The Undefended Self: Living the Pathwork

The shock is to our Idealized Self Image. The ISI, or Mask, is always trying to make us and others believe we are more or better or kinder or more competent than we actually are. The Mask holds on to the illusion of our victimization and does not want to see how we create our own unhappiness. Once we are truly willing to face the negative intention

In all these instances, it can be seen, again and again, how all harm, all destructiveness, all evil, result from the denial of the feelings of the spontaneous real self."

The common denominators of such patterns always point the way to some false ideas we are cherishing, usually unconsciously. These ideas then need to be crystallized into clear, concise expressions, however irrational they may seem. Such expressions may begin with generalizations such as: “All men are,” or “Love is,” or “Work is.” Other false conclu

If you accept and feel the pain, a dissolving process begins automatically. Many of you have experienced this truth a number of times in your pathwork. Thus, when you feel the fear of your fear and can then let yourself drop into the fear itself, this fear will very quickly give way to another denied feeling. The denied feeling—whatever it may be—w

The human condition is a state of accelerated evolution, of constant “becoming.” The state of nonhuman nature, by contrast, is one of more simply “being,” where the forces of evolution move slowly, having not yet reached the stage of self-consciousness or free will. On the other end of the evolutionary spectrum, beyond our normal human consciousnes

Sometimes we can actually recall the moment in which we decided that something in our environment was intolerable, just too painful to be felt. We decided from then on to deny our real feelings. Such a decision, renewed and amplified many times in the course of a life, solidifies the construction of the mask.

While we may understand that diverse and contradictory levels of consciousness coexist in us, we often do not perceive that each one of them is innately creative. Our lives are a manifestation of the sum total of all the different characters or levels of consciousness that we are, whether or not we are aware of them. Bringing the inner worlds of ou

Eventually we find that, after unearthing our misconceptions in such diverse areas as love relationships, friendship, work, play, sexuality, and creativity, there will be certain common denominators to our images. Our work will circle around certain kinds of issues and we can begin to identify the false belief behind these issues as our main image.

The light of awareness must penetrate the fear, resentment, and shame of the child, in order to uncover the images that have become buried in the unconscious mind. We must be willing to see the truth of our mistreatment as children, including our parents’ flaws, without having to eradicate the good that may also have been present.