Can you tell us how to find God? How should we think of God?
The Guide: Do not think of God as a person in human form. Think of a tremendous power, continuously creating life in a purposeful way. Look around and open your eyes. In all branches of science you find aspects of the universal intelligence and power. In all manifestations of nature you find it. In the very complex physical, mental, emotional organism of the human creature lies the proof of this intelligence and power.
God is not a disciplinarian; God is beyond good or evil. People often cannot conceive of God, because they can think of God only in human terms. Human beings, before they can come to a wider understanding, have first to give up their concept of God as a small disciplinarian whom they want and fear, and who should act as a substitute for a parent. They want such a God because they are too afraid of tackling life by themselves.
As I have pointed out again and again, before the true God-experience can occur, you all must learn to stand on your own feet, and perhaps shelve your search for a while. Do not declare “there is a God” due to false guilt and the misunderstanding of human relations, if you are not certain.
Neither declare “there is not,” because your outlook is blurred by your hopelessness and confusion about life and about yourself. At such a time, it is healthy to say, “I do not yet know,” without guilt and without defiance. And as you find yourself – and this is always how the Path must start – as you find your real, true self, the rest is given to you. It comes by itself.
It is a natural understanding that comes when you learn what you need to know about yourself in order to live successfully. Finding God cannot be done by discussing theories on an intellectual level. Keep the problem shelved, my friends, keep yourselves open, but find yourselves first. This is all that matters.
For then you will come into the truth from inside, from your personal experience, rather than accepting postulates or enigmas out of fear, obedience, wishful thinking, or the desire for dependency and reward, through rejection of self-responsibility.
In fact, the wishful thinking has to go, the childish greed given up. All attitudes which make you cling to a false God-image need to be changed before a true God-experience is possible. Every desire for escape must disappear first. Then the experience is built on a rock.
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How does a person go about re-establishing an emotional experience about God?
The Guide: You cannot have a genuine God-experience and trust and belief in God, if you do not trust and believe in yourself. To the degree that you do so, you will not only trust other people, but you will also trust God.
So my advice is, do not search for God in churches or temples. Do not search for him through knowledge, books or teachings. Search for him in yourself and God will reveal himself. God is in you. Trust, faith, love, truth – all these exist in you. No outer knowledge provides you with a genuine God-experience, and, for that matter, you would not even accept it. If you would, it would happen out of unhealthy motives, just as much as the opposite.
Learn first to trust yourself, in spite of the many reasons you think you cannot or should not. This Path in itself must eventually give you a very healthy trust in yourself. And that is all you need in order to know how to find God.
There are so many people who cling to God just because they do not trust themselves. This is the wrong kind of faith, the wrong approach. This kind of faith is truly built on sand. It is false religion that leads to obedience and fear. It is so destructive, reinforcing weakness instead of strength. That kind of religion you should avoid. Not only is it found in well-known religious denominations, it can also be found in individuals who are not affiliated with any religion. It is a subtle and pervasive poison.
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Would you explain further about the state of being and how to achieve it?
The Guide: How to achieve the state of being – the real self or divine self, as we call it – that is the work of the Pathwork. All the lectures are showing the way to reach the inner being, where you are eternally in a state of Now.
The way is essentially not to fight yourself, not to be against yourself, but rather, first of all, to comprehend yourself. Because when a person is in a state of fighting him or herself, which constantly happens, this inner dissension makes a person incapable of being what he or she really is, and that is in the state of eternal being.
Now, in some way, organized religion in general, on the one hand, contains some aspects of this truth. And yet it is completely distorted and, in fact, puts people in a further state of dissension with themselves. For here a person is between what is taught as good and evil, two opposite forces.
The evil force is really the undeveloped instinctual side, which is not evil in itself, as you know. It is a distortion and an arrestment of development. And there is, on the other hand, a supposedly good force, which is really nothing but an obedience to a stern, pedantic, childish authority.
So a person thinks him or herself to be good if he or she obeys and submits and is a good little child, which has nothing to do with his or her divinity. This is the fight that goes on in people. It is a very destructive thing. Of course, this concept of religion, as it is so widespread, is really a projection of man’s inner state.
A person’s inner state is actually not a result of these teachings and what these teachings imply. Actually they also explicitly say so, but even more so implicitly. But it is the other way around. Humanity’s general religion is a reflection of this state where a person battles him or herself with a pseudo-goodness that is really nothing but a helpless little obedient child that submits for the sake of being approved of.
This part battles the instinctual side, which is still raw in many instances and unformed in many instances. Actually, this instinctual side is so much closer to the God self, to the state of being, even if in its present form it is not advisable to express it in acting it out.
But it is closer because it is more real and it contains the real energy of life. And if a person does not battle this side, but sees it, accepts it, comprehends it, and learns not to impulsively act it out, that person will be nearer the state of being than when he or she fights it and denies it.
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You close all your sessions with, “Be in peace. Be in God.” My question is about God. Recently it has been in the public press that many in religion are beginning to question the meaning of God. Can you comment on that?
The Guide: Of course certain stages that present humanity is going through about God are extremes, which are a reaction of the pendulum going to the other side. But on the whole, from the point of view of evolution, this is a healthy manifestation, because it will not stay on that extreme.
The individual spiritual development has to go from an outside, personalized, projected God-image to the phase when this God-image dissolves and crashes, and man apparently finds himself all alone with himself. He has to learn selfhood; he has to learn that no outside authority will do for him – he must do.
On that road, on the deep, temporary aloneness of having the old God-image destroyed and not yet have found a true concept of the universal spirit – where he finds and comes to terms with himself – he will then finally break through this inner self in which he finds the true cosmic power of God.
This is what general humanity has to go through, too. In that sense, it is a manifestation of growth, even though it seems to deny God, to deny the old outer projection of God – that is an escape from the self, that is a childish belief, that is an insistence of being lived for him, and that is a denial to face himself – and to take the reins of life into himself.
In that sense, it is a progress to temporarily abandon a belief in a personalized God-image. Until that real, divine presence within can be found, this may in many instances be a necessary stage.
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The Guide: I leave you all with the message that you please trust in the goodness of life and in your own goodness at the bottom of your heart. Bank on it. Pray for it. It is there. It is there. Focus on it, without overlooking the negative. Look at the negative and recognize it as a temporary, unreal, partial state. Take responsibility for it.
See it squarely, but never lose sight that that part in you that is capable of this self-confrontation and honesty and openness and exposure – that part that is capable to choose the proper attitude – is the God that is eternal. It is so near. It is your choice – the choice in which way you direct your thinking.
Do you direct your thinking into an abysmal hopelessness and self-defeat because you are imperfect, or do you direct your thinking into acknowledging your divine nature, even though there are imperfect parts in you? They’re only parts. Know your beauty. Know your eternal greatness. You are God.
Be in peace. Be in God.
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