Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: We lose a lot of strength and protection if we don't see the danger of the enemy wanting to dominate our lives and dominate society. Now,
I
Richard Lloyd Jones: remember my first psychoanalysis session with you. By telephone, I was in New York. I still remember that many years ago now.
And I was talking about the difficulties of moving from Toronto to New York. And it was not easy and I was doing well, but it was a challenge. And you said right at the end, very lightly, you said, "do you think it's possible maybe that you initiated this move to make your life more difficult?" And I remember thinking and saying, I think I said, "I can't think like that.
If I think like that, I won't get out of bed in the morning."
What kind of advice is that? How can I think negatively? I've got to be armed to go out into this jungle of a world in New York and survive. How can I start thinking negatively? So we thought we would start with that aspect. How is seeing our problems so often a good thing for us?
Cláudia: By the way, this morning I was attending a client, and she said, "Oh, now I have been here for a time, and I got so much better in many ways.
I'm better in the relationship with my mother, with my son. Now I am being much more useful. I help a group of older women. Every week I go there. They are very much benefited by the reading groups I do with them. And lately I have been spending more money than I should. So the course I was attending on Saturday mornings with you is fantastic.
I love it,
Richard: it's the best thing I ever did in my life."
Cláudia: But
Richard: I have to stop for two or three months because then I put my bills in order.
Cláudia: And when people start explaining things like I should spend less money in analysis or in these activities, it's already a sign that the person is thinking that analysis is causing some sort of impoverishment. Like I'm getting poorer here. Here. I'm losing something. I'm losing. So it's not the money I'm spending, it's not bringing enough benefits.
So this is not real, something real rational. It's a kind of irrational. But later on, when I asked her what did she associate the course, she said "light, energy, because I get energized. Every time I go there, I get very much energized. And there are many, many subjects that are very interesting. But I have this problem in spending more than I should, and I feel uncomfortable, blah, blah, blah."
I asked her, "what do you associate spending more money than you should." And she said, "well, is this a sort of imbalance? I'm not dealing correctly with reality." And I told her, "okay, so then you are not wanting to stop the course for a while and put your accounting in order. You are more interested in escaping from this consciousness that you are having now, because you have been always the same.
And now you are having better a consciousness of how you are unbalanced.
Richard: You sabotage yourself.
Cláudia: And you're sabotaging yourself, and you are not balancing in spending money and in other areas. So it's an escape from consciousness you are doing." Then she was sincere and she said, "I get too depressed to see so many problems in myself as I have been seeing. Lately I thought, okay, so I saw enough.
Now I should stop a little bit of seeing so many wrong things in myself and so much, but the logical attitudes."
But then she said, "okay, but this is logical because if I don't see better, What I do destructively with my finances, I can get into trouble. And I really got into trouble before analysis, financially speaking." And then the consequence of the analysis was that she thinks mistakenly and invertedly that if she sees pathology in herself, she will get worse, she will get depressed.
"Won't be
Richard: able to get out of bed in the morning." Yes,
Cláudia: as you mentioned. As
Richard: I mentioned, yeah.
Cláudia: So here we come. Nobody wants to see mistakes in oneself. Nobody, nobody. This is something everybody rejects. To be criticized? Never. If we accept to be criticized, then it should be with such an affection and, you know, just an excuse. But we don't like to see when we are mistaken, and sometimes not only mistaken, but ill-intentioned.
Because ill intentions, they turn against us.
They end up by turning against ourselves. So now we go to something, Richard, another step here in our conversation. This is not only a matter of every day-to-day simple things of life. This is a philosophical and a theological matter and scientific. When people question the method that Keppe uses, consciousness of errors, consciousness of problems, consciousness of pathology, consciousness of evil, consciousness of what is negative, so consciousness of disease, consciousness of what is wrong.
So, come on, can I bear so much consciousness of what is wrong, what is problematic? And we call Keppe's method as Christian and Kepian dialectics. What is the Christian dialectics? The Sermon of the Mountain. Yeah, Sermon of the Mount. Sermon of
Richard: the Mount.
Cláudia: And there is the Christian dialectics. The importance of being humble, the importance of admitting one's sins and mistakes and problems.
And he puts this all the time in his teachings. It's such an enormous importance of being humble.
