QA175 QUESTION: I’m struggling with two problems: one of them is an irrational suspicion and jealousy toward someone that I recently broke up with. I’m constantly dreaming up unrealistic situations that this person is in with women where we work. The second problem is that I always think that this person is going to change, and therefore I’m not going to let go of this relationship.

ANSWER: My advice here is to take this relationship as the out-picturing of all your inner confusion and as a means to recognize exactly where your inner conflicts and your inner problems are.

In other words, do not strive to use your energy in making yourself behave rationally inside of you. Do not say, “I should not have this suspicion, and I should not be concerned with this, and I should not want to change him, because I know this is neurotic and immature.” This way of approaching yourself is a disciplinary way that is unrealistic and that cannot really succeed. And the problem will never be resolved this way.

The approach should rather be, “What does this kind of inner behavior indicate to me? What does it tell me? Where did it start? Where did I feel in a similar way in the past? Where would I go on and on and on feeling that way, if I do not resolve it? It has nothing to do with this person. It is in me.”

You would always turn toward people who would have a particular unconscious talent to elicit this kind of thing in you by their own makeup. That goes without saying, but that is really secondary. The primary thing is there is so much contained in that, there is so much to work out with if you stop fighting your symptoms. Rather, receive the symptoms in a spirit of gratefulness that this affords you an excellent opportunity to understand your problem.

Rather than having all your energies engaged in fighting your symptoms, let the symptoms make themselves conscious to you. Let them unfold within yourself. Let them express within yourself. That does not mean you have to act them out outwardly. In fact, the more you accept your symptoms, the less compelled you will be to act upon them.

For example, there is one hint I can give you right here, and the rest you will have to work out in your Pathwork. The one thing is that it is, at this point, impossible for you to be in a relationship with a person who totally, freely comes toward you. You must be engaged in a relationship where you have to fight the other person – inwardly coax the other person.

Otherwise, you are not receptive and otherwise you would even be threatened. You would not make it possible. You have to re-experience exactly this kind of situation. Do you see this?

QUESTION: That’s fantastic. Why is that? Why is that?

ANSWER: It is for basically two reasons. It is, number one, due to the innate human fear that all human beings have to some degree – some more, some less – of a total pleasure, of total bliss, of total fulfillment. So there will always be a barricade. And it is sometimes easier to think the other person barricades, not the self.

Nothing is more painful for a human being than to recognize that “I block off the good feelings. I block off fulfillment.” No matter how unflattering it may be and how painful, in another way, it may appear that one feels rejected and one feels unsure, it is still preferable to the pain that one experiences when one first is confronted with the fact that one’s self discourages it because one is afraid, but cannot even visualize this fear when their unfulfillment is so great.

But when the fulfillment comes near, the inner person retracts and withdraws from such a situation. That’s one reason. Another reason is that as a child, you must have felt in a similar way. And since your whole psychic direction of energies is geared in this way – to function as you did as a child – you think you want to overcome this original hurt as a child, to fight it again, to fight what you didn’t have, and make it happen by sheer inner will. And that does not make room for allowing a free love coming towards you. Do you understand?

QUESTION: Yes, but isn’t it true that the person that I’m attracted to also will have problems of a similar nature?

ANSWER: Of course! You could not possibly be involved with someone else at this point – that is, with someone not having such a problem. Only as you become more capable of fulfillment can you attract another kind of person who is more capable of giving and loving – when you can make room for it within yourself.

QA181 QUESTION: I’ve been thinking about longing, and what I can’t understand is when, in a personal relationship that you believe is so good and so natural and so fulfilling, all of a sudden you realize that the other person doesn’t. This is not a longing in which you’re not sure of yourself, so therefore you long or you’re lonely, but where you are sure of yourself and everything seems fine and then all of a sudden there’s, you know, nothing.

ANSWER: Yes, but then why are you in a position where you are involved with someone who cannot fulfill the longing? You see, there must be something deeper there that is afraid of the fulfillment and that therefore seeks the situation or the partner who is unable to fulfill.

For whatever you have now, is wanted; whatever you do not have, you do not want to have on a deeper level – no matter how much you may imagine, or indeed even feel, the contrary on a conscious level. That is a very, very important aspect in this work.

I can safely say every one of my friends who has really worked in this Path, who has first suffered from a certain problem or a certain unfulfillment or a certain undesirable condition, when he or she was confronted with the fact that this must have been wanted on the unconscious level – no matter how great the denial was in theory, when one goes deep enough, one finds this to be so – that in spite of longing for it, there is also a fear of it, a fear of the fulfillment of the very thing one longs for.

