This planet and the people on it are going through a growth process. Every seed that this plan of ultimate self-evolution contains, carries its own plan for fulfillment. And each seed will unfold in its own organic way, following its own inner laws. We experience this phenomenon when we do our work of personal growth and healing, the way this path guides us to do.

Again and again, we watch as an organic process unfolds that operates independently from our conscious mind and our expectations. A plan like this goes in stages, with new energies released each time we transition to a new stage.

“Greetings, my very beloved friends. Blessings for every one of you. Divine love reaches out to you, seeps deep into your heart and embraces you. Let it give you the peace of the ultimate reality that you can and will find within your innermost being if you go all the way with yourself.”

–The Pathwork Guide

Let’s take a look at how this phenomenon manifests on the material level, which is the most superficial level. For example, what happens in the outer growth of a person as they go through very distinct growth phases. For a baby, when they are ready to learn to walk and talk, dormant capacities unfold in them. In order for this to take place, new energies must become available to them.

Many people are still unable to make an apparent sacrifice in an effort to preserve kindness, constructive behavior and decency.
Many people are still unable to make an apparent sacrifice in an effort to preserve kindness, constructive behavior and decency.

On the physical level, this is the first major change that takes place after we incarnate. The next major phase of expansion happens when a child leaves home and goes to school. This big step is not just a physical one, but also involves an inner expansion. This is a step out into the world that involves unfolding the child’s built-in potential to cope with other people who live outside the home. Growth continues in this way throughout the span of a person’s entire life.

After a person becomes fully physically grown, it’s harder to notice these transitions. Nonetheless, they are just as real and distinct. Each new phase involves changes, growth and the ability to express oneself more creatively so one can better deal with the world—both the outer world and the inner one. Physicians know that there are changes in our cellular system every few years. In fact, the chemical components of the outer structure change completely. And even though we may not notice this happening, it’s real.

The changes that happen on the other levels of our being—mental, psychic, emotional and spiritual—are even more dynamic. During each stage, we take an orderly step to fulfill the plan of the seed. And the seed plan releases new energies automatically. When we are following our plan, these energies provide us with just the boost we need. They help us expand and change and grow, so we can reach a new dimension. This motion starts from within and moves outward, reaching to embrace more of reality. After all, the aim of inner reality is to reach out and transform outer reality, following its own unlimited beauty, perfection and infinite possibilities for expression.

But when the outgoing movement is obstructed—such as when the ego-consciousness hinders the process, ignoring its urgings and acting insensitive to them—then the energies can’t unfold in their natural, harmonious way. This is when these energies, which are originally constructive, turn destructive according to our human view of things.

Actually, the aim of the destruction is to destroy the obstruction, the untruth it holds and the way it is infringing on the free unfoldment of the divine. Our work is to dissolve the blocks that untruths in our consciousness have caused. For these get in the way of the energies being released. What does this look like on the surface level of life? Painful crisis, upheaval and destruction. We need to figure out that these unpleasant events are not haphazard events. We have set them into motion, and it’s important we start to see and understand this.

If our consciousness is in accordance with divine laws, meaning we’re in truth and our system is open, the energies will move in a harmonious and organic way. But wherever our consciousness is not in truth, the energies become inverted, and then they turn against the self.

No one is picking on us. This process works the same way everywhere, embracing all beings in all of creation. This means it applies to individuals just as it applies to entities. And this planet we call home, Earth, is an entity. So it is subject to the same laws of growth, and it goes through the same stages of growth and unfoldment.

For both a person and a planet, we experience distinct periods of expansion. For both, the energies inherent in the seed plan must be strong, since their release must be able to make expansion possible. As such, it’s easy to spot the positive manifestations that accompany these energies: New potentials unfold; changes are made; creativity is renewed; new approaches are made that reveal a higher level of maturity; there is an increased sense of well-being; there is an elevated vision of how we can express ourselves. All this happens in accordance with the seed plan.

But when we resist the new energies because we don’t realize they are an influx of divine forces, then crisis and destruction are the result. All radical revolutions as well as all reactions in which we regress to immature behaviors, are nothing but blockages. The first is an outward projection of withheld emotions that are now being emphatically misdirected.

