 We all have needs: real, legitimate, have-a-right-to-have-them needs. One of these needs is for closeness. Another need, it turns out, is to have privacy. It’s not hard to imagine that these two can be tricky to weave together. Privacy, then, is not a nice-to-have, but a need-to-have. Being oblivious to this reality, we may find ourselves alone and then immediately set about cluttering up our inner landscape with noise So where does secrecy come in? Take apart any secrets and we’ll find the wish to hide something that we think will be unpalatable to someone… We may rationalize our secrets by saying, “If I reveal myself, I won’t be understood,” or “People will criticize me unfairly”…In truth, when we’re standing in truth—or attempting to get to the bottom of it—we’ll make an effort to help others understand… What’s happening when we keep secrets is that we fear we’re not in truth. Better yet, we often know we’re not but we have no intention of changing. So then we’re really being dishonest…And hey, we also sort of like the way it keeps things lopsided. We don’t have to work at finding equitable, honest solutions that allow others to participate in the party. That’s how secrets become such killjoys for relationships. And that’s why secretive people are never emotionally fulfilled… Even the interactions between countries are often enormously impacted by secretiveness…Opaqueness, it is believed, makes for sound diplomacy…Just as individuals need to go through the painstaking process of learning to be open, so must countries…We can’t get to peace and harmony any other way. It’s like trying to live life while projecting a false version of ourselves, basically saying, “Please see me only as I pretend to be.” It’s going to be hard to forge an authentic, trusting connection on top of that. Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 1: Privacy vs. Secrecy: A Boost or Bust for Finding Closeness Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #252 Privacy and Secrecy www.phoenesse.com

Pearls

Privacy and Secrecy: A Boost or Bust for Finding Closeness

 Within the lines of the Lord's Prayer is everything—yes, everything—we need to live a glorious life. This is what makes the Lord’s Prayer the most beautiful of all prayers. OUR FATHER As we say these words softly inside ourselves, we can meditate on how this must apply to everyone, even those we don’t happen to like…In fact, we can only call ourselves children of God if we’re willing to open the gates to all the creeps and crapheads in our world. Either no one’s in this flock or everyone is, even those who bring up unpleasant feelings in us…Whenever we have angst about another, there is something in us that needs attention, no matter how wrong the other person may be. WHO ART IN HEAVEN Heaven is inside us, not outside. So we must look for what we’re seeking—to find our own perfection—within, where it already exists. It may however be covered over and difficult to find. HALLOWED BE THY NAME The way to hallow the name of God, the father, is to try to fathom his laws and follow them…Whenever we find ourselves stumped by any life situation, it means we haven’t found the specific law we’re violating. THY KINGDOM COME When we follow spiritual laws, hallowing God’s name, we also bring ourselves closer to his kingdom. Because it’s within. Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 2: Reading Between the Lines of the Lord’s Prayer Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #9 Prayer and Meditation – The Lord's Prayer www.phoenesse.com

Reading Between the Lines of the Lord’s Prayer

 We’re about to discover, by reviewing the spiritual nature of political systems found on this planet—monarchy and feudalism, socialism and communism, and capitalistic democracy—that each has a divine origin plus a handful of distortions….We’ll also see how each of them—in their divine and distorted ways—lives in each one of us… In its original divine nature, capitalistic democracy is about total freedom of expression and abundance as it accrues from personal investment. At the same time, the divine form of this system also makes room for caring for those who, for some reason, can’t be—or aren’t yet willing to be—fully responsible for themselves… There is no sentimental claim that such people should reap all the same benefits as those who invest their whole being into their lives. But it also doesn’t exploit such people to justify the power drive of a ruler… This form of government then is closer to the fusion of duality—to being about unity—and is a more mature form of government than the previous categories… So how do we manage to abuse and distort capitalistic democracy?…This system can be abused from both sides. Those clamoring for socialism can become more parasitic and blame the power structure for keeping them down. On the other extreme, those who are strong and diligent, who risk and invest, can justify their greed and drive for power by blaming the parasitic nature of those who are lazy. But abuse is abuse… That’s the paradoxical way of spiritual things: the more developed and free we become, the greater is the danger for distortion and abuse. As such, in this system, we find the potential for a “negative fusion” when both sides are in distortion…What needs to happen is that a channel must open up to perceive divine will and establish divine law... The real question is: when we’re given enough leash to responsibly run our own lives, do we choke ourselves? It’s so easy to abuse freedom unless we confront our hidden motives at all times. With selflessness at the top of the docket, world politics could blend together the spiritual nature of each one of these political systems, not in contradiction to each other but as one united whole. Indeed, a single government could be created that would combine the divine natures of monarchy and feudalism, socialism and communism, and democratic capitalism. Yes indeedy, it could be done. Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 3: Exploring the Spiritual Nature of Political Systems Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #242 The Spiritual Mean

