The first twelve years of my life the existence of Go(o)d was self-evident to me, the (d)evil was far way. I was raised a protestant Christian and broke with religion in my teens because of the dogmatic and outer experience of Life/God I had to adopt. As a reaction I became a vigorous anti-religious and anti-Christian atheist. In my twenties I felt I had the choice between living for myself and be happy and guilty on the one hand and living for other humans and be unhappy and good on the other. I chose the first which unexpectedly led to unhappiness as well.

At 32 I saw some patterns in my life which seemed to be repeating themselves so I asked the help of a therapist as I had always been interested in psychology and the human mind, my own included. One year later I stumbled into a Buddhist site by accident and it’s atheistic-spiritual way of life and being opened me up for looking at life beyond matter and beyond reasoning from the brain only. Not long after that I browsed a Pathwork book in a bookstore, vaguely remembering my therapist mentioning it as an inspiration. It was as if I was reading the words my therapist always spoke to me and because I felt her way of helping me was very effective I kept on reading.

I was struck by the deep psychological insight in the lectures, bought the book and it taught me surprising things about myself. I have never found anything of this depth and size before and since in psychological and spiritual literature. That changed my life because in the Pathwork Guide Lectures psychology and spirituality are brought together, religion and atheism walk hand in hand, East and West no longer collide, reason and faith support each other, thinking and feeling don’t exclude each other, negative character traits no longer need to be repressed, denied or justified. I began to understand my life and Life.

Apart from Buddhism and Pathwork I found more and more articles and books which showed me God, Brahman, Allah or the Universal Spirit is talking to us, the messages becoming clearer and clearer throughout history .

I have followed three years of schooling to become a Gestalt therapist/helper myself. Not at a Pathwork school but the spirit of the Pathwork teachings played a significant role and that fact made me choose for this teacher. Apart from that I have followed a number of courses of which I’d like to mention these: meditation and Kum Nye at the Nyingma Institute of Tarthang Tulku, vipassana meditation with S.N. Goenka and meditation and visualization in the Linda Keen style at the Centre for Living and Intuition.

My motivation for making Pathworklectures.com is the wish to share the sources of understanding our lives and Life with everyone who looks for spirituality with a head and heart.

Put the words into experience,

Gerard van de Lustgraaf