As destructive as these patterns are, they are very hard to change. The moment we deny ourselves some gratification, we feel deprived. Part X appeals to our selfishness, telling us we should never have to feel deprived. The only way to fight this is to have an equally selfish reason not to give in to our impulses. In other words, we need to find a

The transformation of the lower self is the heroic journey for our times. The hero’s path for our day is to go inward, not outward; to travel deep into the basements of our inner darkness, where we will meet and transform our devils and demons.

We need to keep remembering that evil is not a separate force in the universe. On the ordinary, dualistic level, evil can appear to be an equal and opposing force to good. In reality, evil is merely a distortion of the one great creative force of the universe. Meeting and embracing evil is the only way to redirect its “energy current” back to its p

Dr. Hilde Bruch, in the preface to her book Learning Psychotherapy, states that basically all patients come to psychiatrists with “one common problem: the sense of helplessness, the fear and inner conviction of being unable to ‘cope’ and to change things.”4 One of the roots of this “sense of impotence” in the majority of patients is some desire to