Exploring the Spiritual Nature of Political Systems

 We humans are a superstitious lot. There is one insidious form of superstition—pessimism—that is the hidden culprit behind many of our disappointments in life… It all starts with an inner attitude that goes something like this: “If I believe that something good may happen, I will be disappointed because I will chase it away with my believing in it. Maybe it’s a safer bet to believe that nothing good will happen to me.” This is the game we play with ourselves… At some point, this playful game starts to go sideways and then the fun gets lost in its tragically painful effects…Because there is power in our thoughts, and there’s no playing with that power without getting hurt… The nice thing about our old superstitious ways is that we just speak negative beliefs and they come true. No waiting…It’s tempting to lean on that instead of investing in a very uncertain waiting period…For the journey to having faith in a positive unfoldment takes a bit of time to ripen… We need the patience of a gardener who understands that a gestation period is required. With experience, the gardener learns that after sowing seeds, one must wait for the plants to sprout. It would be hard to trust this process until we’ve seen it in action… There is a pitfall to watch out for: it’s easy to confuse this courage of which we speak—a vigorous faith in good outcomes—with wishful thinking. But they’re not the same…How do we distinguish between the two? With wishful thinking, we spin fantastic dreams of fulfillment without having any price to pay…In our daydreams, happiness comes our way magically and gratuitously…We think we can game the system…Daydreams, then, are nothing more than the flipside of the superstition of pessimism… Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 4: Debunking the Curious Superstition of Pessimism Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #236 The Superstition of Pessimism www.phoenesse.com

Debunking the Curious Superstition of Pessimism

 We each have a Book of Life and everything gets written down in it, for everything in every life counts. As such, every incarnation is meticulously planned by carefully following the information contained in our “general ledger”… Be careful about comparing, judging and generalizing. Our view is very limited, seeing just one life at a time, and at that, what we see is still even more limited…So whenever we’re inclined to say that our life is too difficult to bear or that someone else has it too easy, we need to back off. We wouldn’t think this for a minute if we saw all the missing puzzle pieces… The thing that most determines what opportunities we will get to next—and what we need to work on for our overall development—is how much of our current plan we fulfill…If, according to what gets noted in our Book of Life, we don’t advance much this time around or we do a rather half-assed job of it, we may be looking at a complete do-over… Again, don’t jump to judgment; an easy, pleasant life may not indicate that the previous one was gangbusters. It could be that merits were earned, possibly three or four lifetimes back. Likewise, a tough life might be the result of actions in our last incarnation. Or not. A zealous person may make the choice to pay off, in one lifetime, a monster demerit, while another pays off just as great a demerit—maybe even a bigger one—but eats the elephant one bite at a time. So one more time, what did we say about comparing and judging?... Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 5: Preparing for Reincarnation: Every Life Counts Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #34 Preparation for Reincarnation www.phoenesse.com

Preparing for Reincarnation: Every Life Counts

 Imagine we live in a great big house that has one room we don’t use, so it becomes a room for storage. We push a few things into it helter-skelter and if we had to tidy it up at that point, it wouldn’t take too long. Imagine over time we let things pile up until that room’s filled to the brim. We’re lazy and don’t want to hassle with sorting things and putting them away as we go. Now we’ve got a tougher job on our hands. It’s just like this with the time we have at our disposal… If we have a problem area and at the first sign of feeling troubled we heed it saying, “Why am I just a little disturbed?”—rather than packing it away into the storeroom of our unawareness—we will be able to sort out what it’s about in jig time…But if instead we let it ride, pushing it out of our mind, it will fester underground. Now it starts to create negative patterns and vicious circles that seem to trap us in wicked chain reactions that eat our lunch… Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 6: Unwinding Humanity’s Relationship with Time Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #112 Humanity's Relationship to Time www.phoenesse.com

