The Key to Life

Years ago, a student at the beginning of his undergraduate course in mathematics, with whom I interacted as his physics professor, brought me a book on mathematics – the kind that physicists generally do not use – and said, “Teacher, this is a very good book; I will leave it here for you to take a look, but be careful! ” How come?! – I thought. How come an undergraduate student in the first term of his course, has the audacity to tell a professor with a doctorate degree to be careful in reading a book? I asked what he meant by “be careful”, trying to disguise my annoyance, and thinking he was trying to establish a power relationship over me. He looked embarrassed, and evaded.

This moved me a lot. For a long time, I faced an internal struggle between the desire to humiliate the student (though a part of me disapproved this attitude) and the desire to understand what was really going on internally in my soul – no matter how wrong that student could be.

Maybe he didn’t mean to diminish me. Maybe he just saw an opportunity to impress me, or perhaps sincerely had desired to alert me to a necessary care – although not with much tact. Maybe all of that happened together, since different voices often manifest simultaneously in every human being. But none of that would have grabbed my attention so much, making me react so negatively, if there were not a corresponding negativity in me. Looking at this in an attempt to understand and then transform this negativity, instead of spending so much energy on useless rationalizations with the vain desire to show that “I have plenty of reasons to be upset with him,” is indeed to use what the Pathwork Guide calls the “key to life”.

Try to understand: it matters little whether the student’s error to me was real or imagined, or if it was exaggerated; what really matters is how I reacted. In this regard, instead of seeing that event as unfortunate, it was actually a blessing, because it enabled me to take a few more steps in the direction of truth, of love, of life – which would not be possible without self-knowledge. Using the key to life – be it in a conflict between people or between nations – is to look at our own involvement in the conflict, trying to understand how we are negatively related to the dispute, and seeking to transform this negativity. It may be that some other person has done wrong to us, and we have the right and duty to defend our integrity. Using the key to life doesn’t in any way mean allowing others to abuse us, to hurt us; It means that we must not hide from ourselves the negative form of our involvement in that issue, because it is so easy, so tempting to blame others for our problems. Use the key to life means that we must seek the truth in every situation – and, in a conflict, the truth never involves only one party.

After much thought about why the words of that student did hurt me so much – in a constant effort to avoid self-deceiving – I realized the obvious: I was wounded in my pride, because I was trying to pose as an exceptional teacher, and how could a student warn an exceptional teacher about the care needed to read a book? I knew I was a good teacher, but not as good as I intended to be; and I needed the help of that and other students to keep my illusory status of excellence.

Plunging deeper into the problem, I discovered other aspects. I found that my irritation also had roots in the betrayal of my own integrity. Many times I have not been true to my values, in the search for admiration and acceptance. When, even subtly, we betray our integrity in the hope that someone will grant us something, if we do not get what we expected, we get angry – not so much for not getting what we wanted (which would not fulfill us anyway), but for not having been faithful to what is best in us and not getting anything in return. It is as if we cried: I betrayed what’s best in me to receive your admiration (or whatever), and you do not admire me?!

Diving a little deeper in the issue, I discovered that I was drawing negative pleasure from reliving mentally and emotionally the situation, wondering what I could have said to the student “to put him in his due place.” This negative pleasure made it even more difficult to seek the truth.

Only with persistence in the use of the key to life could I gradually dissipate all the mist that prevented me from seeing the truth in that situation. My challenge is to persevere in the use this key, in different situations of life – no matter how many times I may fail – until one day the doors will open as if by themselves.

Paulo Peixoto
Collaborator of PWOL
July 2016

English translation by

Gustavo Monteiro