Many spiritual sources are delivering messages about an immense cosmic force that is sweeping this planet. A force has been released into this universe with the goal, not of sweeping us out, but to sweep us clean. There is a surge happening in our world, leading us toward spiritual truth. New values are pushing their way through old walls of resistance. Let’s look into what this cosmic force means in terms of a spiritual community, our individuality, and our personal healing and growth. What is this new consciousness about?

“Blessings, love, and greetings to all of you, my dearest ones. With immense joy do we resume our contact for the coming working period. The rejoicing in our world is great. This rejoicing can communicate itself to you if you open yourself to it. It has to do with what many of you have accomplished individually and together. But the rejoicing is also about what is to come. For more growth and liberation, peace, and joy will come to those of you who really devote yourselves to your own innermost path.”

–The Pathwork Guide

Earth, as a planet, is an entity, and each person who lives here is a cell. It’s much the same as the cells of a human body. Each cell, on planet Earth, is an energy center with consciousness, just as the cells of a body are conscious and have energy. Now, the entity we call Earth is growing up. It’s at an inner crossroads, in the same way a growing person comes to inner crossroads.

At some point on our path, we each find that one part of us is ready to expand. In this part of ourselves, we are willing to take a risk and expose our secrets. We want to move into a new mode of living, with a new vision of ourselves. In this new modality, we are not going to shed what’s old. Rather we’ll transform whatever is not compatible with this pure, new influx. We are going to incorporate the pure substance woven into the old self, into an expanded version of ourselves. This will create a new version of ourselves.

What we come to realize is that another part of ourselves, our Lower Self, is going to attempt to obstruct this movement. This part fears and distrusts—and therefore resists—this kind of growth. It’s our ego consciousness that decides which part we will align with.

It’s inevitable that in such a conflict there will be crisis. This is created by the resisting part as it obstructs the evolutionary force that cannot be stopped. The less we are able to recognize what is happening in this struggle, the more we will deny and rationalize the true significance of what’s going on. And this will result in an equally great upheaval in our lives that will frighten us.

Conversely, the more we can see the struggle for what it is, the more we will be able to align with Higher-Self principles, and the more quickly the crisis can be resolved. Then the crisis will transform into an experience of previously unimaginable joy.

A crisis then, is both healthy and unavoidable. Without a crisis, growth can’t take place, yet to the extent we resist growing, we create crisis. Our Lower Self is not only dishonest, selfish and devious, it is also ignorant. And this ignorance makes us stubborn and unperceptive, in addition to being negative and destructive.

Planet Earth also has a Lower Self. Like a person’s, the Earth’s Lower Self is not just negative, selfish, dishonest and greedy, it’s also ignorant—with a vengeance. It too resists what its soul is ready for, which is to move to a higher level of consciousness. And so there must be crisis on this earth.

The movements of expansion are not always without their exaggerations and distortions, without their misunderstandings and fanaticism. And so we can see Earth go through crisis as it expands into new ways of being. In short, expansive movements sometimes miss the point of how to handle a great new wave of consciousness by avoiding the confrontation of some unpurified matter. When, as individuals, we abuse the growth process this way, it will be particularly costly for the person. It will be highly disappointing as well.

This cosmic force has tried to get the attention of humanity many times, in many ways, but we have largely not understood its meaning. So often, a spiritual movement comes along trying to follow the pressure that builds from within, but the necessary cleaning work doesn’t happen within the soul.

For centuries, the spirit world has been preparing us for this expansion, investing a great deal of energy. Many are being called, but not everyone follows. For not everyone is willing to heed the call coming from within. It would be better for us to clearly acknowledge this, leaving the possibility open that the call may come again. But if instead we explain it away, preferring to accept illusions and delusions like they are valid reasons for our decision, then our soul is going to remain in a state of confusion.

Serving and leading

Right now, earth, as an overall entity, is going through a struggle like this. If we are resisting the light of the new consciousness that is coming in, we have a stake in making ourselves blind and deaf to what is happening. Many people have the mental capacity and spiritual development to follow the movement that is happening. But they choose—out of pride, self-will and fear—not to follow the movement, or to realize what is taking place.

Of course there are, at the same time, people who are at such a place in their spiritual development that they aren’t ready to know that other levels of reality exist which we can’t see with our eyes. Some may follow the movement, however, even though they don’t quite grasp what is at stake.