Unwinding Humanity’s Relationship with Time

 There’s an obstacle many face. It’s the tendency for people to build on deficit. This is intrinsically linked to this belief in an empty, poor, ungiving world…Whenever we stack positive beliefs on top of negative ones we are only half-aware of, we are building on deficit. So if we secretly believe we are unlovable or unacceptable, despite our surface behaviors to the contrary, we’re building on deficit… The trouble with building on deficit is that it appears to work, at least for a while. It’s temporarily convincing…With this as the foundation we are standing on, pouring our energy into our mask and our Lower Self, we don’t dare to expose our deficits—the inner bankruptcy that smolders underneath. This is why a path of spiritual purification is about bringing out all of our Lower Self maneuvers. We must stand there poor, no longer covered up with a fake veneer… Any personal crisis is nothing more than a bankruptcy exposed. We can wait for this to happen on its own, or we can create a controlled fall by working mindfully with a spiritual helper or counselor…Of course our spiritual and emotional “finances” appear on the physical level as well. We often live above our means, coasting on debt and covering one hole with another newly created hole… The fear that causes us to hold and hoard is in error…Giving through faith—even before we’re convinced that our fear of giving is unfounded—is like pulling out poisonous weeds and planting beautiful seedlings instead…Then we can release the faith that is in us, not as an act of blind belief in wishful thinking but as a new ground rule for life. Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 7: Basking in Grace & Not Building on Deficit Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #250 Inner Awareness of Grace – Exposing the Deficit www.phoenesse.com

Basking in Grace and Not Building on Deficit

 In the beginning was the word. Words, in fact, are the blueprint necessary for building any structure…Nothing in creation can exist unless a word has been spoken, known, held, believed in and committed to… Holy Scripture starts by postulating that in the beginning was—or actually is—the word. The word is eternal; it will always be. It is from God’s spoken word that all creation came into being, including our personalities…So what do we do with this truth? Well, for one thing, we can become aware that every situation we experience in life is the product of words we ourselves have spoken… Our goal: establish a one-pointed word…Words are no less powerful when they are not articulated well. Vague and hazy words need to be crystallized and brought out from behind the smoke screen…The silent word is not necessarily less powerful than a word that is uttered. In fact, words that wash across our vocal chords may well have much less energy than the ones held inside that are rooted in strong beliefs… By tuning into the underground noise, and observing and identifying our words, we will gain a much better understanding of how we create our lives…Holding onto a nihilistic belief about a terrible world may seem preferable to seeing our own painful belief that we’re not worthy of the joy of life. But folks, if we believe this, we’re not in truth… Until we unwind all this for ourselves, we may be convinced that the positive words spoken on the surface are all that count. We might then use the fact of our opposite experiences as proof that life is unfair and untrustworthy—that our own inner processes have no bearing on what goes on. People, we then think, are victims of life…Once we go a little further in our work though, we will uncover our unfortunate self-hate and our lack of faith in our own Higher Self. Knowing this information about words will help in our search for the imposters, those parts of ourselves who still speak on our behalf but don’t represent our best interest. Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 8: Articulating the Power of the Word Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #233 The Power of the Word www.phoenesse.com

Articulating the Power of the Word

 Whether we realize it or not, we associate a joyful life with a life of perfection. We can’t enjoy life if we’re not perfect—or so we think—nor can we enjoy our neighbors or our lovers or our situation in life. So let’s pause right here because this is one of humanity’s biggest bonehead beliefs. Essentially, we demand perfection, and that’s just not what’s happening… It’s time to connect the dots between how our need for perfection alienates us from our true selves, which in turn hoses up our chances for a joyful life. No one’s shooting unrealistically for 100% joy here, but it could be possible to have a lot more joy than we do now…Only by accepting that we are imperfect beings can we grow out of our imperfections and enjoy the experience of being who we really are, right now… People, we don’t have to be problem-free. In truth, we cannot be. We don’t have to be perfect to live fully, have more awareness and enjoy more fulfilling experiences. Accepting our imperfections, in fact, makes us less imperfect and flexible enough to change…The trouble, as is often the case, is our dualistic either/or attitude. Either we strive for immediate perfection—ignoring what’s still not perfect—or we give up… Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 9: Why Flubbing on Perfection is the Way to Find Joy Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #97 Perfectionism Obstructs Happiness – Manipulation of Emotions www.phoenesse.com

