Our greatest joy in life comes from giving—fully and freely.

In other words, it comes from fulfilling our potential.

Our greatest pain, on the other hand, comes from not meeting our full potential in giving to others and to life. Every other pain and frustration flows from this one source—from not offering up what we have to give.

See another way, all pleasure and satisfaction flows—without question—from giving freely.

Why, then, do we hold back?

 

Ready to begin?

Why do we refuse to give freely of ourselves?

It stems from our fear of the parts of ourselves we don’t yet see and know. These parts are responsible for creating the painful patterns in our lives.

But as long as we keep those parts hidden, we won’t be free. We’ll become a pretender who is always on guard.

This means that wherever we are harboring distortions inside, we are living a lie.

And none of this needs to happen.

It’s a needless lie we’re living based on a false fear of our own selves. 

Some people, when they start doing this work of self-knowing, meet their private, hidden parts quite quickly. They bring them forward, face them directly, and then go on to overcome their fears.

They walk out into the world a free person.

But others—even some who have the best outer intentions to find themselves—skirt around the issue and get nowhere. They have a vague hope they can get all the way home—without exposing and cleaning up their Lower Self.

The question is, are we ready to stop living the “big lie?”

Are we ready to let go of all this pretense?

This is not an easy choice to make. It’s a battle, really.

And it matters deeply that we do.

To this end, let’s look at where this illusory fear of the self comes from. Just as importantly, let’s find out what happens if, instead of overcoming it, we coddle it.

The trap of trying to be ideal

There is only one way for things to end, if we keep fearing ourselves: self-alienation. And this will undoubtedly rob us of our birthright to be happy and free. Because it’s going to short-circuit our giving and receiving.

For as our natural inner processes get turned upside down, we lose contact with our innermost self. On top of that, the inner mechanism that couples relaxation with independence short-circuits.

This prevents us from building a realistic yet rewarding life.

Because now, we are alienated from ourselves. This means we can’t see how cause and effect are working.

Yet we still refuse to reveal what’s going on within.

Instead of truly finding ourselves, we find ourselves stuck at a crossroads—confronted with one good alternative and one bad.

Here’s what’s happening. When we fear ourselves, it’s because in some way, we can’t be what we want to be. What we want is to be ideal, which we then pretend to become.

Being “ideal” seems like the good option. But it’s unrealistic and unrealizable. By contrast, the “bad” alternative seems to be exactly who we are—in this moment. 

There is a lot wrong with this picture. To begin with, our concept of our present self is not right. It’s exaggerated and distorted, especially since we haven’t even taken a clear look at ourselves yet.

But the goal we set for ourselves—to become ideal—is equally distorted. For we are aiming at something unrealistic, which is to be better than we can be in this moment.

Meanwhile, we see ourselves as being worse than we really are.

Here’s the truth: what we judge in ourselves to be horribly, unforgivably bad won’t appear that way once we bring it out into the open—once we see the connection of cause and effect.

In contrast, when we give up this inner lie, we will clearly see the negative trends in ourselves. We will also see just how undesirable they really are. But this time, our awareness of this new reality won’t make us feel “less than.”

We’re only crushed by what we think we are when our perceptions of ourselves are so unrealistic.

At the same time, we can look more closely into the way we idealize ourselves. When seen in a new light, this may seem less desirable than we thought.

In the end, both alternatives leave us feeling flat and lifeless.

What happens when we lose ourselves

When we are not willing to look at our whole self, we set negative chain reactions rolling. The first link is that many other issues in life will turn into a narrow “either/or” choice.

This is a problem.

Because as we saw, even the “good” choice doesn’t turn out well. Choices, then, become impossible to make.

The ideal we were shooting for—which has always been unrealistic—must, of course, become unattainable.

Perhaps even undesirable.

When we are self-alienated, all of life—starting with ourselves—seems to cleave down the middle. It divides into a rigid, sterile good side and a flat, bad alternative.

