PL 183 The Spiritual Meaning of Crisis
Video Summary by Jan Rigsby  20 mins
https://youtu.be/x4zwV33JgPo 
Subtitles edited by Shakila Faqeeri

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Jan Rigsby (Host): I'm going to go over the
arc, the different sections of the study guide

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on Pathwork Lecture 183, the Spiritual Meaning
of Crisis.

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So I divided it up into four different sections
as usual. The first section was on defining

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crisis. The Guide expresses that crisis is an
attempt of nature to affect change. And in

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other areas, the lectures say that everything
on this earth reflects a spiritual truth. The

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interpretation may not reflect that, but the
actual event does reflect a spiritual truth. So

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that you can take the definition of crisis as
stagnation and apply it to geology--to where

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two tectonic plates are supposed to slip on
each other and move slowly over time. And they

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get stuck! And the forces build up, and build
up, and build up until an abrupt break has to

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occur. And in the real world, when an abrupt
break happens, it's an earthquake! And it can

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be a pretty big one. And mountains fall, cities
crumble, people get hurt. But if you'll keep in

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mind the definition of crisis, meaning the
attempt of nature to affect change, it is part

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of the organic growth of the planet for the
tectonic plates to move. So that mountains are

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created, but they're created slowly, gradually,
over time.

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Same thing is true when you get down to an
individual example of crisis. Crisis means that

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something has to change and it's stuck. And at
some point, change has to occur without

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cooperation, without grace, without our
conscious permission, without being able to

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manage the after-effects.

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So, the corollary of that would be if you don't
want crisis to happen, it is important to look

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at factors and see where places are getting a
little bit stuck. And lubricate, allow, accept,

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explore, examine, experiment with change so
that the change that is necessary won't become

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abrupt. Now, I could think of 20 different
examples of this, 100 different examples. But

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sometimes it's easier to just think in terms of
one or two like tectonic plates.

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There is another example that is present in my
energy system and my presentations during this

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month and last. And that is, I'm going to use
that as an example. My son died unexpectedly in

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May. I wondered if I should continue with the
online meetings or cancel them. Now, why would

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I cancel them? Because a distraught parent is
not a good therapist. And a needy person is not

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a good therapist. And a person who can't get
their head together is not a good therapist.

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So, there would be many practical reasons to
give the clients a break while I took care of

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of my emotional needs.

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However, Pathwork may not be an egalitarian
community. We don't just sit around and chat

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together. But it is a community. And I am a
member of the communities that I have created

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over time. And I feel supported by these
communities, even though I am facilitating,

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rather than usually participating. So I wanted
to continue.

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So how to avoid crisis? How to avoid a conflict
here? And so I tried to be open to what is

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right. What is right for me? And what is right
for the community? And what entered into my

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mind at that point, is a feeling that I'd had
off and on for months.

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And that was that I'm a very strong
facilitator. And I run a somewhat authoritarian

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process group to create a safe container for
the person who is revealing themselves.

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And that can lead to shutting down a little
experimentation, creativity, unstructured

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sharing. And I wondered... I wondered if people
might like to use the groups with me holding as

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gatekeeper, but not process.

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So, I always fall back to the concept of
Pathwork Lecture 143, the concept of unity and

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duality, instead of "all or nothing" in the
group/out of the group.

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What if I could find a way to be in the group,
but not take the lead majority of the time?

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So what I did was I offered to the group an
experiment. There is a process called

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"inspiraling" that is used in Pathwork and in
other places. I actually learned the essence of

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it from someone who taught how Quakers operate
in their communities. And the essence is to

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give everybody time to speak, but not go on and
on and on. But just to speak and then hear

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everyone else. And then speak and hear everyone
else. And what happens is that there is a group

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consciousness that can emerge, if this process
is gentle, and honest, and there is a positive

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intention going on. So it may not be as easy to
create an "inspiral" in any random group. But

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it is possible to do that in Pathwork.

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So, I offered to the participants of the June
meetings that we would "inspiral" for an hour

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of the hour and a half meetings. And then if
somebody wanted to process, I'd be willing to

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do that,  facilitate that for the last half
hour. And so we did that. There are three

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different groups, populated by three different
groups of individuals. So each group is

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different in a modest way. And some are
crossovers. And it was awkward.

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"You mean you just want me to talk?" Yeah, I
just want you to talk, just share a few

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sentences.

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"And you're not going to help?" No, I'm just
going to hear you.

