The Work of Healing

What We’re Here to Learn, in This Land of Duality

In doing our work of healing, we develop on various levels of our being. In our spirit, we move from the separation of duality to unity. Within our mind, we move from wrong conclusions to truth. In our will, we move from forcing currents and withholding to receptivity and a willingness to give. Within our emotions, we move from being blocked and numb to being loving and flexible. In our bodies, we move from being frozen and split to being open and integrated.

Over time, we will develop discernment and a truer perception about the world around us. We will shift from our defensiveness, to a stance of openness and transparency. We’ll be wise in our self-disclosure and rigorous in self-honesty. We will learn to become vulnerable and we will know peace.

There are no musts and there are no shoulds. There is just an open invitation to see what aspects of healing need our attention. Then as we go along in life, we can begin to make different choices.

Healing our inner split is a key reason we incarnate into this difficult dualistic sphere. Bones_Phoenesse — Healing our inner split is a key reason we incarnate into this difficult dualistic sphere.

Soul Split

When we are born, we are already split into either a male half or a female half. Our longing to unite with another stems from this cleaving of our soul. (The Pull, Chapter 1: The Cosmic Pull Toward Union )
Each soul also contains a primary inner split; healing this split is a key reason we incarnate into this dualistic sphere. This split gets transferred onto our parents. One parent surfaces one side of what we believe to be true, and the other parent surfaces the opposite belief. (For example, “It hurts to be seen; it hurts to not be seen.”) Neither side is in truth. This is what the adult will need to come to understand.
Until we surface these hidden untruths, we will unconsciously transfer our inner splits and faulty thinking onto everyone we meet. We will see them through our inner distorted lenses rather than in the reality of who they are: people with both strengths and weaknesses, just like us, who in fact are not our parents. (Bones, Chapter 11: Our Habit of Transferring our Split onto Everyone)

Due our inner split and other distortions, our needs do not get met in childhood. This is painful. Gems_Phoenesse — Due our inner split and other distortions, our needs do not get met in childhood. This is painful.

Unmet Needs

Children want to be loved 100%, caught as they are in the all-or-nothing thinking of duality. But due to the parents’ human limitations (they have their own splits and distortions) it is not possible for our parents to give us the 100% love we demand as children. As we grow older, we often remain stuck in similarly demanding love, having not received it the way we wanted it as a child. But in fact, love can’t come to us this way as adults. And if it did, we wouldn’t let it in given our now-defended state. (Gems, Chapter 13: Landing Our Desires by Letting Go of Our Demands )
Our parents are selected for their ability to create the ideal conditions that will bring our splits and distortions to the surface. This happens so we will be able to see them in this lifetime and heal them.
Often, we wish we’d had “better, more loving” parents. But if such parents were available, we would not have been born to them. For that would defeat the whole purpose of incarnating. Again, our issues must come to the surface for us to see them. Then we can do the work needed to heal them. (Note, perfect parenting is not required for a child to feel loved; if “good enough” parenting is offered, the child does not suffer. To the extent our relationship with our parents is healthy and fulfilling, to that extent we are healed on our inner layers.) (Pearls, Chapter 5: Preparing for Reincarnation: Every Life Counts)
Due our inner split and other distortions, then, working in concert with the splits and distortions of our parents (and siblings or family substitutes), our needs do not get met in childhood. This is painful.

We fear pain because we unconsciously believe it means death. We avoid our old frozen feelings as a way to avoid pain. But this only allows our Emotional Reactions to control us. Blinded by Fear_Phoenesse — We fear pain because we unconsciously believe it means death. We avoid our old frozen feelings as a way to avoid pain, and “death”. But this allows our Emotional Reactions to control us, and ruin our life.

