QA247 QUESTION: [John Pierrakos] Following the abrupt departure of our friend [from the Center], there have been negative reactions and maligning in the minds of some people toward me and the instrument, my wife, Eva, such as: 1. Not being confrontable, 2. Being out of process, 3. Being defensive. Can you give us an overview of the dynamics of such reactions, and specifically why some people in the Pathwork have a tendency to assess blame instead of accepting the occurrence related to their departure and its real significance as outlined in your message to them.
This shifting of blame also occurred in other difficult incidents, such as death of a friend, etcetera. Can you comment on the importance of such reactions for future guidance of the Pathwork? Also, can you explain why it is that spiritual leaders of communities who do not share themselves as openly as we do, don’t get these reactions of judgments and criticisms – often extremely unjust accusations and blame? One would believe logically that just the opposite would occur: those who keep a place of separation should be more likely to receive these reactions, and vice versa.
ANSWER: I shall attempt to answer this questions in two basic ways: first, as far as you as leaders are concerned, and second as far as those in the community are concerned who are tempted to fall into this trap. As far as you, as leaders, are concerned, it is possible to emotionally accept the reality that unfairness, slander and maligning must happen to all leaders, when you view this problem with a deep awareness of and connection with the spiritual reality that goes beyond this material life.
Only then can you also learn to respond with love to hate, which is admittedly an extremely difficult task, and I would say quite impossible to master unless this deeper connection is being established. As long as only the human aspect is emotionally perceived and reacted to, it all seems unbearably unfair and painful and very, very difficult to cope with.
Now, let me be more specific about what I mean. Just as I said to the individuals who left this Path in such a regrettable way, so I say to you, too: you have undertaken a contract before your incarnation – a different contract, of course, than the one I mentioned to those friends, and a much more demanding one.
You have committed yourself to do this, in the full knowledge of its value, of what you gain spiritually in your own development, of its rewards and blessings, and also of its pains and suffering. It is your covenant with your spiritual home base. Your spiritual knowledge is very keen in regard to the challenge that this task presents to the World of Darkness and its entities, who will not hesitate to use any weapon to destroy the execution and fulfillment.
You are very well aware, in your spirit, of the barrage of enmity unleashed against any bringer of truth. The speakers of truth, the channels of truth, have always been maligned with lies and will always be maligned with lies. They will be betrayed by the very followers whom they helped most.
The life of Jesus Christ is a perfect example and illustration of this fact that needs to be held in front of anyone who works for God’s world of truth. When you allow yourselves to connect with this knowledge, you’ll see the problems in a much wider view, and your pain will be of a different nature and you will be better able to accept what is happening.
So I ask you to connect with this deeper knowledge in you and bring this true vision to the events, rather than reacting as if this were a merely human event that need not come to pass. You also need to understand particularly that this Path, more than any other, elicits a great deal of inner resistance of each person who has chosen to work on this Path. There is always this inner voice that is threatened by letting go of the lower self.
And there is always, of course, the demonic world that sends forth its specialized practitioners to influence the lower-self intentionality. In the last lecture [Lecture #247 The Mass Images of Judaism and Christianity], I have gone into thorough explanations about the interactions between resistive, unfaced lower self trends and devilish spirits.
I have also talked about the special influx of evil at crucial times of expansion and rapprochement to the eternal, cosmic Christ. So the leaders of this Path do encounter more resistance than in any other type of path, where less is expected in terms of exposure of lower self attitudes and full investment into transforming them.
But there is also another reason why leaders of other spiritual paths may receive less of what you have to put up with. Quite contrary to what you are being blamed with, your openness, your modesty of not setting yourself above others, your givingness of yourself – not only in terms of helping others, but of sharing your true being with those who wish to see this – makes you infinitely more vulnerable.
Leaders who do not do this protect themselves with a wall of separateness that is absent here. Of course this may seem very unfair to you – to be blamed for exactly the opposite of what really exists – but you do have something to learn here. This is not easy to explain, because I certainly do not wish to imply that you should close your heart now and keep yourself separate and aloof.