Those who follow the movement will discover deep joy and many blessings, and will have no need to fear anything. They will be able to rejoice. By following the flow of the influx, they remain in harmony with the universe. They move with the process and don’t try to obstruct it. These people are needed as physical channels of the Christ consciousness as it penetrates further and further into the planet, pushing us into a new era.

Such individuals who continually renew their decision to devote themselves completely to the process that is unfolding will not only make their lives full and meaningful, they will become useful for the whole cosmic evolution.

In order for this surge to fulfill its purpose, profound purification must happen. We begin by doing our own work. Then we enter a new growth phase in which we become ready to join a cohesive movement that sweeps our whole world. In other words, there is more at stake here than just our individual fulfillment.

By “more,” we’re not implying that individual fulfillment is not as important. Our individual happiness, wholeness and ability to walk freely in the world, without obstructions, is vitally important. Our personal fulfillment—which we can’t enjoy unless we purify ourselves so we are no longer alienated from the truth of who we are—is the most important thing there is. At the same time, there is something else at stake. There is no contradiction here.

Maybe we can put it like this: We can only find total fulfillment for ourselves when we serve a greater cause. Many of us have practically tripped over this truth, as we have moved forward on our spiritual path. The guidance of the events that occur help us realize—sometimes more intuitively, and sometimes more intellectually—that there is a great task we are simultaneously serving while we are fulfilling ourselves.

What we find is that this greater service enhances our own fulfillment, in the same way our service requires that we become happy people. We start to experience that our own fulfillment lies in being of service. And we can be of service only by way of self-fulfillment. Once again, if this appears to be a contradiction, this is only so because we have a faulty perception of things.

For what appear to be opposites can coexist nicely as complementary parts of a whole. They exist in oneness, so an individual person only appears to be opposed to the whole.

As we do our spiritual work, we will learn to more consciously and deliberately perceive how important it is for each of us to work in service of the wave of Christ consciousness that is infiltrating us now. For those of us who are willing to follow this movement, it will drastically change our lives and our consciousness.

We will see, going forward, that there are old values and there are new values. There will be old consciousness and new consciousness. We will come to see that our own personal fulfillment is a tool we can use to serve. For frustrated people cannot serve. Unhappy people cannot undertake the task of enriching the lives of others and themselves. They cannot set a desirable example.

For how can someone who is poor enrich others? Someone who is poor also can’t pretend. For followers do know. They do know, in a deep inner place, whether the ones leading are genuinely fulfilling, or just pretending.

Only people who sit firmly in themselves, fully centered in their own God-consciousness, can create lives for themselves that meet their desires, that enliven others, and that teach their consciousness to others. There are many different tasks in this world, but everyone who serves in this cause must also teach and lead. They represent the new consciousness and live the new values, both through instruction and by example. They transmit joy, love and the capacity for a person to be their best self.

The grand dichotomy

Like many people, most of us who are doing this spiritual cleansing work feel a compulsion to be good. We fear being selfish, so we use some kind of mask to cover over our selfishness and our mean little ways. This mask forces us to comply with higher standards so that it will appear we are, in fact, a very good person. Often, there will be a message and a genuine surge coming from our Higher Self that gets woven into the threads of our mask, creating this cloak of false goodness.

What we find, as we go deeply into our work of self-discovery, is that a part of us has been selling out our true self-interest—giving up our real rights—in an effort to please some make-believe authority. We are not doing this in a spirit of pure service, but rather, by design. We are wanting this authority to do something for us that isn’t fair to expect, and which is something we should be doing for ourselves in order to fully become ourselves.

Over and over, we must see how we are doing this until we find the strength to give up this secret hope. We have to let go of this false form of give-to-get service. We must become more self-responsible and, as a result, learn to be more self-assertive. This is the way to find balance. We must stop cheating and then pretending we don’t. And the more we do this—while we stop with the false goodness—the more we can expect to receive the best life has to offer.

When we start to live honestly, our guilt will go away. But as long as we remain dependent—and consequently submissive—we will lack selfhood, and we will not yet be ready to serve a greater cause. We will misuse our service and put our energy into keeping our mask shored up. The answer? We must learn to be selfish.

Of course, as we have discussed, there is a right kind of selfishness and a wrong kind. The right kind establishes and preserves our right to unfold in the best way possible, no matter what anyone’s opinion of us may be and their possible motivation to exploit us. With this kind of selfishness—which has roots in independence—we will be able to recognize and deflect any exploitative demands. For we will no longer submit out of our own hidden agenda.

