About: The power of words
The Bible says, “In the beginning was the word,” which speaks to the power of words to create—whether they are silent, spoken or written. Yet, although words help create our reality, they are not reality itself.
Nonetheless, some words have become so emotionally charged that we react to them almost like an allergy. As a result, we may push away the very truths they point to.
When words become barriers
“Evil” is one such word.
When we deny our vulnerability—our shame, our helplessness, and our sense of being unlovable—we create destructive feelings and attitudes. That is evil.
Evil, then, is a defense against suffering.
But denial of these original experiences compels us to re-experience them over and over again. In doing so, we increase the suffering and perpetuate evil.
The Guide tells us we can more correctly interpret the Biblical phrase “resist not evil” to mean that resistance is the evil. Resistance is a tightening against the flowing movement of love and truth. It is a slowed down consciousness that can only exist as resistance to good.
It always obstructs some beautiful, valuable aspect of creation. In the end, resistance really is futile. Because eventually a crisis occurs, which is the breaking point between two opposite desires—evolution and resistance of truth.
“You have begun to understand that to the degree your Lower Self is conscious—thereby enabling you to choose not to act upon it and to pray for help to purify it—you are invulnerable to evil.”
– Pathwork Lecture #248
Learn more in Pearls, Chapter 13: Uncloaking the three faces of evil: Separation, materialism and confusion.
Immaturity means separateness, and in separateness, one does not love and is therefore “in sin.”
The word “sin”
We resist through laziness and self-indulgence, as well as by distracting ourselves and not being honest about our emotional reactions. Then we project our distortions onto others, blaming them and not seeing how the darkness lives in us.
The Pathwork Guide calls that a “sin”—another loaded word.
For many people today, “Jesus” has become another emotionally loaded word. In his series Resurrecting Jesus, spiritual teacher Adyashanti suggests we reframe our sins as being the places where we “miss the mark.”
The Guide defines a sin as the lack of love resulting from immaturity of the soul. Immaturity means separateness, and in separateness, one does not love and is therefore “in sin.”
Following are the Pathwork Guide’s descriptions of various sins.
The Seven Cardinal Sins
Covetousness | Wanting to have and own what is not yours, which comes from a place of deprivation.
Lust | A selfish desire from child consciousness to receive without having to give, without a true spirit of mutuality.
Anger | A cover to real feelings such as pain, which may also move to collapse.
Gluttony | A distorted way to try to be fulfilled when real inner needs are not fulfilled.
Envy | Wanting to destroy and take what we can’t have because we feel so empty.
Pride | When we did not receive “good-enough” mirroring, we did not get a clear view of a healthy self; this leads to feeling inadequate. Pride is the way we try to overcome our lacking sense of self.
Sloth | The collapse into indifference and apathy when neither aggression nor submission seems to work.
It is important that we not let our reactions to these words keep us from receiving the deeper meaning of these teachings. For this reason, as well as the fact that words can lose their meaning after too much repetition, the Guide often uses alternative words to describe the same thing.
For example, divine essence, universal power and greater consciousness are all different expressions for that one hard-to-name word: God.
“There are many languages with many different words for the ultimate Creator. It truly does not matter which language you use, provided your mind connects with the source of all that is.”
– The Pathwork Guide in Q&A #244
During the decades of Question-and-Answer sessions, the Guide invited participants to ask questions about Bible verses so they could receive a deeper explanation of their meaning.
Read them in Bible Me This: Releasing the riddles of Holy Scripture, or under the topic The Bible at www.theguidespeaks.com.
“What is the word?…Each word is a blueprint essential for building the structure…It is plan, knowledge, opinion and consciousness. The word is feeling, attitude and intentionality…The word is what is behind all creation…
It can be the divine will or the will of the cut-off, ignorant and destructive particle of consciousness. Be it conscious or not, the word is the sum total of your beliefs in any given area where you speak the word.
It is the sun that creates the planets. It is energizing force and it is design. So much is contained in the word.”
– Pathwork Lecture #233
Learn more in Pearls, Chapter 8: Articulating the power of the word.
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