Now is the time for the arrival of a new era. The arrival of this event has required that many people were made ready for it—regardless of whether or not those walking a conscious spiritual path have been aware of this preparation. So we have been filing away at our impurities, and we are still doing this work. We have also been creating emptiness to make ourselves available for a powerful force that is being released in the universe—in the inner universe.

Many channels and spiritual teachers have been aware of this event. But many have incorrectly interpreted what this event would look like. They’ve had the idea it would come by way of geological cataclysms that would affect humans on the physical level. But this is not true. The changes, which have been in progress for decades already, are changes in our consciousness. And this is exactly what we are working on here.

Its arrival is unprecedented, as there has been no other time in the history of humankind when this force has been as available as it is right now. This is what we have been waiting for.
Its arrival is unprecedented, as there has been no other time in the history of humankind when this force has been as available as it is right now. This is what we have been waiting for.

As we do our personal self-development work to purify ourselves, we become steadily more ready for inner enlightenment. We become ready for the arrival of this awakening force with its self-perpetuating nature. Its arrival is unprecedented, as there has been no other time in the history of humankind when this force has been as available as it is right now.

If we have been doing our own healing work, then what we experience will be a result of this power landing on a receptive channel. But if this power hits a channel that is unreceptive, a crisis will arise. What we’re talking about is a tremendous, creative force that is highly beneficial and which could help us thrive in an entirely new way. But if we block it, even if only partly, we put ourselves under great stress—psychically, physically, emotionally and spiritually. This is what we must try to avoid.

Let’s now discuss how important it is to be receptive to the energy and new consciousness arriving with this force. This is Christ consciousness and it is spreading throughout human consciousness wherever it can. But in order for us to receive it, we must also understand another important principle: creative emptiness.

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

Any place our mind has not been punctured, we stay locked inside its narrow confines, which our spirit is quickly outgrowing.
Any place our mind has not been punctured, we stay locked inside its narrow confines, which our spirit is quickly outgrowing.

Preparing the mind

Human beings are famous for creating an agitated mind, which we do through overactivity, both inside and outside ourselves. We do this because we are afraid we might be empty—that maybe there is nothing inside us that will sustain us. Rarely are we conscious of this thought. But when we’re walking a spiritual path such as this one, the time will come when we do become consciously aware of this fearful thought.

Then our first reaction is something along the lines of, “I don’t even want to acknowledge that this frightens me. I’d rather keep on busying my mind so I won’t have to face the terror of realizing I’m nothing inside. That I’m only a shell that needs sustenance from outside myself.”

Obviously, such a self-deception is futile. So it’s critically important we face this fear head on and deal with it in an open way. To do this, we must create an inner atmosphere that will allow us to be empty. Otherwise we’ll go on deceiving ourselves, which is such a waste since this fear is not justified. But we’ll never be able to live in peace with ourselves if we don’t know what it is we fear. And our avoidance makes it utterly impossible to figure out: Whatever we fear, we don’t need to fear.

Humanity has, for centuries now, been involved in a process of conditioning ourselves to make our mind a very busy place. So when this busyness stops temporarily, we confuse the quiet with emptiness. Our mind does indeed suddenly seem empty. As the noise recedes, what we need to do is welcome and embrace the emptiness. After all, this is the most important channel for receiving our innermost Godself.

In order for us to nurture this emptiness and turn this process into a creative venture, we need to comprehend a couple of spiritual and psychic laws. And some of these laws will seem like they contradict themselves.

• If we can’t let ourselves be empty, we can never be filled.

• From the emptiness, a new fullness will arise. (Yet we can’t just pretend our fear doesn’t exist; like everything else, we must go through our fear.)

• Our work is to challenge our fears. At the same time, we need to welcome the emptiness, for this is the doorway that leads to the divine. (It’s understandable that this sounds like a contradiction, but really it is not. We need to embrace both attitudes.)

• It’s really important we become expectant and receptive. Yet we must be without impatience or wishful thinking, and we must not have any preconceived ideas. (It’s hard to even explain this one using human words. It’s just something we have to try to feel into. What we want is to have a positive expectancy that’s free from preconceived notions about what will happen and how it should happen.)

