The Undefended Self: Living the Pathwork

Actually, her mate was ready to love her, but she was unable to accept his love because she was focused so hard on trying to “win” it. This basic assumption that she could “succeed” to make someone love her had to be challenged so that she could finally relax and receive his genuine affection.

"The need for protective love has a certain validity for the child, but if this attitude is maintained into adulthood, it is no longer valid. Since he does not cultivate the faculty of self-responsibility and independence, his need for love and his dependency can actually make the person helpless. He uses his entire psychic strength in order t

The mask of power is an attempt to get control of life and others by always appearing completely independent, aggressive, competent, domineering. Falsely reducing life to a struggle for domination, the power mask is attempting to escape from the vulnerability experienced as a child. Security and self-esteem rest on winning in all situations and bec

In addition to hopelessness, another primary indicator of an image is a pervasive sense of shame, a feeling of not being worthy or deserving. A specific shame lives in the inner child of all of us, stemming from the time we discovered, with a great shock, that our parents and our world were not perfect. The child has a great need to believe that he

The mask is the defense we create in response to our main image or principal negative conclusion about life.

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.

Our lower self would have us remain proudly separate while our higher self yearns for humble reconnection, reunion, and resumption of our identity with the whole of Creation. This yearning leads us on a journey of many lifetimes until every piece of human consciousness that has ever split itself off chooses, of its own free will, to return to the u

"The more you acknowledge your hate, the less you hate. The more you accept your ugliness, the more beautiful you become. The more you accept your weakness, the stronger you are. The more you admit your hurt, the more dignity you will have. These are inexorable laws. This is the path we tread.

The process may at times seem unbearably slow; at other times dizzyingly rapid. For a while we will expand toward greater fulfillment; and then we will temporarily contract. Our personal spiritual evolution moves in a spiral form. We circle around the same inner issues and difficulties, but each time at a deeper level, as our ability to learn from

All such longings to know more deeply, love more deeply, connect more deeply are ultimately a desire to experience a more unified state of awareness than that afforded by the normal disconnected ego.