QA201 QUESTION: Can you tell me why the image of being tied up is such a pervasive one in my life?
ANSWER: Well, I will not go into any histories of previous lives, because to whatever degree this may or may not be true is only of secondary importance. The primary importance is that this reflects and symbolizes your psychological state, your feeling state, in which you tie yourself up in any number of contradictions and contradictory beliefs and conceptions about you and your life.
You are caught in the trap of your own contradictions, and you are bound to this – you are tied up in this. Also, you’re tied up to, for instance, aspects of your negative intentionality. Now, can you bring forth any yourself at this point? Are you aware of any? If you can do that, I can show you the way further, and show you the image of being tied up. Which negative intentionality are you aware of at this point?
QUESTION: Well, right now I felt very nervous and afraid about even expressing this question to you tonight.
ANSWER: Yes, how is this a negative intentionality?
QUESTION: Well, I think maybe I felt that I would get very negative, hostile reaction from people if I told them about this situation, if I opened myself up to them.
ANSWER: That is still not the negative intentionality on your part. That is a belief that may spring from one. In this attitude, if you are afraid of what others do to you, you still see yourself as the victim, and that is just one half of the story. You would have to ascertain in what way you are critical, you are negative, you reject, you find yourself, in a way, enjoying judgmentalness.
QUESTION: Well, I recently had a relationship with someone and I have reason to believe that she could be involved in prostitution. I feel as though I want to punish her for that. I feel as though she is not in a position to want to love me or to give herself to me, and I feel a great deal of hate and desire to hurt her for that.
ANSWER: Now you see, your helplessness, or what you mention – the image of being tied up, being helplessly caught in something that seems utterly outside your control – is very vividly demonstrated in what you just revealed. And that is that you see this situation as a very unfortunate happening that befell you and in which you experience yourself as the victim.
The only way you can come out of the bondage, the image of being tied up, is when you can assume responsibility. Now, the only way you can start doing this is by asking yourself certain very probing questions. For example, you can begin by saying, “What is it in me that made me attract this kind of relationship, the kind of person who is the way she is. Where am I in the innermost part of my being, where do I correspond or interact in some way with such a situation?”
Even if you cannot totally and wholly accept the principle of it, you have to at least make room for the strong possibility, in good faith, that if you are totally willing to give, you would find somebody who is totally willing to give. If, therefore, you come across someone in a relationship and are being tied up with your feelings, whether the other person is unavailable or whether the other person is apparently congenitally incapable of true and genuine feelings, the syndrome is the same.
The person is inaccessible and is not an individual who responds to love or wants love. And that must be a reflection of something in you. If you search for that, then you begin to assume responsibility, and you will untie yourself. You are only tied to the degree you do not assume responsibility for your problems. This may be in a very subtle way, but nevertheless you have to search for your own creation in this problem. As you see this, you untie yourself. You become free.
Now, this is a very simple principle and if it is pursued, you will see that there is nothing mysterious or mystical about it. Although most human beings want to see it as such and they want to theorize it and say, “Oh, I do not know whether I can believe in this.” But you do not have to be psychic, you do not have to be a mystic, you do not have to be even spiritual in order to verify this.
All you need is to be really in good faith and search deep inside your unexpressed consciousness, and that can be unearthed. With the help of someone, you can find it. Only in that moment do you become free, do you cease to experience yourself as a victim who is tied by circumstances beyond your control. That is always the key, my friends.
It is one of the basic principles of the teachings I am privileged to give you here. It is the basic principle of this Pathwork. It is something that most people want to reject because it is uncomfortable, and they prefer to see themselves as a victim, at a tremendous cost. But the true freedom and liberation lies in always seeing what part you play volitionally in the situation you are in.
Maybe I can tell you that the outer situation may be a very crass symbolization of something you are doing in a much more subtle and refined way with life. This is a hint, but if you pursue your inner work, you will know what I mean.