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And this also allowed me a place to share,
hopefully with some, also, with some sense of

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limits, not to misuse that ability, but a place
to just share in turn.

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And throughout the month, people got used to
it.

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And we found this happening where I keep making
this movement with my hands, like a whirlpool.

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So we found that after the first few "I did
this" and "you did that" and "he did the

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other." That on the second or third round, we
were sharing "well, you know, he said this" and

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"I relate to that" and "she said that" and "I
relate in this way." Not commenting upon other

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people sharing, but building, building a deeper
sense of universal experience,

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Each person having a facet of a certain type of
experience.

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So, in one particular meeting, we started off
and we wound up very quickly on the track of

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feeling that turns out a lot of the people on
that particular meeting felt like they were

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introverts. And one person shared about that
experience, and then another person who shared.

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And pretty soon we're all sharing about our
experience of being an introvert in a world

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that tends to honour and appreciate extroverts.
It was a very deep experience, unexpected. And

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while we don't come to conclusions in such
explorations, there's a feeling of really

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hearing someone else's experience.

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And throughout the month, I vented some of my
grief. I expressed some of the things that were

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on my mind. And I feel that I got through my
process much more quickly by being a part of

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the group than by attempting to stand back and
hold on to my feelings and help others with

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theirs. Now, I give that as a somewhat lengthy
example of if crisis is an attempt of nature to

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affect change...then by not resisting the
change, I managed not to go into crisis by

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either behaving badly as a
therapist/facilitator, but also by not

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isolating myself from the possibility of
misbehaving or mismanagement. By bringing in

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what might help other people, as well as
myself, I was responding to a vague sense that

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we might want to shift the format a little bit.
That there were other possibilities that hadn't

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been explored. So my so-called "weakness" in
that moment allowed for other people to feel a

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different way of being together in community
and in discussion. So that's an example of how

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crisis can be averted with a willingness to
shift, change, explore, experiment. Now as,

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also as part of this month, I perhaps overused
the diagram or diagrams, I found online of

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Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And they are
represented as triangles with lines between.

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And there's four or five levels. And I found
that I didn't want to explain these to people.

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I wanted to just let them subliminally see
them. And see if they could relate how they

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wanted to relate to the text.

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That may have been a little bit too subtle.

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My intention was that if you're going to manage
crisis, it is important to know at what level

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you're working on. There is a level of minimal
needs or physiological safety that have nothing

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to do with feeling good. They have to do with
staying alive. In a discussion the other day we

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were talking about spiritual healing. And the
dilemma with spiritual healing is that the body

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may decide, as  with a massive facial injury,
the body may decide all I have to have is the

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ability to eat and breathe. I don't need ears,
I don't need eyes. The ego may. The mind may.

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But the body really works on a minimalist level
very, very well. It just wants to survive. And

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then let the other elements of the personality
in the body, and etc. take care of the

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finessing. So, a body, for instance, when a
body goes into shock, the conversation in the

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body goes something like this:

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"We're going to die. So we need to allow the
blood pressure to plummet. We need to, when the

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blood pressure plummets, the blood to the
extremities will be shut down almost

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completely. If there's any amputation, that'll
take care of that. We'll need to shut down some

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of the brain functions too." Because, you see,
the body doesn't care about the mind. It cares

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about the brainstem. Remember that the body is
concerned about survival at all costs.

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So, the danger going into shock is the body
doesn't know how to finesse shock. It goes

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there with, pardon the pun, a hatchet! And just
shuts down systems that don't seem necessary to

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preserve the core organ functions of the body.

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Now, we want more than to be a torso with a
head attached. So as we go up Maslow's

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hierarchy, we have more... I'm going to call
them fussy details. We have, there's more

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detail in what we want to preserve and what we
feel is being threatened. Our ideas of what

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death is change as we go up the hierarchy. So,
I've talked about the physiological level, how

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minimal it is. For just a minute, I want to
talk about the tip of the triangle, which in

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Maslow is self-actualization. And in spiritual
groups, they add spiritual actualization, that

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includes self, ego, human being actualization.

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In spiritual actualization, we may be just as
blunt and minimalist and determined as the

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body. On a spiritual level, we may decide to
sacrifice our human life for some cause.

