QA159 QUESTION: I’m very concerned about my ability to really perceive reality, as opposed to the child within me. I relate this in particular to an incident with a girl in which I reacted very violently inwardly to apparent rejection. Tonight I had dinner with my grandmother and did not feel that she could give me all her love. How can I bring the child in me to bear upon the situation so that I might divest myself of it?
ANSWER: Yes. My answer here would apply to everyone who is sufficiently aware of, or is in the process of becoming sufficiently aware of, their inner processes. And the answer would be this. In the first place, it is extremely important that you prepare yourself that there are two distinct levels in you.
Theoretically, one knows and accepts this, but it is quite another matter of permitting oneself to accept two levels of thinking, feeling, reacting and functioning. There is the level of your conscious mind, which is not only one thing but it is a mixture, let’s say briefly, of the following aspects. It is the mixture of the ideal you set for yourself, or you think is expected of you. It is what we call the idealized self-image.
It is everything you think you ought to be and that others expect of you. Then there is, on that same conscious level, the rationalizations, the explaining away of where you are driven by blind impulses and blind reactions and reflexes that this conscious mind makes allowances and excuses for and explains away. This is also in the conscious mind.
Then in the conscious mind is also the actually mature ego intelligence that truly knows better. A half-blind mixture of all these three elements makes up the conscious level of reacting.
But then there is this unconscious level where again two levels commingle. The one is the irrational child that you have mentioned; this irrational child consists of hurts, of misinterpretations of what comes to pass, of utter selfishness and destructiveness. This child is a mixture of all these elements.
Then in addition to this irrational child is the divine intelligence that sends forth its messages. These messages are often misinterpreted. In other words, the idealized self-image picks up a message and distorts it in the sense of saying, “This is the way I ought to be.” Or the divine intelligence sends forth a message “you should be happy” – to make a brief and oversimplified example. The irrational child may misinterpret that in its own selfish and self-centered way.
This is the mixture. If you set out to truly allow yourself to feel and react, without forcing yourself to feel and react how you think you ought to, the language of this irrational child will become very clear.
First of all, you may not be able to distinguish between these variations I just explained. But you can give yourself permission daily – not during meditations, but several times during the day – where you say, “I want to allow this child to manifest in my consciousness.”
Then you will not be driven by it, but you will observe it with a modicum of sense of humor and with some distance, in a way – not distance by denying it, but distance by knowing that this is not all there is of you.
You will not feel the need to explain it away or to excuse it, or to thereby project it outwardly onto others, which is always a tremendously painful thing. Because from then on one is so alienated and so far away from the element of truth, that one is trapped – that is when one begins to be trapped.
So the moment you give yourself permission to allow the irrational to manifest in your consciousness, without being driven blindly by it but in observing it – fully knowing that this is not all there is to you, and fully knowing that this does not mean you need to act upon it – then you will gain a tremendous step of improvement.
You will not feel compelled to act upon it, and you will gain so much clarification about yourself, and you will not feel the need to project any longer. Therefore peace will come, even while you still are this irrational child.
In other words, if you find yourself able to express the demands, the beliefs, without any inhibition – just express it in thought and words – you will find help, and that is the way it must be. Then and then only can you weigh the significance of what that child thinks and feels and wants and expects.
Then you will suddenly see, the more you see the irrational and illusory in you, the more aware you will become of reality as it actually is. Can you see that?
QUESTION: I do see that. Also the idea of the idealized self-image, which I do see to be bound up together with the child, and both are contradictory.
ANSWER: Right. In other words, you can express both. To give you an oversimplified example, the idealized self-image says, “I should always be loved” – not only the idealized self-image says that but also the irrational child; sometimes they both coincide.
“I should always be loved. I should be the most important, and nothing else exists but my person and the attention that others must heed me.” If you can allow yourself to make such a statement, you will then see the next step – the fact that the other person does not comply with this demand of yours, the demand of the irrational selfish child as well as the idealized self-image.
Then the next step is that you will say, “Well, the other person is mean to me, since he does not do this.” Then the idealized self-image may make another contradictory command. And then it issues forth, “You should be perfectly content if no one loves you. You should accept yourself in modesty that you are nothing and count nothing. That is the superior thing to be.”
Then you try to fulfill that demand. And then something in you rebels, of course. Then you’re getting all confused. Now, if all these statements are made, then you will see where the reality is. The reality is not that you have no right to be happy or that you do not count. The reality is that you do count.
But the reality is also that others also have other concerns and must be permitted to have other concerns as well. Then you will see that this reality is not a painful one. It does not mean loss if others have other concerns as well.
Because in your misbelief – that only if you get this irrational demand fulfilled does it count and is it of value and are you then loved – you were absolutely blind to the actual good feelings that others bring you and have for you, so that you miss out all along.
Now, this irrational child must be permitted to manifest in consciousness. The more this is allowed, the less will be the compulsion to act upon it. The more the irrational child conversely is denied and squashed, the greater is the pull toward acting upon it, which is then rationalized and denied that it means this, and there are always explanations found. This must be your way.
QUESTION: I suppose you do need the Helper, in other words.
ANSWER: Yes, the Helper or people with whom you can talk in that way. First of all, the greatest difficulty in doing this, the greatest obstruction for people to do this, of course, is pride and the fear that they will then be completely rejected and criticized.
Once this fear and the pride are overcome, the courage is taken to be and express what one is at that moment. A tremendous new strength grows, the strength that can only come from the truth of being oneself as one is. And the more the child is acknowledged, the weaker it grows in its demands and in its compelling force. That is an unalterable law.
As with all destructiveness, the more it is acknowledged to exist, the more it is honestly admitted and reasonably not exaggerated, as though this were all that were to you, the less forceful it becomes.
QA222 QUESTION: One of my Workers who’s been in the Path for many, many years, is at a very, very severe crossroads in terms of opening up his emotions. We’ve been working on this for a while, and I feel the sincerity of his commitment to the truth and his dedication to your works. But there seems to be some other blockage, and I wonder if perhaps you could give him any advice or help in relationship to this?
ANSWER: Yes. You have worked for many years, my friend, in a dedicated way, and it has brought its results – perhaps even you forget how strong they are. For it is easy to forget where one has been in a previous time span on this Earth. Yet, the difference is enormous.
However, you now do approach an altogether new phase. And if I may, I put it in the following way. This overall first phase consisted of your difficulty you had in your mind and something always penetrated into your feeling self. It was from that feeling self where almost on an unconscious level, the understanding reached your outer mind, from within.
Whatever words came to you through me or your Helpers reached the subliminal level, from where it worked its way outwardly. Because somehow your mind had to go through certain stages of development in order to be reachable.
Now, I would say, the opposite has to occur. It is from your mind and from your understanding that you have to reach the block that exists on your emotional level, so as to open yourself up emotionally. As the first phase had to open the mental block through the emotional level, so does the opposite have to occur now.
Your understanding and your will and your mind must make the commitment daily. To fear your feelings is senseless, is a misconception, and you can afford to let go and use help, and let yourself be guided into the state of your feelings.
Another advice here would be that the first layer of feelings are very negative feelings that you have been able to express on a mental basis, but emotionally you are still afraid of it. You feel, on an irrational level, that that is all there is to you. The truly warm, positive feelings will communicate themselves to you as you dare express the negative feelings in a less fearful manner.
And a third advice in this respect is that you have used a lot of feelings in an exaggerated, dramatized way, so that you nourish your fear through a falsification and exaggeration. You should be aware of this and perhaps go into the feelings without exaggerating it so much, and that will also diminish your fear.