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Pathwork Steps
2022 Study Guide Summaries
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2022 January Monthly Newsletter

Decision Making
PL 32

Study Guide SUMMARY
 
Week 1:   Deciding to Believe that All Things Work Together for Good
Week 2:   Self-Responsibility in Decision Making
Week 3:   Facing the inability to love; Resentment, Shame and Guilt
Week 4:   Positive and Negative Elements of Ambition
 
NEWS and NOTES
YouTube Video Links
 
Study Guide Highlights
Week 1 & 2 
Download the full study guide at www.janrigsby.org

Suggestions for Further Exploration
Reading and Film Suggestions

Study Guide Highlights
Week 3 & 4

Daily Review Pl 28
Online Study Guides
Suggestions for Pathwork Resources

 Free Weekly Teleconferences
Sharing and facilitated process work
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Fridays 2pm US Eastern
Sundays 10am US Eastern
Weekly subscription (also free) required for access
 
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YouTube Video Summary

December Video PL 170 part 2

https://youtu.be/A1-xXj519KI   :22 mins


November Video PL 170 part 1
https://youtu.be/7DWSB4qa-q4    :23 mins
Experiential Workshops
Experiential workshops on PL 32 will be held January 26, 28, 30 in place of the usual Week 4 meetings. Fee: US$10-40 -- or what works for you. A special Zoom link will be required. 
Downloads:  Workshop Details /  Suggestions and Guidelines
Week 1: Deciding to Believe that All Things Work Together for Good

 The true love of God means to work spiritually, to develop, and to get to know divine law in all its psychological aspects as they pertain to you personally.  In order to be able to do so, -- in order to get to know yourself thoroughly so that not only your deeds, your words, and your thoughts are in conformity with spiritual law, but also your emotions, -- you must love God.  (The latter is, of course, a lengthy process.)

As long as these words remain merely words for you, it is not sufficient.  You must come to the point when you deeply realize the truth of these words.  This is why I am giving each and every one of you this suggestion for meditation: 
PL 32
Exercise 1a: Meditation

Think of all the tragedies and difficulties and troubles of your life up to now ‑‑ past and present. 

If you can find some good in it, you will have accomplished a further step upwards. 

Reflect on the possibility that “there is no apparent tragedy, mishap, or misfortune that does not carry some good for you; that whatever happens must be for good.”

Allow your arguments against this possibility to come forward; do not hold them back.

Simply keep asking, what if whatever happens must be for good.
PL 32
Week 2: Self-Responsibility in Decision Making
 
The subject of decision is a very, very important one in man's life, for everything is a decision.  This is true not only of your deeds, your obvious and material choices, but it also involves every emotional attitude a decision holds. 
 
Even in the cases where one way would be right or better for you than the other alternatives, it is infinitely healthier for your soul, strange as this may appear at first, if you choose the wrong way but in the right attitude.
PL 32
Exercise 2a:

Have you made a real decision about your spiritual work and self-development? 


Or have you decided here and there superficially, not weighing, not facing what is involved.

And then, as a result of it, when things naturally do not turn out to your satisfaction, do you then feel thwarted? 

Do you then revolt against your self, your surroundings, and with life in general?
Law of Paying the Price
 
There is a price to be paid for each desired gratification. The Forces of Activity and Passivity -- Finding God's Will PL29;  Every advantage has its disadvantage. Images: The Damage They Do PL41; The disadvantageous side of each alternative or decision has to-be faced and accepted.  Decision Making PL32; The price for illusion is extremely high. The more you want to evade paying the natural and fair price, the heavier the toll becomes. This is unalterable law. The Abyss of Illusion -- Freedom & Self-Responsibility PL60.
The  Spiritual Principles with which We Manage Ourselves to Create Heaven on Earth  PC10

Law of Self-Responsibility
 
You create your own reality. More on Image-Finding  PL40l Your life experiences are a reflection of the beliefs in your soul. You should never believe for one instance that what you experience is unjust and unfair, no matter how much it may appear that way. In the last analysis, in absolute truth and reality, it is your misconception that has caused it. The Life Force in the Universe PL48l Only you create your own happiness and unhappiness. Nothing can come your way that is not self-produced. The Abyss of Illusion -Freedom & Self-Responsibility  PL60
The  Spiritual Principles with which We Manage Ourselves to Create Heaven on Earth  PC10
 
Examples of Pathwork Concepts in Everyday Life
Articles are added until the published date.

Life Kit from National Public Radio
A free weekly newsletter emphasizing life skills; this week, featuring procrastination, jealousy, waking up refreshed, apologies, burnout, and imposter syndrome!
Each segment contains a link to a 2-30 minute podcast.
Sample suggestions for procrastinating:
1. Identify small goals
2. Make a list of six things to work on the following day. Rank in order of true importance
3. Use natural patterns to your advantage; work on these 6 items during your most alert times.
4. Don't be too hard on yourself.
5. Plan ahead -- and delegate if you're procrastinating wellness and rest! 