When a person has the right kind of selfishness, they feel deserving of being happy, for they never want it at the expense of someone else. It’s only the distorted form of selfishness that splits off the interest of the self from that of others. The right kind unifies the self with others.

At first, it’s rather complicated to sort out all the misunderstandings. But once we have traveled some distance along the spiral movement of our path, there is no longer any dichotomy between the self and the other. When we free ourselves from the real guilt caused by our pretenses and our hiding—by the hidden agenda we are disguising and the negativity this keeps perpetuating—we won’t feel unworthy of becoming our best selves. We won’t hesitate to be the happiest and most deeply fulfilled person. Then our service won’t be something we do to compensate for our guilt.

This particular spiritual path has been designed to prepare as many people as possible for the great event now sweeping our universe. This requires guilt-free souls who are strong, and who can act for real—not false—reasons. This is why our work on this path begins by bringing out both our false and real selfishness. We do this in an effort to help us become unselfish without sacrificing personal fulfillment.

Our Lower Self, with its lower aims, has to be sacrificed often. But is giving up our Lower Self really a sacrifice? It only seems to be so. What ultimately arises is genuine fulfillment. Then our outer self—our ego consciousness—will no longer go against our Godself.

We can only reach this state, though, when we have learned to let go of our mask of false service. We must expose our short-sighted selfishness that stems from our littler self. Then and only then, after we learn healthy selfishness, do we come into a true selflessness that isn’t in any way contradictory.

When people align with spiritual teachings that focus on service too soon in the process, there’s a danger that some will use the teachings to escape from their work—from their hidden selfishness. To compensate, they offer service through being a martyr, which is never wholesome for the soul. Any time we refuse to truly become self-responsible and independent, we are not meeting our hidden selfishness. And so whatever service we offer is distorted.

If we look at our personal healing work in this light, we will see more clearly the overall dynamics. We might represent our work using a certain symbolic figure, which is widely used in spiritual expressions because it is a recurring thought form. It consists of three circles in a mandala-shaped design. The Higher Self is represented by the center circle. This is surrounded by the Lower Self, which is surrounded by the Mask Self and our defenses. We can apply this to our individual work, and also to the work of a spiritual community, as well as to humanity as a whole.

Healing through community

When a spiritual community forms, there will be people who represent the Higher Self of the group. They will be the ones taking the most responsibility for the community, who have worked the most deeply and exposed themselves. These are the people who are starting to reap the tangible fruits of fulfillment, having traveled through their outer layers.

More and more, they have learned not to fear any part of themselves. They have come to accept themselves—all of themselves, including the good and the bad parts—thereby uniting what was previously divided. Such people will identify, more and more, with their Higher Self, since they can now see the difference between this part and their Mask Self, which is filled with the wishful thinking that one can hide the distortions and untruth of the Lower Self.

In this way, such leaders have learned to hear the true voice of their Higher Self. And they have increasingly learned to trust it. We will find evidence of this kind of leadership in the growing number of group members. We can see it in the nature of the new people showing up who are ready to listen to, understand and follow the new cosmic force. We’ll see it in the deep connections that form among members. The more each member works to remove their blocks and obstructions—resolving conflicts and clearing up problems—the more this deepening will continue on all levels. Growth in such an environment is not a coincidence. It is a natural expression of the development of the group members.

So a number of people will form an inner nucleus, which will function as the Higher Self of the community. Does this mean these people are perfect? Of course not. But they are perfectly capable of establishing a channel to their Higher Self—to their inner light. Such people are increasingly able to commit themselves completely to the will of God. And they can sense the importance of the Christ consciousness sweeping the planet. They will have what it takes to serve it.

By living and working together in this way, these people will be protecting themselves in a remarkably effective way against the onslaught that is sure to come from the countermovement. By immunizing ourselves against the countermovement of one’s own Lower Self, we are immunized against the Lower Self of the planet.

Then there will be others who will be diligently working on their spiritual path, but who are still struggling. These people are still in the phase of owning up to their own Lower Self. They are laboring to get to know how it works by penetrating the concealment of their Mask Self.

