When we first begin our spiritual journey, we find we have wounded, dark corners of our psyche that we have long neglected, that need attention and healing and compassion. This is an essential step in strengthening the ego and reclaiming all of who we are, and the Pathwork teachings and practices are very effective at offering a sacred container for this healing to occur.
In the Pathwork Lectures, we find profound truth that open our eyes to new possibilities for a life of joy and fulfillment. In walking this path with others in spiritual community we finally find the loving, nurturing environment we always longed for and deserved as a child. We are seen, heard, and acknowledged for who we truly are. All aspects of ourselves are welcomed. It often feels like water to a traveler in the desert, we have been parched and dehydrated for so long.
It’s important to note, however, that the lower self can use this needed and valuable part of the process to keep us stuck there, to keep us in separation.
Yes, the lower self can take a genuine part of our journey and make us think we are spiraling inward when we are just spinning endlessly in circles. We can spend the rest of our lives as wounded children that need healing, and never do the work of growing up. We may grow from an infant to an adolescent, but we refuse to launch into adulthood. The lower self is cunning and seductive, and it is important to be alert to its ways.
The true inward spiral circles around on deeper and deeper levels, where the work of healing engages the courage to face the places where we have a negative intention toward life. As we become willing to take back our projections, we find that we have a demand that life be perfect, that others be perfect, that everyone and everything submit to our wish to rule omnipotent.
When life guarantees to be the Garden of Eden, then maybe we will grow up and show up. This is usually not a conscious, intellectual demand, but an unconscious emotional demand that we can discover as we examine our behaviors, emotions, beliefs, and attitudes.
It’s a bit of a challenge to face this initially, to acknowledge that what began as a loving, healing, nurturing relationship with our inner child has become a codependent, enabling, indulgent relationship that actually stifles the expression of our Real Self. It takes an advanced sense of self-responsibility to acknowledge that our real needs as adults are to bring our gifts and talents to the world, to grow and express and to love unconditionally. At a certain point we need to offer our inner child compassion and loving discipline.
It’s a gift to recognize and respond to that moment when you know it’s time to transition to the next evolution of yourself.
I invite you to take an honest look at where you are today on your path. Have you done a certain amount of inner child work, and find yourself stuck recycling the wounding instead of growing from it?
If so, this is not an invitation to abandon your feelings and indulge the inner critic, the one who negates need and emotion and tries to whip you into behaving properly. This is an invitation to drop even deeper into feeling, including feeling the immature desire to remain self-centered and dependent, to be taken care of indefinitely —by life, by God, or by others. This is an invitation to feel the pain of the world and not turn away.
I’m challenging you to go all the way through these feelings, and allow them to give birth to the awakening of the greater consciousness that has always resided within. I’m challenging you to become intimate with your negative intention, and then choose to align with positive intention. The maturity and wholeness that results fuels purpose, meaning, and a willingness to engage in constructive action in the world. There is no question that this world desperately needs individuals living from this level of consciousness.
Are you ready to get off the Merry-Go-Round?
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