The work of healing: Yellow

Soul Splits

• When we are born, we are already split into either a male half or a female half. Our longing to unite with another stems from this cleaving of our soul. (The Pull, Chapter 1: The cosmic pull toward union)

• Each soul also contains a primary inner split; healing this split is a key reason we incarnate into this dualistic sphere. This split gets transferred onto our parents. One parent surfaces one side of what we believe to be true, and the other parent surfaces the opposite belief. (For example, “It hurts to be seen; it hurts to not be seen.”) Neither side is in truth. This is what the adult will need to come to understand.

• Until we surface these hidden untruths, we will unconsciously transfer our inner splits and faulty thinking onto everyone we meet. We will see them through our inner distorted lenses rather than in the reality of who they are: people with both strengths and weaknesses, just like us, who in fact are not our parents. (Bones, Chapter 11: Our habit of transferring our split onto everyone)

Faults

• Our reaction to pain is the origin of our three primary faults: Fear, Pride and Self-Will. All other faults tuck up under these three categories. (Bones, Chapter 12: Finding out the truth about ourselves, including our faults , and Chapter 13: The ubiquitous faults of self-will, pride and fear)

• Fear: In our immature state, caused by our unwillingness to express and release our old pain, we see life in black-and-white terms. Caught in this dualistic illusion, everything boils down to life-and-death. So pleasure equates to life and pain equates to death. In short, we fear pain because we unconsciously believe it means death. We avoid our old frozen feelings as a way to avoid pain. But this only allows our Emotional Reactions to control us. (Blinded by Fear: Insights from the Pathwork Guide on how to face our fears)

• • In our healing work, we must come to understand the wrong thinking connected with our pain, and realize that feeling pain will not kill us. This is the only way to release our pent up old feelings and step into freedom. (Bones, Chapter 2: The importance of feeling all our feelings, including fear)

• • Often, in our hopelessness, we will resign ourselves to “death”, giving up on getting pleasure or on getting what we want. But this is just an ineffective strategy for coping with our fear of pain, and our belief that pain will kill us. (Gems, Chapter 5: Facing our deepest fear and unfolding our greatest longing)

• Pride: This is the feeling that we are separate and better than everyone else. That to have life, we must win. We adopt this attitude as a countermeasure against feeling less than everyone. For our less-than-satisfying childhood leaves us feeling worthless or somehow not enough.

• Self-Will: In an effort to avoid pain and facing our unfortunate conclusion that we are worthless, we apply our will to defending ourselves. We either hold ourselves back, becoming lazy, stubborn, resistant to change, withholding (including of our best self) and rebellious. (Gems, Chapter 9: Why lazy is the worst way to be, and Finding Gold, Chapter 6: Laziness as a symptom of self-alienation) Or we use a forcing current to get our way, believing this will save us. Both strategies only bring us more pain. (Living Light, Chapter 1: THE FORCES OF ACTIVITY AND PASSIVITY | Searching inside the serenity prayer and finding God’s will)