We’re not going to love either option.

Either way, we feel tension and distinctly unreal.

After self-alienation gets underway, the next step in the negative chain reaction is that all options lose their appeal. Both the good and bad alternatives now look equally undesirable.

Any time we’re faced with two distasteful choices, our sense of what’s true and beautiful has gone wrong. Everything—even the most desirable aspects of life—turns sour.

We become terribly confused.

When desire turns against us

Let’s looks at the typical real-life example of desire and fulfillment. These are two separate aspects that merge in a healthy person—one who is not alienated from their Real Self. Such a free individual will feel no pang or conflict about either one.

A self-alienated person, however, will experience them both as something negative.

When it’s healthy, desire is about reaching for new possibilities and becoming fulfilled.

In distortion, desire turns into frustration.

Then desire and frustration will land in the same place in a person’s psyche. As a result, we will not welcome desire—not one little bit.

In a similar way, when fulfillment is distorted, it turns into stagnation. In short, it becomes a dead-end street. A self-alienated person then, bounces between frustration and stagnation.

Life becomes a no-win situation.

But when we no longer fear the self, we will no longer fear either desire or fulfillment. Then we’ll know our desires can be fulfilled. And fulfillment is not an end—just another new beginning.

If, however, we become disconnected from our real selves, our outlook will be tainted. So fulfillment of our desires will not even seem conceivable—much less attainable.

When that’s the case, we’ll reject our healthy desires too, and withdraw from desiring anything at all. To make up for this lack, greed will rear its ugly head. This stems from our conviction that if we want to have anything, we have to scrap for it.

Fulfillment, we think, is a pipe dream.

And desire? Forget it.

To recap, when we are not willing to meet ourselves openly and freely—even the hidden parts we don’t yet know—we also can’t desire openly and freely.

Frustration, then, is inevitable.

Why fulfillment can feel empty

But isn’t it true that sometimes we experience at least partial fulfillment, even though we’re not yet fully clean inside?

Why, then, does it always seem that our fulfillment tarnishes and turns into stagnation?

This happens because fulfillment can only remain vibrant when our inner being is open and free. Then the cosmic river runs clear and clean, and pleasure is abundant.

But when the flow is even partially closed off, things start to freeze up. So our soul becomes rigid. And those free-flowing vital energies can’t reach our core.

We then experience the self as finite, rather than infinite. As a result, every activity must come to an end.

But this is not a good ending. For it lands flat and feels like a burden.

We feel like everything is futile and confusing. We wonder, “What is any of this for?”

After all, why bother if even fulfilled desires are going to turn sour?

For one who can be open and honest with themselves, fulfillment will be an unending, deeply satisfying continuum.

What’s to fear about that?

But in distortion, we will fear desire, regardless of how things turn out.

If it goes unfulfilled, we will fear it because the frustration stings. And if it is fulfilled, we fear it because we won’t know what to do with it.

All told, our fear of desire and frustration will be in direct measure to our fear of our own hidden self.

Only when we are no longer alienated from our self, will life be a vibrant experience. Then desire will not hurt, so desire and fulfillment can become one.

Just as we will become one with our self.  

Reclaiming our inner authority

Self-alienation sets another chain reaction sets into motion. We get lost in the illusion we’re not in charge of what happens within ourselves. We believe we’re powerless over our feelings and attitudes—even our thoughts and actions.

We fear that our negative emotions are going to control us, and we will have nothing to say about it.

We ignore the fact that no thought or act can happen that we don’t allow. But we lose ourselves in the illusion that we’re not in charge of ourselves. “I feel such-and-such!” we exclaim, as though some feeling makes it impossible to escape our unpleasantness.

We overlook the simple fact that we determine our thoughts, our feelings and our actions.

We’re even in charge of how we want to feel and react.

If we are fully meeting ourselves, this self-determination will be real. We won’t be pretending how we feel. And since we will know what we’re really feeling, we can desire to feel differently and go in that direction.

