“Every human being is continuously confronted with the deep problem of how to handle the destructive forces residing within himself and within those others with whom he has to deal. This problem seems an unending one, for ever since mankind has existed and can think, theories and philosophies have been built around it. And man’s search, directly or indirectly, has always been concerned with this great predicament. For all suffering really comes exclusively from one’s own destructiveness, negativity, or evil — whatever name you give it. The great difficulty man is up against in this respect is that in his mind with which he tries to solve this problem, he is within the system of duality. He conceives of two opposite forces: a constructive one as opposed to a destructive one, good as opposed to evil. The moment he becomes involved in this kind of conceptualizing, he is unable to solve the problem. For he begins to negate, deny, evade, repress that in him which is indeed destructive. Consequently he is partially unaware of its existence and totally incapable of seeing it and the way in which it manifests. In other words, he is forced to act out the destructiveness indirectly — with damaging results nonetheless. Thus guilt compounds, because the evil which he hoped to eliminate only increases when it is repressed and acted out indirectly.

“In this dualistic approach man becomes split off within himself, for he rejects a whole part of himself, which is essential, potent creative energy and without which he can never be a full human being. His sense of awareness dims as a result of repressing the undesirable part of himself. The less awareness, the weaker he is. He becomes more confused and less able to solve this, or any other, problem. The pathwork is, of course, primarily concerned with facing these undesirable parts and aspects in order to remove the self-imposed blindness. It is found again and again that such confrontation, rather than bringing devastation as it is feared, wakes up vital energy and makes you a more whole person. But the problem which still remains for all of you is how to cope with this undesirable material that begins to manifest.” (PL #184)