QA163 QUESTION: Lately, I have had the urge for physical contact as a mother/son relationship, and it’s become extremely strong. I’m beginning to experience a new constructive experience through physical contact so I think of it in a positive way. I wonder if you could say something about this.
ANSWER: Yes, you are quite right that this is an unfoldment, for most individuals live so self-encased, so much in fear, so much in separation, so much in awkwardness and false shames that their self-expression is completely hindered. Most of the time, this only functions on the verbal level, and even there, in a very false and shallow way. So this is a very healthy sign, as it were.
But it also harbors, at the same time, simultaneously, an urge from your childhood, a hunger that has never been stilled. If you allow yourself to recognize this hunger, you will then gradually and surely find a way to now, not be dependent on others to fulfill it. Your own inner processes will change in such a way that you will be able to fulfill it by creating new conditions in your life. Is that clear?
QUESTION: Well, I didn’t expect a negative connection. [Laughter] I mean, I know what you’re talking about, but I don’t think that I want to embrace people because I have a hunger.
ANSWER: Well, I know that you do not wish that, but I would like you to recognize this hunger in you as a need that is unfolding itself. Because in your growth, you have overcome certain barriers that did not permit you to recognize this. So what I meant to say is that there are two factors involved in this awareness.
There is the general, positive factor involved of simply wanting to be closer to people in a spontaneous warm way, which is natural and unproblematic. But there is also this old need. That is all I meant to say. Your recognition that there are these two aspects involved will be helpful for you. I do not know where is the problem now. Is there anything specific, or answer you expected, other than that?
QUESTION: I guess I will discuss it later on. I just don’t like your “buts.”
ANSWER: What buts?
QUESTION: I’m experiencing something I feel is for me a form of exercising. It’s not a compulsion. It’s an urge. And in your answer you do state the positive aspect and then you have “but” next to it. I can discuss that later on.
ANSWER: Well, there is no “but” in the sense that I say it’s wrong. I merely point out that there is a certain unfulfilled hunger existing that unfolds itself out of you, as it should. You must become aware. You interpret things here in my answer that are not there, because you are fearful here about something.
QUESTION: I have come to some sort of a plateau. I haven’t felt so good for a long time, and I feel connected much more with my inner self and with the people who are nearest to me. And somehow I am not able to go on from here. I have it here in my notes that I’ve taken in my private sessions, and I must meditate, because I’m afraid that I will lose this. I’m so happy to be here. And since I know that after an up, a down must come – I just don’t want to stir.
ANSWER: It is again the favorite human ostrich policy that believes, “What I do not see, does not exist.” If a down must come because a down still exists in you, it must come, whether you look for it or not.
The only difference is, if you go on with vigor and good spirit, the down will not be half as painful as when you are pushed into it by its processes that you are separated from in your voluntary Pathwork. So you can only gain from going on. You can only gain and make the down curve a much more fruitful and much less painful period.
That is perhaps one of the very important dividing marks in the evolution of an individual, in his overall evolutionary path – when he comes to the point when life and his own inner process no longer push him toward self-facing because he’s so unhappy that he has no other way to turn.
Instead he is moving on his own steam, until this movement becomes self-perpetuating. It is a very relaxed thing that comes simultaneously from the outer ego and the inner real self – after the outer ego is taking, again and again, command to go into this direction.