Quotes for the New Year
from https://www.inspiringquotes.com 
Celebrate endings — for they precede new beginnings.
— Jonathan Lockwood Huie, author
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.
— Neil Gaiman
Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.
— Oprah Winfrey
Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a new year's prayer, not a resolution. I'm praying for courage.
— Susan Sontag
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
— Winston Churchill
We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives ... not looking for flaws but for potential.
— Ellen Goodman, writer
For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice.
— T.S. Eliot
What a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven't even happened yet.
— Anne Frank
Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake.
— Frances Bacon Sr.
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
— C.S. Lewis
With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.
— David Bowie

Week 3: Facing the inability to love; Resentment, Shame and Guilt
As long as you are not completely purified, your love cannot be divine and perfect.  Your love will be blurred in the measure to which you are still lacking purification. 
 
There are various ways in which, according to the complexities of an individual's character, this deviation from divine love may take place.  One way is that you put the loved one on too high a place.  In other words, you invest the loved one with a perfection he or she does not possess as yet.  And here you are doing a great wrong even though you may feel that this is really a proof of your love.  This is not true. 

It must be a burden to the loved one to be overestimated.  Sometimes consciously, though more often subconsciously, the particular person in question or the loved subject will know or feel it and will therefore feel a compulsion to live up to that idealized image. 

PL 32
Exercise 3a :

So I should like you to search within yourself, my friends: when you do love someone dear or close to you, do you unspokenly or even thoughtlessly demand too much perfection? 

In addition, there must be a lack of tolerance and compassion in you, a lack of being able to accept people as they are.

You should be able to love a person, accepting his imperfections, not having to close your eyes to them. 

In that way, you will really bestow a gift on the loved one, for he will then feel free to be himself and not be forced or burdened in any way. 
PL 32
Week 4: Positive and Negative Elements of Ambition

Original good quality: underlying factor was benevolence, harmony, a certain type of tolerance, a certain type of humility, by not having to stand out and shine, be better or higher than others. Ambition is often a price for what you desire. 

Lack of Ambition
 
  If you give in to your lack of ambition and then seem to be left wanting in one or more ways in life, you should realize you were not ready to pay a price that could perhaps only be paid by efforts that needed ambition. 
 
Spiritually, a lack of ambition is a very grave hindrance.  This sluggishness will prevent you from accomplishing your development, which alone can bring you true happiness and security.  If you lack this happiness and you are the possessor of this trait, you should not bear a grudge because of your unfulfilled needs, but clearly realize your decision in this case.

Excess Ambition:
 
As far as the opposite extreme, over-ambitiousness, is concerned, the original good quality is a strong will power, a readiness to pay the price in effort, a desire to work, to serve in the higher realms for others.  (In lower realms the goal becomes the self.) 
 
Use these positive aspects to cleanse this current of its exaggerated, distorted, and negative facets, which are a certain type of selfishness; a power drive; self righteousness; greed in a certain way (to have more, to be more). 
 
Often people with overambition have such a strong desire current that they become ruthless in gaining their goal at the cost of others. 
PL 32
Exercise 4a:

Meditate upon this weakness from this angle:

"If I have no ambition; if it is so difficult for me that whatever I do goes against my grain and I must force myself to do it; if I cannot do it with enthusiasm and real will power; and if I still desire that which is rightfully mine if I were not to feel that way, my emotions want to steal something. I desire to steal the happiness or any other result I desire." 
PL 32
Exercise 4b:

Explore some quality you “lack”.

Find your decision not to develop it.
Material below appears in each monthly newsletter:

Daily Review

"When you ponder over an accumulation of days and notice of your reactions, you will undoubtedly find a recurrent pattern." 

Exercise: Keep a record of incidents that disturb you. Record your most immediate feelings and reactions, even if these are obviously short-sighted or at odds with your values and beliefs. Shift or narrow your focus as needed.

The Guide refers to Daily Review as ‘spiritual hygiene’. 
Online study guide from Daily Review PL 28 illustrated below:
Graphic by Online Particpant Shakila F.

Daily Review 1.0  from The Call   PL 17
Let the whole day pass in front of your eyes, in your memory, and think of everything that has happened that has given you in some way a disharmonious feeling or reaction.  
At first these incidents will appear entirely unconnected and isolated; they will be meaningless for you at the beginning.  But later on, you will begin to sense -- at first, and then clearly understand, a pattern.  
If you follow this through for some time to come, really faithfully (not just once or twice ‑‑ that will not do you any good) but regularly and faithfully for some time, you will, after a while, see a clear pattern coming out of it. 

Daily Review 3.0 from The Capacity to Wish: Healthy and Unhealthy Motives in Desire PL 56
Learn to investigate your reactions, and ask yourself what the meaning and further significance of them may be.
What to they imply?
What lies behind the emotions you register in the most casual incidents of your life?
What is the emotion you register just at first, and what is behind it?

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Free Pathwork Resources

Listening to the Lectures: Free Downloads
Gary Volbracht created his own recordings of all 258 printed Lectures.  These are available on iTunes at no charge, and can be downloaded individually.  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pathwork-lectures-by-eva-pierrakos/id819545226?mt=2
His current project is preparing audio and video materials for teaching and studying the lectures in a devotional format.  His work can be downloaded here as a .zip file:
https://www.garyvollbracht.com/pathwork-lectures/pathwork-lectures-devotional-format/

Researching the Lectures Online
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Study Guides © Jan Rigsby 2021
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