where you enslave, weaken, and paralyze yourself. You will then experience a new, resilient strength coming out of you that suddenly conciliates apparently insoluble problems. You will become free as you let free.

Only when you can let go — on the ego level — in the areas where you exert force, can you gain or win — on the level of Creation — the power to form a good life.

Conversely, your inability to give up, to let free, to be fair; your insistence to win and have your way, your refusal to lose on this ego-level, makes it impossible to win where it counts and makes it impossible for you to find your real strength.

Jesus Christ spoke about this when He said, “He who wants to live must be able to lose his life.” This is the meaning. You must give up what you want to gain. Here we are dealing with levels. I hope it is quite clear that there is no sacrifice or renunciation involved.

What is meant here is that you cannot obtain what you want, and what you should have, in the manner and through the source you exert your effort to. The emphasis must shift. If you insist to win on the wrong level, you cannot win. If you can lose on that level, you will win. You will inevitably come into that nucleus of yourself where every conceivable power exists. As you grant others the right to be, whether it is convenient to you or not, to that extent you will truly find your own rights.

It is a steadily growing process to find these rights. First it will manifest by no longer selling out, in no longer downgrading yourself. You will find genuine, good defenses against abuse. You will feel good about them. Later, you will discover ever increasing “rights” for pleasure and happiness, which you can expand towards obtaining. You will find yourself move toward vistas and visions of what your life can be, possibilities you never dreamed could exist.

You will suddenly permit yourself pleasure. You will no longer cramp up against it, as inadvertently you continuously do. You will stop undermining the spontaneous processes and will learn to trust in them. This will open a richness of life and a security that truly are heavenly. By letting go and giving up inner forcing, you will experience the beauty of free relationships, not forced relationships. When you live in the dependency pattern, you force the other and are thus forced to make him do what you want.

Thus you have mutual force. This weakens you and creates a host of negative emotions through which you lose contact with the nucleus of your real being, as well as with your good feelings. When you can lose gracefully, you will find a treasure within that is an entirely new venture, a new way of life, whose beginning stages you are just embarking on. You will feel free in the areas of your life where heretofore you have felt so weak and trapped.

Reach into your inner being, communicate with it, for the purpose of eliminating this weakness in you that binds you and that wastefully and needlessly holds you back in your life, for no good purpose whatever, no matter how much you may glorify this holding back.

All of you do this in one way or the other, just as mankind has done for millennia, by saying that pleasure is wrong and frivolous and unspiritual. This way you may have your own private excuses to beautify your weakness and apparently make an asset out of it. Thus you cannot really come face to face with yourself.

Only by coming face to face with the forcing current in you that says to others “you must,” can you also come face to face with the strength, the beauty, and all the potentials that exist in you, in a way you cannot even fathom yet.

Be blessed by the great strength that is here now, but even more so by the great strength that dwells in you. Be in peace, be in Light.