After the Ego: Insights From the Pathwork® Guide on How to Wake Up

As we go through our purification process, we will see how deprived and resentful we feel when we don’t get to act out our destructive behavior.
As we go through our purification process, we will see how deprived and resentful we feel when we don’t get to act out our destructive behavior.

Growing pains

Earth is now going through a stage of expansion, unfolding a new influx of Christ consciousness energies. So how does all this apply to what’s happening now? We can look first at what happens when a person is ready to reach adulthood but blocks it. The adult energies that are released into the systems—physical, emotional and psychic—create a crisis. Generally speaking, most people ignore what is going on.

The same thing is true for our planet. It’s ready to move into adulthood and is striving to unfold. At the same time, the planet harbors elements that are resisting and wanting to ignore this process.

So too we can see factions of people who are oblivious to this inner growth movement. And then there are others who are well aware of the inner reality, and they see the outer reality for what it is: just a reflection of the inner. So whether we are speaking of people or planets, there are less evolved parts. They are focused only on the outer picture and are caught in a state of separation. Since they can’t perceive the oneness of all beings, they proceed to act in ways that split them off further into separation. This turns their mind toward cruelty, ruthlessness, greed, selfishness and lack of concern.

Since all these things are based on illusion, they inevitably must prove to be painful and unworkable. These are what any new influx of divine energy is destroying. It takes considerable maturity for a soul to grasp the inner meaning of such a crisis, and see the true significance of this truth.

The blindness that can’t perceive the oneness is distinct. It is based on what seems to be a diversion of interests between people. When a person is blind like this, they neglect—even refuse to see—any points beyond what’s right in front of them. They get stuck on a point and can’t see past it. So they miss all the connection points that really link us together.

Long, long ago, back when the planet was still in the early stages of adolescent consciousness, people needed to learn to make a crude distinction between good and evil. We had to learn what was social behavior and what was antisocial, between which were constructive acts and which were destructive ones. At that point in our development, it was inevitable that the whole planet was locked in a totally dualistic state. We were unable to perceive anything beyond duality.

But that was also a necessary stage. And it prepared us for the next era, which is the one we have now entered. This is now the time for people to find the strength of character—to not fall for temptation—to sort out that we don’t sacrifice anything by growing up. For our real interests can never differ from the real interests of others.

Before now, we weren’t able to make this kind of distinction. We couldn’t even tell good from evil or tell the difference between constructive and destructive acts, especially if there was something in it for us. During those early periods, people let impulse and desire govern them. If it was immediately gratifying, it seemed “good,” and we didn’t think past that. Consciousness was, at that point, in its infancy. Not until now, as the previous era is just ending, could we take up the struggle to make certain choices when interests seem to go in different directions.

The undeveloped state creates blindness, and blindness creates pain. This pain then becomes its own medicine and its own lesson. This is a divine spiritual law that few are able to recognize. If we are able to give up—to sacrifice—what we think is in our best interest, because we see that not doing so will harm others, we become prepared to enter the next stage of development where we will have more clear vision. This applies to the entire planet.

But many people still only see the world in a dualistic way. Duality is, after all, embedded very deeply in our consciousness. So then everything appears to require a choice between either me or the other. This way of seeing things, which is not in truth, creates conflicts—with others and in our conscience—and the consequences of this are very hard to live with.

Needless to say, many people are still unable to make an apparent sacrifice in an effort to preserve kindness, constructive behavior and decency. Because deep in their psyche, it would seem like they are acting against themselves. As such, when we attempt to sacrifice but are still in dualistic consciousness, we will do so to our own detriment. In this case, we sacrifice within the framework of illusion. So it is not really an expression of kindness, love, decency or honesty.

Further, if it seems to us that these attributes extract a severe sacrifice from us, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that a sacrifice must be experienced. For we experience according to what we believe. As we go through our purification process, we will see how deprived and resentful we feel when we don’t get to act out our destructive behavior. And yet we feel self-rejecting and guilty when we give in to the temptations of our Lower Self, with its demanding call to always have our immediate desires met.

