QA218 QUESTION: I’d like to ask about the cause of the pain I’ve had for a long time. This pain is physical, but I’m sure there’s an emotional component to it. I’ve had a difficult time with sexuality, and knowing and feeling what negativities might be involved. On the rational level, I’ve always told myself this is due to trauma and injuries. I have an inkling because of the location of the pain that it has something to do with an Oedipus complex, because this pain is in my lower back and has been there for years.
ANSWER: My answer now will be for you personally, and the general question I will speak about some other time, because there is not enough energy left for that tonight. But now I will say to you the following thing. Of course your problem, as any other problem, can be discussed or gone into from many, many different vantage points.
The question here is which vantage point to choose at what time, at what period of your Pathwork? What may be most advantageous at one period may be not so much relevant at another period, another phase. At this particular period, this phase you are in now, I would like to answer the question in the following way, but this does not mean that this is the only way it can be approached.
The pain you described – physical and, of course, its inner component, which is its creation, its cause – is mainly a result of your holding back all of your spontaneous movements to quite a degree. There is a hesitancy in you and cerebral censorship and judgement that does not allow you to come out and let it be whatever may be.
So therefore, you hold back, not just anger, not just sexual feelings, and not just hate, but many other feelings – love and insights and spontaneous joyousness or humor or just outgoing energy. It is all held in.
It is held in, not really behind a wall, but behind a net. The spiritual energy form is a net – a web. It is not even a very tight web, a very resistant web. But as long as you allow that web to exist, it will be like an iron web. And this iron web causes you pain, physical as well as emotional. It is only as you venture out, venture into risking to make a fool of yourself, that you will free yourself of that web.
The decision must come from you to venture out, to take chances, to risk being foolish, and to go through the feelings that this elicits, and let it come out. The more you do that, the more the web will dissolve, and your freedom will be established. You will be in contact with your spontaneous inner being. Do you understand that?
QUESTION: Yes. I am particularly interested in the origin of this.
ANSWER: In this life, you mean? [Laughter] You carried this already with you when you came into this life. However, in this particular life you started it with an extreme caution, with an anxiety that the expression of your feelings will have an undesirable effect on your environment – your mother – and this caution created the way.
There’s always the thinking, “How is it going to be?” and “Maybe that is not right,” or “Maybe they will not accept it,” or “It will not be accepted,” or “I will be laughed at, ridiculed.” That is a basic attitude inside, that started in this life.
The very fact that you could ask that question is already a very favorable step in the direction I described here – to break and dissolve the web. This is good. It is a very simple thing energetically, and in the level of consciousness, it is very simple. You will see it work when you do it.
QA221 QUESTION: I have recently come to some deep insight about my hatred and contempt to be a woman, and also my refusal to expose and admit that I have soft feelings, and that I need and want for others. At the same time, in connection with this, my body somehow has reacted very negatively. I have for most of my life had a lower back condition, and I had a slipped disc operation, but nothing helped until I went for bioenergetics therapy.
For the last four years, my back has been very good. I really did not have to bother about it. And suddenly it has acted up very, very badly, not only my back but also headaches and a gum problem and all kinds of things. I know that this can happen if we close off. I’m so terrified that somehow I will get ill again and all this will really come over me. I need so much help to see that I could react in a different way than just worry and fear.
ANSWER: In the first place, it is very important that you understand the exact nature of what is going on in you. And I venture to say it will not be too difficult for you to even connect consciously. I suggest that you listen to the language, the statement your body makes, with these manifestations and symptoms.
Perhaps I can help you a little bit by saying it really says, in the fight it puts up: “Do not open up to these soft feelings. They may not be responded to. You may not be able to gratify them. You may be hurt. It may be humiliating. You will lose control. People may ridicule you.” All such statements are embedded in those symptoms. And if you can translate them into consciousness, it would be very helpful, because then the battle will take place on the conscious level.
It is as though, one, your inner being, your spirit self says, “Yes, it is good that the truth is out – the soft feelings, the truth, the needs, the reality of being – this is where you have to go. This is where fulfillment and life and wholeness will come.” And the defensive, battling, blind side says, “No, no, no, no, no, no, I have been conditioned all my life to function in that hardened, defended, contracted way. I will not change. I will not risk. I will not open that up.”
Now, when you can make that statement conscious, when you detect that statement in every one of the physical symptoms, and perhaps go back into more physical work, while at the same time connecting with a consciousness to the statement, then your conscious mind can take over and say, “Where do I wish to go?”
It is your conscious mind that then makes the decisions, knowingly, in full awareness of the choice, and can ask for the divine guidance. It should do so, and can and should also decide, “I want to go beyond the prospect. The prospect is not good. The voice of that limited aspect of me is not the voice of truth. I want to listen to the voice of truth.”
The voice of truth will manifest to you when you first listen to and know the voice of the untruth, which now appears in those symptoms in your body. The moment you can translate those symptoms you will be already less frightened, for the fear is really a misplacement. The fear is really the voice that says, “Do not open up!” That is really the fear. And then the fear translates itself as the fear of these symptoms. The fear self says, “I will make myself so sick, so that I do not have to risk being open, risk giving up my pride, risk giving up my pseudo-self.”