But there is a certain distance that you do require to preserve your energies and be able to function in your task. It is very subtle and in no way should you stop your love and friendship or your sharing, when this is appropriate. But you do require a greater sense of reality of the negative intentionality that exists in many of the followers to see you as untrustworthy.
In this alertness and realism, you will also know how to keep your distance. You will not have to prove to anyone that these accusations are unfounded; you will simply hold your own. The right balance between intimacy and privacy must be maintained. A healthy sense of distance is indispensable for any leader of an exacting task such as this.
Perhaps many of the other spiritual leaders tend too much into the direction of separateness and aloofness, while you have tended too much into the opposite direction. The blame you receive sporadically seems all the more illogical, but if understood on a deeper level, this is really not so.
For on an inner level, your openness and unassumingness and sharing is misunderstood, misinterpreted and overlooked, and if sensed, interpreted as weakness. Since you cannot and must not give what the lower self of the followers demands – namely to protect the conscious personality from facing it and from facing the need to transform it – you can never give enough; there will always be something found that can be used to topple your leadership and make your task untrustworthy.
It is not only those accusations you have listed. There are others, and, as mentioned, they are inevitable. Your integrity will be questioned and suspected. If you express the necessary strength that leadership necessitates, it will be misread as authoritarianism. The variety is infinite what leaders can be blamed with when the inner will exists to do so, when there is a hidden determination not to trust and love.
You must learn to recognize these factors and find a more appropriate balance between sharing and distance. You must become more realistic as far as the Forces of Darkness are concerned and accept the occasional pain of injustice, lies and betrayal, just as Jesus had to put up with more than any other leader before and after him.
I know, we all know, these are difficult lessons to learn, but you will learn them, as you have learned so many other lessons before. The sun will shine again.
Now, as to those who find it necessary to shift their feelings of being betrayed and disappointment to the leaders of this Path. You too should begin to recognize that part of you which violently opposes change and transformation giving up the lower self, which is supposed to be the best defense against pain and disappointment.
You have recognized your lower self in many ways, but you still believe that it does not influence your vision, your perception, and your interpretation of what happens around you, particularly what holds true about those who stand for this Path. Nor do you fully recognize the subtlety of the influence of demonic powers who can come near you to the degree the lower self is held on to and in any way defended.
This subtle influence rarely appears devilish off hand. For example, all those aspects you blame your leaders for seem rather harmless. After all, why should you not be allowed to issue such statements and observe what you inwardly wish to observe? The destructiveness lies in the generalization of your accusations that cannot be countered.
The moment you would deny any of these statements, they appear to be true. So you always win. If your claims had any factual reality, you would deal with a specific that you would wish your leaders to confront. Furthermore, you would arrange to have a personal encounter with them, in which you would approach them with an open mind and ask questions, rather than condemn in advance, on hearsay, and without knowing much that would have to be taken in consideration.
The way this is talked about in a spirit of gossip among each other and in a spirit of condemnation in very general ways has the earmarks of having a stake in wanting these condemnations to be true.
It is sometimes even true that you recognize your hostility, your jealousy toward the leaders, your negative intentionality toward them, yet you nevertheless insist that your perceptions are accurate. Do you not know that, with such strong feelings and intents, it is hardly possible to make accurate assessments about those toward whom such feelings exist? This is a very basic reality that should lead you to disqualify yourself from judgement.
The tragedy is that this is hardly a little thing, an unimportant detail. Undermining the leader of your Pathwork is the best way to destroy the credibility of the Pathwork for you. It is an insidious way the Forces of Darkness use you to spread the poison of distrust, and to topple the leaders who stand for the truth and integrity of this Path.
If you really think with all your intelligence about it, this will not be hard to see. Off hand, you may go on being devoted to your Pathwork, but your convicting the leaders serves as an inbuilt back door. When you encounter a particularly difficult aspect of self-facing, the Pathwork can then instantly be discredited.
