103 QUESTION: Is it nature’s plan that a child develops a reaction, a neurosis, against a parent or parents, regardless of how good or kind these parents happen to be?

ANSWER: It certainly is not nature’s plan. No. This again shows a complete misconception of what the human being is and what life is. It is the humans’ doing. The only way you can grasp and understand why it should be that certain children have the best and most favorable circumstances and develop so-called neuroses, while in other cases the conditions may be extremely unfavorable and yet comparatively little neurosis exists – we cannot say none since no human being is free of it – the only way to understand this is that you are not born once, but come again and again with the problems that are as yet unresolved. It is not nature that gave you these problems.

QUESTION: At one time you told us that it was easier to work on this Path here on Earth than in the Spirit World. Yet we know that our loved ones are developing too. They too, are working for their self-realization, and are helped by our work on ourselves. Could you explain how this works?

ANSWER: Growth and self-development can, to a degree, take place in every sphere of being. But where the hindrances and obstacles are greatest, there growth can be most effective, provided the person in question so desires. The deeply embedded problems are not called forth without hindrances or obstacles. They cannot manifest, and therefore you lack awareness of them. Without such awareness, you cannot grow out of them. All this I explained in the past.

In spiritual spheres where you live without your physical body, you are in a life where you do not encounter the hindrances caused by matter. One can still grow and develop to a degree without this obstacle, but certainly not to the same degree as on Earth. Matter is one constant hindrance. It is one resistance.

We talked about psychological resistance, but that is only one aspect, one small fragment of resistance, as such. Earth life, life in matter, is one resistance. If you had no resistance whatsoever, you could not live at all. Yet when you resist too much, you cripple yourself accordingly, and if the degree passes a certain limit, you cannot live either.

Life on Earth requires a certain equilibrium between not too much and not too little resistance. The same thing is true of the will. Will is a force that overcomes the resistance of matter, the resistance of separation. If the will is too strong, it is harmful, and if it is too little it will not sufficiently overcome the resistance of matter.

This is how you can grow much faster because of the resistance. By learning to go with the resistance, you develop inwardly to just the right degree, to the proper balance. Needless to say, this cannot be learned by rules and regulations and laws and doctrines you absorb with your brain. This is an inner feeling that develops out of such a Pathwork as you are doing. It is intuitive, not learned.

You grow to fit into the right stream of the particular degree of resistance you need. It is not the same for everyone. Each person has a personal vibration, or frequency, the sum total of his or her entire being, outer and inner. According to this personal vibration, the resistance has to fit, as it were, to the general resistance of matter.

To the degree that you live productively and harmoniously, your vibration will be in harmony with the general resistance of matter. That is why development on Earth proceeds so much faster.

QA221 QUESTION: You have mentioned several times that we choose our lack of life situations when we choose our parent. I’d like you to talk a little more about the spiritual meaning of the parent-child relationship. I experience with my mother a very, very deep sense of how I chose her and how we had a task together. We’re working together on something. But at other times I’m perhaps the most narrow, intolerant and demanding towards my mother, and I completely lose sense of the connection with her. On a much more distinctly deep level, it is simply that I am her child and she is my mother.

ANSWER: What I’m going to say about the mother and the child does not only apply to the mother and the child. It applies also to the father and the child, and it also applies to siblings, and it applies to the important other contacts in life. It has a particular connection with the mother and the child, but the principle is the same with all important relationships.

Now, the significance here is that there is invariably and inevitably a task to be fulfilled together, in the interaction. To whatever degree there is a negative interaction, that is precisely where the task lies, where the unfulfilled problems exist. That is where the most attention and focus is required.

Of course, most people avoid to see this, and then they have to reappear in different combinations again and again and again, until the lesson is perceived and accepted and learned. But sometimes, inadvertently, aspects of the lesson may be learned without the consciousness fully recognizing the task.

But when the spiritual development has sufficiently progressed that these concepts can exist – of a task fulfillment in the very difficulty – then, of course, the task can be fulfilled infinitely more profoundly and efficiently, if you will.

You can see here how one and the same occurrence can be seen in totally different ways. Suppose a very difficult relationship between a mother and a child has nothing but friction and unpleasantness and discontent and mutual frustration and pain and hurt – if you’re very deeply submerged in just the level of manifestation, if you’re very much disconnected from the inner reality – that relationship will seem an undeserved curse for both participants.

However, if you go deeper and look with the outlook you are increasingly gaining through a path such as this, you begin to see suddenly a totally different picture. You see that in the very frustrations and difficulties lies the lesson – the lesson that you as a soul have come for, to fulfill.

This is why, when a mother dies and the child goes on living, and the problem the child has come to resolve has not been recognized and worked and fulfilled, the same relationship that you had with your mother will manifest in different forms and with different people. You will be magnetically attracted to similar conditions that your mother had, in other people.

Or even if these conditions do not really exist, at least you will react to people as if they would exist. That is the repeated chance that the processes and lawfulness of evolution offer you that you can use. Even if you do not fulfill it with the first, real mother, then other possibilities and opportunities present themselves.

So you can see one and the same occurrence in totally different lights. All of you who are on this Path can begin more and more to see that what is apparently bad or undesirable can be seen in a totally different light, when you look at it from the point of view of “what is the meaning for me in terms of my spiritual task for which I came? Where is my lesson in this situation?”

It is always where things are most difficult that the most important lesson ought to be learned. This is why I said to you so often, my friend, that the aspect of the Pathwork that presents the greatest difficulty or that gives you the greatest resistance is the most important one to seek.

The sooner you do so, volitionally, the more difficulties you avoid for yourself, because you will always find a lesson there – whether it is in the relationship with your parents, or the repeated reestablished parents, or in the aspects of your life manifestation. Seek your lesson in the difficulty, and you will fulfill your life. Is that clear?

QUESTION: Yes, I just have a further question. A parent is specifically one who guides and the task is to work out the negativity that may be present between parent and child – and in that sense, it’s for the greater good. But I also feel that somehow, once that negativity is worked through, the potency of the teaching/learning relationship between parent and child is so great. In other words, I’m not disagreeing, I’m just…

ANSWER: No, you are quite right. You see, I spoke now about the negative manifestation. It goes without saying, of course, that incarnators of relationships do not always and only have negative manifestations. There are very positive ties.

For example, you may come to a parent or to set of parents who will represent, through their own problems, the arena that will trigger off your problems. But in addition to that interaction lie also very positive karmic ties, positive possibilities, what you may call karmic debts, love, the desire to give, to guide, to help – all of that exists.

But I took it for granted that you know this, because the lesson is not only in a negative way. The positive manifestation is not that it is so much a lesson but a help. And the negative manifestation can serve as the directive where the task is deeply embedded. The other is the helpfulness, the nurturing.

They both must exist in some inward relationship and corresponding and complementing way. And, of course, with each case, it varies greatly – the relationship of the positive and the negative.

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