After the Ego: Insights From the Pathwork® Guide on How to Wake Up

The pendulum swings

In the era that is just ending, the mores of societies hinged on a limited vision of reality: they were based on duality. This was a testing ground for us. Every time we turned around, we were facing conflict over something or other. That era has now come to an end. If we have sacrificed for the good of all—for doing God’s work—we’ll now find that’s not necessary. Now we can reach a deeper level of truth. For now we can see that what harms another, harms us, and what harms us, harms another.

If we’ve been acting primarily from a selfish, destructive level, we will need to have a change of heart if the new energies being released on the planet’s inner plane are to be constructive for us, and creative. Otherwise, these energies are going to create unbearable tensions that will erupt in a crisis.

At this stage in the development of this planet, we can’t maintain the old structure any longer. We can’t stand the restrictions and tensions of our old limited consciousness. So we will need to discover a new vision in which we are able to perceive the truth: We are one with others. We will need to search for this new vision, which lies beneath the limited vision the ego is so familiar with.

This new vision comes with a tremendous sense of peace and security, self-expression and joy. It’s not an illusion full of wishful thinking; this is stark reality.

As we all know, humanity is not cut from one cloth. The distinction between people who continue to be steeped in old consciousness and those who can share the new perception is not simple or easy to make. Many people are on the brink of change, and they just need some help and guidance to pull them over to the new world.

Even people who already embrace the new Christ consciousness, and who are, by and large, close to letting the new consciousness express through them, have inner areas that maintain the old vision—the limited, narrow dualistic view of life. We typically refer to those areas as our “problems”. Perhaps these teachings will shed a new, more comprehensive light on things. For it’s too simple to just call these our problems. They are an expression of an obstacle to expansion and growth.

Some people are ready for this era of new consciousness. And so, in this sense, we could say this new consciousness is already here. These people are the pioneers, and they will create a new civilization. There have already been beginnings made, in various places around the world.

At the same time, there are a large number of people who aren’t quite there yet in this new consciousness. But they are capable of reaching this state, which will require doing some intense inner work. These teachings present the way to go about this. More people need to become involved in this kind of preparation throughout the world. And that will happen.

Those of us doing our spiritual healing work have a very important task. We must each do our own purification work, going through our own growth process, so we will have a larger vision. Then the state of our consciousness—as it manifests currently—will change, according to our seed plan. When this happens, we will be able to help others do the same. It’s not necessary, then, to make a strict delineation between who is in the old and who is in the new.

There are others who, at this stage, aren’t ready to do the work. They currently lack the necessary discipline. Then there’s another camp—more people than we realize—who might be able to do it, but unfortunately won’t. That said, there are many who can, and who wish to deepen their consciousness, according to their life plan.

This spiritual work has not yet spread sufficiently on this plane. It needs more emphasis, and this will happen. The work must be done. We must liberate God within ourselves, and we must liberate God within the general consciousness of all humankind. We can’t let everyone just stay where they are.

In previous eras, God-consciousness was always projected outwardly. Then the pendulum had to swing the other way, putting an emphasis on the self. People gave up God outside and started to assume responsibility for themselves. To transition from God outside to God inside—to bridge the gap in space and time—a transition period came about in which atheism and agnosticism rose up. This had to come, to prepare people for reaching full selfhood and full autonomy.

At first this had to happen only on the outer levels. Because full selfhood and autonomy can only exist when our oneness with God has been found, and God within has been freed up. When this happens, we are living in true reality.

After the Ego: Insights From the Pathwork® Guide on How to Wake Up

On this path, we learn to harmonize this whole process by surrendering all of ourselves to the Christ that is waking up in us.
On this path, we learn to harmonize this whole process by surrendering all of ourselves to the Christ that is waking up in us.

Following the plan

On the level of the planet, when the seed plan calls forth powerful energies and they are resisted, development must be affected. Certain aspects of the planet’s consciousness will develop differently from the aspects that are ready to embrace the new unfolding. This division is inevitable, organic and even necessary.