Faults

Our reaction to pain is the origin of our three primary faults: Fear, Pride and Self-Will. All other faults tuck up under these three categories. (Bones, Chapter 12: Finding Out the Truth about Ourselves, Including Our Faults , and Chapter 13: The Ubiquitous Faults of Self-Will, Pride and Fear)
- Fear: In our immature state, caused by our unwillingness to express and release our old pain, we see life in black-and-white terms. Caught in this dualistic illusion, everything boils down to life-and-death. So pleasure equates to life and pain equates to death. In short, we fear pain because we unconsciously believe it means death. We avoid our old frozen feelings as a way to avoid pain. But this only allows our Emotional Reactions to control us. (Blinded by Fear: Insights from the Pathwork Guide on How to Face Our Fears)
  • In our healing work, we must come to understand the wrong thinking connected with our pain, and realize that feeling pain will not kill us. This is the only way to release our pent up old feelings and step into freedom. (Bones, Chapter 2: The Importance of Feeling All Our Feelings, Including Fear)
  • Often, in our hopelessness, we will resign ourselves to “death”, giving up on getting pleasure or on getting what we want. But this is just an ineffective strategy for coping with our fear of pain, and our belief that pain will kill us. (Gems, Chapter 5: Facing Our Deepest Fear and Unfolding Our Greatest Longing)
- Pride: This is the feeling that we are separate and better than everyone else. That to have life, we must win. We adopt this attitude as a countermeasure against feeling less than everyone. For our less-than-satisfying childhood leaves us feeling worthless or somehow not enough.
- Self-Will: In an effort to avoid pain and facing our unfortunate conclusion that we are worthless, we apply our will to defending ourselves. We either hold ourselves back, becoming lazy, stubborn, resistant to change, withholding (including of our best self) and rebellious. (Gems, Chapter 9: Why Lazy is the Worst Way to Be, and Finding Gold, Chapter 6: Laziness as a Symptom of Self-Alienation) Or we use a forcing current to get our way, believing this will save us. Both strategies only bring us more pain. (Living Light, Chapter 1: THE FORCES OF ACTIVITY AND PASSIVITY | Searching Inside the Serenity Prayer and Finding God’s Will)

Due to our one-size-fits-all strategy of numbing and avoiding, we don't fully embody our own selves. So we become alienated from ourselves. Finding Gold_Phoenesse — Due to our one-size-fits-all strategy of numbing and avoiding, we don’t fully embody our own selves. So we become alienated from ourselves.

Body Blocks

We numb ourselves to avoid feeling painful feelings. This is a one-size-fits-all strategy that stops positive feelings right along with negative feelings. One primary way we blocked our feelings as children was by holding our breath, or breathing shallowly. We still do this as adults when unpleasant feelings arise, and often this becomes habitual. As a result, we don’t fully embody our own selves. We become alienated from ourselves and ungrounded. We also add in distractions and addictions to further avoid our feelings. (Finding Gold, Chapter 5: Self-Alienation and the Way Back to the Real Self)
This numbing action creates frozen blocks in our energy field, which are in turn held in the body. They will remain frozen until we feel and release the unfelt pain held in them.
Our bodies develop their shapes following patterns that result from the way we freeze our feelings. We can trace iIllness in the body to our early reaction to pain.

We use three strategies to defend ourselves against pain and get the love we now demand. But we don't realize they are based on untruth. As such, they can never work. Bones_Phoenesse — We use three strategies to defend ourselves against pain and get the love we now demand. But we don’t realize they are based on untruth. As such, they can never work.

Defenses

Every child chooses a strategy to avoid pain: Aggression, Submission or Withdrawal. These translate into behaviors designed to get our needs met—to get love—using accordingly either a Power Mask, a Love Mask, or a Serenity Mask. These do not work and instead bring more pain. (Bones, Chapter 4: Three Basic Personality Types: Reason, Will and Emotion, and Chapter 7: Love, Power and Serenity in Divinity or in Distortion)
We use these three strategies to defend ourselves against pain and get the love we now demand. But we don’t realize they are based on untruth. As such, they can never work.

We believe that maybe if we are perfect—if we project an ideal version of ourselves—others will love us. This also does not work. Pearls_Phoenesse — We believe that maybe if we are perfect—if we project an ideal version of ourselves—others will love us. This also does not work.

