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QUESTION: I just read a book by Prentice Mulford which almost completely agrees with your teachings, but there is one thing which I do not completely understand. He says that one should not preoccupy oneself with the negative, especially not with one’s own faults; such preoccupation creates more negativity. It is enough to identify the negativity and leave it at that. You, however, taught us not only to confront our faults, but also to fight them. Yet in order to fight them we have to think about them every day. Here I find a contradiction between your teachings and the book.

ANSWER: There is no contradiction. It is a question of how to confront faults. Many people like to wallow in their faults, immerse themselves in a false guilt which I have already mentioned several times. These people lament, saying, “I am a sinner. I am so bad. I cannot overcome my sins. How terrible that I have this fault!” And whenever they encounter it, they throw themselves into the same unproductive current, thus increasing their guilt feelings. These guilt feelings have further consequences and a chain reaction is set in motion. This kind of preoccupation with one’s faults is obviously wrong. It not only attracts negative forces, it is also based on self-deception. Such people believe themselves to be very humble, while in reality they only want to take the easy way out by telling themselves that everything is hopeless. This attitude is frequent and it is just as much at a false extreme as its opposite: wanting to see oneself as already perfect. A person with spiritual understanding who tries to dissuade you from preoccupation with negativity means this kind of preoccupation.

On the other hand, it is absolutely necessary on this spiritual path that you learn to know yourself as you are and to accept your temporary reality. This does not mean that you should put your hands in your lap and not do anything, but that you say to yourself, “This is how I am. I have this fault. I know it takes struggle, willpower and patience to eradicate it, but I can and will do so.” This is productive. For when you look closer, you will realize that the terrible upset, the exaggerated guilt feelings about faults and shortcomings, are nothing but a form of pride and arrogance. You want to be better than you actually are. You want to be perfect without taking the trouble to become perfect. When you have to recognize that you are still imperfect, you feel devastated because your vanity is wounded. Not to accept yourself as you still are is unhealthy. Whoever feels the truth of these words should think and meditate about them and new doors will be opened.

As I have said so often, it is the how that matters. Once you have come far enough to see yourself with all your faults, devoid of defensiveness and feelings of disharmony, as an uninvolved observer would, you can build the positive—and only then. For you must build on a foundation of truth. You cannot build on lies or untruth, and those who do not know themselves and their motives, either by not wanting to or through self-deception, build on untruth. When you accept calmly who you are just now, you possess true humility which will set in motion the forces of transformation from deep within. Then you are able to see the reverse, that is the original goodness at the root of your faults. By visualizing the positive you create a new thought form and direct your will toward it.

As I speak to you, my dear friends, about the perfection that you should strive for, you may imagine it vaguely as something to be got from the outside, something you do not have in yourselves. This, of course, is not so. The perfection lies dormant within you deep down beneath the layers of the crust, hidden by your lower self, but it is only covered up—the perfection is already in you. You need only to remove the crust, and that is done by first recognizing it, by accepting the thought that there is a crust that takes such and such a form. Only when this is done can the layers of the crust be thinned out and so allow the breakthrough to the higher self in those places where your faults have so far made it impossible to establish contact with your inner perfection. When you clearly understand that perfection is already in you, it will be easier to overcome the difficulties and free yourself of the fetters of the imperfections which alone rob you of your freedom. Then you have to unfold your latent inner perfection. When you have clearly crystallized your lower self into definite form and see it as a foreign body within the self, you can begin to build the positive form toward which you move in the process of self-realization.

Let us take an example. A person is fighting his selfishness. This fault is in almost everybody. Some have it to a greater, others to a lesser degree, one in this form, the other in another, but everyone has at least some selfishness in him or her. As at the end of every day the person examines his reactions, he will reach, step by step, the following stages: First, he will find it very hard to recognize where he has been selfish; next, as he asks more and more to see the truth and as he opens himself to it, he will recognize certain events which he used to bypass but which he now sees as examples of his selfish behavior. Such recognitions will make him very uncomfortable at first, they will upset him and give him a bad conscience. These feelings in turn will create a resistance against the recognitions. In this phase the battle is to overcome the resistance and to nevertheless accept the self as it is in the moment. Persevering in this fight will eventually bring an immeasurable spiritual strength and with it further spiritual consequences in the best possible way. To progress in this phase the person has to attack the resistance from several sides. He needs to pray for strength and willpower to see himself as he really is. He needs to meditate to arrive at a deep inner recognition of his lack of humility, of his pride and arrogance in being so terribly upset about his fault. He needs to meditate to see how very far from the truth he is when he cannot accept himself as he is. He also has to go deeper into himself and find what other characteristics his pride and arrogance have given rise to. Thus he will acquire a better understanding about his personality and unconscious emotional currents. After a certain time these efforts of daily self-finding, retrospection, meditation, prayer, and resolutions will enable the person to react in a new way. He will succeed in applying what he knows in his daily silent hour and will react from this knowledge to whatever happens. As he once more goes into his stillness, he will recognize the progress he has made in handling his problem. Yet he will also have to notice that his feelings were still opposed to his controlled reactions, and thus there was an inner split behind his action.

It is easier to control actions than feelings, and the danger is that you may cover up the emotional reaction, pretending it is not there, until the feeling sinks into the unconscious. It is precisely this split and repression which give rise to the unhealthy soul currents. You may act right because your conscience says that you must follow what you have learnt about right and wrong, or because you believe this buys recognition and love from your surroundings. Yet when the action is not supported by a corresponding feeling, it becomes a lie. If you courageously fight on for your inner truth, you will be able to avoid the lie and identify the false emotional currents underlying your correct outward actions. You will know that more spiritual work is needed to change the feelings, and you will not shy away from such work. You will then, in your meditations, build good, healthy spiritual forms—for instance by visualizing yourself free from selfishness, or whatever other fault you may still have, and by feeling how much joy you can experience by letting others also have that which you hitherto had wished only for yourself. In time, this form will become so powerful that it will stand out just as clearly as the part which is still a residue of the lower self. You will always be aware of the discrepancy—but now without being upset by it. Slowly, slowly, old, false currents will transform themselves and be in line with outward actions and what you recognize as being right. This is the process.

Of course, it is more convenient not to do all this. It is an inconvenience to face oneself over and over again in this kind of self-honesty. And people are very resourceful in finding excuses to justify why they do not need to or cannot do it. They are inclined to cling to what is easiest. But what is easily gained is not worth much. Only what comes to us through inner discipline and overcoming of what is difficult, only that for which we have paid the price, brings lasting happiness. It cannot be otherwise.

- Excerpt taken from Pathwork Guide Lecture #7 Asking for Help and Helping Others