People who are blind to the meaning of the event—to the reality it was caused by an obstruction to forward movement—will feel like they are a victim of the crisis, and insist that everything is hopeless. But those who appreciate the truth of the situation won’t fear it. They will be aware that a change is happening that may, presently, make it difficult to adjust to the new situation. But because they are in the know, they realize liberation and joy must also come.

The same thing takes place at the level of the individual. What we will find as we do our spiritual healing work—if we are really willing to look at what we find—is that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, any personal crisis stems from our own negation of the truth. We have violated our own divinity. And that is why we are having difficulties. That is why we are suffering. We are, in fact, blocking the immense stream of powerful energy that is flowing through us and for us, underpinning our spiritual growth.

Now, with this awareness, we hold a wonderful key in our hand. With it, we can find the places in our consciousness where we have blocked the flow of this healing power, inverting it so that it has turned against us. On this path, we learn to harmonize this whole process by surrendering all of ourselves to the Christ that is waking up in us, on the plane of our inner reality. And this is exactly the same process that must happen on the level of the planet.

Many people have visited spiritual centers—retreat centers and the like—and experienced the truth of this process. They have encountered life and growth, as well as joy and pain and authentic peace by doing this. It’s tempting to believe that this life—the life we are living during these short stays—is too beautiful, too meaningful, to be real. Reality can’t really be this way, we think. This is too much, we feel.

So when we return to our daily lives, we call this our “real” life. Friends, nothing could be further from the truth. What we refer to as “real life” is a most illusory life, where everything has been turned on its head. In this version of life, we only concern ourselves with the outer world, which is the most superficial level of life. That’s all we deal with. As a result, life fragments into meaningless patterns.

In the new world, we will learn to make connections between cause and effect—between these fragments of consciousness and how we have created them. We will learn to uncover the deeper, more real life within that is responsible for creating our outer circumstances. By working this way, we will approach reality. Over time, we will live in more harmony, in a more true reality.

Once we connect with our inner reality, we will be better able to deal with the superficial issues that arise out of illusion. Assuming, that is, we don’t fall back into the trap of seeing duality as the only reality that counts. For as soon as we do this, we will once again distort truth.

The time has come to start living in this new kind of civilization and culture. The forces working to build this new reality are, at the same time, destroying all that gets in the way of this movement. For it’s not possible to grow and create without also destroying what is destructive. Whatever is now obsolete must go. But destructive consciousness clings to its destructiveness, opposing this purifying movement.

When we were in a less developed state of consciousness, these obsolete attitudes may have had their place. But to keep pursing them now does not make sense. We will all find this is true when we do our individual work. The attitudes and reactions we had when we were small children and infants were understandable—appropriate even. But then we held on to them, as though they still have value for us as adults.

To whatever extent we are still doing this, we are creating obstructions that lead to strife and crisis. We will end up frustrated and unhappy, and this leads us to becoming destructive—so the old can crumble and we can build anew. If we become willing to give up our obsolete, old attitudes and find new, more appropriate ones, the painful crises and their associated destruction won’t be necessary.

When we become willing to change our inner stance, outer change can happen organically and harmoniously. But when we deliberately deny and hold back—when we choose to delude ourselves that all is well inside, or that it probably doesn’t matter anyway, or it’s too hard so I can’t do it—we court crisis and we invite pain.

This applies to all of humanity in exactly the same way it applies to a person. What each person is, relative to all of humanity, is the same as what an attitude or reaction is to our whole personality. Just as we find that our inner strife is due to our conflicting parts—part of us wants to grow, and part of us wants to hold back—so it goes with planet Earth. Parts of the planet want to grow, and other parts want to hold back, denying there is even a conflict. In this global community, of which we are all a part, there are some who want to change, and there are some who resist.

If we are able to understand this teaching, we may want to commit ourselves to changing on a deeper level of our being. For change is one of the hallmark features of this new era we are in.