Idealized Self-Image

We believe that maybe if we are perfect—if we project an ideal version of ourselves—others will love us. So we don a mask of perfection designed to compensate for our missing self-esteem and bring love. This also does not work. (Bones, Chapter 6: The Origin and Outcome of the Idealized Self-Image , and Pearls, Chapter 9: Why Flubbing on Perfection is the Way to Find Joy)

Inner Critic

We internalize the voice of our parents—often the one we hate the most. Now, instead of someone else being cruel to us, we are cruel to ourselves.

We resist giving or giving in, and instead stay stuck in our misery. Bones_Phoenesse — We resist giving or giving in, and instead stay stuck in our misery.

Negativity

Negative Pleasure: Human beings are wired for pleasure. If pleasure is not what we experience as children, we will attach our life force to whatever destructive, painful things we do experience. We will then go through life with our wires crossed, needing to re-create destructive experiences in order to feel energized. (Bones, Chapter 16: How Pleasure Gets Twisted into Self-Perpetuating Cycles of Pain, and The Pull, Chapter 5: Pleasure: The Full Pulsation of Life)
Negative Intention: Our Lower Self wraps itself around our Higher Self, with the intention of keeping us in separation. As such, we resist giving or giving in, and instead stay stuck in our misery. Our Lower Self uses our wrong conclusions about life to justify our intention to cut ourselves off from life. (Bones, Chapter 17: Overcoming Our Negative Intention by Identifying with Our Spiritual Self)
No-Current: Hidden in our unconscious are faulty beliefs that cause us to say No to fulfillment. As a result, we will feel frantic about our Yes to having what we want. For with a hidden No, our Yes will always be ineffective. (Bones, Chapter 15: Learning to Speak the Language of the Unconscious)

Our hidden misunderstandings—what the Pathwork Guide calls “images”—cause us to behave in ways that create life experiences that make them appear to be true. Bones_Phoenesse — Our hidden misunderstandings—what the Pathwork Guide calls “images”—cause us to behave in ways that create life experiences that make them appear to be true.

Hidden Wrong Conclusions

Our mistaken beliefs about ourselves, others and life in general, called images, are generalizations. We form them at a young age using the logic of a child. We go on to apply them to life as though they are 100% true. For example, “All men/women lie to me,” “I will never be enough,” “I always have to prove I am worthy”. Our hidden misunderstandings cause us to behave in ways that create life experiences that make them appear to be true. They are not. (Bones, Chapter 9: Images and the Deep, Deep Damage They Do)
As we grow up, since our wrong conclusions aren’t true and don’t really hold water, they sink into our unconscious. There they hide, where we can no longer see them. More importantly, since we are not aware of them, we can’t change them using our better adult reasoning. Hence, they rule. Our life situations reflect back to us exactly what we unconsciously believe. (Suffering? Here’s Why. Better Yet, Here’s How to Resolve It)

Our vicious circles come from the traps of our wrong thinking and unfelt feelings that keep us spinning in old hurts. Bones_Phoenesse — Our vicious circles come from the traps of our wrong thinking and unfelt feelings that keep us spinning in old hurts.

Recreating Childhood Hurts

We will go through life creating vicious circles, over and over. These come from the traps of our thinking and unfelt feelings that keep us spinning in old hurts. We keep defending ourselves against the pain caused by our own inner distortions. (Bones, Chapter 10: Unpacking the Pain of our Old Destructive Patterns)
Beyond this, the fractured young aspect feels it was defeated, and this time, it thinks, we are going to win! It’s not true, however, that we were ever defeated. And so it’s equally untrue that we if we remain lost in illusion, we will ever win. Victory lies in seeing the greater truth of the situation and dying into our feelings of disappointment. Remember, doing so won’t kill us; feeling all our feelings is what sets us free. (Bones, Chapter 1: Emotional Growth and Its Function and Chapter 8: How and Why we Recreate Childhood Hurts )
When we start walking a spiritual path, our vicious circles turn into spirals. Over time, we will unwind our inner wrong thinking and release the pain attached to them. Eventually, we step out of the prisons of our painful recreations and walk into freedom. (It’s a Jungle In There: Hacking Our Way Around a Spiritual Path)