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We may decide to sacrifice the needs of the ego
or the needs of the emotional level of being

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because there's something more important in our
understanding, in our perception

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But that doesn't mean that that's right. But it
does mean that there is a pull sometimes

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towards a spiritual inclination toward 
omething that may want to overwhelm the needs 

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f the human being that brought it to that 
oint of realisation. A little complicated, but 

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erhaps you can see that in a triangle the 
ottom layer is: I'm still breathing. And the 

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op layer is: I am where I need to be in space, 
ime. There's a lot of latitude.

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So if you figure out where you're working on
this Maslow's hierarchy, it can calm you down a

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little bit. Although it feels like this is a
life and death issue. It's not actual

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physiological life and death. It's more about
your ego's sense of succeeding versus not

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succeeding, at a particular aspect of life.
It's still important. But it's important also

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to put this into context. That's all about kind
of defining what crisis is.

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Part Two was about fear of change. Fear of
change is about a decision that you may not be

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fully conscious of and you may not be able to
control and surrender the fear. Fear of change

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means that if you've got a deep unconscious
fear of change, your outer faculties might not

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be able to be control your fear. Fear is in
charge and fear runs away even though the rest

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of you is saying, "no, no, no, no, don't run!"

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So if fear of changes on the surface, it may be
very wrapped up in justification processes and

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rationalisations that basically say, "I'm
afraid and I don't want to give up being

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afraid."

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And so there's a place here, part of the crisis
is you need to give up being so afraid that you

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can't even look at the details.

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You can't even adjust to what's going on. In
effect, surrendering the fear means all or

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nothing. Whatever fear says we have to do,
that's it. That's survival. Anything else is

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death. Notice that I keep going back to the
idea of dualistic thinking. Where a decision is

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black and white, life or death. And we do that
on purpose. There's a deliberateness there,

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where we do that in order to get over it. So
there's a mechanism buried within us that says,

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"I'm going to be so frightened but nobody can
talk to me. And nobody can talk me out of it so

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I can get what I think is a solution. And,
therefore, avoid what I consider to be

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threatening."

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And yet, when we're in that, we don't realise
that decision-making level. We just know that

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we are completely overwhelmed with fear. Fear
of change contains somewhere in it a decision

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to surrender to fear. There's another aspect of
that which is abdicating the ability to make a

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decision. And the Guide uses the phrase, "I am
so bad. I am nothing." And I'm doing this as a

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kid thing. Because that's what it is. It's an
immature way of dodging the responsibility for

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making a decision. It's fear. "If I make a
decision, it won't be a great one. It won't be

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the right one." So I'll just throw up my hands
and despair and say, "I'm not making a

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decision."

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"I have no authority. I'm not good enough."

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And again, inside that

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is the decision. And the decision is to let
other people control your life. Let other

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people make the decisions for you.

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So that was Part Two, Fear of Change.

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Part Three involves defiance. Defiance is is
not always easy to see because sometimes

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defiance looks like fear. And when the defiance
looks like fear, what it looks like is: I can't

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go on any longer. I'm out of patience. I'm out
of ability. I'm helpless. I just can't go on

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any longer.

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I'm not going to talk about the grain of truth
in that. There can they bring truth. What I'm

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speaking of is how we misuse the grain of
truth. We misuse "exhausted." We misuse being

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so stretched we can't think straight. We use it
as an excuse to avoid. This is different from

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being controlled by fear.

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This is more about... This is a tact.

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If I can't function, I don't have to take
responsibility. It can sound subtle, but

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there's a difference. There is defiance in
fear, but it's so buried, you can't get at it.

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There's a phrase in psychology that says, the
first thing you have to do is stop the baby

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from crying. Meaning that if somebody is
screaming, you can't d therapy with that. You

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need to calm them down.

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Fear of change is like screaming or crying.

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And it's going to need to be calm down before
it can be analyzed.

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Defiance has a quality of cold, hard
determination. This is not easy for some people

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to find in themselves. And there's a reason
that defiance is part of our resistance. I want

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to go back to the reason we're here. The reason
we're here is there's something in the spirit

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world that we weren't able to work out.

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So we came here. We made that part bigger.

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I like to tease about this! There was a little
tiny speck on our... on the edge of our

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proverbial spiritual nose. But it was so small
we couldn't deal with it. So we turned it into

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a giant wart on the tip of our nose. So that it
was right in front of our vision and we

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couldn't help but see it. And we go through
life seeing this huge wart on the end of our

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nose until we deal with it. But resistance will
say, "what wart on the end of my nose? Or

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that's just the way it is. I'll just look
around it." Or we'll try to remove it, rather

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than process it.

