Our struggle to find ourselves is blessed. Then another part of us may ask, If we’re so blessed, why doesn’t God end this struggle?

It may help if we better understand the struggle.

This state we’re in—the state of human existence—is a problem. For we are in an in-between state. We’ve woken up from a lower state—a plant or animal where we were in harmony, but not with awareness. And we haven’t yet reached that higher state—the proverbial mountaintop—where we will be in harmony with awareness.

Where are we now?

Somewhere in the middle—in the upward struggle.

And it’s a struggle for everyone, whether we know we are on a spiritual path or not.

What makes us suffer

Suffering is what we produce in the struggle between the spirit world of truth and the material world, or matter.

What makes us suffer is untruth.

Another word for untruth is unawareness. Matter results from unawareness.  

When we attempt to master our life by mastering matter, what we are really hoping for is mastery over untruth.

This is not only true for life in general.

It exists in each one of us.

It’s in the makeup of our being that led to us become matter.

So where must we search for untruth?

In ourselves.

When we are not in truth, we are not in reality. So our work is to find our own unique brand of unreality buried in our wrong conclusions, unnecessary defenses and evasions.

That’s how we must go about finding the core of our being.

Eventually, we’ll start living from our core rather than from our erroneous thinking. It is then—when we act and react from our core—that we can reach and affect the core of others.

It won’t matter if they know they are on a path or not.

Along the way, one challenge we must face is that we believe our own stories. This is such a habit that we don’t even see we’re doing it.

And so we search in vain.

Maybe we see how we have become destructive. Or where we are inauthentic. But this does not stop us from continuing this way.

We still have no real sense of our real selves.

This is the struggle—to come out of the distorted ways we see the world. To change, to grow, and to become happy—living fruitful, rich lives.

To do that, we have to become whole again.

We must become undivided.

Our Real Self is one whole nugget, waiting for us to find it. It is logical that we must climb this mountain, if we want what’s at the top. Paradoxically, that is where we’ll find our Real Self—at our core.

One way we alienate ourselves

This state of self-alienation we are in—where we are truly not our real selves—is so pervasive, we don’t see the symptoms of it.

We think we’re just being “normal.”

Often, we find ourselves feeling trapped in situations that are outside our control. This state of helplessness signals that there is an underground conflict—a problem in our soul.

Naturally, you might say, anyone would feel self-alienated if they had my kind of problems. We can look at this however we like. But what’s true is that if we experience helplessness, powerlessness or paralysis in our lives, self-alienation is present.

Such personal problems are based on error.

As you may know from other Pathwork teachings, people choose one of three ways to cope with our struggles: submission, aggression or withdrawal. For those who turn to aggression, or power, it may be particularly easy to twist the Guide’s teaching here.

We believe that not being helpless or frustrated is the way to always win. Wearing our power mask, we will demand that things must always go according to ideal plans.

The sad truth is that adopting this strategy for winning makes us more dependent on others than most.

Because we always have to win.

If not, we feel weak and humiliated.

Since our constant winning cannot possibly depend on us alone, we are dependent. All our energy then goes into forcing others to do our bidding.

By putting all our strength outside ourselves, we direct our personal resources at others, rather than using them for ourselves.

This is how we alienate ourselves.

So the aggressive person is as helpless as the outright submissive—and supposedly weak—one.

We may say we want to become the masters of our own lives. But this does not mean a power-driven compulsion to always win and never do without.

When our Real Self masters our lives, our forces work in harmony, constructively and productively.

Our inner management gets all its committees working together.

We will find strength and resources to create good choices.

This is how we become our own solution.

Our reaction to nonfulfillment

Our true self is endowed with numerous fabulous forces: reason, love, understanding, insight, strength, resourcefulness, resiliency, flexibility, adaptability, self-assertion, creativity.

Once free of our inner distortions that cause fear and anxiety, we will express these qualities as we express ourselves. And we will be understood.

We will make proper and mature choices.

Because we will be able to distinguish between what’s valid and constructive, and what’s not. With that kind of clarity, we can work our way out of any difficulty.

In fact, our difficulties will turn into steppingstones.

But we can only reach this stage when not having fulfillment no longer kills us.

Why, though, does it seem as though it will kill us?

Basically, our experience of ourselves and others is so distorted, we take any frustration as a personal rejection. In other words, it feels like proof that we are inadequate.

We can only give up this painful attitude when we discover that our worth and lovability have nothing to do with whether we are fulfilled.