And therefore one compromises in a strange sort of way where the total personality creates a situation in which the longing can be expressed without the total fulfillment, which would be too frightening. And then, of course, the unfulfillment is there. Then one is, on a more superficial level, afraid the longing will not be fulfilled, because on a deeper level, the fear of fulfillment exists. Now, can you understand this, my dear?

QUESTION: I understand it, but…

ANSWER: You cannot accept it yet.

QUESTION: Maybe. Either that or that I just don’t feel a fear of fulfillment. I’m aware that all the time in the past, I did, but this one time – maybe it was premature. Maybe I’m really not confronting it. It’s so deep down inside I feel it not to be there at all.

ANSWER: You see, this is the difficulty here. When the fulfillment is unattainable or seems unattainable, one is absolutely unable to feel that one is afraid of the fulfillment – because it is unattainable anyway. One only is aware how much one would want this. But if you truly, truly want the fulfillment, your meditation should be “I want this fulfillment; I want the mutuality; I want my partner to be as open and as loving and as giving and as free as I want to be in order to experience this. And whatever blocks it inside, whatever is in the way, I want to work it through; I want to see it; I want to give my best; I do not want to run away from it; I want to face it and work it through so that the blocks be eliminated. And I am going to face whatever it is and change whatever it is in order to attain this.”

This kind of meditation sets up another vibration. Now, listen in very carefully when you speak these words into your innermost being. Do you truly vibrate with these words, or is there something in you that holds back, that is reticent, that is holding it, that is doubtful, that possibly even feels slightly anxious at the idea of obtaining this fulfillment?

If you register such an anxiety or such a holding or doubt or not being totally open toward these thoughts which should be expressed inside, then you have perhaps a clue to where something in you denies what you long for on the conscious level. This is the way it must be gotten at. You will first only recognize it indirectly, and this may be one of the ways.

QA184 QUESTION: I have a question from somebody who doesn’t want to ask it themselves. How come I am always attracted to men who I know like me but who only have time to see me once a week, because they are always so busy with one thing or another? The excuses are legitimate; however, I feel they are afraid. Can you help me?

ANSWER: Yes. Well, this is very obvious that there is something in you that is just as much afraid of a real relationship as those whom you attract. And in my next lecture I will deal with the topic of mutuality [Lecture #185 Mutuality: A Cosmic Principle and Law], which has much deeper significance than all of you are aware of. Now, this is a very important topic, and you may find answers there.

But offhand, I would say that it will be very, very important for you to become aware that – notwithstanding what your conscious mind believes it wants and also wants – you are cut off from another part of you that has its own reasons to avoid a total relationship. I do not know if you wish to acknowledge the identity, although there is really nothing to be ashamed of here. But perhaps you can answer me, are you aware of this unconscious emotional denial of that which you consciously aspire?

QUESTION: [The person who didn’t want to identify herself, now speaks] Yes, I am aware of it.

ANSWER: But have you worked it out? Are you working with this?

QUESTION: Yes, I find that I just started to be aware of it.

ANSWER: Yes. Yes. So you have to really go very deeply into your own inner reasons. What are the fears, what are the misconceptions that make you deny, very specifically with yourself, apart from the general human predicament that everyone has to go through this. But you have to personally become aware of your fears, your denial, and how seeking for partners in that way is like a compromise between that which says Yes and that which says No.

QA250 QUESTION: I still do not understand the meaning for me of why I am with a man who is not on the Path. At times I feel I can accept this, and at other times I feel I am having temper tantrums about it. Then when it seems he might come on the Path, I feel fear. Could you give me further guidance at this point?

ANSWER: Deep down you really know the answer, my child. There is this part in you in which you need to keep a separation, a good reason why you cannot give all of yourself. In that way you have an in-built reason to withhold some of yourself, to feel superior over the man.

In that way, you can also use any difficulties that come up in any relationship to see his part of the problem clearly and hide your own from him. This can be done in ever-so-subtle ways. What you need to do is make this aspect of your consciousness very, very conscious, so that you become intensely aware of the stake you have to keep up some separation for which you do not need to take responsibility.

After a more-or-less permanent awareness of this intentionality has been gained, you will be able to make the step into the apparently risky unknown to want to have a complete mutuality with a mate, in which you have no reservation, no holding back; in which you see yourself as his equal, no better and no worse; in which you can share your innermost soul, your spiritual truth, your path of purification.

By expressing this real need over and over again in meditation, prayer and visualization, you will build a new inner reality that blots out the old obstruction. Thus, you will create the outer reality accordingly.

Next Topic