Materialism: A Limitation of Life
Materialism: a limitation of life
By Jan Roelofs and David A. Schwerin Ph.D. *
One of the greatest struggles for any human being is to overcome the split between the visible and the invisible world. The visible world is the world we call ‘reality’. Everything that is real to our senses – maybe with the help of machinery that helps and amplifies the powers of the senses, like microscopes, computers, scanners etcetera – belongs to this world. It is the everyday world of food, cars, products, buildings, advertising, economy, careers, science, power, MONEY!
For many people this is all the reality there is. In their worldview there is no space for the invisible, the immaterial, the spiritual. And there is nothing wrong with that, because you can very well live a happy and contented life, limiting yourself to this sphere. Although that’s exactly what it is: a limitation of life. When you grow up and learn to find your way in the material world, there will be many moments that reality itself wants to open up into larger dimensions, letting in aspects of the immaterial world. Any of these moments will be a crossroads for you: are you willing to grow? Are you ready for a larger vision? Are you eager enough to leave behind the wellknown comfort of the tangible reality, to journey into space in which at first nothing seems to be there?
“The power of spiritual forces in the Universe – how active it is everywhere. Invisible to the eyes, and impalpable to the senses, it is inherent in all things, and nothing can escape its operation.” Confucius
When we take a closer look at the material dimension, we can of course already see aspects of immateriality. The food you eat consists of material that was alive, until it became something to eat. You can see whether something is alive or not, we all know very well the difference between a cow and a steak. But can you really touch this difference, do you really understand it? You can measure it, you can explain it, you can experience it, but could you produce it? Create it? Doesn’t it essentially stay a mystery?
And the car you maybe drive in, it’s all mechanics and electronics. But where did that beautiful design come from? Out of the head of the designer? Was his or her inspiration a matter of neurons bumping into each other? Was it a matter of coincidence?
A mix of material and immaterial reality
And so we can go on, but I think I’ve made my point: we tend to define our reality as being material, but at closer look we live in a mix of material and immaterial reality. This is already a step ahead from the stark materialism that serves as our defense line when things get tricky. We’ve all experienced it: when stress levels rise, our perception of life gets narrowed down to the bare essentials: only matter matters. The larger vision disappears in a cloud of fear and our survival instinct focuses exclusively on tangible things like food, water, shelter, warmth. It’s only when these things are provided, that we can relax in a more spacious mood that once again gives room to the more immaterial side of life.
This is normal. It belongs to our human condition and has served the human species in it’s evolution on the planet. But once our biological needs are met, life wants us to take a next step. In the comfort of material abundance, we tend to forget this. In the Pathwork lectures (**) the reality of the material level is acknowledged, as is the need to achieve a healthy balance between the material and immaterial aspects of life, but the Pathwork takes a step further. This is a step which is hard for us to take, because all our physical senses point the other way. Yet the Pathwork does not differ from many other spiritual traditions in its fundamental statement, which is: ultimately only the immaterial level is real.
Living the full potential of human life
This is a hard message to swallow when you’re hungry, out of a job, ill, destitute or involved in deep conflict. Luckily the Pathwork takes us on a, gradually evolving course in what it means to live the full potential of a human life. Of all the 258 Pathwork lectures, many deal with the more mundane realities of overcoming your fear, pride and self-will, discovering the inner negativity (our Lower Nature or as Pathwork terms it: ‘The Lower Self’) which helps to shape our life’s experiences, acknowledging our lack of healthy self-love, learning to create the life we want, and many more guidelines to help you lead a more fullfilling life.
But in the end Pathwork is not about becoming A Better Person. In the end Pathwork is about self-realization or maybe even enlightenment. In this article I want to focus on one of the big obstacles in reaching this enlightenment which is in the view of the Pathwork the ultimate goal of every human life.
“In this state there is no fear. A sense of being utterly safe and at home in the world permeates your whole being: A sense of security about life, yourself, all things, that might perhaps also be described as "being cozy" with life. Life fits you like a glove.”
Pathwork Lecture 243: The great existential fear and longing
But to reach this state, you have to overcome the obstacles which keep you in a state of separation and isolation. This is the human adventure. It takes a lot of self-searching to recognize, acknowledge and let go of the urge to hurt other people not only on the superficial level but also on the deeper levels of our personality. Honesty and forgiveness towards ourselves help us make the adventure easier and more enjoyable. Along the way we must battle our lower nature with its destructive materialistic excesses.