It’s true that nonfulfillment may not feel good. But it only happens because of our errors, not because of the truth of who we are.

It has never had anything to do with who we really are.

Our painful wrong conclusion

The pain of not having what we want is far less than this added factor—this apparent proof of our worthlessness, inadequacy and unlovability.

In short, that we are nothing.

Of course, we’re not consciously thinking this. Quite the contrary, we go to great lengths to not be aware of this conclusion. We’ll use opposite opinions, feelings and attitudes to cover our tracks.

But that doesn’t make any of this untrue.

Or less painful.

When we feel overly affected by a failure, a rejection or a lack of success, this hidden scenario may be what’s really going on. Which doesn’t mean we don’t have a really terrific rationalization for what just happened.

Our stories will seem to make perfect sense.

But below the surface, our worth has gotten tangled in an outer situation. Only by seeing what’s hidden can we alter our relationship to ourselves—and to the outer situation.

By gaining insight into our own distorted sense of reality, our sense of actual reality automatically improves. The scales shift and we no longer ascribe as much power to outer circumstances.

We will feel less helpless and more able to mobilize our inner strength.

We will see how our fear of failure isn’t about the failure per se, but about what it implies—that we’re inferior. Our fear of responsibility isn’t about being lazy, it’s about being discovered to be inferior.

Fear of the frustration of pleasure isn’t about not being able to live without pleasure.

It’s that not having it implies we’re inferior.

Once we see this, we can grow out of it. The upside will be that things like success, responsibility and pleasure—in their reality—will increase.

Better yet, we’ll have access to our Real Self.

We won’t have to live these lies that alienate us from our core. We will begin to realize our full potential.

All this can only happen if we stop living on the periphery of who we are and return to the center of ourselves.

What self-alienation looks like

As long as we’re living on the periphery, we’re putting our powers outside ourselves.

What’s the alternative? It is to experience our own power.

We trust ourselves because we can give up something and it doesn’t kill us. This frees us from compulsion and anxiety.

We relate to ourselves, so we can relate to others. But we don’t overestimate ourselves.

We don’t need to be perfect—to have all the glory. So we are much better at using the infinite resources of our very being.

Here’s what we are essentially saying to ourselves: “I am strong and my possibilities are many. If problems arise, so be it—I can deal with them.

“I can cope with them truthfully, not just superficially or for the sake of how it looks.

“I don’t have to be great. And I don’t have to be special. I’m a simple human being—just like everyone else.

“As such, I have great powers I have not yet realized. But they can’t surface through my distorted views. The more I come into truth, the more great powers will manifest.”

That’s how people who aren’t alienated from themselves see themselves. They’re equipped to handle what life brings. And they are grounded in reality in their relationship with the world and the people in it.

Alienated people, on the other hand, tend to be too big or too small, bouncing back and forth between these two extremes. Others make them feel worthless and dependent, or they inflate their egos.

We may think, I’m smart, so that doesn’t happen to me. But on an emotional level, this is the way others often affect us. We may need to keep a close eye on our behavior to see this in action.

It goes on all the time.

What our reactions reveal

Once we start operating from our real selves, we won’t continue experiencing ourselves as better than or less than. We’ll see others’ shortcomings, but this won’t make us feel superior to them.

We might even see something in them that we lack ourselves. But this won’t make us feel inferior to them. It’s this tendency to feel worthless—good for nothing—in some hidden crevice of our personality, that makes us tend to overinflate our egos.

If our ego wasn’t so impaired, we wouldn’t feel this need to pump it up. And if our relationship with ourselves wasn’t so impaired, we wouldn’t perceive others in such distorted ways.

For example, when someone seems powerful, strong and invulnerable to us, we may particularly want their acceptance. Then they take on an aura of awe that doesn’t match reality.

So we become anxious and tense around such a person. For we perceive them in a very distorted way. Our minds may be saying fairly accurate things.

But our emotions tell another story.

Our feelings are colored by our fears and desires about this person. Which may be that we want to use them to elevate ourselves—to pull us out of the inferiority that engulfs us.

When we suffer from self-alienation, we don’t experience others in the reality of who they are. We experience them according to our own problems.

We can’t possibly communicate cleanly with them in this position. Yet that’s what needs to happen to resolve our challenge with them.

In a crass sort of way, the other has become our enemy—even our slave. By the same token, we are alternately enemies or slaves then too.

Signs of self-alienation

We may need to make some progress in our self-development before we can even detect this. But if we dedicate ourselves to this work of self-knowing, we’ll get there.

