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Pathwork Steps
January 2014 
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In this issue:
 
2014 Weekly Teleconferences Series begins February 1st

A Tribute to Brooks Greene-Barton

Structure of the Human Personality PRS2

Change of Direction for the Google Group
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2014 
Free Weekly Teleconferences
Saturdays 7pm US EDT 
converts to Sundays 11am AU EST

We work with one central topic or concept a month, looking at it from different angles.  Members share their understanding and interpretations based upon their own life experience. Members can pass (skip their turn) or remain silent throughout the entire meeting. 

Anyone can audit a meeting: please email Jan at janrigsby@gmail.com for the access codes.There is no charge or obligation to continue, and no reading requirements unless you wish to participate.

We use Zoom.us teleconferencing software that allows us to click a link to join the meeting online. You may also call via landline, mobile, or VOIP line. 

Monthly study guides include: 2 pages of quotes from the primary lecture or source material plus worksheets, suggestions for further self-study, tips on observing Pathwork concepts in our personal lives. There is often a list of film suggestions, with links to to online clips or shorts that may illuminate the concepts. Those who wish to share are encouraged to read the full lecture and study guide, but participants are only asked to read 1-3 pages of the study guide each week. Download full study guides at: www.pathworksteps.org//teleconferenceschedules

If you attend at least one meeting every 4-6 weeks, you will receive weekly reminders along with notes from the last meeting and a 2-4 page portion from the study guide for the next meeting. 

2014 topics will be selected from Eva Pierrakos' manuscript The Path to the Real Self (PRS). The 'voice' of Eva is easy to discern in the preface, where she describes the process of developing a relationship with the Pathwork Guide. The surviving 26 chapters seem to have been written by the Guide, and even have Q&A segments like the lectures. 

The Structure of the Human Personality 
PRS Chapter 2
February  1, 8, 15 and 22

Initial Steps for Self-Growth
PRS Chapter 3
March 1,8,16 and 22

The Path to the Real Self (PRS) encourages a more holographic understanding of the Pathwork lectures, bringing an overall perspective to concepts that may be touched upon in 20-30 different lectures. The copyright was part of John Pierrakos' personal estate so the International Pathwork Foundation was unable to sell copies until a few years ago. When I was training to be a Helper, the chapters were made available but were considered 'advanced material'. Yet today, many Pathwork teachings that seemed radically 'new age' in the '60s or 70s have been absorbed into everyday culture.  The PRS can deepen our appreciation of the individual lectures by giving them a larger context.

The entire PRS is included on the newest DVD-Rom of all the Pathwork lectures, now $30 at www.pathwork.org.
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Memorial Service for
Brooks Greene Barton

February 1 2014 1pm
Please RSVP
carrie@artofgod.org  805-646-1864
P.O. Box 1619, Ojai CA 93024
An additional memorial will be held in
Amherst, MA later in the year. 

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A Tribute to
Brooks Greene-Barton

Brooks died in December from a rare degenerative cognitive disease.  Alison and their 3 1/2 year old son had time to plan and say their goodbyes.   

Our relationship was complex; Alison was my Pathwork teacher and Helper for several years, and I attended their School of the Wounded Healer in Ojai for one year.  Brooks and I were classmates during my last 2 years of Helpership training, as he sought to integrate Pathwork more fully into his life and his international project, The Art of God. I spent many weekends at Matilija, the retreat community they owned, as a client, a student, and later as their friend and guest.  Alison was my supervisor while I was setting up my own Pathwork Transformation Programs in Australia, and both Alison and Brooks generously taught several weekend modules.   

Their unique personal, professional, and spiritual gifts were priceless to me. My students were able to experience distinctly different approaches to the Pathwork concepts, as we were chalk and cheese in terms of personalities. Alison used to say that we were friends because I was fast where she was slow, and where I was slow, she was fast. Brooks has a career in international real estate before finding his soul's work, where I had owned a manufacturing company; we shared an ability to ground abstract concepts through real world examples.

Brooks and Alison introduced me to Australia in 1998 by inviting me to accompany them to a Dolphin and Whale conference near Coffs Harbour. While they toured Queensland, I decided to spend one week on my own. On my last day in Hervey Bay I strolled along the extensive mud flats, thrilled to watch thousands of soldier crabs scattering in all directions or disappearing into moist sand if they could not outrun me.  It’s an intoxicating (if momentary) feeling of omnipotence. Years later I remembered that I stopped and whispered a brief prayer: God, I wish I deserved to live in a place like this.

