Living an Undefended Soul Infused Life
“An inner voice tells you that there is much more to your life and yourself than you are capable of experiencing at the present moment.” Pathwork Lecture 204. “What is the Path?” from the book “The Undefended Self-Living the Pathwork” by Susan Thesenga, Based on material created by Eva Pirerakos.
( All quotes below signified by ST are from this book)
So, what is it that keeps us from living and becoming this person that we long to be?
What if the world was designed for you to come up against obstacles/ problem/people, who help you define who you really are. Abraham Hicks (Ester and Jerry Hicks) describe it as “Knowing what you don’t want, so you can know what you do want” Consider the possibility that the world is perfect just the way it is. That’s what Byron Katie says in “Loving What Is”. And Barbara Brennan, whose school I attended for four years, teaches that all our traumas/trials that we’ve experienced throughout life bring more of our Divine Essence into our beingness, when we look at the images and beliefs around them and heal them.
”Our life experiences will bring us lessons about how to live from the ever-flowing source within us. It will bring us lessons about those aspects of ourselves not yet unified with this source.” ST
WOW! What would it be like to just live one day at a time, seeing what’s right in front of me, as an opportunity to become more of ME?
That is what Radiant Living is all about. Using the work from some of my favorite teachers, you will have the opportunity to learn some new skills and information that will help you uncover, old images and beliefs that keep you blocked /locked in old patterns, and integrate them into an alive free flowing individual; an undefended soul-infused authentic being.
Susan Thensenga, describes it like this. “The higher self, lower self and the mask coexist within each human beings. Our job is to stay open to receive who we are moment to moment, to not reject whatever is within us. In this way we can gradually release the mask, face and transform the lower self, and learn to identify with and express the higher self.” ST
Lower Self: “The lower self is the creative center of our negative attitudes and feelings toward self and others, arising out of our egocentric separateness from the totality of life; It is our defense against pain, our numbness to feeling, our disconnection from ourselves and from other people. We project onto others the role of “enemy,” thus enabling us to treat them badly, forcing them to play a part in our own secret melodramas, rather than respecting their God-given integrity. The lower self stems from the false belief that our separate body-mind can live a life severed from the fabric made up of all other living being and of which we are, in fact, but a single, interwoven strand. The essence of the lower self is the negative intention to stand apart from the whole.” ST
“When we reclaim those negative attributes within ourselves that we project onto others we will have fewer enemies. When we allow ourselves to expand our individual boundaries to include an identity with other humans and nature we will be able to live in greater harmony with the whole of life.” Susan Thesenga
Higher Self : “ He who consciously and deliberately makes the decision and commits himself to living his life for the primary purpose of activating the real or higher self, he alone can find genuine peace.” Pathwork Lecture 145, “Responding to the Call of Life”
“The higher self is our personal embodiment of and connection to the universal spirit that moves through all things. Meeting the higher self is an experience of ourselves as filled and flowing with the spirit, the Life Force, or God. It is an experience usually accompanied by relief, as we feel we are coming home to our true identity, remembering who we really are.” ST
“The call of the soul to grow spiritually comes to us in the form of our personal longings. Every human being longs for something we believe will make our lives more fulfilling. All longing is…to experience a more loving relatedness to self, to other, to our environment and to God.” ST
The Mask: The mask is an attempt to rise above our faults and our pain, to deny our ordinariness and our pettiness.
“The mask self is the outer layer of the personality, the self we superficially identify with, the face we show to the world. It is the self we think we ought to be or wish we could be, based on idealized mental images. The pretense of the mask keep us from the reality of all that we are, moment to moment… The mask stems from our often frantic and always doomed attempts to live up to a “perfect” ideal, and idealized self-image…Perfectionism is a central block to happiness, preventing our ability to relax and accept the imperfections of the here and now.” ST
“Whether we create the mask of the good girl or boy, or powerful man or woman, the striving student or the self assuredteacher, the needy child or the competent adult, naïve seeker, or the worldly cynic our masks are an attempt to rise above our faults and our pain, to deny our ordinariness and our pettiness.”
“The vastness of our human potential can become ours only when we first dare to be exactly and only who we are moment to moment, however petty or fearful, grand or holy, this might temporarily be.” ST
Does that mean we go around spewing our ugly selves all over others, UH, NO, it means being honest with ourselves. Not just reacting or defending, but observing, ‘Seeing, What’s here now.”
“Spiritual work is the discipline of slowly, steadily expanding the boundaries of self to integrate into awareness more and more of who we are.” ST
“The path to the real self includes learning to shed our mask, accepting our “lower” imperfect human nature and embracing our “higher” perfect spiritual nature. Spiritual growth is movement toward the undefended self, the self that neither masks our human flaws nor denies our spiritual essence. Expanding our self-awareness and self-acceptance in these ways will bring us the deepest possible harmony and contentment in life, and will provide the most solid basis for true self-esteem.” ST
“When you muster the courage to become your real self, even though it would seem much less than the idealized self, you will find that it is much more.” Pathwork Lecture 83, “The Idealized Self Image”
Candace Pert, a cell biologist, who discovered the ‘molecule of emotion’ says that our body is our subconscious. “The cellular level, where emotions are instigated is also where unexpressed emotions are stored. The catharsis of illness expresses the sudden overwhelming release of information that has been trapped in our bodies. What Freud termed the ‘subconscious mind’ is actually a measurable physical process . In other words, there is no ‘mind-body problem’. Your body is your subconscious.
Using your body as your monitor throughout this work is key. It is amazing and can bring you such wisdom and insight. Your body is a physical manifestation of all the levels of the field: mental, emotional, spiritual. It carries all of it. (Brennan Healing Science) The body is our teacher, letting us know when the higher self, mask, lower self, or other defense patterns are running the show.
In the Radiant Living Listening group sessions offered on Wednesday evenings we will be using our emotions to build a village of support around ourselves, as we journey into this self discovery, releasing old blocks and patterns, so that we can live our dreams and passion, as undefended soul-infused beings.