Notes and Thoughts By W. G. Black Ph.D. - Founder of Gakati'yi

“Old Friends…Sat on a Park Bench…”

Simon and Garfunkel…are you young enough to remember?  They became one of the most popular and most listened to musical combos in history, especially if we consider in our evaluation the seriousness and the depth of their work.  There have been bigger hits and larger sales records of more shallow vintage, but Simon and Garfunkel, for our purposes here, were like “pure healing and psychotherapy.”  In the late 60’s and early 70’s I was doing several types of groups for healing, therapy and education.  Neil Diamond, Peter, Paul and Mary, The Beatles, and Simon and Garfunkel were vital parts of the group process.  The music, of course, served numerous functions and purposes – comfort for those who were hurting, integrative support for work already finished, and, sometimes very evocative…leading to new work and new levels of exploration.  I feel eternally grateful to them and for all those years and all those experiences.

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Respect is not demanding nor is it used for personal enhancement, ego, selfishness or the need for power. It never encroaches on an anyone's free will. Just the opposite, it empowers people in their path of both spiritual and self-discovery. It releases all thoughts of discrimination, anger, control, jealousy, hate, self-pity and guilt. It eliminates fear, rationalizations, and materialism. Most importantly, it listens with heartfelt understanding and extends with love.

Moreover, it perceives how people or things will be affected by its actions, thoughts and feelings. It considers the ramifications on all others before it acts. In short, it practices love and kindness on every front.

Have you ever been disrespected? How did it feel? How did you act toward yourself or others as a result? Now remember a time when you felt totally clothed in respect. How did you feel? Did you extend outward to others as a result? "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:40)

“Old Friends” may be one of the shortest songs ever in anybody’s repertoire.  It is by no means the least powerful.  As usual there are several reasons my focus on old friends is unfolding now.  The most obvious one is that I have decided to resume my work and my connections with The Guide Lectures for Self-Transformation by Eva Pierrakos.  The reconnection began totally casually…my friend Fred Sparkman of Dallas “just happened to mention” that the entire collection of 258 lectures is now available on the internet and has been for quite some time now.  I had read and worked through the lectures published in books many years ago.  I  regard that as one of the most important parts of my life.  Jack Karhu, another “old friend” and I used to spend hours and hours, reading a lecture and discussing it.  I resumed and read several more lectures in the last few days.  I dread to process fully what I had been missing!  The additional energy and ideas are perfect support for the current inner work in which I am involved.  The Guide used the term,  “Friends,” very often.  To the Guide everyone who is on the Path is a “Friend.”

The lectures were delivered through Eva Pierrakos from 1957 through 1979, the year of her death.    “The Guide” refused to be named, categorized, labeled, etc.  It was referred to as a “Being of Great Wisdom,” and, if we do make any gender discrimination, preference, or identification, the Guide came through as “masculine.”  This item was of interest for numerous reasons; Eva, of course, was feminine.  Many groups have spent endless hours and years now studying and working together with the Guide Lectures, later called The Pathwork.   My experience has been that these people are typically quiet, thoughtful, powerful, and phenomenally disciplined with reference to the problem of egotism.  That may be one reason why we may say, “Oh, really, I never heard of them before.”  Yet I assure you that the groups meet and work together quite tirelessly, and their influence on Earth is powerful.    

Now, speaking of “Old Friends,” again, I almost made direct connection with the Guide Lectures in about 1969 or 1970.  I had a friend, “an older one now,” who went to a workshop in Tulsa, Oklahoma with Dr. John Pierrakos of New York.  He was one of the three leading persons at that time in bioenergetics.  Most people in those days were aware of Dr. Alexander Lowen and his book, The Betrayal of the Body.  Dr. Pierrakos was also a psychiatrist, as was Dr. Lowen, and had decided to include bioenergetics as one of his methods for helping people, quite an innovation during that time in traditional psychiatry.    Little did I know when my friend returned from Tulsa that he was potentially connecting me with this vital part of my future growth.  As it turned out,  my friend’s delivery of the Pierrakos name was what was most important.  The powerful healing environment which he created in Tulsa  was also most impressive as I  heard the report.  Years later, when I first encountered the book, I recognized and remembered.  Dr. John’s last name was “an old friend.” 

Perhaps I am introducing you to a new friend if this is your first contact with the Pathwork.  Perhaps I am encouraging you to do as I have…to return anew and do some more work with the lectures if you have been away from your friends for too long.  It’s so simple nowadays.  All you have to do is get online, go to pathwork.org, and it’s all there.  Scroll through the titles and see which ones attract you.  Begin there.  You may eventually read most of them.  I will close with one of the favorites which the website presents as a  favored sample of “much more to come.” 

                                                                   Abundance

“No human being, no individual, no entity can ever find peace and inner fulfillment, joy, wholeness, security and his intrinsic genius with which he uniquely contributes to creation unless he can be dedicated to a cause outside himself.  This…is something you ought to clearly understand and use as yet another signpost to where you are…Only when you can truly give to creation of your unique contribution in a selfless spirit can you also feel entitled to receive, to be fulfilled, to have abundance in all ways.” 

             --- from Lecture 212, “Claiming the Total Capacity for Greatness” 

There is something important about San Francisco in all of this process of transformation. 

I spent two of the most important and transformative days of my life there in August of 1968.  My son, Phil, graduated from Stanford and has lived there many years now. 

Cathy Black got married there on March 30, and last month’s article was about all the love and truth involved there.  The LightsSream Team was in San Francisco for a great exposition as this article was being written.  The Graduate, Mrs. Robinson, Dustin Hoffman and Simon & Garfunkel became household consciousness and icons with Berkeley as the location and landmark.   A portion of our hearts remains in San Francisco,

“Old Friends” is a song which touches our hearts with the eternal nature and value of friendship in contrast to illusions, the fleeting, changing, temporary deceptions of realness as opposed to reality in Spirit and Soul.  Ramtha once said, “The Soul is forever memory.”  The song says, “Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you.”  The Guide teaches us how to remove the barriers to love and friendship so that we can attract friends and remain that way, forever.    

please respond by email to gakatiyi@hotmail.com   friends speak to each other from their hearts.