This is obviously also the reason why some have an absolute stake in seeing the leaders in a certain way that does not at all correspond to the truth. Even the blame of being unconfrontable serves as a good ruse to never make an effort to dispel your negative opinions and beliefs, by never asking, by never encountering them in a spirit that gives the benefit of the doubt.
I do not believe it shall be very difficult for you to see this when you really start working on it. It is not very obscure or hidden and is rather easy to ascertain, especially for those of you who have some experience in self-confrontation. But you also need to recognize how extremely undermining and destructive this is, as well as how necessary that you desist from claiming objective observation.
The undermining quality is a subtle poison that penetrates into the crevices of many a soul, serving as walls against your total purification and transformation, walls against your own inner God. And this is indeed the aim of the Prince of Darkness.
You need to acquire a realistic assessment of the influence of evil spirits, their aim, and their tools. This is why the lecture that I will be giving you next [Lecture #248 Three Principles of the Forces of Evil – Personification of Evil] had to come at this time. Your community represents the greatest imaginable threat to the Forces of Darkness.
All its teachings, all it stands for, the whole purification process, the good news of eternal life, the new society that is being created in the Christ consciousness, all that means a positive power against evil. Any means possible to prevent this from happening will be good enough, and the best way to disrupt is from within, to soil truth, trust and faith.
You have discussed leadership quite a lot in recent times. Many new leaders are forming, you begin to understand some qualities of leadership and learn to execute them in the fulfillment of your tasks. But what is not sufficiently understood yet is followship. If you cannot follow, you can never be a leader.
You have to learn to be a follower, a good follower, without feeling that this diminishes you. You need to see your human dignity, autonomy and honor as men and women in your ability to trust leadership and follow it. This never means blindness, selling out or submission. These only exist when you adamantly refuse self-responsibility and want from the leader to establish your autonomy and self-esteem, while you do not want to take the risks of being an adult.
You are then so ashamed of the weakness that you yourself create, of the secret desire to submit in order to obtain this utopic selfhood, that you rebel, not only against the best and purest of leaders, but also against your feelings of love and trust. You distrust your trust and are ashamed of your gratitude, and thus rebel against learning adult, autonomous, self-respecting, aware followship. This is then the sound foundation on which your own leadership and authority can be built.
I speak to all of you with great love and deep concern. As I said before, friends leaving this Path is inevitable. There will always be those who come to a point when self-confrontation, exposure and change will seem impossibly painful. They will then tear the bonds and often attempt to smear the characters of the leaders.
And I say to you, my friends, if someone really does not wish to go all the way within themselves in the rebirth process, then it is surely better that they do leave. This should be recognized for what it is, without feeling threatened and assessing blame.
Crisis is impossible to avoid in anyone’s life – take it as a beautiful threshold to become cleaner and better and wiser. And to the leaders, I say that your pain was predictable. It has to happen occasionally, and you can indeed learn your own lesson from it, as I explained. You too, have to learn from such events.
You have to become more realistic in this respect. You have to establish new balances in your soul, as I said before, so that you can remain freer and less a target of evil. This will help you to learn and grow into loving, even when you are hated.
I speak to all of you with much love and give you all divine blessings so that you may sense the deep truth of my words. May you open yourself to truth in God with all your soul, mind and heart, with every fiber of your being. And do not ever forget that the Path and the channel through which I manifest cannot be separated from the process and the personal path of the instrument through which I speak.
In your depths, you know this oneness that is intrinsic, and for that very reason, your lower self discredits the person. At this moment, you may not yet discredit the channel, and you may see the person and the channel as independent from one another.
But when the time of great resistance comes, this oneness would be used and distorted in the negative way – both will be discredited. Beware of these tricks of evil influences. Wake up, my beloved friends, and let the sun of Christ’s truth and love shine on you.