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Without realizing the energy, the spiritual
implications behind it.

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Now I'm using that because I'm a kinesthetic
and I, I feel things in my body. So my, my

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negativities once I... come to the moment of
admitting them feel like they've always been

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there and I was successful in avoiding seeing
them.

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And now I see them... and it's so obvious! But
in hindsight it's always obvious.

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So "I cannot go any longer" contains a seed of
defiance. Now this defiance can create a life

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threatening situation.

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If the outer will, which is the topic of July
 if the outer will, is in defiance and the inne

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 will can't get through the outer will then th
 Guide's phrase is "if the outer will reject

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 change the inner will may decide to find a ne
 life circumstances." In other words, if th

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 outer world is blocking growth an
 transformation, which is the point of life

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 then the inner will may create new lif
 circumstances. And an example of that is ero

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 takes off. Eros says, "I gotta get out of thi
 situation. It's not healthy, it's not good." M

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 eros soars into space. I fall in love wit
 someone. I become enamoured with anothe

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 profession. I become enamoured of a spiritua
 group. Eros is a soul movement. And it's 

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 message that something else is needed in orde
 for growth and transformation to proceed

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The way I use this is fear of change is hard to
manage because you've got to calm that down. 

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nd sometimes in the fear people are reluctant 
o listen. It's easier to work with defiance. 

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t really is. Defiance is more on the surface. 
nd it is possible to demonstrate to people how 

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hey are deliberately not too seeing something 
 Especially since, as you can imagine, I work 

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ith people who are coming to learn about 
rowth and transformation. I don't walk out on 

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he street and do this.

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If you can access the positive intent that may
be right next to the defiance and access it in

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some way. The Pathwork lectures teach that
positive intent is always stronger and our

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negativity. That may not be true in other
realms of existence, but we're not talking

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about that. We're talking about being human
beings on this planet. The Pathwork says that

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by the time you advanced to the state of the
human being on the planet with a lot of

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autonomy, you have a very large positive
intent.

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And you have come here to work on the
negativity.

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So the opposition of positive intent and
negativity that creates the strain and tension

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of crisis. And if we can deal with it, as I
talked about in the beginning, if we can deal

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with that and we can allow movement, meaning
growth to occur. If we don't, then that te

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sion and opposition will mean that the inner 
ill find new life circumstances to break thr

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The last section was about how not
understanding crisis creates the dark night of

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ugh t

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the soul. So this integrates all these element
 that we may not be aware of our defiance.

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And so we may have created on a particular
topic, such an impasse of ignorance and blind

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spots. Now in many other lectures, I have spent
a lot more time with the concept of blind

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spots. So it's in my study guides and online.
And the physiological blind spot is an

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allegory. Once again, if it's true on the earth
plane then it's true in spirit. There, there

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are blind spots. But that's not the end of the
story. There's this blind spot and there's one

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in each eye where the optic nerve comes in the
back. But the eyes have figured this out, and

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the mind has figured this out. So imagine if
you're in the control tower the mind like the

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movie Inside Out. Here in the control tower of
the mind, you've got two telescopes with two

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big spots up. And you've got to figure out how
to keep looking and keep the vision going even

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though you've got two actual spots in each
telescope. But the telescopes move slightly

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independently, even though they tend to move as
a pair. They have a little wiggle room.

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And if you keep the eyes moving, you can
pre-map what was there and like a computer

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program, superimpose that when the spot covers
it up.

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When you take a very, very complex eye exam,
they examine you for blind spots. There's a

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normal size and an enlarged size. In the blind
spot test, once again (indiscernible) you put s

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mething so far from your face that has an X on 
t and the X at some point disappears. The eye 

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xam is to find out what distance the X disappe
rs. Because if the X disappears when it's ver

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 close to your face that means that your bli
d spot is very large. It means a disease of so

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e kind. But if it disappears in the normal
place, but the piece of paper must be still. An

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 you have to cover one eye out so that it ca
not be compensated for. (That's my doorbell

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 But we're going to ignore it) So in not unde
standing crisis, we create a dark night 

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f the soul. It's an underlying choice fo
 ignorance. You can imagine the body saying, f

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r instance, "I want it back, I want it 
he way it was." And therefore there will be a n

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cessary eruption in order to cleanse. Thank 
ou for listening. I hope you will take a loo

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 at the study guide and you will read the L
cture, Pathwork Lecture 183, the Spiritual 

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eani