Why Flubbing on Perfection is the Way to Find Joy

 We face our first conflict with authority at a very young age. Parents, siblings, relatives and later teachers all represent authority whose job is seemingly to say No…So there’s a barrier between the child and the adult in charge…On one hand, the child wants the parent’s love, and on the other, the child rebels against being restricted…Authority, then, is the hostile force of an enemy locking us behind prison bars and causing frustration… The child then develops an impatient longing to grow up and become an adult so these restricting walls will go away. But then the child actually does grow up and the face merely changes. Now, instead of parents and teachers, it takes the form of society, the government, police officers, bosses and other people in positions of power we must now depend upon. Same conflict, different day… We can build common ground with others by seeing how their reaction lives in us, but not setting ourselves up as the judge. This balance is tricky to attain; we can only find it through solving our own inner struggle against authority… Common criminals must be prevented from continuing their law-breaking ways, and this must be done by imperfect law-enforcing establishments…We can all contribute to building a world in which vicious circles get broken before they result in wrongdoing; the cornerstone for this work is to examine our own reactions to authority that, left unchecked, can set an avalanche rolling. Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 10: Two Rebellious Reactions to Authority Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #46 Authority www.phoenesse.com

Two Rebellious Reactions to Authority

 Orderliness is directly connected with divine harmony and, like so many things, there is both an inner version and an outer version; there’s also a divine version, order, and a corresponding distortion, disorder. In the grand scheme of things, inner order is what we experience when we are fully conscious and there is no more unconscious material left in our soul…Any lack of awareness is an indication of disorder somewhere in our soul. When we’re not aware, we’re not in truth; things slip away into our unconscious and we become confused… The disorderly mind will become frantic trying to impose a false order, but this only heightens our level of discomfort and disorderliness. It’s like shoving garbage under our furniture so no one will see it, but the whole place reeks of the hidden waste… Our resistance can be surprisingly strong. When we kick over to compulsive orderliness, we create as much trouble and hardship as if we were surrounding ourselves in filth…The first step in becoming aware of this connection between orderliness and our inner landscape is to tune into how much we are disturbed by disorder; feel the tension and anxiety it creates… Interestingly, the part of us that resists is well aware that freeing ourselves of the burden of disorder will make our inner work much easier. And that’s exactly what the resistance wants to avoid. Think about it. The disorganized person can’t concentrate; same for the compulsively orderly one… So someone who has their act pulled together is going to be an orderly person in their outer habits. They will be clean, not just in their body, but in their handling of daily life…Making messes then comes from our unconscious negative intention—our will to stay stuck. This may be a whole new vantage point from which to view disorder. Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 11: Bringing Ourselves to Order, Inside and Out Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #205 Order as a Universal Principle www.phoenesse.com

Bringing Ourselves to Order, Inside and Out

 There is a subject of great dispute: positive thinking. As many believe, it is indeed essential for anyone who wants to mature spiritually. Unfortunately, it is often wrongly understood and therefore applied in the wrong way, for there is a wrong way to think positively. One of the fundamental building blocks of any spiritual path is developing clean and sound thoughts…Unclean thoughts then build disharmonious creations that lead, eventually, to impacting our destiny… It’s always so tempting for us to push uncomfortable thoughts out of our awareness, but we don’t realize that those thoughts then have the power to do infinitely more harm than any conscious thought ever could—even our worst ones…When a thought is conscious, we can deal with it. When it smolders in our unconscious, it’s like a time bomb that builds highly destructive forms around itself… As a result, diligent students of positive thinking are encouraged to do the one thing that is the very worst for them: they push all negative thoughts out of their mind and into their unconscious, completely disregarding the discrepancy between what they actually think or feel and what they want to think or feel. All in an intention to not harbor negative thoughts…Positive thinking tries to convince us it's out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Well-meant as this may be, it’s a lie. And this is the real tragedy of the wrong kind of positive thinking... Listen and learn more. Read Chapter 12: The Right and Wrong Way to Think Positively Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #13 Positive Thinking: the Right and the Wrong Kind www.phoenesse.com