It will happen gradually, based on previous progress. Over time, we will quietly approach a new perspective.

If we’re hoping for a quick resolution, we’ll be disappointed.

We cannot skip steps.

That said, the moment we see ourselves in our unreality—how we don’t relate to ourselves or others in truth—we take a giant step forward toward reality. More so than if we tried to force ourselves into it before we’re ready.

As always, we have to see the distortion before we can fix it.

Awareness is the first step.

Until we truly see how we are out of touch with it, we can’t come into touch with our Real Self.

We can look at any current problem from this viewpoint, seeing how we feel victimized by circumstances—and how frustrated we feel when we tell others what we want.

We must see how confused we really are about what we really want. To look at where we can change things and where we can’t.

Are we open to new solutions? Are we willing to take a new action?

Or do we want it handed to us?

This kind of dependency reveals not only self-alienation, but also a desire to stay that way.

Do we feel big?

Or do we feel small?

Do we see the complex, multifaceted nature of others, who have their own vulnerabilities and struggles?

Or do they only exist for us where emotionally they make us feel better or worse, or more or less powerful?

We can look at dissatisfaction as a test of whether we are realizing our potential. If the answer is, “No we’re not,” we are alienated from ourselves. Otherwise, we wouldn’t feel dissatisfied, regardless of temporary storms.

We have the power within ourselves to set a different course.

Seeing ourselves in action

Coming out of self-alienation is a two-step process. In the first phase, we must become aware of the roots of our problems—our errors and unreality. We want to see the full scope, find the causes, feel their effects and make all the links in between.

The second phase is about change. This is often so gradual and automatic, occurring organically, that we are not even aware of it.

Until we are.

It happens through seeing our shortcomings.

After enough insight and understanding, another kind of change comes about. This one is less gradual.

It involves a very decisive way of taking action when we become determined to stop following old, ingrained behavior patterns. This requires that we engage our will to institute a new pattern.

This has to come from within—never to please an outer authority. And we must be fully convinced of its value.

At this point, self-discipline comes into play. Don’t misunderstand—we can’t force something that isn’t organically ready. We won’t make progress if we have unhealthy motives of wanting to obey, appease, or look more perfect than we are.

All these will make us anxious and only serve to create new destructive patterns.

This process of unwinding ingrained behaviors requires some finesse.

Nonetheless, at a certain point, we must apply some self-determination and discipline. Otherwise, we can’t fully uproot counterproductive habits, no matter how much we wish for this to happen.

As long as we doubt that there’s a real upside to this new way, we’re not ready. Or if we become anxious about giving up our old ways, we’re not ready. Then we need to search within some more.

“Why do I feel this way?”

Ask and the door will open.

Perhaps we feel anxious about the goodness of what we know to be a right course. If so, we still believe that goodness is somehow not in our best interest.

Of course, in reality, this can’t be so.

But we need to reach the point where our outer knowledge soaks into the layers that don’t yet realize this—that goodness means solutions to inner problems.

Regardless of what we may think, real change really can happen. But real growth and happiness can’t happen if change doesn’t take place.

The very essence of life is change.

So why not take the reins and steer the direction it goes?

Lack of change then is lack of life. Part of our struggle stems from the fact that some aspect of us grows organically while another remains stuck.

It helps to look back to get a better perspective on how much change is already taking place.

Change, growth and waking up

Sometimes we may notice that people in an obviously lower state of development seem to live in a certain harmony. Meanwhile, people who have done more inner work are still struggling, disharmonious and unhappy.

The reason is that the former have developed more steadily, according to their potential. Their life is on an even keel.

There are no big discrepancies.

More highly developed people, by contrast, often fail to realize their potential. They don’t fulfill their mission by working with their inherent possibilities.

Because they are further along, they are capable of more.

Yet they focus on aspects of themselves that are already developed and neglect areas that then become quite stagnant. Nothing changes because they don’t will it to be so.

It’s easy to concentrate on what’s already working. Meanwhile, the parts that need attention continue to lag and create problems.

This discrepancy has its own effect, beyond the simple reality that such a person could do more. They could be bringing to life that which is lying there lifeless.

This is the human struggle.

As we do this work of self-knowing, we will discover that change and growth are pleasurable. The freedom of losing shackles in one area inspires us to ride the constant flux of change.

If, however, we resist change and growth, we remain frozen and rigid in that yet-unhealed area. And this lopsidedness is worse than if our whole personality were still asleep.

