Doubt is the opposite of faith, with faith being basically inner certainty about everything we now doubt. And no inner experience can come by way of outer events. It just can’t happen that way. What has to happen is that we prepare the inner conditions by removing our blocks and hurdles—in short, everything standing between us and true faith…
If we don’t adequately prepare the inner soil, the seed won’t take. One level of reality can’t replace the other. It can only be integrated into it. And that can only happen through slow and steady inner development…It can’t come by way of a miraculous burning bush…Shortcuts and quick measures hope to eliminate the effort needed, but they never pan out with any lasting effect; they are the playthings of the forces of darkness…
So no matter how astounding the experience, we can’t get to spiritual enlightenment in one shot…As we work, one step at a time, to free ourselves of our inner chains, our doubts will come less and less often…All divine processes work this way, by making progress little by little, leveraging personal effort to achieve anything substantial and permanent…
Inside each of us, there is a battle going on between the Higher Self and the Lower Self. Wherever there is any disharmony, the two natures are at war. Whenever doubt reappears, it is Lower Self talking. When doubt disappears, Higher Self can be heard…The mere fact that we feel depressed when we are in doubt, but we feel joyful when we are in truth, tells us a lot…
Truth—even unpleasant truth—makes us happy…Untruth, by contrast, has a knack for robbing us of peace…For deep down, our Higher Self knows the truth, and we feel that. Truth is not depressing…Whenever we doubt, we are not in truth…
This brings up a subject of great dispute: the directive to think positively. As many believe, it is indeed essential for anyone who wants to mature spiritually to think positively. Unfortunately, it is often wrongly understood and therefore applied in the wrong way…
One of the fundamental building blocks of any spiritual path is developing clean and sound thoughts…Unclean thoughts then build disharmonious creations that lead, eventually, to impacting our destiny…
It’s always so tempting for us to push uncomfortable thoughts out of our awareness, but we don’t realize that those thoughts then have the power to do infinitely more harm than any conscious thought ever could—even our worst ones…When a thought is conscious, we can deal with it. When it smolders in our unconscious, it’s like a time bomb that builds highly destructive forms around itself…
As a result, diligent students of positive thinking are encouraged to do the one thing that is the very worst for them: they push all negative thoughts out of their mind and into their unconscious, completely disregarding the discrepancy between what they actually think or feel and what they want to think or feel. All in an intention to not harbor negative thoughts…To think positively is to convince ourselves it’s out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Well-meant as this may be, it’s a lie. And this is the real tragedy of the wrong kind of positive thinking…
Folks, it is imperative that we meet whatever exists in us squarely. Otherwise that part in us that doesn’t like looking at unpleasant aspects is going to win…The price is the effort one has to make to get to know all aspects of themselves, including all that’s currently hidden. It involves overcoming our faults and learning spiritual laws—such as the law that there is always a price to pay for privilege.
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Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #13 Positive Thinking: the Right and the Wrong Kind
