About: What we really believe about life

Practically everything a child enjoys most is forbidden. Dealing with authority, then, is the very first conflict for a growing child. The child also learns that God is the highest authority.

Therefore, pleasure equals punishment from God. This makes a monster out of God. Said another way, God seems to be a lot like Satan.

This is often the reason for atheism. One fears a God who is severe, unjust, pious, self-righteous and cruel.

The origin of this stems from the child’s reaction to his or her parents. If the child experienced discipline as harsh or punitive, the child may then experience the parents as being hostile. The reaction to God then is fear and frustration, believing God to be punishing, severe and unfair.

The attitude towards life then is one of hopelessness and despair, believing the universe to be unjust.

If the parents were indulgent, the child’s reaction will be more benign. But the child may grow up believing it can get away with anything and avoid self-responsibility. The belief, then, is in a pampering universe.

In our work, we need to become aware of what we believe and whether it is false. Then we can formulate a right concept, which we need inner enlightenment to see.

The truth is that we are the ones obstructing the light and freedom, not God.

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Learn more in:

• Bones, Chapter 14: Exposing the mistaken image we have about God
• Pearls, Chapter 10: Two rebellious reactions to authority

Aligning with the divine

God’s laws are infinitely good, wise, loving and safe, and they make us wholly free and independent. They always lead to light and bliss. The pain created by any deviation is what becomes the medicine that leads to the cure.

But we have free will to choose our way.

God, it must be noted, is not a person who acts with justice. God is life and life force—like an electric current with supreme intelligence.

God’s laws work automatically, so this great creative power current is always at our disposal.

If we experience an injustice, we need to find our part—whether it is ignorance, fear, pride or egotism. According to the Law of Cause and Effect, our unconscious has an effect on the unconscious of others.

So our attitude, deeds, thoughts and emotions all matter.

Our God image matters greatly because it is one of our deepest images. Instead of being about other people, it is a mistaken belief about life itself.

“The particular path on which I lead you, my dear friends, will make you understand, step by step, how and where your outer problems are connected to your inner conflicts, where you react emotionally in a way that will attract certain happenings to you as inevitably as a magnet draws iron to itself.

These forces can be truly understood only when you uncover your emotions and find out their deeper meaning. And with that knowledge you find the particular reason and purpose of your life, your own individual existence.

When this is discovered, an entity has reached an important phase in his or her whole cycle of incarnations. That this knowledge can be brought forth is the result of important efforts, which in turn are a sign that a soul has reached a significant milestone on the upward road.

At that point you step across the borderline between unconsciousness and consciousness with a higher degree of awareness. The true understanding of one’s present existence marks, indeed, a major steppingstone of a soul’s return journey to God.”

– Pathwork Lecture #46

Learn more in Spiritual Laws: Hard and fast logic for forging ahead.

How to uncover a God-image

As is so often the case, our personal God-image will have subdivisions and nuances. But it will in some way be a combination of these two main categories: strict and harsh, or permissive and coddling.

For example, let’s say there was a hostile, domineering authority in our house growing up. The atmosphere of our home, then, may have been filled with fear. At the same time, the other parent may have been a pushover.

Yet the permissive parent may have left the deeper impression. Or this could flip around and a weaker but harsher parent could have left a bigger impression.

However it was, our God-image will somehow reflect all of this.

One easy test to know if we are harboring an image of God is to ask ourselves: Do I fear God more or love God more? Obviously, if we have more fear than love, we’re under the distorted illusion of an image.

Or maybe we believe the life force only works in a negative way. If that’s us, and we’re deeply convinced of the absolute futility of life, we will find ourselves coming to life only in negative situations. Then we need a fight, a quarrel or some kind of disharmony or unrest to feel fully alive.

Smooth waters, by contrast, make us go flat. Whenever we feel more alive in a negative situation and more dead in a quiet one, we can be sure we have a God-image going on.

One major stumbling block lies in thinking about God as a person. God, then, is someone who makes random choices, acting at will in an arbitrary sort of way.

Stacked onto this is the idea that all this must be just. We can start by listing all the injustices we feel in our own life. Then sift through all the factors surrounding our various complaints.

Do I feel forgotten by God? Abandoned? Unseen?

Does life seem stacked against me?

Does the universe seem cold? Uncaring? Cruel? Vindictive?

The more resistance we have to doing this excavation, the greater the relief when we uncover the true cause.

Connecting cause with effect

Once we see that there is no injustice, we will be able to realize that it’s not God or the fates that force us to suffer due to others’ shortcomings. It’s our own ignorance, our own fear, and the pride of our own weak ego.

The issue is our attitude about our own shortcomings, or faults. Due to having a wrong attitude, we become too depressed to face ourselves.

This is a vicious circle that we must work on before we can make further progress on our path. Because if we feel guilty about the possible wrongs we must uncover, we will dodge reality and cause ourselves more harm.

With the proper attitude though, we will realize that we don’t commit our faults out of malice or because we wish evil things for others. Every fault—every act of selfishness—is nothing but a great misunderstanding.

It’s a wrong conclusion.

The realization that cause and effect is on us, not an angry or indulgent God, is one of life’s main breaking points.

It’s hard to imagine how free this makes us feel—how safe and secure.

More than that, the way spiritual laws work, the more we deviate from them, the more we live in misery. At some point, this misery causes us to turn around and realize that we ourselves are the source of our misery. Not God and God’s laws.

We can see the love that is built right into the laws.

How can we think God doesn’t care about us personally when God created such an elegant plan designed to guide us back home?

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