• We must be specific, but our specificity needs to be neutral and light. (So the challenge is to be specific in a certain way, but not in another way. If this sounds confusing, now would be a good time to ask our inner being to relay an understanding to our mind. This will be more effective than trying to wrap our ego mind around it.)

Here’s the thing: The workings of the greater mind surpass the ego mind’s imagination by so much, being more specific would only hinder us. Yet our outer mind must know what it wants. We also need to be ready for what we want, to reach out for it, and to claim it. We must know we deserve what we want and will not misuse it. Plus, our outer mind will need to be able to constantly change, so it can adapt to the larger scope of the God-consciousness within.

Our goal is for our outer mind to become empty and receptive. At the same time, we must keep our mind open and poised for anything. In this condition, our mind will be able to connect with the inner stillness—which at first appears to us as emptiness.

As we empty our mind and soul—in a spirit of patience along with positive expectation and perseverance—a new fullness will come into being. Then this inner stillness will start to sing, as it were. Energetically speaking, this stillness will feel warm and light. A strength will rise from within that we’ve not known before. We will see all the issues in our lives—from the smallest to the biggest—from this wise viewpoint that is both inspiring and infused with guidance.

We must truly nurture this creative emptiness by gently listening to it with our inner ear. This isn’t something to do with urgency, but rather by opening to when and how we will be filled. This is the only way to move ahead in finding our inner sustenance and divinity. We must become a receptacle for receiving this tremendous universal power that is being released and which will show up in our lives even more than we have experienced already.

This moment of evolution is a significant time in history. We all need to comprehend what is happening so we can help perpetuate a profound change in the way we perceive and think about the new values and laws now spreading across the world. We must open the way from without and within, creating as many receptacles for the Christ consciousness as we can.

Our mind can either help this process or hinder it. As we may realize, our mind is only limited by our idea that it is limited. To whatever degree we limit our mind, we can’t perceive what’s beyond it. In truth, the mind is infinite. Our goal then is to extend the edge of our finiteness until we measure up with the infinite that is beyond the ego mind and that is inside us—right here, right now.

When we do this, our mind merges into the infinite consciousness of our inner universe where we are already one with all that is and yet we are infinitely our personal selves. As things are right now, we carry our mind around with us almost like it’s a burden. For it has become a closed circuit.

We give ourselves a little leeway to have particular opinions, ideas and possibilities that we’ve made room for with our education and by what our society allows. Our limited mental circuit includes the things we have chosen to learn. It also includes the knowledge we have picked up through our personal experiences and from being part of the group consciousness.

To whatever extent we have expanded and grown, we have widened the closed circuit of our mind. But it’s still a closed circuit. So the limiting ideas we have about ourselves still burden us and restrict our world. It’s necessary then—if we want to open to creative emptiness—that we start questioning all the things we think are impossible for us. Then we will find the edges of our mind.

Anywhere we feel hopeless and have fear, we must also have an idea of finiteness that our mind has locked onto. As a result, we are locking out the great power that is here for all who are ready to honestly receive it.

Once again, we are looking into the eyes of an apparent contradiction. On one hand, we need to open up our limited mind, opening ourselves to new possibilities and new ideas. This is what we are learning to do in meditation. What we’ll discover is that whenever we make room for some new possibility that we desire, it comes into our life. We’ll also find that when it doesn’t come, there is some reason that we are denying it.

We must start to puncture this closed circuit. Note, we can’t just immediately dissolve our mind, because we need it to live. But by puncturing our mind, the flow of new consciousness and energy can work its way into it. Any place it has not been punctured, we stay locked inside its narrow confines, which our spirit is quickly outgrowing.

On the other hand, our mind must become neutral. It must rest and not hold onto fixed opinions. This is what will allow us to be receptive to the great new force that is now sweeping the inner universe of all consciousness.

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

The right thing to do in one situation may not be right to do in another. This opposes the old “stable” laws that say what’s fixed and unchangeable is what’s secure.
The right thing to do in one situation may not be right to do in another. This opposes the old “stable” laws that say what’s fixed and unchangeable is what’s secure.