A few weeks later, I received a letter in the mail from the conference organizer, Kamala.  To help pay off the the costs of the conference, she offered a plot of land in Nambucca Heads as a lottery prize.  Tickets were $100.  For weeks the letter tumbled around my desk, over and under paperwork.  I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, to send in the $100 — but what would I do with land in Australia if I won it?

I’ll fast-forward through the serendipitous events that supported me in moving to Melbourne in two years later.  In 2002, I traveled to the sleepy township of Nambucca Heads.to spend time with Kamala, who had become Alison's friend while living with a Helper in NYC a decade earlier, teaching her unique version of Brethwork. She showed me the lottery land, part of an environmentally protected development she'd created next to her home. Brooks' and Alison's retreat in Ojai was part of sacred Indian land, yet I had never been able to feel the 'vibe' that others seemed to be able to tune into. Halfway around the world, for the first time in my life, I felt in tune with a piece of land. The original winner had married after winning the prize and was living in another state. She was delighted to exchange the land for a down payment on a new home in the city. I was learning how intricate and precise the mechanism of following spiritual guidance was, I HAD won the lottery.  The higher 'ticket' cost ($57,000) felt like the price I had to pay for ignoring my original impulse. The bridge picture that I use for all my newsletters crosses a tidal bay and leads to a secluded beach. The prism effect seems to have been one more magical gift. 

I built a home on the land. Dreamtime was filled with the hum of cicadas, the calls of catbirds, the rhythm of crashing waves. Kookaburras announced sunset and sunrise so raucously that conversation was impossible. Alison and Brooks spent some of their rare vacation time there.

My intention is telling such stories is to share how profoundly different my life has been because I accepted the love Alison and Brooks offered. (Why stories, instead of just stating your feelings?)  Because even after 20 years of Pathwork sessions, classes, and workshops, feelings are not easy for me to express. However, I was able to I wholeheartedly embrace Eva Pierrakos’ favorite slogan: ‘your life doesn’t lie’. To know who I am, I can just look at my life. If I am a loving person, I will have stories to tell about love.  Brooks and I shared a similar reluctance about expressing our deepest personal feelings.  In our Helpership training class, we were partnered up by the teacher to gave practice sessions to each other. I was terrified of making freshman mistakes on someone who was already a teacher, and decided to wait for his spiritual team to help me out. He appreciated my humility, and also needed extra time to open up. Learning to wait for the soul's participation was one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned. It’s hard — really hard — to just ‘wait for it’.  Brooks helped me learn that.

Pathwork has taught me that each and every human being on the planet is here on a divine mission. It gives me great pleasure to connect with all of you.  My 4 year old granddaughter taught this way of saying grace at meals to her family. We hold hands and say:

Thank you, thank you, everyone.

 

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The Structure of the
Human Personality

Week 1: Quotes from the Path to the Real Self  pgs 1,2
Week 2:  Chart and diagram from The Undefended Self on Higher Self, Lower Self, and Mask pgs 1,2,3
Week 3: Review of Unity and Duality and how it is used by the lower self to limit choices pgs 1,2,4
Week 4: Worksheet on Co-operation and Obstruction of the Real Self PL 158 pgs 1,2,6,7

Quotes from Chapter 2 of The Path to the Real Self

By Eva Broch Pierrakos
Book or full text download available from www.pathwork.org

Before the self can be accepted and changed where necessary, it must first be thoroughly understood. And before this can even be attempted, the general structure of the human personality must be seen in its various layers and divisions.

Just as every human being is a higher or real self, so it can be stated that every human being has temporarily become also a lower self. (It is actually incorrect to state that one possesses either) Man may be as unaware of the existence of either. The truly great side of his being, as well as the artificial covering, disciplining the lower self away, as it were, often make the lower self undetectable. Only when man becomes aware of its existence, understands its workings, can he gradually dissolve it, for only then does he discover that selfishness and other character faults are no defense, nor do they serve him for any advantage, but are rather the opposite.

Superimposing right behavior cannot ever convince man that he is basically good, generous, kind. The only procedure affording him this awareness is the courage to first face that which is so opposite from what he wants to be. To contact this inner center is the inevitable outcome of a path such as this. It is important to understand that misconceptions and negative feelings cover the higher self . Getting to know his lower self, man must be prepared to meet it without self‐accusation and utter self‐rejection

It can thus be seen that the unconscious harbors both the higher and the lower self. The higher and the lower self also manifest in man's conscious mind. Not only moral and ethical traits, or their opposite, apply to either, but all sorts of other human aspects, such as talents, intelligence, accomplishments, health, stamina, energy, beauty ‐‐ or their opposites.

