24 QUESTION: The law is, you have to give up what you want to gain. How can we be certain that we are giving up so completely that the idea of gain is not somewhere hidden as a subconscious motive?

ANSWER: The fact that you can ask and consider such a question is already the first step to assure yourself that you are on the good road. You have to be ever wakeful for these hidden motives. Test yourself, check yourself each day in your hour of prayer, meditation and daily review, when something like this comes up. “Oh, here my ego intrudes again. I have to give up craving recognition by others” – or whatever it may be.

Then ask yourself this very question: “Am I really willing to give it up, or do I do it because I hope to gain something?” In other words, see if the truth is that you are not able to give it up at all. If you really want to know the truth about yourself, you can always find it out. This is merely a matter of whether you really desire the truth about yourself or not.

If you are unwilling to face yourself with the truth, and rather believe you are living and feeling and thinking in this or that respect according to law, then you will not find the truth. But if you realize that, it is much better. It is the only way, indeed, to recognize your present inability to give something up.

It is the only way, for instance, to accept your imperfection in this respect, in humility, yet with the sincere desire to be able to change it, realizing that you need your own goodwill to do so – your own constant self-honesty – and how far you are still deviating from the right course. Realize at the same time that you cannot do so without the help of God, for which you should ask specifically every time you recognize your inability in this or any other respect.

The knowledge that you are still not giving up what you want to gain, even though a part of you desires it, is the best medicine. If you can recognize that again and again, and then ask God for enlightenment, strength and higher understanding, to help you want with every particle of your being to purify your motives, then you will eventually succeed, little by little.

It will happen not in one sweep, but first just in a small measure, occasionally, and as time goes on and you do not lessen your efforts ¬– which should never be tense – you will find it easier and finally it will be your natural reaction. In the course of this path, you will be guided to situations where you will have an opportunity to do this, when you can prove it by an action. It does not have to be something big and important.

Often, the smaller the act, the better it is for you. The less people are aware of it, the better it serves the purpose. No one ought to know but yourself and your spiritual teacher. And if you can really give up without letting the other person involved know, then, once you have tried it, it will be so much easier the next time.

This is the way you gradually find the law. Nothing like this can ever be accomplished suddenly or with one single act. It can only grow in constant endeavor, in constant effort. Nothing can be accomplished any other way, nothing that is durable and really solid, least of all spiritual security, harmony and a firm foothold.

QA179 QUESTION: I’d like to ask a question about reaching people when they aren’t present. It’s been difficult for me sometimes when I’ve tried to talk to people when they’re not present, to reach them spiritually with very specific thoughts. As I’ve done it, I’ve felt that because I wasn’t at a certain stage or they weren’t, that I wouldn’t be able to reach them. And I’d like to know about why it isn’t possible, generally, to talk to people this way?

ANSWER: Because there’s too much insistence in you. These contacts are being made when the soul is relaxed and when it happens spontaneously and when it is least perhaps expected. All such experiences – whether reaching and communicating with others or any other spiritual experience or real, creative experience, in any shape or form – can always be made only when it is least expected, because then there is the right kind of inner relaxation there.

But when the soul currents are taut, when there is this kind of insistence there, where everything is contracted inside in the soul movements, that in itself will be the greatest hindrance. First of all, you have to learn to give up and let go. And not insist.

You also have to examine where does this insistence come from? What are the underlying dynamics here? There is a tremendous amount of distrust there, the kind of attitude or feeling that if it is not the way you want it, it is bad or “it must be that way” because otherwise it is terribly bad. That puts a tremendous strain on your soul movements.

The trust must be examined – in life, in God, in the world, in your own being – that even if it is not this way, there are other ways. Why is it so important for you to communicate in this way, for example, that you put so much stake in it at this moment? Have you examined this?

QUESTION: No, I haven’t. You’re right in what you say. I want to get to the cause of it and the basic fact of it and work through it.

ANSWER: Yes, that will be good. And in the meantime, if you want to communicate, you can do it in your everyday ways. You do not have to use these ways. You have to do the best you can with what you have available of your own faculties now, and not insist that your faculties are other than what they are.

There is also the whole question of self-acceptance that enters here, that puts so much strain on your being. One of the greatest keys and most important things for you at the beginning of this Pathwork is to learn this letting go. Then peace will come to you, and then the world will open up. Only then will you find out the truth of the law that by letting go will you find God, by letting go will you find that which you think you give up. But in trust, not in resignation!

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