The materialistic aspects of life
When you’re caught in this materialistic mindset there is no such thing as ‘Inner Space’. Only that which is tangible, measurable, observable by the senses is real. The rest is illusion, fantasy, daydreaming, wishful thinking, nonsense. According to the Pathwork lectures this materialistic vision has gained importance over the last century and is now the leading problem in the modern world. It is more subtle, less black-and-white than the principle of plain destructiveness, for materialism has a positive and a negative side. It therefore demands more from us human beings in terms of self-responsibility.
The positive side of materialism is that is has brought material abundance to an increasingly larger part of the world population in countries like Brazil, India and China.
The negative side of materialism is the denial of the lifeforce itself, the misconception that there is no such thing as spiritual reality. It is very tempting and therefore easy to narrow down your worldview to the tangible reality of matter, money and markets. This can be an insidious process in which you gradually lose sight of the qualities that also make life on earth worthwile: the awe of nature, the opportunity to develop connections and relationships. If everything I do is oriented towards a goal, a result which I strive for, all my human relationships are coloured by efficiency and effectiveness. Affection evaporates.
The great sages of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism didn’t take the materialistic vision as basis for reflection on the world, but used social behaviour and human manners as the foundation for the deeper layers of their philosophy of life. For Taoism, living in accordance with the natural world and it’s flow of life was a basic precept. The central tenet of Confucianism is the same as the ’categorical imperatif’ of the German philosopher Immanual Kant: “what you don’t wish for yourself, don’t wish it for another.” The basic principle of Buddhism is that suffering is caused by attachment, of which attachment to material things is a good candidate for the number one obstacle.
We can tap into the wisdom of all these sources and take in the quotes of wise men from Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism and other traditions.
“A drop of tenderness is more than money and power.” Buddha
“Having enough is happiness. Having more than enough brings unhappiness. This goes for all things, especially for money.” Lao Tse
“The noble man knows what is virtuous. The common man knows what is profitable.” Confucius
“There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed.” Gandhi
But what do we dó with all this wisdom?
‘Gross National Product’ or ‘Gross National Happiness’?
The exclusive emphasis on the material, external side of reality has in the western world led to an increasing sense of pointlessness. In the Netherlands, more than a million people (on a population of 16 million) daily take tranquillizers to drug out the pain of this. 1,4 million Dutchmen and women are heavy drinkers. These figures do not differ greatly from those in other western countries. The exclusive focus on ‘Gross National Product’ does not seem to make us happy. We could take as an inspiring example the kingdom of Bhutan where the king (in 1972) introduced ‘Gross National Happiness’ as an alternative. The four pillars of this GNH are: reasonable and sustainable social-economic development, conservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment and good corporate government. Buthan developed a 750 page guideline to calculate the GNH, containing questionaires on 33 indicators like psychological welfare, health, education, culture, government, ecology, life standard and use of time.
Over the years the concept of GNH drew worldwide attention, culminating in a UN Conference on the subject in 2012. Several western governments like France and Great Britain followed the Bhutanese approach. This little Himalayan kingdom, one of the poorer countries in the world, thus managed to exert an influence, not from a material source but from a spiritual inspiration.
This is something which is asked from all of us: to embody our spiritual inspiration. No matter what you call it, or which wisdom you quote, in the end it comes down to how you live your life. It is this inspiration that defines the true value of everything we do, own or long for. Our daily reality can be very misleading in this, because it tends to make us focus on the tangible. In our everyday chores, whether it is in the office, in the factory, , in the kitchen or at school , all our energies are focused on the manipulation of things. Nothing wrong with that. We need to do this, in order to do our job the way we should.
Sudden wealth syndrome
But if we convince ourselves that our ultimate goal is in the material, for instance: ‘getting rich’, we may find one day that this leads us nowhere. Like the succesful American entrepreneur Markus Persson who sold his company Minecraft to Microsoft, became a billionnaire but also started suffering from the ‘sudden wealth syndrome’. "The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance," he tweeted. "Hanging out in Ibiza with a bunch of friends and partying with famous people, able to do whatever I want, and I've never felt more isolated." He also wrote that employees of his company "hate me now," and that he found a "great girl, but she's afraid of me and my life style and went with a normal person instead."
Although many of us would no doubt gladly accept Markus’s problems along with his money, the billionaire points to the deep truth that money doesn’t make you happy. And neither does lack of money. The Pathwork lectures encourage us to look for our happiness in another direction. Making money is fine, but don’t let the focus on the outer world distract you from the inner world, where the real, ultimately satisfying wealth is to be found.