It is therefore that the searcher can find his higher self in some respects only after he has courageously faced his lower self. This he often fears and escapes from. True liberation occurs only when man no longer fears and avoids any aspect of his most hidden self.

The higher self is covered by the lower self, and the lower self is often covered by still another layer ‐ we might call it the mask self, or a false self, or the idealized self. This covering pretense is not only for the benefit of others, but often also in order to deceive oneself.  [See diagram from The Undefended Self by Susan Thesenga] 

Man consists of many components. This manifoldness is the cause of the rich potential he represents. But it is also the cause of confusion and inversion. When the different parts do not function harmoniously together, to mutually aid and complement one another, imbalance and disorder are the result.

The average human being does not have all his inner faculties in good working order, the way they are meant to function. As a result, man's degree of awareness is below par and he is only half alive ‐ often much less than that.

The real self is autonomous; it cannot possibly be divided within itself. The over‐layers, having come into being due to misunderstanding and ignorance, do not know of its quiet existence. They misinterpret its messages. The higher or real self is motivated by the greatest and widest possible range of vision. The lower self only sees the immediate issue, regardless of how misleading this may be. It is often impossible to immediately change the motivations of the lower self, but it is of utmost importance for an individual to be acutely aware of its presence, as well as of the presence of motivations of the real self. This self‐acceptance and

self‐honesty integrates the personality already considerably before lower motivations can genuinely disappear. This state of self‐awareness and acceptance of what one is, in a realistic spirit, is essential for unification.

Self‐awareness crystallizes the real self to such a degree that its messages are understood. The real message may be: "turn into myself, find myself and free all my inherent assets. I stagnate and do not fulfill myself. This is why I am unhappy." The misunderstood and misinterpreted message may be "I am hopelessly bad, wrong, inadequate. I am so imperfect that there is no hope for me." All human failings are exaggerated, if not on an outer thinking level, so in emotional reactions to oneself, manifest by the defenses one sets up in order to prevent criticisms from self or others.

The real self is never wrong. It does not adhere to blind, rigid rules. It is highly individual and unfailingly leads to fulfillment, fruition, constructive results for all concerned, without causing damage to anyone. The small, limited outer brain is often confronted with alternatives in which something is good, on the one hand, but bad on the other; favorable for one person, but detrimental for another. The inner center of one's being, which is The Reality Of Life , to be found deep within, accessible to all, transcends these manifestations of illusion, penetrating into the ultimate truth, where no such conflicts exist. And this applies to the most mundane of matters, as well as to the great, important issues of life.

The reason that the higher or the real self are interchangeable is that the real self is the only eternal, real, indestructible part of man. All other manifestations of man are of temporary duration, hence not real.

Today, it is known that every material object is energy. It required great scientific insight to realize that a simple piece of furniture, for example, is a power house of energy. The fact that this was ignored by mankind until quite recently did not change the truth.

Perhaps this makes it easier to understand that thoughts and feelings, will direction and emanation, are also potent energy. Inanimate objects are petrified energy, which must be released if the energy is to be activated. thoughts, feelings, will, are fluid , working , activated energy. Neither petrified energy of inanimate objects, nor fluid energy of human expressions, are visible to the naked eye.

Let us state once again: the aim of this path is to first find the significance of any forms of unhappiness, what misconception or false idea lies behind it. Stated in a different way, we may say that the elimination of false imprints simultaneously dissolves the lower self and brings out man's divine nature, thus liberating him from his shackles. Where man makes his mistake here is that he often tries to will the effect, disregarding that a cause exists.

The inner will functions due to a wholehearted decision, it wills out of conviction, independent deliberation and understanding, in freedom of choice, without force within or without. It does not will in order to avoid something negative, but ut wills for a positive purpose ‐ to attain something positive. Not obtaining this results at once causes no fright. Inner will can afford to be patient and can live without undue disturbance even when it does not succeed. It can stand frustration. Out will cannot; it believes to perish without its wish fulfillment. Consequently, outer will is strained, tense, anxious, ineffectual. Inner will is relaxed and free flowing. Upon close observation, outer will is felt to originate from the regions of the head; inner will from the region of the solar plexus.

If, to begin with, you simply determine and acknowledge where your will power comes from, by deeply listening into yourself, without trying to force anything (inner will cannot be forced, it can only be calmly activated), you will have accomplished a great deal. It sets you on the right road toward cultivation of self‐awareness; of determining what goes on in you. Suppose you have determined that inner will is lacking while, at the same time, you very much wish to pursue this path. By quietly observing this lack of inner will, you may then calmly and firmly express the desire to have it manifest. If this is done consistently and if you do not look for an answer in a tense, anxious way, you will find that something within yourself responds. You may become aware of this only later, perhaps it will first appear so natural that it almost happens without being apparently connected with your has in this respect.