The Ego

Every person has, at their core, a Higher Self. This is the truth of who we are. Here, in our spiritual center, we are each imbued with the divine qualities of courage, love and wisdom. In addition, we each have gone through the Fall (see Part Two: The Prequel) and acquired a Lower Self. The goal of our Lower Self is to keep us separate. To go the way of the Lower Self, we only need to follow the path of least resistance. (Bones, Chapter 3: The Higher Self, the Lower Self, and the Mask Self )
This means the ego must make an effort to transcend the Lower Self and follow the quieter inner voice of the Higher Self. Meditation can be helpful to hear what our Lower Self is saying—to see where our work lies. Meditation also helps us listen for the wiser direction continually streaming from our Higher Self. First, we need to clear the loud clamoring of our Lower Self. We do this by feeling our old pain and surfacing our wrong conclusions. Then we can realize the truth emanating from our Higher Self and imprint it in our soul substance. (Bones, Chapter 18: How to Use Meditation to Create a Better Life . And Pearls, Chapter 14: Meditating to Connect Three Voices: The Ego, the Lower Self & the Higher Self )
Doing the work of healing will require us to have a strong, well-disciplined ego. Such a healthy ego is willing to make an effort and pay the price for what we want, while not skipping steps and not trying to cheat life. (Gems, Chapter 10: Spotting the Tricks of Our Ego and Getting Over Ourselves , and After the Ego: Insights from the Pathwork Guide on How to Wake Up)
The ego must also learn to surrender to the greater self. It does this by asking for help, listening for guidance, letting go of results and learning to trust God. A strong ego knows it can give up having what the little self wants, at least for a limited time. Because this is a necessary step for finding God within and ultimately getting what we really want, which is to be at peace. (Pearls, Chapter 17: Discovering the Key to Letting Go & Letting God )

If we get all the way to the other side of our inner obstacles, our frictions with others will resolve. The Pull_Phoenesse — If we get all the way to the other side of our inner obstacles, our frictions with others will resolve.

Transformation

Once we do the work of healing to release old pent-up feelings and reorienting our thinking to align with truth, we will experience a deep inner freedom. (Bones, Chapter 19: The Giant Misunderstanding About Freedom and Self-Responsibility )

Our belief in something greater than ourselves will organically unfold as we apply these teachings to our lives and free ourselves from our self-made prisons. It is hard to describe the joy and serenity that unfold when we are in alignment with truth. (Gems, Chapter 11: Four Avenues for Reaching the Cosmic Nougat at our Core )
There is nothing here we have to believe. But by doing our work, one step at a time, we will come to a firm knowing that healing is possible and that these teachings can take us home. (Gems, Chapter 12: Four Pragmatic Steps for Finding Faith and Addressing Doubt)
The value of visiting this dualistic sphere lies in the friction that naturally arises at the interface between our distortions and the inner distortions of others. Because we often don’t see the distortions in ourselves, we project them onto others, where we can see them. Too often we stop there and mire ourselves in blame and victimhood. We need to go further and find the untruth where it lives, and where we have the ability to correct it: inside us. Over time, if we get all the way to the other side of our inner obstacles, our frictions with others will resolve. (The Pull, Chapter 4: The Spiritual Significance of Human Relationship)
As we mature, we will begin to give love, and in return, receive what our hearts desire. We will come to know what we want, instead of relying on the unrealistic demands of our immature fractured selves. These young inner parts of ourselves are in need of healing so that we can re-integrate ourselves and become whole once again. (Gems, Chapter 4: Claiming Our Total Capacity for Greatness, and Chapter 14: How to Visualize Living in a State of Unity)

It is hard to describe the joy and serenity that unfold when we are in alignment with truth. There is nothing here we have to believe. Gems_Phoenesse — It is hard to describe the joy and serenity that unfold when we are in alignment with truth. There is nothing here we have to believe.

Understand These Spiritual Teachings | The Work of Healing • The Prequel • The Rescue

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