QA169 QUESTION: I am in a painful situation in my relationship with someone who I think is frequently very inconsiderate of me. I have two reactions to this. On the one hand, I get very angry at her and I really want to leave to put a stop to it; sometimes that seems the only way. On the other hand, I want to stay. I’m confused about my real motives – whether they’re constructive and with the intention of working things out in a healthy fashion, or do I simply stay because I’m afraid of loneliness and loss of love? I’m in a real turmoil about this, and I wonder if you can comment on it.
ANSWER: Yes, Yes. Now, first of all, of course you realize I will not say which alternative to follow. That would be impossible and completely against the principles of this work. But I will even go further than that and say, as long as you are caught in the dichotomy – in the inner conflict of the split in you – it does not make any difference what course you pursue.
In either course, you could truly come to the nucleus of the problem, where it all unifies and where you can become whole. In either course, you can follow the course of your neuroses, which could be by staying or by leaving.
In other words, what counts is whether or not you take this painful experience in a robust way, in a way of real strength and initiative: “I will make this the stepping stone I need for my own growth, for my own wholeness.”
That is all-determining – if you can catch your self-pity, if you can catch your dependency, if you can catch your anger, if you can catch your fear and the guilts and all these emotions. You see, the more you accept your problem, the more it will be possible for you to grow out of it.
The less you drive yourself into an action that finishes the turmoil and the pain, before you have even discovered its real source within yourself, the less you will come to a solution and the more the chances are, I would say, it is inevitable even that you re-experience similar things later on in life. Therefore, terminating something that isn’t terminated from within is not necessarily the answer. But if that’s what you feel at the moment, fine – and then find the answer.
In other words, you have to act in the best possible way you know how under the circumstances. For, as long as one is deeply involved in the inner distortion, whatever one does, one cannot win. By the same token, it is true that when you have unified yourself, whatever you do will be right.
Therefore I say, accept your problem. Approach it with the idea, “Now, let me relax into it and really observe and learn from it, before I can even attempt to find a solution as far as action is concerned. What does it reveal about myself?” The cultivation of that attitude is all-important. That is perhaps more important at the moment than anything about the problem itself.
For you hurry yourself because of the pain. Of course, this is not only you. I would say, all human beings – unless they have learned this approach to themselves through the labor of such a Pathwork – are in this. When they’re in pain, they want to hurry themselves and the other person and circumstances out of the present situation, because they want to stop the hurt or the pain or the anguish or the fear. And that is always wrong.
So say, “Yes, what are all the diverse feelings I have?” and list them, put them down, face them. Then you will see that a new acceptance will arise of your own split motivations, of the various opposite wishes you have that are mutually exclusive really. You will see how that brings you in contact with people who, of course, have problems commensurate and compatible with this thing, so that the whole thing must then flare out in the open.
Truly face your fear of self-assertion and why you fear it, as you do already to some extent. Face the question of why you are so afraid of losing; why are you so afraid that you cannot find love? What is it in you where you do not wish to give yourself completely either, but give yourself instead in a self-debilitating way, an enslaving way.
You hold back when it comes to your deeper feelings and where you cannot entrust yourself into the stream of life. And the stream of life is also formed by the stream of your own natural feelings.
These and other elements of your conflicts will become clear, and you will assume a more self-accepting attitude so that you can let the conflict unfold. Human beings always make the mistake, as I said: they do not even give their conflict a chance to unfold to themselves, and they already want to get out of it.
That is hardly possible. This is what you have to learn first. Let the conflict unfold, and as you accept it, it will hurt much less. Because a big part of the hurt now is your compulsion to get out of it already now – to find a solution of action that will give you peace. And that, of course, is erroneous.
I would like to add that what may not make sense with the common sense may come from a deep inner voice of wisdom. Yet when the personality is insecure, it does not dare to give himself or herself to this inner voice and is not able to completely recognize it. Because also, at the same time, this may be polluted by false motivations and wishful thinkings and illusions and fantasies that mix into that, so it becomes all the more a muddle.
Then what is reasonable may also be mixed. It may be partially, under the circumstances, where the whole personality happens to be within his development, the common sense little thing. But nevertheless, it may be a constricting thing that is, on the whole, not necessary if the personality unfolds.
Now, I would say, you need very much to find your inner problems, to find your unconscious confusions and misconceptions about yourself and about life. These emotional turbulences create an outer situation in which you do not know what to do. And whatever the outer thing would be, whatever alternative you choose, none of them would be right or would bring you peace or would bring you solutions – as long as you do not resolve the conflict within yourself.
There is unfortunately no hard and fast answer or rule that I can give you: “This would be the right course of action that would bring you to what you want out of life.” What you want out of life is what everyone wants out of life. You want to be in complete possession of the best faculties in you that you sense exist, but you also sense are not used yet.
Whether these faculties apply to your creative and intuitive abilities or to the capacity to experience joy, bliss, pleasure, depth of feeling, or to your mental abilities – all of that is hindered by constrictions that exist in you and that are not necessary and that hamper your life.
Happiness would mean nothing else but choosing a systematic pathway toward this unfoldment, even if you have not unfolded it all. Very, very, very few people come to that point. Because, indeed, the potentials are infinite. For you are within yourself divine, and as such infinite – also in the unfoldment of these potentials.
But once you’re really launched on such an unfoldment path and feel that you have gained a certain foothold on it – first only occasionally and gradually more and more – you will then know that this is the solution of a problem that happens now to manifest in this particular way, and could just as well manifest in many other ways as well.
You see, this problem is not in itself the problem. You should try to see it for nothing else but a symptom, an out-picturing, of what exists within you.
