Image

What it is

The Pathwork Guide uses the word “image” to describe an unconscious, mistaken conclusion about life, formed in childhood from painful experiences.

Why it matters

Images quietly orchestrate much of our emotional life, until we bring them into conscious awareness. They influence how we behave and react, causing repeated life experiences that seem to confirm our mistaken conclusions.

From Bones

~1~

From practically the time we were born, we have been creating our own impressions about this thing we call life… Based on what we experience, our minds form conclusions… The only problem is, most of the time our conclusions are wrong…

As we grow up, these wrong conclusions, along with the attitudes they sprout, sink out of our awareness. There, in our unconscious, they settle in and start molding how our life will look…

The word that the Pathwork Guide uses to refer to these conclusions is “images.” For in the Spirit World, they can see our whole thought process as a spiritual form—or image. (Chapter 9)

~2~

It’s extremely important for us to understand that we have these images. It’s equally important for us to realize that we draw people and events to us, like bees to honey, on account of these images. (Chapter 9)

~3~

But when our impressionable mind has petrified an experience into an image, or a generalization about life, then all our experiences are limited by our filter. The freshness of life goes stale.

The truth and beauty of the present moment get wrung out of life by our squeezing it into a mold of the past. Remember, the mind is the origin and keeper of these images. (Chapter 5)

~4~

Due to our images, we are compelled to re-experience undesirable experiences repeatedly. We will keep recycling painful experiences until we summon the courage to now live through what was not lived through before.

Good intentions will not be enough here. (Chapter 2)

~5~

Trying to reach a higher state of being by using intellect and willpower causes us to construct images. These are essentially wrong conclusions about life. They are based on how we think we should be and how life should be, according to our limited past experiences. (Chapter 5)

~6~

The idealized self is the image of all images—it’s a hugely wrong conclusion about how life works—and we need to dissolve it. (Chapter 6)

~7~

Fearing our images, though, is shortsighted.

If we believe that something we don’t know about can’t hurt us as much as if we knew about it, well, there’s an image right there. Again, we think our images keep us safe, but it’s just the opposite. (Chapter 9)

~8~

Our stagnated energy doesn’t only trap feelings, but concepts too. We take a single event and base a false generalized belief on it, which we then hold onto.

It’s rare when stagnant feelings don’t hold equally stuck concepts about life in them. Often these wrong conclusions about life, which the Pathwork Guide calls “images,” are tucked far from our waking mind. (Chapter 2)

Continue with: Emotional Reaction • Out-picture • Soul Dent