Opening the mind

How do we go about puncturing the mind? We can start by telling ourselves that we are holding onto limiting beliefs. For we need to stop taking these beliefs for granted. Then we need to challenge these limited beliefs. This means we must take the trouble to really think about them, by observing and confronting ourselves. We need to practice doing this and get good at it.

We must start to see, not just that we have a false belief, but that we have a negative intention to hang onto it. This is how we are keeping the closed circuit shut, and thereby depriving ourselves of the inner abundance we are deeply yearning for.

It’s important that, as we go about this task of opening ourselves up to the greater universal consciousness, we don’t think of this as some kind of magical process that’s going to help us bypass the process of learning and growing. Yes, our ultimate goal is to have this power fill and sustain us. But our outer mind will need to go through the steps of acquiring the knowledge needed for this to happen.

We can look at how this process works in the areas of art and science. A person cannot be inspired as a great artist—regardless of how much genius they have—if they don’t develop the technical dexterity needed and learn the craft. So if our childish Lower Self hopes to find a shortcut to the greater universe, hoping to avoid the tedium of learning the ropes, then this channel will remain closed for us. For in the end, what this amounts to is cheating, and God will not be cheated.

When we cheat, we are seriously doubting that anything exists beyond our mind. After all, when we try to use “magic” to coddle our lazy, self-indulgent selves, we don’t receive any inspiration. None at all. For there is a spiritual law at work here that operates the same way in science, or really in any field, as in art: Effort is always needed at the beginning.

How does this spiritual law work when it comes to inspiration regarding our personal life and the decisions we make? Here again, our ego-self cannot fail to go through the work that’s necessary to become a proper channel for the universal consciousness, or God-consciousness. This is what we’re doing when we do the work of this spiritual path.

We must come to truly know ourselves. This means we must get to know our Lower Self. We do this by seeing our weaknesses and knowing where we tend to be dishonest. We must learn where we are corruptible. This is hard work, but it has to be done. If we keep avoiding it, our channel will never be reliable. We will be filled instead with wishful thinking that stems from our “desire nature,” and our channel may reveal “truth” that is completely unreliable because it is based on fear and guilt.

Only by working on our personal development in the way we learn on a spiritual path like this one, will we reach the point where we don’t confuse wishful thinking and gullibility with faith, or mix up doubt with discrimination. A great musician can become a channel for higher inspiration—which makes playing effortless—only after going through hours and hours of practice, and doing finger exercises. God-inspired people must go about things the same way as they work on their purification process, uncovering deep self-honesty and self-knowing.

This is the only way to become a receptacle that’s a match for higher truths and new values. Then we will be fit to be influenced for use in a higher purpose—one that enriches the world and ourselves. But we also, at the same time, have to cultivate an inner field of neutrality. If we want to devote ourselves to fulfilling God’s will, we must have an attitude that says, “Whatever comes from God is OK with me, whether I desire it or not.”

Having too much desire, then, can hinder us as much as having no desire at all, which we usually recognize as resignation and hopelessness.

If we refuse to endure frustration of any kind, we will create tension inside ourselves. We will build inner defensive structures that seal up the vessel of the mind. As such, the circuit stays closed. This is why we, as a receptacle, have to remain neutral. But by giving up our tight, strong, self-willed Yes or No, we will make way for developing flexible trust and being guided by God.

Our goal is to become willing, flexible, pliable, trusting and always ready to make a change we didn’t see coming. For when it comes to the divine life that flows from our inner well, there is nothing that is fixed. So what’s right for us today may not be right tomorrow.

Our mind has come to believe that security lies in fixed rules. But nothing could be further from that truth. Yet this very idea of a flexible universe makes us feel insecure. This is one of those beliefs we were talking about that we need to challenge and change. Just imagine what it could be like to forever keep meeting each new situation with new inspiration. In this lies a new kind of security we haven’t yet found.

The right thing to do in one situation may not be right to do in another. This is the law of this new era. And it opposes the old “stable” laws that say what’s fixed and unchangeable is what’s secure.