In the midst of this struggle, there is great temptation to hide. And there is also the habit of hiding that one must overcome. These are strong obstacles. Other strong obstacles include guilt and fear of exposing the truth. We can eliminate the illusion of the fear only by gradually testing it until we are able to realize that this process is trustworthy. Some people will struggle to find the channel to their Higher Selves, and therefore they won’t want any of this. They will fear it, and they won’t trust it. Such people will put all their trust in their old, habitual, destructive defenses.

Then, of course, there will be those who still identify strongly with their Mask Self. These people will have the most difficult time. And they will look for reasons to judge this process and discredit it. This won’t make them any happier, but nonetheless, they will proceed in this fashion. They have a stake in not growing that is strong, and a fear of growing that is equally strong. They have no desire to find out just how unjustified their fear is.

These aren’t necessarily new friends, people who are just now joining a spiritual group. For development is not always a matter of time. These friends of ours will need to realize that they are identifying with their Mask Self. And they must start to do the work of traveling through their inner layers.

It is worth outlining this here so people can figure out, for themselves, where they stand. In the same way some have already learned to take responsibility for their Lower Self—by overcoming the shame of it and admitting to it—so must these people now learn to take responsibility for their Higher Self, and not be ashamed of it. We need to admit, indeed, where we have already arrived.

Then we will be able to give ourselves even more fully to it. Then we will be able to fully commit ourselves to becoming a part of the great movement. We will also be able to feel the beauty and excitement of it, as well as the honor and privilege. To be of service as part of a greater cause will cleanse any little selfishness that still resides in us and makes us fearful.

We believe we can’t give all of ourselves to a greater cause because we’re afraid to do so. But in truth, it works the other way around. We are afraid because we still cling to a little piece of selfishness here or there. To consciously give ourselves to a greater cause that is sweeping the entire planet is, in itself, a cleansing process.

The new consciousness

The wave of new consciousness that is arriving is bringing with it new values based on these new truths. They are not actually “new,” however. They have always existed in highly developed people who have incarnated to accomplish a specific task and who have not been widely known. The big difference right now is that the whole planet is growing up, and stepping into its own divine consciousness.

The first thing for us to do, in this respect, is to gain a conscious understanding that our life must reach beyond the bounds of our immediate personality. We also must understand that this expansion will lead us to happiness. This is true, even though a prerequisite for experiencing it is also happiness. There is nothing dividing expansion from happiness. We will not be deprived if we choose to follow the will of God. So in the years to come, we must become proficient in trusting—to totally surrendering to the God within—every single day, in all issues, in any venture, in each decision we make, even regarding the opinions we elect to adopt.

With this new consciousness, we won’t make superficial decisions using just our head, hoping to get the immediate fulfillment of our desires. With the new consciousness, we will make decisions in a whole new way. The new consciousness is already aware that our outer self doesn’t have the answers; that it’s full of prejudices and highly colored distortions.

The new consciousness consults the Higher Self in all things, and is willing to wait patiently and quietly to receive an answer. It is not opinionated. It is happy to accept when, as of yet, it doesn’t know, and it stays open. Also, it doesn’t have a stake in getting a certain answer. So it makes room for the possibility that the answer could be just about anything. What comes may be what is desired, or it may be the exact opposite, but either way, it trusts that whatever comes, it will be good.

This is the kind of approach that has no fixed opinion—it makes itself empty. This is a hallmark of this new value system which has already started to sweep the planet. Of course, this is going to clash with the old value system, which functions at merely the surface level. The old values focus on the little immediate emotions, and take the narrow view which has a stake in not even wanting to consider what’s possible or to widen one’s perceptions.

These old values are going to clash with the new ones as they rise up in each of us. In our communities, the clash will be between those who align with the new consciousness and those who align with the old. As this unfolds, it will become increasingly clear where we stand. It will not be enough to claim, “I belong in the new consciousness,” while continuing to act in the old ways. We can say whatever we want, but our actions and the way we approach decisions will be the litmus test revealing in which camp we belong.

Many people walking on a spiritual path have already made the commitment, and they are already being caught up in the remarkable surge of new golden light that is sweeping the earth. This light is only unbearable to those who are refusing it. They are the ones who are only able to perceive the negative countermovement, and they are blind therefore to the light itself. They feel a strong discomfort when the light approaches them and they do not interpret their reaction correctly. The light carries the greatest joy to those who want to receive it, who are willing to give themselves to it, and who fight for the light and serve it.

“Be blessed, my dearest ones.”

–The Pathwork Guide

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