[Suggested exercise:]  Express gently, but firmly, the wish to be in contact with your higher self, to have it manifest, ‐‐ whether this concerns inner will, inner wisdom or guidance, or any other facet of it ‐‐ it is bound to respond. Cultivating this desire by consciously formulating the thought is an indispensable prerequisite for activating the real self. It has to be "used" in order to eliminate what still covers it up and hinders it from full self‐expression. This may sound like a paradox, but it is not. As you put these pointers in practice, you will more and more convince yourself that the real self is a living reality, forever ready to serve you when you request its manifestation.

Please download the complete study guide from 
www.pathworksteps.org/teleconferenceschedules

Quotes from The Path to the Real Self © The Pathwork Foundation 1999 Full text may be downloaded from www.pathwork.org 

 

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Thank you

2013 donations covered all the hosting, and domain charges for www.pathworksteps.org, plus the monthly software costs fro Zoom.us, the service that allows us to hold online meetings. Thank you so much for your support!

Please consider making a donation to the International Pathwork Foundation at www.pathwork.org  They provide us with the lectures, list websites and local groups, and work to find new ways to support interest in Pathwork. The tasks they take care of may not be evident, I can only hope that we will never have to find out what it would be like without their support.

Thanks also to everyone who participated throughout 2013.  A group is only as good as its members. I had fun, and so I want to do it again and again!

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A New Direction

for the Pathwork Steps Google Group

After starting a new series of weekly teleconference meetings last year, I attempted a concurrent group forum using the Google Group software.  The idea was to offer a way to include those whose schedules conflicted with the meeting times, or who might prefer a written format to an oral one. It could also be a place to continue the reflections and sharings from the weekly meetings.

I also had a private agenda. I've been answering emails about Pathwork for over 15 years. It's one of my favorite ways of helping people, whether they are only looking for facts and information -- or asking incredibly difficult and challenging questions.  I wanted to encourage people to ask their questions in a more open environment, to share my responses, and to invite discussion, commentary, and perhaps some group exploration of a topic.

This patchwork (pun intended!) of agendas may have been well-intentioned, but group formats need clear direction to get started. The Pathwork Steps Google Group flopped.

A key step in the Pathwork process is to find, understand, and accept responsibility for our part in a disharmony, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem at first glance.

(So what's your part, Jan?)

I became just as inhibited about writing for a group as I imagine group members were when asked to share. Just because I can pound out a page or two answering an individual's question doesn't make that a fit 'column' for a forum. I began to realize how individualistic my responses were, often saying things in the privacy of a correspondence that I would extensively re-write before publishing in a newsletter for the general public. I gained empathy about people's reluctance to put things in writing.

I didn't want to promote a 'Dear Abby' or ''ask the pro' energy. Yet I feel at ease with the concepts, having explained them hundreds of times (even when / if I do it poorly) and used to expressing myself in written format. In trying to wanting to avoid looking bossy or arrogant, I missed opportunities to keep the energy going. I pooped the party.

Part of leading a group is demonstrating one's vision, manifesting it so that it can either inspire others or its limitations can become evident. I did not demonstrate my vision very well.

I also tried too hard to mimic the weekly teleconferences, instead of inviting creativity and new kinds of dialogue.  

There are few if any online Pathwork groups.  Dottie Titus facilitated the only one I know of (Pathwork Circle), and it was open to the public -- no prerequisites.  She said it was really tough to manage.  The Pathwork Leadership Circle, created as a forum for Pathwork teachers, community leaders, and Helpers has lost its energy over the years, and there are only 1-2 posts a month.  I feel that I overestimated my abilities, underestimated the problems, and then pulled back without continuing to look for solutions.

So between having a secret agenda (writing more often about Pathwork), perfectionism (wanting to be the perfect host), and not having enough experience with written group formats, when the energy of the group dissipated I withdrew (Reason type defense). My personal process is to figure out what happened, find and accept the lesson(s) that are offered to me, and then decide whether I want to re-engage or move on.

My Eros for what is possible using this format has returned. I'll be posting this note in the group.

Choose a screen name, and whether your email address can be used to receive private messages from other members. Select whether you want to receive each posting as it is made, a daily or weekly report containing all new postings, or just online access for when it suits you.You may quit the group with a simple click.

 Anyone can join, but I haven't figured out how to add members except by doing it manually myself or sending out individual invitations -- if anyone knows how to use the 'sign-up sheet' option, I'd love to hear about it!

I will continue to facilitate the group by monitoring postings.

J