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

This is how the mind opens up and punctures its limits, acquiring new ideas—not new tight concepts, but light ones—that it can play with for awhile.
This is how the mind opens up and punctures its limits, acquiring new ideas—not new tight concepts, but light ones—that it can play with for awhile.

Following spiritual laws

We’re going to need to study these new laws that pertain to this new venture in creative living. We’re going to need to work with them. These aren’t just words for us to take in—we must make them our own. And this may not be easy, as spiritual laws are filled with apparent contradictions.

So we need to acquire new knowledge, expand our mind, and allow ourselves to conceive of new truthful possibilities. At the same time, we must empty our mind and become neutral. This only appears to be a contradiction from the perspective of the mind that is stuck in duality, or dualistic consciousness. But from the viewpoint of the new consciousness—which is the golden light spreading through our inner universe—these attitudes aren’t contradictions at all.

For when something is in truth, making it a match for life’s higher spiritual laws, opposites that are mutually exclusive on lower levels of consciousness are reconciled. It always works this way. Things that produce conflicts on the lower level—the level of duality—will interact and help each other on the higher level, which is the level of unity.

As we go forward, it’s important that we discover the truth about unification, where dualities no longer exist and contradictions simply stop contradicting. In this new world, we will experience two things, which we formerly viewed as opposites, as both being valid aspects of the same truth. When we understand what is happening here, and start applying this principle to our lives, to our values, and to our outlook on our lives, then we will indeed become ready to receive the new consciousness that is being released in realms that are far beyond this one.

Continuing with the theme of apparent contradictions, to say we must not approach our divine channel with an attitude of wanting it to save us the effort of growing and healing, does not negate the need to be passively receptive. It’s more that we must shift our balance. In places where our mind has been overactive, we now need to quiet our mind and let things happen. In areas of our lives where we insisted on always being in control, now we must let go of the reins, relinquishing control and letting this new inner power take the lead.

On the other hand, in the areas of our lives where we have been self-indulgent and lazy—always seeking the line of least resistance and as such, making ourselves dependent on other people—we are now the ones who need to take over. In these areas, it’s time to actively nurture the principles that will help us establish a direct connection with our inner God. We also need to actively express the messages we receive from our Godself, into life. So we need to reverse our relationship with activity and passivity.

This is the way to turn our mind into an instrument. This is how the mind opens up and punctures its limits, acquiring new ideas—not new tight concepts, but light ones—that it can play with for awhile. By donning a new lightness in how we perceive the world we make our mind flexible. And this motility of mind is what makes us as receptive as we can be to what, at first, seemed to be emptiness.

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

Working with emptiness

So how do we go about approaching this emptiness? What does it feel like? What’s it all about? Once again, we will bump into the limitations of human language, as it’s nearly impossible to squeeze an experience of emptiness into words. But let’s do our best to talk about it and learn about some tools. Try to also listen with your inner ears.

Notice that as we listen into the “chasm” that is inside us, it will at first seem to be a big, black gulf that is empty. What comes up is the feeling of fear. Notice how this fear seems to fill us up. Let’s look at this fear. What is it? It’s both a fear of finding out that we are indeed empty, and a fear of finding ourselves to have a new consciousness—a new being that is evolving right here inside us.

Even though we long for this, we are also afraid of it. We have a fear of both of these possibilities. We want the new consciousness so much, we’re afraid of the disappointment of not getting it. Yet we fear finding this consciousness, because it might impose obligations and changes on us. We are going to need to hold on to ourselves and travel through both of these fears. On this path, the tool we learn for dealing with this fear is to question it. We need to question our Lower Self.

Eventually, despite the fear, we become ready, because we have connected all the dots. We now know, for instance, what our Lower Self wants, and we have figured out why we have negative intentions. Then, in spite of any remaining fear, we must make a decision to quietly and calmly, wade into the emptiness. So the reason to empty our mind is so we can meet the emptiness deep inside.

