Self-responsibility

QUESTION: Is the total number of spirits incarnated and discarnated finite, and if so, does that number remain constant or are there additions and subtractions?

QUESTION: I would like to ask something about self-responsibility. Would not self-responsibility lead to irresponsibility toward others? If I am responsible for just myself, how then am I my brother’s keeper? Wouldn’t it lead to selfishness, being responsible only for my own life and well-being? I would look for that which is best and most suitable for me first, and only then consider the other person. Although I would give the other equal rights, I would consider myself first.

First, let us briefly recapitulate. To begin with, the child suffers from imperfections in the parents’ love and affection. It also suffers from not being fully accepted in its own individuality. By this I mean the common practice of treating a child as a child, rather than as a particular individual. You suffer from this, although you may never be aware of it in these terms or in exact thoughts. This may leave as much of a scar as the lack of love or attention. It causes as much frustration as the lack of love, or even cruelty.

Imagine wide open spaces, containing all the beauty of the world, all that an individual could possibly require for his or her enjoyment. But people do not see these wide open spaces. They do not see the powers, forces, assets, beauties surrounding them.

We have, in our pathwork, two fundamental approaches, both of which are necessary. One is finding, expressing, and emptying out what is within you, so that it can be reexamined as to its truthfulness and reality. The second is impressing, molding and directing the powers within yourself, so as to create favorable, or more variable, circumstances.

It is not easy to reach an awareness where you can see yourself think, feel, and act destructively; where you are furthermore aware that this causes you misery, and yet are unable and unwilling to give up this way of being. It is a great measure of success, if this word can be used, to be aware of being in this state. But to accomplish the second part of this phase of your evolution, namely the letting go of destructiveness, the nature of destructiveness must be better understood.

[Therefore,] one of the hindrances to making the universal power available is the inability to seriously and openly question and make oneself available to a new truth — no matter how revolutionary it may be — to a new outlook that seems to contradict previous convictions and experience.

The human mind is squeezed into a narrow box, as it were—a box of misperceptions and limited perception. Only as you know yourself do you gradually gain a proper perspective and perception of life and its relation to your inner self-creation.