Such a desire matters. It will have an effect.

And we don’t have to wait around to see what will show up.

Right away, we can make the choice to give in to our resistance—to act destructively. Or we can meet ourselves and determine a better course.

It’s an illusion that we have to go on feeling angry—like we want to punch a wall. Or that we must say cruel things until something or someone unlocks the door and sets us free.

We are the ones who hold the key.

We can instantly release our destructiveness by desiring something more constructive, at this moment. But to arrive at a constructive desire, we’ll need to know who and what we are, at this moment.

We will need to know what’s tucked away in the hidden chambers of our psyche. Too often, we keep some destructive part of ourselves secret and separate. We mask them behind our hazy and vague inner screens.

When we do this, we will not know what a relevant, constructive desire even looks like.

How to begin to change

Let’s say we look within, and we find hate or hostility tucked away.

What effect might that be having on our actions?

We can say to our fear, “I am willing to face what is in me. I do not need to act on it, nor deny it. I can see it, understand it, and choose something more truthful.”

Taking an approach like this is the first step in coming back from self-alienation. It’s the way to achieve self-government that is both relaxed and in truth.

We don’t need to strain or put on a false face. And we don’t need to wait for permission to adopt such a stance.

We can do it right now.

It’s time to give up this notion that we can’t help how we feel, or we’re not responsible for our bad behavior.

That’s simply not the case.

And don’t forget, our actions include our attitudes, like the one that wants to let our resistance or negativity have free rein.

“But this is the way I feel,” we say. Then we act like it’s a done deal and nothing can be done about it.

A miracle is not going to descend on us from outside and take away our troubles.

What escapes us is the fact we must first want to feel differently, before we can free ourselves from this trap.

What if we don’t want to feel differently?

We can know that—and stop deceiving ourselves.

We can stop with the pretenses already, pretending we want to change but cannot. Once we realize that we don’t want to feel differently, we can start to question why.

Why do I want to stay in a negative, unpleasant state?

The high cost of hiding

When we deny the truth—which is that we’re the ones who can choose how we think and behave—we give up one of the greatest powers we have available to us: self-government.

Don’t be confused.

This is not the same thing as the false control we administer over our inner guards who keep our secret parts hidden.

Too often, we funnel all our available energy into controlling our secret self. When we misuse our energy this way, there is none left for creating a better life.

Where does this notion come from, that we must keep a part of us secret?

From not believing in ourselves—in all of ourselves.

For we keep shying away from exposing the parts that we fear. So then we can’t convince ourselves that underneath our distortions and destructiveness, our essence is seriously good—we are utterly wise and totally trustworthy.

For if we were able to believe this, we would realize there is nothing to fear.

We fear there’s nothing reliable or rich at our core. We suspect that our inner being cannot nourish us. We’re worried that the ultimate in us is that part that hates. It’s that part that nurses destructive wishes and bad desires.

We start out thinking we’re only going to hide this from others. But then we get lost in the game and hide it also from ourselves.

That’s how we lose touch with ourselves.

This work of becoming honest with ourselves is serious business. We must become willing to meet ourselves where we currently are.

Then we can move on to discovering the ultimate in us—which we won’t have to hide. But as long as part of us is in hiding, we’re living by proxy.

All our goals, as well as our fulfillments, are make-believe—never whole and real.

We could fear nothing if we didn’t fear the part of ourselves we’re keeping secret, largely from our own selves. Before we knew it, we started pretending we don’t believe this part even exists.

This is the lie of our life.

Even if it’s only a little lie, it pervades everything so that somehow everything seems like a lie—even the aspects we are truthful about.

The promises of honesty

Here’s the big promise: If we will state and restate our desire to—above all else—give up our inner secrets, we will meet the whole of ourselves. If we do this every day—and really mean it—we cannot feel lost, stagnant or in disharmony with ourselves or others anymore.

