It’s a privilege to talk to you graduates today.

I’d like to say something to you about the need to “work and wait, wait and work,” as you bring your helpership out into the world.

Often, new helpers think they have to find their workers. The truth is, it’s the worker’s task to find you.

How does your worker find you? Is it a coincidence? Is it a mystery? Not really. You work. Then you wait in faith.

What do we mean by “work?” I like to say in the 50/50 work,

“We work to discover what isn’t.
We work to learn and accept what is.
Then we know that only what really IS is.”

Now, back to where your worker has to find you.

Our very own Judith Garten found her helper in a college course on Dante’s Divine Comedy. The teacher, of course, was a helper. He was waiting and Judith found him.

Another seeker was riding the New York subway and reading over the shoulder of a person who was reading a Guide lecture. When the train stopped, the “interloper” asked the person where she could read more. The person she asked was a helper who was ready and waiting. The helper ended up working with the interloper. Of course, as you can imagine, the worker’s first session was on boundaries!

Yes, on the one hand, in the pathwork we work to develop good boundaries.

On the other hand, we work to let go of our boundaries. We open our personal channel and receive the riches of life – including a beautiful worker with a “beautiful problem” who’s looking to find you.

So, if it’s your worker’s task to find you, how can you make it easy for you to be found? You could ride the subway reading lectures day and night.

Or, you can continue to become “merely and utterly human.”

The pathwork is full of seeming contradictions – like most spiritual paths. But perhaps the most paradoxical thing in our work is that you become God, not by becoming a perfect human being but by becoming a “perfectly imperfect” human being. You work to become merely and utterly human.

So, you must go out now into the world and continue to become merely and utterly human in order to become God. Continue to admit your doubts about the abundance of the universe. Continue to accept your resistance. Continue to feel your pain. Then wait in faith.

This is our process. This is how we become open and receptive. This is how you become ready. This is how your workers find you. This is the process you have the privilege to bring to the worker who finds you.

Or, as the Guide says more eloquently, you “work and wait; wait and work.” In fact, “the best helper is the best worker.” Because, as you know, this is a working path. It is not a spiritual path per se. You create your own personal spiritual path.

The Guide says,

The maximum growth of one human being may be based on entirely different spiritual factors and ways of life and expression than the maximum growth of another person. . So you make your own personal spiritual path. You also find and define your own outer expression – what your “helpership” looks like.

You may “bring” your helpership consciousness to your parenthood or to your job. You may give individual sessions. You may teach lecture-study classes. Or, you may find that your true vocation lies in beautifying a house or rehabing chipmunks. Or, you may still be floundering, and yet you give your energies where they are most needed at the moment.

If you fulfill your vocation, your work will be as important, as spiritual, as fulfilling, as beautiful as the chef-d’oevre of an artist, or the important treatise of a scientist. You will be rich and feel rich and contribute in abundance. You will do your work with dignity, joy, and meaning because you will be giving your whole self to it.

You need courage to express your unique life-style and true vocation. Because of the inner and outer pressure to think in terms of “lesser” or “better.”

You also need the courage to find your own personal spiritual expression – your inner expression. As the Guide says our “spirituality is an eminently private affair.” If you are a Buddhist at heart, this working path will help you to be a better Buddhist. Likewise, if you are devoted to a Jewish or Moslem or Christian tradition.

Finally, another paradox: You must take full responsibility to create your life. You must do it alone. And you cannot possibly do it alone.

You don’t have to. You can and should have personal contact with God’s spirit world – your own personal channel. Reaching your spiritual self in this way must be the primary aim of your life. All matters must finally be related to your spiritual self and to spiritual reality. All matters – all questions – all disputes can truly be resolved only in the spiritual self which is one in all created beings!

Here, too, work to activate and connect with your spiritual self. And wait in faith.

So, graduates, create a new life for yourself and your environment of a kind that mankind has not yet known. You’re preparing for it, others are preparing for it – here and there – all over the world. Quietly. Be this new way of being human. Be the merely human, God-like, humble helper that you already are.

In the words of the poet, Rilke:

Again and again some people in the crowd wake up. They have no ground in the crowd, And they emerge according to much broader laws. They carry strange customs with them And demand room for bold gestures. The future speaks ruthlessly through them.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Thank you.