QA138 QUESTION: Could you give some indication of how much I may manipulate the feeling that I have of greater rapport with people or contact with my inner self? It seems sometimes I’m manipulating a bit for the sake of feeling positive.

ANSWER: Yes. Yes. Now you see, there is definitely an improvement. There is growth there. You are no longer in the same position now than you were only a few months ago. There is no doubt about it that there is for the first time a real, real change – more than you know.

This has to be cultivated so that it isn’t lost – but more will come. Now, you are right that there is sometimes the fear of your negative feelings, which makes you force yourself into positive feelings. But it is not entirely so.

There is very often, much more now, a relaxedness about you, a fearless state which affords you the possibility of being a little more undefended, a little more positively inclined. Now, self-observation can proceed in the right direction when you know and realize that this cannot proceed on an even level.

In other words, you will not continuously go on. There will be relapses, but you are not shattered by these relapses. Expect them and intend to learn from them. Meditate in the following way: “Whenever my negativity, my fear of others, my defensiveness, and my negative emotions come up, I do not want to deceive myself. I want to see plenty. I want to learn from it. I want to learn to cope with these feelings, to learn more about myself, and not to be crushed by them, so that I will find it easier to get rid of them. I want to be rid of them. But if they are still here, I want to learn from them why they are here and what is behind them.”

In such a meditation, you will not run the risk of deceiving yourself. You will not manipulate, and as you allow yourself to acknowledge negative feelings, you will then free yourself. You will learn how to go about them.

QA141 QUESTION: I’ve been contending with a pattern in my relationships with women for a while. Today I met someone, and the minute I met her, I felt very warmly toward her. As the afternoon wore on though, I began to feel a numbness for her. I began to feel that I had completely slipped back into my old routine of hostility and numbness. Toward the end of the afternoon, I began slipping into resignation. It became time for her to leave and I felt that I should just let myself go and see what would happen. In the last few minutes, I was able to make a contact which still fills me with a feeling of warmth. But the moment I begin to think about myself and try to pinpoint the problem verbally, I seem to lose the thread. I seem to become more alienated.

ANSWER: Yes. That is a very good point you’re bringing up here, because, you see, this is what I always say. You cannot enforce with a will and the outer ego a manipulation of your psyche. Your psyche will respond if it is allowed to grow, if it is allowed to unfold, even if the unfoldment manifests temporarily in the disturbed areas.

If you then use your ego, your outer intelligence, in order to ascertain, to understand, and to relaxedly issue the positive constructive desire – but before this can be established, observe – then the growth will take place. If you tend to manipulate and force, you will not succeed. Simply observe where you are at the moment. Then, even if at the moment there is still the old, the new will gradually come, and you will observe the state of growing.

Sometimes the old state will manifest, and if you can then allow it to manifest and observe it and say, “Oh, yes, here it is. This is what I feel.” Ask it questions about what comes out, rather than pushing it, coercing it, forcing it into a mold; then you allow growth. Even if the most constructive aim is enforced rather than relaxedly desired while observing what exists, it will resist.

Only when you allow this manifestation, if you observe what is in you and instead of forcing, issuing the relaxed desire, this will then motivate and activate powers and energies that will, little by little, show the growth process. This very afternoon you have observed what I’m saying here exactly. You have observed the old conditioning. You have observed inklings of a new state where contact and warmth and liking begins to be a possibility, which it had not been in the past.

You have observed the resistance that immediately manifests when you coerce emotions that can only function freely. And you have observed what happens when you merely let it be. All that existed in that time, and retrospectively you can learn from it and it can be of help for the future.

I think all of you can learn from this and can observe this in yourselves in a similar way. You can learn the tremendously important difference between coercion of the psyche – which, of course, is not to be advised – and relaxed desire for something, for the positive result, while still observing what is now.

QUESTION: I am realizing that if things don’t work out, I’ll make the rationalization that the person wasn’t ready, and I was perhaps more ready than she was. I’m very curious to know about her inner situation at the moment, if you think it might be helpful. Perhaps you can tell me something.

ANSWER: Yes, I can tell you something. This is a very frightened psyche, extremely frightened, and it can only expand in confidence and trust and the feeling of acceptance. This is a less demanding – only indirectly – but not overtly demanding psyche, but very frightened and feeling the great need for acceptance.

Now, in your former state, which, of course, is still not eliminated, that was absolutely impossible, as you know, because you were yourself so utterly convinced that people were against you. Therefore you were so defensive and hostile that the climate necessary for it could not be established. You’re beginning to learn this now, but perhaps by knowing this and allowing this unfoldment, and by really paying attention and sensing this need and this strife in this other person, you will become so much more observant of the other.

This will immediately reduce egocentricity and therefore the fear in you. It will also reduce the defensiveness in you and naturally, consequently, the hostility, if you make yourself perceptive and observant and attentive to this other psyche. Not by knowing it because I say so – which should merely be a helping push in the right direction – but that you can make yourself observant of others. In her case, you will sense this immediate pulling back, and yet coming out when the climate is warm and sunny.

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