Our anxiety will slip away.

Along with it will go our confusion and bitter hurt.

The procedure is fairly straightforward. We need to meet our whole selves without any more hiding. It’s time to stop allowing ourselves to be ruled by our unreasonable defenses. For they are effectively keeping us from knowing the whole truth inside.

We must watch for our clever evasions.

Notice how busy we get with things that have nothing to do with this. We need to take hold of ourselves, instead of letting ourselves be controlled by our negativity. For destructiveness snowballs into fear, and then guilt. Until we end up feeling helpless.

It’s up to us to change.

The world is such a wide place. There are so many possibilities available to us when we stop keeping a tight check on ourselves.

In the wider life, beyond our hiding, there are not just two alternatives, where one is falsely good and the other falsely bad.

Nor are there only two bad options.

In our new reality there can be many beautiful alternatives. In the greater reality, we can have all good.

How we make our own miracles

Meditation is a tool we can use to bring the kind of miraculous changes we are talking about.

What do we mean by “miracle?”

A miracle is a law of life we’ve just now discovered. The law works like this: Whatever concept we hold—whether conscious or unconscious—must manifest in our life.

The truth of life, in this new reality that’s free from illusion, is unlimited goodness. To the extent we can embrace this possibility—even if we’re still holding an attitude of honest questioning about it—to that extent it must unfold for us.

A miracle can happen in whatever area we wish to apply it. When such goodness then unfolds, it seems miraculous to someone who was mired in negativity before.

Our expectations of life act like fences.

When we discover greater possibilities, the fences recede accordingly. The greater our vision for joy and bliss, the more these possibilities must come into being.

For in reality, it’s all available in unimaginable abundance.

Our narrow fences come from the distorted, untrue ideas in our minds.

We can’t experience more than we can conceive of. So if we believe deep down that it’s not possible to be happy, we won’t be happy. This follows the same kind of logic as any physical law.

Let’s envision that we move our body from here to there. Now our body can only be in the spot we move it to; it can’t be somewhere else.

This isn’t any more or less miraculous than what we can do with our minds.

As far as we can move our body, that’s where we will find ourselves. If we find ourselves in a gloomy little room, we don’t have to stay there.

But we can’t convince ourselves of this unless we walk out into the sunshine and discover there are much nicer places to be. If we resist attempts to help us leave—believing there isn’t another room or enough space for us—we can’t come out.

We can argue about this all we want.

But the only way to move is to actually make the move.

If our limbs are healthy, this miracle awaits us. If we’ve let our limbs atrophy, we may need some treatment and exercise first.

It works the same way with our minds.

When we find out that another room exists—beyond the one we’re in—it will seem like a miracle to us.

But we will have to make an effort to go there.

So often we remain stuck in a mental hole. All the while, we could stretch and discover a beautiful world that’s safe and satisfying outside our cramped little space.

This is what we must do with our psyche if it’s lived for too long in a climate of negativity and isolation—after our misguided fears have limited us so much. But once we give up this limitation, the miracle must happen.

It’s a logical law that works for each and every creature in the universe.

The reality of creation is that our freedom is unbounded. There is every possibility for experiencing goodness.

No one is left out on this.

But we might have to heal the “limbs” of our psyche to take advantage of what’s available. If we keep frantically struggling to guard our secrets though, we can’t experience the wide-open possibilities of life.

This struggle is a useless pain that we keep inflicting upon ourselves. But we can start today, to rid ourselves of it, if we so desire.

To do that, we must face the area we fear the most.

What have we not been willing to see?

That’s where we need to shine our light. It’s also where we will feel the most reward. The freedom and safety that will follow is beyond words.

These are not empty promises.

“Be in peace, know how wonderful is the peace of truth by not shirking this truth.
“Be in God!”

–The Pathwork Guide

Read Original Pathwork Lecture #136: The Illusory Fear of the Self