The problem, if you will, is that it is not still asleep.

Once we reach a certain stage, we can’t go back to ignorant slumber. We’re now half-awake and we need to follow the nature of the cosmos, which is to wake up.

Now our only hope for reaching real harmony again is through fuller and fuller awareness. We’re in for reality, growth, and change

There’s no turning back.

So don’t say change isn’t possible.

It’s the only thing that is possible.

It’s the way of nature, and it’s the way of people. Our work toward knowing ourselves thaws out the substance of our soul. This is how we become unstuck—unfrozen.

We put these wheels into motion. And we will be the ones to benefit greatly when real, noticeable change happens.

Discovering real needs

Want another hint for how to find our elusive Real Self?

Let’s look at our needs. Or not. In truth, that’s what usually happens—we don’t consider our needs. We look away so much that we are not even aware of what our needs are.

We know we have them—physical and otherwise. But specific emotional needs?

Things are cloudy.

This unawareness is even true for those who have been consciously on a spiritual path for some time. But getting to the bottom of our list of needs—even a superficial list—takes time, attention and self-honesty.

The first thing we find, as we begin to surface our needs, are false needs. Later, we start to tap into the real ones. Seeing this gives us insight into our state of self-alienation.

For if we are in contact with true reality, we will have crystal-clear awareness of our real needs. We’ll know whether they are being filled or not.

Until then, our sense of our needs is unclear.

It is during the course of our spiritual journey that our real needs will be revealed. These can be subdivided into groups.

First we will come in contact with our need to receive—be it love, understanding, closeness with others, or creative fulfillment. All of these we hope to gain by having them given to us.

We can have real and false versions of these needs. But in all cases, in our emotions, we seem to need someone or something to give us what we need.

Next, we’ll find in ourselves a need to give. We realize we may need to give what we need to receive, as is the case with love.

We also find we need to understand others, rather than only be understood by them. Often, we’ll discover that we need an outlet for our giving. If we don’t have one, our need will remain unfulfilled.

So far, all that has changed is we are now acutely aware of our needs and their unfulfillment. Before, we were just foggy and hazy, feeling the unfulfillment in an indirect way.

Such muddled awareness has roots different from the actual unfulfillment of real needs. Because the latter doesn’t create anxiety or a feeling of urgency. These uncomfortable signals are telling us that real needs have been subverted into false ones.

Try to really absorb this message. That long before we fulfill our real needs, we will find relief, peace and harmony just by becoming aware of them and consciously realizing they aren’t being fulfilled.

Why do we run away from knowing what our real needs are? It’s not just that we would have to face the pain of unfulfillment.

It’s that unfulfillment seems to be proof of… our inferiority.

We need to find the strength, courage, humility and determination to face our real needs—both to give and to receive—and then to tolerate the unavoidable temporary frustration.

When we can do this, we will have reached a much bigger part of our Real Self than we may realize.

This is real life—to be ourselves, in reality.

How we gain strength

Unfulfillment will recede into the background as we gain new strength by finding this treasure: our true home. Then the stranger—our alienated self—can begin to find a home within the reality of who we are, exactly in this moment.

We don’t travel a straight line to get to this point.

We’re going to go down many byroads. We’ll take many detours. Then, once we get there, the pot may hold no gold.

At least not for a while.

But an empty pot is better than one filled with illusion. We will have to go through a period of emptiness. We will experience being aware of our unfulfilled need and longing. Now, however, there will be space for truth to emerge.

As we bear this time of waiting with good grace—not in false humility or while pouting—we will continually gain strength from being able to endure this situation, as long as is required.

This state is a consequence of patterns we ourselves have set into motion. For their effects have not yet worn off.

But we won’t be suffering the agonies we felt before we had such awareness.

We can relax; this unfulfillment will not weaken us.

On the contrary, we’ll gain a fuller and deeper insight into ourselves. Best of all, because we’re now actually living in reality, we will slowly begin to set different outcomes into motion.

The old effects don’t dissolve immediately just because we’ve found their cause.

Nothing happens overnight.

As we are grappling with all of this, partial fulfillment will eventually find its way to us. We’ll see how the old patterns appeared and created problems.

These outer relapses and disappointments are necessary for building some spiritual muscle, so to speak. They allow us to own this new way of being, to make it part of who we are becoming.

Until it is once again our first nature.

Next Chapter

Return to Finding Gold Contents

Read Original Pathwork^® Lecture: #95 Self-Alienation and the Way Back to the Real Self