After the Ego: Insights From the Pathwork® Guide on How to Wake Up

Changing to new rules

Before delving into the importance of change in this new era, let’s go back to the concept of good and evil. We can define these as that which is constructive and in alignment with truth and divine law, and that which opposes it. In the past, living in a world steeped in the primitive consciousness of duality, we needed rigid laws; we needed dos and don’ts; we needed commandments and prohibitions.

For a consciousness that is childish and self-indulgent needs rules to be imposed from the outside. Without them, there would be complete chaos. Without rules, people would act on their destructive impulses to a much greater degree. But such severity brought a superficiality to people’s live, and also a certain rigidity.

Further, it’s tempting to blindly obey such rules and avoid thinking for ourselves, for that would mean we need to struggle with the more complicated matter of inner morality. By blindly obeying rules, we encourage laziness in our thinking. We take the way of avoiding responsibility and not participating in the search-and-find effort needed to uncover true answers—to reach enlightenment.

This is why these teachings stress, over and over, that it’s an error to believe one action is right and another is wrong. This is, most of the time, faulty thinking. As we have been painstakingly taught in many other teachings from this source, most of the time, either alternative we follow could be in keeping with either sincere motives, or dishonest ones. It’s only by sorting out our dishonest motives on both sides that we open our inner channel to God and get the guidance we need.

We will need to have the courage needed to search for such understanding. And this is hard work. It’s easier to just obey outer rules. This kind of inquiry, though, will be exactly what we need in this new era of new consciousness that is spreading more and more across the planet as humanity grows up and wakes up.

There is another way the dualistic approach to life creates confusion and distortion of truth. There are some who claim it is desirable to adopt a particular attitude toward life, and the opposite attitude is then supposedly undesirable. Another group of people will feel it’s the other way around. Each side resorts to fanaticism, exaggeration and distortion to make their point.

Some people say the introspective life is the only way to go. Being outgoing and extroverted then is harmful, and even wrong. Others say the exact opposite is true, believing it’s always best to be active. So then we reject anything passive or receptive. Many other approaches to life are divided down the middle like this. Entire philosophies are based on such divisions. Whole treatises have been written using half-truths to present one side of a matter.

So many issues today meet this fate. Going forward, such rigid divisions based on shortsighted either/or thinking will no longer fly. And yet this kind of polarization was an inevitable byproduct of a system that runs on rules. Again, such rules were necessary in the past to stop people from destroying each other, blindly, willfully and selfishly. For this is what happens as long as we remain in a state of emotional alienation and then don’t experience another person’s pain as real.

After the Ego: Insights From the Pathwork® Guide on How to Wake Up

If we choose to see the plan that is playing out—to read the script we have been following—and go along with it, we’ll see there is nothing to fear.
If we choose to see the plan that is playing out—to read the script we have been following—and go along with it, we’ll see there is nothing to fear.

What to follow

The point here is not that humanity is now developed enough that we don’t need outer rules. Obviously that’s not true. As we know, even in spite of existing rules, there are those who willfully harm others with their cruel, selfish and irresponsible behavior. But whether we are talking about a person or a planet, this only applies to the darkest, most undeveloped parts—the Lower Self of the entity.

As we increasingly develop, the rules naturally fall away, making way for a new conscience and inner morality. As the Christ consciousness evolves from within, it gradually brings humanity, bit by bit, to a state where rules are superfluous. For our inner God knows the truth. From this place within, we know what love is and we know divine reality. Once we start living from this place, our personality can begin to act from our innermost center.

We can already see this, at least to a small degree. As we walk a psychological inner path to explore our emotions, outer rules don’t apply. What we discover on our inner path is the beauty of divine laws working in utter perfection, along with justice and true love. Our childish Lower Self—sometimes called the Little-L Lower Self—in us might blindly rebel against these laws. But once we wake up, we must be overwhelmed by the grandeur of the divine scheme in which all is well. If we choose to see the plan that is playing out—to read the script we have been following—and go along with it, we’ll see there is nothing to fear.

We know, deep inside, what our inner truth is. No one can tell us this. On this level, there is no single act that is right or wrong. And yet, at the same time, sometimes our inner plan wants us to go in a certain direction; our divine self is telling us we need to go this way, and not that. But this can’t come to us from the outside.

