QA148 QUESTION: I recognize many problems in myself and yet there is a bottleneck. I don’t do anything to dissolve them.
ANSWER: Yes. In spite of the many recognitions that you have already made and the many changes that have indeed also occurred in you, you nevertheless are frightened to make the step into becoming a full-fledged self. My advice would be that you tackle this question a little more specifically.
Why do you want to remain where you are? Why do you fear full-fledged selfhood? Why does it seem more secure and more comfortable, or perhaps more safe, to make yourself a lesser being than you are? Why do you deliberately diminish yourself and seem to find security in this state? See this!
See how this manifests in various ways. Moreover, tackle this very point and ask yourself, “Why do I like this better? What do I specifically not like or feel threatened about when I am perhaps my best?” Why do you take such pains to diminish yourself?
QUESTION: Because in that state of mind I feel alive at least. I feel dead – I don’t feel my emotions. I do those things because, even if I am full of fear, at least I can feel myself alive.
ANSWER: That is right! Now, from here you can make the next step and question yourself on the assumption on which you operate – that there is no other life in you but fear and agitation – artificial agitation. You operate on that assumption.
Now, verbalize this assumption and consequently question its veracity. Say to yourself, “Is it true that there is no other life or no other kind of aliveness?” Raise this question and drop it into the psychic pool into which you direct other meditations. The answer will come from within. But this question must be seriously and honestly raised.
QA154 QUESTION: I am stuck in a funny state at the moment, as if there were a mountain with all sorts of crevices, and I’m clinging to it. I can’t go back and I can’t go forward. In going back, I’d fall, and going forward would be too dangerous. I just seem to be digging in my heels and I can’t do anything. I’m stuck.
ANSWER: The fact that you feel this and are able to verbalize it indicates your progress, for unfortunately, so many people do not sensitively tune into themselves to determine where they are at the moment. This is extremely favorable, to be intuitive enough to feel where you are on the Path.
The advice of how to go on from such a place is to utilize this very awareness by speaking into yourself and saying, “I will not shy away from this apparent, steep rock I have to climb. I want to do it. What seems like an insurmountable difficulty is only because I am erroneously afraid of something that is always – and it always turns up in the end – illusory to be afraid of it. There is no need for such a fear.”
Determine this with absolute firmness and yet relaxation. Firmness without tension is so indispensable, because the tension in the self-determination is always and only a substitute for really wanting it. If you really want it, you can be determined and firm without being tense.
Now, if you watch these soul movements as you make such a pronouncement to yourself, then you have immediately a very good way of gauging what I just said. With determined total will, you decide not to be governed by the illusory fear and resistance.
By thus instructing your real self, you allow it to go to work for you and bring you the realizations you need at this moment – to guide the further steps on your path. This is where we can and must help it in order to overcome this difficulty.
As everyone can find out, whenever there is such a point – where one feels oneself stuck – it is overcome by this determination. For the truth in oneself, for better or for worse, the relief and the release is always there. It always brings aliveness and light and the truth that makes man free.
QUESTION: The greatest resistance seems to be digging down into it as though I were afraid of finding out something. I can’t force myself to ask to find out, because I don’t want to know whatever it is.
ANSWER: Well, but here is exactly where you have to make a decision. This decision must be made – and can only be made – with your very conscious ego self. When a person says, “This is unconscious, I cannot help it,” he also deludes himself. Because when you really look at it from that point of view, closely and honestly as you are doing now, you must feel very clearly that it is a conscious decision you have to make. It is not an unconscious resistance. It’s very conscious.
QUESTION: Very conscious?
ANSWER: If one wants it to be conscious, it is conscious; it is not something you have no access to. It is immediately accessible. Everyone has it immediately accessible. Anybody can determine this and if no other meditation is made than saying to oneself, “I make up my mind: my conscious ego self has this power to decide that I want to meet myself in absolute truthfulness; I will not shy away from anything that is the truth, because I know this is folly and cannot bring me anything desirable. I will face the truth, and I will accept the truth in myself.”
Then, once you have the issue out in the open, you can decide whether or not you wish to change. But first of all the determination to see and accept the truth in yourself, that is a conscious – very conscious – decision that everyone can and must make with his conscious ego self. These decisions must be made and can be made.
QA241 QUESTION: I had a very vivid dream recently that had to do with missing a train. At first, I didn’t believe that the train was going to come and I started to leave. Then as I heard it coming, someone started talking to me, a man, and I sort of reached to touch him to say, “Listen, I have to go now,” but my hand got stuck to him. Then the train came and there was a gap between the platform and the train. I was afraid to bridge that gap, and as I ran for another door, the train left.
I’m left with this image of the train leaving. I feel many times that I don’t take a step that I could. I feel in a lot of ways that I’m letting trains go, like staying stuck, like in my past relationship. I want to make one other connection which I feel strongly and which is about asking this question. I almost didn’t want to ask. I’m afraid you’re going to say “Well, you already answered it.” And I kept thinking well, maybe I’ll just pass the microphone. I feel a lot of times in my heart I want to take a step or get on a train, but there’s a battle. I want to ask you about what the meaning of all this is for me?
ANSWER: I will not go into the details of the interpretation of the dream. This you can do in your Helper sessions, for it requires more time and involvement and your personal associations to work this through. But I will give you an overall answer about the meaning of it all.
To some extent, you are quite aware within yourself, and yet you manage not to be quite aware of it. And that is exactly this difficulty of making yourself move inwardly. It is a combination of fear, distrust and stubbornness. If you focus very strongly on this combination and make it very strongly aware, you can then choose to move.
The dream shows so clearly that, by staying stuck – even on something that may seem or even be important in itself, for all intents and purposes, like the man in your life – you cannot move unless you let go, you unstuck yourself, you make the step, you bridge the gap, you do not let it pass.
You unstuck your stubbornness and rigid insistence to stay, and that understanding and awareness will help you to really want to do it – first in your inner attitudes, in the opinions you hold, in the concepts, in the feelings – and then you become more fluid.