Richard: Yes. Meek, he calls it meek sometimes too, right? Yes. Turning
Cláudia: the
Richard: other cheek and accepting the criticism of others, listening to the counsel of others. He talks all the time about these
Cláudia: because this humbleness, Richard, guarantees that we stay like with the feet on the ground.
And the arrogance and the megalomania, this excessive perfectionistic attitude, it's very sick. It's very arrogant. It's very like proud. It's being proud. And arrogance and pride are things that make us leave the ground and go like balloons. And the fall, it's very painful when we
Richard: need to fall down, back to earth. So when you use pride, you use pride in the original theological sense, which
Cláudia: is exaggerated arrogance.
It's more than just being proud of yourself.
Like in Portuguese, soberba. This
Richard: is pride. I think it's the first deadly sin.
Cláudia: Yes, because this makes us blind. In darkness.
Richard: We get so
Cláudia: crazy. We are like godlike. So it's very harmful. And Keppe uses the same dialectics. And there is another very important subject here. And now we go into psychotherapy and exorcism. Who are those who can't bear seeing anything wrong in themselves eternally?
Richard: These are the demons.
Cláudia: Because they see themselves as gods already. So if we admit seeing a problem, a pathology in us, the demons that are in us or around us
Richard: or
linked to us, In telepathy with us, they
Cláudia: really can't bear seeing themselves in a bad situation. They can't feel feelings of guilt. They can't be humble because they have chosen theomania in themselves, for themselves.
In, like, eternally. Yeah. So they can't bear.
That's why they stay in darkness. That's why they stay hidden. That's why they are, they always speak as God to us, as the wise ones, as the smart ones, as the intelligent ones.
Richard: They show this in the movies. Vampires can't see themselves in the mirror. Exactly.
Cláudia: They can't bear. They can't bear to see. They can't bear because the consciousness of any consciousness and consciousness of our pathologies has an energy, like a divine energy in it, a powerful divine energy.
Richard: Consciousness of our pathologies has a divine energy.
Cláudia: Yes. Consciousness of a sin in us, our sins, has a divine, powerful energy, godly energy. It's like resurrection. It's like if you really admit a sin, if you really admit and humble yourself and admit a problem, a mistake or something, then you get into resonance. You stay in tune with the truth.
Richard: Yeah. Is this the principle of confession in the church?
Cláudia: Yes. It's the principle of the true, honest confession. Right. Then you get in tune with God, you go down in your arrogance, you humble yourself, and then you are able to open yourself to God's grace. And God's grace is energy. And God's grace is lifting. You don't need to say God's grace to clients.
But when they are humble and honest, they automatically receive God's energy and grace. This
Richard: is the power of repentance, isn't it? Yes, it is. Wasn't there a story in the Bible, Jesus' crucifixion? Wasn't there a criminal there on the cross?
Cláudia: As they say, the good thief.
Richard: Yeah, who repented. He said something to the effect that when the other, there were two criminals there with him.
When one criminal said something against Jesus and this other one said, "no, no, no, you can't compare this guy to us."
We're criminals and he is not.
Cláudia: Yeah, so
Richard: here,
Cláudia: this guy, and then this good thief, they call him Saint, and Saint Dimas, as we speak in Portuguese.
Richard: Saint Dimas. I don't even know what that
Cláudia: is in English, but okay. So this guy, in order to say this, and in order to be in heaven with Jesus, that same day, as Jesus said, promised, "you will be in heaven with me today."
Richard: Because of his repentance.
Cláudia: Because of his attitude. So what did he do? First, he admitted he was a criminal. Yeah. He admitted. Yeah. And then he saw the goodness in Jesus and honesty, and he admitted Jesus' goodness and honesty.
Richard: And that he was nowhere close to that.
Cláudia: And he was humble enough not to project onto Jesus his criminality as the others did. Yeah. So he was a human being that did not project onto Jesus his own sins as humanity does.
Because humanity projects onto Jesus their own heavy sins.
And that's why they say Jesus carried the whole bunch of sins of the whole humanity.
Richard: The whole weight of human sins. Yes, yes.
Cláudia: His cross, right? Because humanity projected onto Jesus the evil they had in themselves. Yeah. And the goodness Jesus had, they saw in themselves. It's projective in like...
Richard: Inverted projection. Inverted projection.
Cláudia: That's what Keppe's calling it.
Yeah.