If we don’t run away, we will discover that, lo and behold, the emptiness will start to feel, not full like we might think, but alive. This is a new aliveness that our old artificially full mind made impossible. As we hang out in this space, we’ll also notice that we made ourselves artificially dull. We packed our mind full and tight. Our minds were tight with noise, and our channel to the divine was tight because, with our defenses, we had contracted our energy into hard knots.

We had killed our aliveness through our artificial fullness. And this, in turn, made us needier. Because without access to our inner light, we could never feel filled, not in a real sense. We created a vicious circle by striving to get fulfillment from outside ourselves, since we refused to take the steps necessary to allow fulfillment to come to us—from within.

We fear the aliveness, in one sense, more than we fear the emptiness. And we would do well to face this. Here’s what often happens. We become empty enough to get this initial taste of aliveness, and then we slam the lid tightly shut again. So we started out by denying our fear, but then we also deny that we are really quite unhappy about how our life lacks aliveness. Yet the fear is what causes the lack of aliveness. And the only way to make the fear give way—to open up our aliveness—is by allowing ourselves to be creatively empty.

What does this aliveness feel like? It’s like having our whole inner being—both our energy and body—become an “inner tube” that is vibrantly alive. Energy will go through this tube, and feeling will go through it, as well as something else that is vibrant, which comes to the fore but which we can’t name.

If we don’t let ourselves shy away from it, whatever this unnameable thing is, it will sooner or later start to continually offer instructions—like encouragement, guidance and truth—from within. The wisdom it carries is specifically oriented to serve our life, right now, wherever we are needing it the most. So then what actually is this vibrantly alive emptiness? It’s God talking to us.

All day long, wherever we need it, God talks to us. At first it will be vague, but over time it will grow stronger. If we really want to hear it and tune into it, we will discern what it is saying. We will need to practice using our inner ear to be able to recognize it. Over time, recognition will dawn on us—we know this voice! This vibrant voice that speaks in tones of wisdom and love—talking specifically to us, not in generalities—is a voice that has always been there, but we have become conditioned to not hearing it. To not listening to it.

And in this conditioning, we have tightened ourselves up, packing up that “inner tube.” Now it’s time to unpack it and let it fill us with the vibrantly alive music of the angels. What do we mean by “music of the angels?” It’s not meant literally, although that too could be possible. But what most of us need to hear more of is direct guidance to help us make decisions about what attitude or opinion we should consider in any particular situation.

And instruction like this is on par, in its glory, with the music of the angels. One can hardly describe the wonder of this kind of fullness. This is a treasure that is far beyond words. This is what we are forever searching for. We long for this, but usually we’re unaware that we’re searching for this, mistakenly projecting our yearning on substitutes we hope can fill us from the outside.

It’s time to turn our attention back to what has always existed inside us. Our mind and our outer will have confused us and complicated our lives for long enough. So making this contact is like finding the way out of the maze—a maze that we ourselves created. Now, we have what we need to rebuild our inner landscape, this time without the maze.

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

To treat our mind as though it’s the devil—and to therefore try to oust it from our life—is really missing the point.
To treat our mind as though it’s the devil—and to therefore try to oust it from our life—is really missing the point.

Living in fullness

Now the question comes up, “What’s a person like, in this new era?” The new person will be a receptacle for the divine consciousness. This universal intelligence is the Christ consciousness that permeates all of life, including every single particle of every single being. The new person doesn’t function from their habitual thoughts.

For century after century, we humans have been developing our intellect. We had to cultivate this so our ego mind could fulfill its role in becoming an important stepping stone in the evolution of humanity. But by now, through our overemphasis, we’ve overshot the mark. This doesn’t mean it’s now time to revert back to being blind, only following our emotional “desire-nature”. What it means instead is that it’s time to wake up. It’s time to open up to a higher realm of consciousness inside us, and let this light shine. Our true self is ready to unfold.

There was a time in history when it was very hard for people to think. We couldn’t sort out situations, weigh ideas, hang onto information, remember what we had been taught—in short, we didn’t know how to use our brains. Back then, the use of our mental faculties was as difficult for us as it now seems to be to contact our Higher Self.