Only after we have gone very deeply into ourselves will we find the ultimate truth. Then, and only then, we will be able to transcend the rules. Then we can be done with adherence to public opinion, the self-interest of the Lower Self, the façade that covers the Lower Self, the need for approval, and the need to spite others and rebel.

Outer help and guidance, though, can have great value on our path. It can guide us to go deeply enough into ourselves that we see how far we invest in this false vision of reality—in the dualistic illusion. We can easily get lost in our inner maze. But someone outside of us can often see the maze we can’t see. Therefore they can help us find the way out. But our ultimate goal is to realize our own inner law, once we find our own inner God. Our current reality is urging us to go in this direction.

Outer laws run parallel to inner laws. Many outer laws arise directly from divine law, but we’ve lost the thread to their divine origin. So they are, by now, disconnected structures. Sometimes the connection is obvious. For example, destructive acts like killing, stealing or somehow robbing another of their rights are clearly parallel to inner law. But when situations get more complicated, the inner law may not be so simple to see. This is where using our new approach can help, as it brings forward truth and the reality of divine law as it exists on an inner level.

We may at times find that outer law is completely contrary to God’s inner law. Here’s a simple example of this: If a person lives in a land where the government is corrupt, people may be required to commit acts that go against humanity—in other words, that go against God. To follow outer law, in this case, is to go against divine law. It takes a lot of courage to stand up for inner truth under such conditions, and defy outer law.

But people can get lost in a maze of confusion and then find refuge in following the outer law. For them, that may be the easier—possibly even the better—way. By the same token, someone could misuse these words to justify a Lower-Self desire to defy an outer law. We must always study our motives carefully to see the true situation. There aren’t any rules telling us what to follow, when we should break the rules, or how to go about following them.

The Christ consciousness sweeping the planet is not a revolution. It is not a rebellion. Nor is it, in itself, about destruction of the old ways. It is about change. It is a reorganization of eternal values that already existed in the old consciousness, but which we must now express in a new way.

The Christ consciousness, with its new inner morality, will slowly but surely wipe away outer commandments, outer regulations, and outer laws—written and unwritten. For sure, laws will still be needed for quite some time, in terms of Earth years, but this is the direction things will be moving. For now, we need these laws to protect each of us from the Lower Self of others. But when we have outgrown the Lower Self, we won’t need to be told not to hurt someone else. We will know this, and we will have no desire to do so.

To the extent we allow God to wake up in us, outer laws will go away. The new laws of inner morality are totally flexible. Every case is different. But to uphold them, we will need courage and the honesty of self-knowledge so we can’t be corrupted by sneaky, slippery Lower Self motives. We will need to learn to look at every situation individually, and deal with it as though it is completely new. This is what adults can do. And maturity is now humanity’s goal. But we are not being mature when we resist change.

We will need a flexible attitude to thrive in the new ever-changing world. For change and freedom are inseparable. What else is inseparable? Rigidity and enslavement. If we want to live in a world that is simple, where we don’t have to search or put any energy into unraveling a difficult situation—if we want everything handed to us on a platter—we will need to deal with inflexible rules that enslave and confine us.

We can be free only if we overcome our rebellion against authority—because we have found our own inner authority, and our own self-honesty. This will require that we embrace change. And flexibility. Situations that look the same on the surface may in fact be quite different and require a different approach. Freedom, then, is totally dependent on our ability to change.

“Find that part within that can create an echo now to the words I have given you. Let these words nourish and strengthen you where you need it most. Make room for the ever more emerging new consciousness as it spreads on the inner plane and fully embrace the movement. Go with it! Trust that this can only enhance you and your life. You are all being blessed in truth and in love. Be your God.”

–The Pathwork Guide

After the Ego: Insights From the Pathwork® Guide on How to Wake Up

After the Ego: Insights From the Pathwork® Guide on How to Wake Up

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Read Original Pathwork Lecture #227: Change From Outer to Inner Laws in the New Age