The Right and Wrong Way to Think Positively

 For people walking a path of self-discovery—whether through therapy, spiritual counseling or the like—the work tends to concentrate on waking up our own inner being, bringing all our inner obstacles into our awareness so we can transform them. This is important and necessary work. We need to get to know our Lower Self and how it operates if we want make another choice. For we are basically a big electromagnetic field that always follows the like-attracts-like rule. Bottom line: we need some information about the three basic principles of evil so we have a more complete and clear view of our lives and what we’re up against… They all contribute to the aim of the dark forces, which is to alienate us and all of creation from God…We’ve come a long way. People are opening up to accepting God as a creative principle, even though we may hesitate to accept that principles of evil also exist. We drag our feet more still though in accepting that all principles manifest on Earth as entities. We fear being called childish or primitive by those who are too smart to believe in such things… Knowledge that we are surrounded and influenced by angels does not need to lead us to worshipping angels and overlooking Christ, who was God’s human manifestation and who is the ultimate source of all the help we need. We also don’t need to skip over making a connection with Jesus Christ, as that is what opens a direct line of communication between us and God. Being aware of the presence of spiritual guides and angels also shouldn’t cause us to fear the devils, or dark angels, we attract from time to time… Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 13: Uncloaking the Three Faces of Evil: Separation, Materialism and Confusion Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #248 Three Principles of the Forces of Evil – Personification of Evil www.phoenesse.com

Uncloaking the Three Principles of Evil: Separation, Materialism and Confusion

 To get started, we need to understand the three fundamental layers of the personality that must be involved in the process of meditation for it to be truly effective. The three levels are: 1) the ego, with our ability to think and take action, 2) the destructive inner child, with its hidden ignorance and omnipotence, and immature demands and destructiveness, and 3) the Higher Self, with its superior wisdom, courage and love that allows for a more balanced and complete outlook on situations… What we want to do during the process of meditation, in order to be most effective, is leverage the ego to activate both the immature destructive aspects and the superior Higher Self…It’s actually a sign of great progress when we can allow the belligerent little monster inside us to surface in our inner awareness. Being able to acknowledge this destructive part of ourselves in all its egotistical and irrational glory indicates a measure of self-acceptance and growth… Many people meditate but they neglect this two-sidedness and therefore miss out on the opportunity for transformation and integration. Their Higher Self may be activated but the unfree, closed off areas remain neglected. The work of opening and healing, unfortunately, doesn’t happen by itself… Our goal is not to slay the destructive aspects of ourselves. No, these parts need instruction so they can be freed and allowed to grow up; then salvation can become a real thing. As we do this, our ego will, sure enough, move steadily closer to becoming unified with the greater Higher Self. Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 14: Meditating to Connect Three Voices: The Ego, the Lower Self & the Higher Self Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #182 The Process of Meditation (Meditation for Three Voices: Ego, Lower Self, Higher Self) www.phoenesse.com

Process of Meditation to Connect Three Voices: The Ego, the Lower Self and the Higher Self

 In whatever form it shows up, crisis is always attempting to break down old structures that are based on negativity and wrong thinking. It shakes loose ingrained habits and breaks up frozen energy patterns so new growth can happen. Indeed, the tearing down process is painful, but without it, transformation is unthinkable. This is the meaning of crisis. Change is an inevitable fact of life; where there’s life, there’s never-ending change. Full stop. But when we live in fear and negativity, we resist change…So then crisis comes along as a means for breaking up stagnant negativity—so we can let go of it. But the more painful the crisis is, the more our ego—that will-directed part of our consciousness—attempts to block the change…In the areas then where we don’t resist change, our lives will be relatively crisis-free. Wherever we resist change, crisis is sure to follow… Just as a thunderstorm serves to clear the air when certain conditions in the atmosphere collide, crises are natural, balance-restoring events. But it is possible to grow without creating “dark nights” for ourselves. The price we need pay for this is self-honesty… Listen and learn more. Read Pearls, Chapter 15: What’s the Real Spiritual Meaning of Crisis? Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #183 The Spiritual Meaning of Crisis www.phoenesse.com

What’s the Real Spiritual Meaning of Crisis?

In this classic collection, Jill Loree strings together practical spiritual insights in a timeless collection that offers pearls of wisdom we can use every day. Topics include: Privacy & Secrecy • The Lord’s Prayer • Political Systems • The Superstition of Pessimism • Preparing to Reincarnate • Our Relationship to Time • Grace & Deficit • The Power of Words • Perfectionism • Authority • Order • Positive Thinking • Three Faces of Evil • Meditation for Three Voices • The Spiritual Meaning of Crisis • Leadership • Letting Go & Letting God.

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Pearls

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