In this new era, the new person will have established a new inner balance. And in this new system, we don’t want to leave out the intellect. It’s an important instrument that must continue to serve us, and now become unified with the greater consciousness. For ages, people have believed that intellectual abilities represent the highest form of development. Many still believe this. Such people don’t make any effort, then, to journey deeper or further into their inner nature where, if they looked, they would find a far greater treasure.

That said, many spiritual movements have sprung up that practice completely inactivating and discarding the mind. This is just as undesirable, because rather than unifying us, it creates splits. Although each of these extremes has some validity, each has gotten lost in half-truths.

Let’s look at another example. In the past, people were irresponsible and undisciplined, behaving more like beasts to satisfy their immediate desires. They let their desires and emotions drive them, not morals or ethics. So during that stage in our development, developing our intellect was helpful and served a function. Our intelligence could then serve as a sharp tool for learning and making choices.

But when it stops there, the whole thing turns into a farce. For this is what happens when a person is not animated by their divinity—they become a farce. By the same token, it’s a good idea to practice temporarily inactivating the mind. And doing so is also recommended as part of these teachings. But to treat our mind as though it’s the devil—and to therefore try to oust it from our life—is really missing the point.

Any time we are caught in either extreme, we are not full. For we need to have all our faculties functioning in good working order if we want to express our divinity. Without our mind, we turn into a passive amoeba. Conversely, when we credit the mind with being our highest faculty, we turn into a hyperactive robot. The mind is then nothing more than a computerized machine.

We can only be truly alive when we are able to wed the mind with the spirit, allowing the mind to express the feminine principle every once in a while. Up until now, we have linked the mind with the masculine principle, which is all about action, drive and control. In the new era, the mind has to express the feminine principle of receptivity.

Becoming receptive does not mean that we now become passive. In some ways, we will be more active, for we will become more independent than we were before. For when our mind receives inspiration from the God-consciousness within, we must put this into action. But our actions will be harmonious and effortless—rather than like a cramp.

When we allow our mind to be receptive, we are allowing our mind to be filled with the higher spirit that resides within us. From here, we will function completely differently, as life will be forever new and exciting. Our routines will not become ruts. Nothing will become stale. Nothing will be redundant. For our spirits are always alive and forever changing and renewing themselves. This is the kind of energy and experience that can flow more and more from our center, where the new influx is moving so strongly.

The new person, then, will be making decisions from this new consciousness, once this person works through to truly becoming a receptacle—to being receptive to the spiritual being that is arising from within. Such results sound like utopia to a person who hasn’t yet begun to experience this. But once we get on this train, we too will start to experience undreamed of joy and expansion. Problems we thought were unsolvable will begin to unravel. And so it will continue.

There is no end to our fulfillment. As we start to serve a greater cause, we will create meaning in our lives that will awaken us to the productivity and creativity of living. And this will always include joy, love and happiness.

The time has now passed when individuals can live only for their selfish little lives. We cannot continue this way. Anyone who insists on living in that way will lock themselves out from a power they can’t be trusted with. For such a power will turn destructive in a mind that is still geared to serve only the selfish immediate self.

This kind of selfishness always comes from the false belief that we are only happy when we are selfish, and if we are unselfish we will be unhappy. In our work, the first misconception we need to face and challenge is this false belief.

If we do this, we will create a life for ourselves and our environment that’s of a kind humanity has never known. People all over the world have been silently preparing for this as they have been doing their personal healing work. From the dark and gray matter of untruthful thinking, these are the golden nuclei that will spring up.

Each person has the opportunity now to further their inner channel, to open to this new reality. This is what we have been waiting for. It will bring us the peace and excitement we always wanted. It’s time to join this new phase, to enter it gladly, with courage and a Yes in our heart. We need to get out of the attitude we still have, as though we have been beaten down. We are not beaten down, unless that’s the role we want play.

But we can rise up and each of us can become who we truly are. Then and only then will we experience life at its very best.

“All of you are blessed, my very dearest ones. The blessings will give you the sustenance you need to go all the way with all of yourself and become enlivened, activated, actualized by the God within. Be in peace.”

–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 #224: Creative Emptiness