“People think that people can live better only if they have more knowledge, technology, machines, and material wealth. Therefore people produce, consume, and discharge more and more. But mass production, mass consumption and mass emissions are not sustainable. Internal transcendence is a much wiser way for people to pursue a better life.” (Lu Feng, Professor, Director of Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University)
“Go inside”, the Pathwork stresses again and again, and once we take up this inner journey we will – after many travel adventures - find the true Source of our wellbeing, hidden deep inside. Each of us carries a forgotten treasure, which is called in the terminology of the Pathwork: “The Higher Self’. Each of us is born with this core of Light, Love and Truth but when we grow up in this world with it’s material distractions most of us lose sight of this jewel. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can find your way back by being willing to make the journey through the two layers that obstruct your contact with your ‘Higher Self’.
The Idealized self-image
The first, outer layer is the ‘idealized self-image’ or mask self. It’s what in China is called ‘The Great Face’. It is the image of what our ego believes should reflect who we are: ‘If I’m like this, I’m good’. Building on all the messages we get from our surroundings (‘No, don’t do that’, ‘Keep your hands off’, “Shame on you’, ‘Well done, now you’re a good girl/boy’) we learn how to behave in order to get approval. Everything that doesn’t fit into the idealized self image gets pushed underground. The idealized self-image is the main instrument people use to protect themselves against painful experiences. From the ego’s point of view, the purpose of the idealized self-image is to prevent mishaps and unhappiness and to prop up self-confidence. It also reflects the ego's wish to be envied and admired by others. It’s entirely possible that your idealized self-image contains traits and characteristics that your real self possesses, but the motive behind the idealized self-image is pretense: you pretend ‘as if’. Therefore the idealized self-image is always artificial and unreal.
The more we build up the idealized self image, the more we begin to believe in it. And the more we believe in it, the more we convince ourselves that the mask is actually real, the more we become alienated from our inner reality. In the first part of our life – let’s say in the first half – that’s not yet a big problem. You’re still busy building up your life, making your ego strong and successful. But slowly and gradually the satisfaction of outer and material things will lessen, and you begin to notice an emptiness inside. A gnawing feeling of loss confuses you, but it also prepares you for change and further growth.
One day you’ll find you’re ready for fundamental change. But how to do that? The rigid patterns of the mask layer are difficult to change because this layer itself lacks the energy needed for real – not superficial – transformation. If you stick to this level you will often see that changes are only temporary: as soon as the desire for change disappears, you fall back in the old pattern. For real transformation we have to go a level deeper, the Pathwork lectures say. That takes courage, because we don’t know what’s below this comfortable surface, although we have the unpleasant suspicion that it’s not flattering.
The Lower Self
And that’s right. For beneath the Mask Self lurks the Lower Self with its destructivity and negativity. See it as a part of your clothing, not the essence of your soul. Where connectedness is a central characteristic of the Higher Self and of spiritual reality itself, the essence of the Lower Self is separation. It is negative, destructive, and it fights everyone and everything, it’s the enemy within. If you can muster the courage to go on the inner journey and penetrate through the superficial, artificial but well-known layer of the Mask Self, you’ll find yourself in the domain of the Lower Self. It’s very understandable that we all cling to the Mask Self because the Lower Self is nasty, hateful, cruel, violent, ruthless, hostile, totally egotistic, malicious, forcing, negative, and destructive.
By using the idealized self image or the mask self to suppress all of this, we also block the powerful energy that the Lower Self contains. The Lower Self is not to be rejected, but transformed. In the Pathwork vision, every manifestation of negativity is a distortion of the original pure and positive energy. The only way to free this original pure energy and make it available to the complete, integrated personality is to enter this frightening, abhorrent area of your inner world. Then you can direct the light of consciousness onto the darkness and dissolve the distortions and release the powerful energy locked in there to be turned to creative and positive uses.
If you face the demons within you will find that this is liberating and the entrance to the world of the Higher Self. Raising your consiousness takes you there. Conscious recognition of the Mask Self brings you into contact with your Lower Self, and transforming the Lower Self re-establishes your contact with the Higher Self.
Core: Higher Self
The Higher Self is not some mysterious energy with which we may be able, in the very distant future, after long and arduous work, with the help of gurus and complicated rituals, to make contact, if we’re lucky. The Higher Self is here right now.
Every time you do something from your heart, without expecting or demanding anything in return, you’re in contact with your Higher Self. Your Higher Self is your connection to the larger whole, to the life force, to the Divine. It is the source from which you live when you’re happy, when you feel connected with life in you and life around you. All your good, loving, true and pure impulses originate from your Higher Self. It is the essence of our souls; it is who we really, fundamentally are.
