QA257 QUESTION: During a recent training group, a friend and I were wrestling, and I badly broke my ankle. I needed an operation and was hospitalized for two weeks. One positive effect has been that some of my resistance has broken down and my feelings of need, fear and sadness are coming more to the surface. I am, however, concerned that I still may not be adequately aware of the deep forces within me that caused this injury; that I haven’t contacted deep self-destructive sides of myself fully enough; that unless I do, they will continue to lurk and endanger me.
I also fear that I have greater outer-directed hate than I know of, as well as strong and confused sexual feelings, which also contributed to the incident. I also sense strong pride, repressions of deep feelings, and desire to avoid myself and life, which makes me concerned that I won’t fully deal with these places within me.
Can you give me a sense of the true meaning of this injury for me? What are the messages from it I most deeply need to hear? What do I need to face that I may be hiding from? What work do I most need to do? What areas of myself have I still refused to adequately tackle? In what ways do I need to yield more? Also, there seems to be strong forces from the past between my friend and myself. Would you give me an understanding of what my karma is with him and what we need to face with each other?
Finally, while I feel deeply committed to the Pathwork and am quite involved in the Washington DC leadership, I still have few Workers. What is the meaning of this?
ANSWER: The greatest obstruction in you is fear of self and guilt. They are, of course, connected with each other. This fear/guilt compounds whatever other character defects are in you that you need to face and to come to terms with. The violence, hate and resentment, the subterfuges and pretenses – none of them are effaceable; they need not to be feared, make you a bad person, or give rise to hopelessness.
But your belief that this is so creates a terrible inner climate. So my advice to you is to concentrate on the fear and the guilt that what you may find in you devaluates you as a man and as a human being. You do not trust yourself and your goodness, you do not trust the universe and God, or the law that there is nothing that cannot be forgiven – that cannot be changed and transformed.
Meditate deeply about this, infuse yourself with this awareness all the way, and then proceed with confidence and fearlessness. What you will find will not ever justify your fears and apprehensions.
You must also understand that your accident was not just a creation of yours. It was mutually created event. I do not deem it necessary or helpful to go into karmic histories between you two. What is much more relevant is the magnetic dynamics with which you connect now, for you both harbor similar fear/guilt attitudes toward the self.
Learn to trust and love yourself. I say this to him too, although much progress has been made here with him, but there still remains some to be made. I think it should be quite obvious that not having more Workers is based on exactly the same reasons. You distrust your worthiness, you believe you do not deserve it.
And since you fear a large part of yourself, you feel insecure to help others. Only to the degree you encounter yourself wholly, will you feel secure with others. I believe very strongly that these words will make a substantial difference on your path from now on. You have my blessings for this.
