QA162 QUESTION: I have started to see this child within me makes many demands – among them, recognition of my superiority. This is causing me a lot of pain at my job, and in my Pathwork in general. I wonder if you could comment on this.
ANSWER: The pain of this demand can only recede genuinely when you understand that underneath it exists a deeper pain, and that deeper pain is your conviction of your worthlessness and of your inferiority. Wherever you do not express this assumed fact of your inferiority, you only make believe – you put the wool over the eyes of other people. Your whole inner aim is erroneous.
You take the inferiority as such a fact that it can not even be questioned because it is too painful a fact – you think it is a fact – and consequently your whole aim is directed toward “how can I best cover that up and make believe the opposite?”
Unless you face this assumed nothingness that you believe yourself to be, you cannot handle the level you have just discussed, because you could only by ardent discipline try not to make these demands for being superior.
Such a discipline is only a cramp actually. It does not mean the free, genuine being, where your inner being can breathe and be free. You can only come to that when you question the assumption – ask whether it is true.
You have to see first that deep inside – and how you see this all around – you believe yourself to be nothing. That has to be questioned. As you question it, you will see that it is an error. But unless you question it, you can never convince yourself it is an error.
You try to convince yourself of it being an error by keeping this belief a secret and superimposing a false level of pretended superiority. That way, you cannot genuinely convince yourself of your value, and therefore you cannot be emotionally comfortable with yourself and others.