However, the term ‘your’ Higher Self is a little bit misleading, because the Higher Self is that which connects us all, and it transcends the individual level. You could also call it ‘God’, or Tao or ‘Life’, or ‘Light’, or ‘the Whole.’
So from the outside to the inside the order is: Mask Self, Lower Self, Higher Self. This is also the route our process of expanding consiousness must take. When we recognize and see through our Mask -- our idealized self-image -- we can start taking responsibility for our Lower Self. The more we do that, the more the Lower Self dissolves, and that angry and stagnant energy transforms into the original positive and creative energy of the Higher Self.
The nearer you get to your essence, the more you’ll be able to feel that, in reality, our personalities are presented to the outside world in a strangely inverted order. What we think is the best is really the worst. Your core is the Higher Self. Due to misconceptions and destructiveness it is covered over by the Lower Self.
But it’s not true: in essence you’re not the negative traits you fear to be: you’re Love, you’re Light, You’re Life! All this is only covered up and then uncovered by each one of us, wherever we live, whatever our circumstances are. If you can muster the courage to look deep inside yourself, you’ll see that the ground you stand on is made of gold. Some time ago I discovered this gold.
Rock bottom
In a meditation I focus on the question: why can’t I earn enough money? I see a plastic inflatable boat bobbing on the waves and have the association that this is my ego, which is often just hovering round a bit. ‘Where should I go, what should I do?’ I ask with a feeling of despair. An inner voice says: ‘You don’t have to go anywhere.’ ‘Yeah yeah’, I think cynically, filling in the rest of the answer: ‘I’m already there, right?’ I sigh. ‘What’s the purpose of such an answer? This does not solve my problems, does it?’ For a while I sit on my cushion, angrily observing my breathing.
Then a thought strikes: what if I let go of this ego and see what happens? I imagine pricking a hole in the plastic boat. The air hisses out, I sink and disappear under water. When I’m slowly going down I see fish swimming around me with suprised looks: ‘What are yóu doing here?’ Then I touch the bottom of the sea. I sit on the floor, and look around. What now? I’ve no idea. Thoughtlessly I move my hand over the ocean floor, pushing the sand aside, suddenly seeing something sparkle. What’s that? With both hands I push more sand away, and to my amazement I see that the bottom is made of gold. Not just one piece of it, everywhere I wipe the sand away: gold all over. The whole seabottom is made of pure gold! I try with my fingers to wiggle a piece of this gold loose so I can take it up with me but no, it’s all solid. Not a crack. The only thing I can do is look at it and sit on it.
Activating the larger consciousness in you
If we focus exclusively on the outer gold, we loose the inner gold. And it’s only the inner gold that gives us real satisfaction, happiness, fulfillment, lasting inner peace. In our age it seems as if many of us are mice, being guided by an insatiable craving for nice, juicy bits of cheese, sadly ending up in a mouse trap. Each in our own personalized, customized, comfortable version of the limitation of life. Sounds like your life? Time to wake up!
There is a larger consciousness in all of us. It’s waiting to liberate us from our mouse trap. It wants to end the limitation of our lives, but it needs to be activated. The Pathwork Lectures show you how you can do that. The promise of the Pathwork is no mean thing:
“When you function from the liberated center of your innermost self, you attract all the abundance of life to you, but you do not depend on it. It enriches you and is a fulfillment of a legitimate need, but it is not the substance of life. The substance is within.” Pathwork Lecture 204: “What is the Path?”
* Jan Roelofs was trained as a Pathwork Helper in the Netherlands. After many years of Pathwork experience, he wrote the Pathwork Travelguide, which was published in Holland in 2011, and in the U.S in 2013.
David A. Schwerin, PhD., is the author of Conscious Capitalism: Principles for Prosperity and Conscious Globalism: What’s wrong with the world and how to fix it. (Social Sciences Academic Press (China). Dr. Schwerin is a Pathwork teacher who has studied Pathwork for over two decades. For this article some material is used from the Pathwork Travelguide.
** The Pathwork Foundation is an international non-profit organization whose lectures, books and related material present a profound psychological cosmology. The Foundation is overseen by a Board of Trustees but the teaching and associated programs are carried out by local and regional organizations that are largely autonomous. These local affiliates are located throughout the world with a concentration in North and South America, Europe and Australia. Pathwork books and lectures have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Serbian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian and Dutch. Pathwork books written in Portuguese and Dutch are currently being translated into English and other translations are in progress. The 258 lectures that comprise the core of the Pathwork are available free for download at www.pathwork.org
