Between Languages, Within the Soul

A Quiet Breaking

I came to Pathwork in 2007, not through a teacher or institution, but through a quiet kind of breaking – like the moment a seed begins to split underground: unseen, silent, inevitable. The outer shell that had once felt safe had grown too small for what was stirring within. Something in me began to open from the inside, not because I knew where I was going, but because I could no longer stay where I was.

At that time in my life, I thought I had everything I was supposed to want: a stable job, a house, a husband, and two beautiful children. That, I believed, was what happiness should look like. But inside, something was unraveling. The life I had built wasn’t making me happy, and I didn’t know why. I felt lost, as if I had reached a dead end, not only in my outer circumstances but in my very sense of self. I realized I didn’t know who I was.

I searched in many directions: spiritual teachings, teachers, yoga, and other modalities. Each offered something, but none quite reached the place in me that was aching. Then, during a dinner in November with an old friend, I noticed something had changed in her. She carried a presence, a groundedness. When I asked, she told me about Pathwork, and suggested a few lectures. I printed them out that night. As I read, I felt something open. It was as if the lecture was speaking directly to me. Not in abstraction, but with intimate, piercing clarity. By December, I had found myself a Pathwork Helper. The following fall, I entered the Pathwork Transformation Program (PTP). Something in me had turned toward home.

The Voice I Had Been Waiting For

One of the first lectures that struck me deeply was Lecture 204: What is the Path? It didn’t feel like I was reading spiritual theory. It felt like a promise and a calling. The clarity with which it spoke about what the Path “is not” was just as powerful as what it revealed the Path to be. Something in me awakened. I had long carried a quiet yearning to understand the human soul, a curiosity that began in middle school, when I first became drawn to psychology. For a while, I even imagined I might one day study it formally. But life in its mystery took me another way. I moved to the United States and, for practical reasons, studied Computer Science with a business focus. Still, that deeper longing remained – waiting. What began as intellectual curiosity was always, deep down, a longing to understand the soul – not just from the outside, but from within. And when I read Lecture 204, it was as if the voice I’d been waiting for had finally arrived.

Then, Lecture 183, The Spiritual Meaning of Crisis. It allowed me to understand the place I had arrived in my life not as failure, but as initiation. What I had called a dead end was actually a threshold. The more I read, the more I recognized myself – not just the parts I understood, but the deeper layers that I had carried from childhood, and the patterns I had repeated without knowing why. The Pathwork language gave shape to something I had sensed all along but never known how to name. I was being revealed to myself. And for the first time, I felt accompanied in a way that was spiritually precise and emotionally honest.

A Mountain, a Memory, a Beginning

The Pathwork Transformation Program unfolded within the serene embrace of Sevenoaks Retreat Center, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains – a tranquil sanctuary that deeply supported my inner work. The natural beauty of the land, combined with the warmth and guidance of the helpers, teachers, and my PTP brothers and sisters, created an environment of profound connection and introspection.​

This setting evoked memories of my time at boarding school, tucked beneath Guanyin Mountain in northern Taiwan, where I first experienced the nurturing presence of nature during a formative period of self-discovery. Looking back now, I realize that what held me was more than just the land. There was a quiet chapel on the campus, dedicated to St. Mary, where I often sat with my sadness – a safe harbor, a place where I could rest in something larger than myself. And always behind us stood Guanyin Mountain, its very name alone carrying the energy of compassion and listening. I didn’t understand it then, but something in me was already being held by a stream of love that ran deeper than words.

Encountering the land at Sevenoaks years later became a quiet revelation of that same silent embrace – a continuity of presence, both inner and outer. A thread of being that had never left, quietly abiding all along.

Through Pathwork, I could understand many spiritual teachings that had once felt distant or confusing. The lectures had touched something profound in me – a place that had been waiting for truth that felt clear, direct, and alive. I began to see the heart of many spiritual teachings with new clarity.

Around that time, there seemed to be no presence of Pathwork in the Mandarin-speaking community, and I wondered if there might be others, like me, who longed for something they could finally understand, who were searching but hadn’t yet found the right doorway. I felt a call to share my experiences with my fellow Taiwanese. There was an inner “yes,” and I felt the seed stir in me.

I Wanted to Quit

Just like many seeds, it was fragile at first. During my second year of the program, as I was about to enter Year Three, I nearly quit. It wasn’t because I was facing unbearable truths or recoiling from painful self-recognition – at least not that I consciously knew at the time. There was simply something in me that couldn’t be named, only felt: a quiet but persistent desire to walk away.

Ironically, it was the year I had most looked forward to – focused on relationships and sexuality, two themes I longed to explore. And yet, I found myself wanting to leave just before I reached them. I couldn’t make sense of that contradiction then.

Now, as I reflect back, I can see it more clearly. The closer I came to what I most deeply desired, the more vulnerable I felt. The more it stirred in me, the more I wanted to run – to avoid the tangled feelings I wasn’t yet ready to face.

I’m deeply grateful I didn’t walk away. What held me in that moment wasn’t an answer. It was love. Karen Millnick, a Pathwork Helper who was also serving as the Mid-Atlantic Pathwork Administrator at the time, listened to my desire to quit without trying to fix them or convince me to stay. She was simply with me on the other end of the phone – quietly, patiently – offering soft inquiry and something I hadn’t known I needed: safety, reassurance, and space to feel all of it. That moment, simple as it was, changed everything. I stayed. And I kept walking. As it turned out, year three became one of the most fruitful, bringing me into deep inner terrain. A turning point not marked by certainty, but by the willingness to stay.

(Karen passed in 2012, just before my final year in the Pathwork Transformation Program. Her love continues to live in many of us who were held by her. In remembering her now, I honor the lineage of a deeper stream of love within the soul of Pathwork – a love she embodied, and one that helped carry me forward.)

As I continued on the path, the longing to share this work — especially with others who carry the language I was born into — began to take clearer form.

Translation as a Spiritual Path

In 2014, I began a quiet collaboration with another Taiwanese Pathworker, who also carried a wish to bring the lectures home. There were many ideas at first, including publishing a Pathwork book and organizing events, but we eventually chose to begin with the lectures themselves. Translation felt like the most essential, humble offering we could make. And soon, we discovered that it was also one of the most demanding.

Translating the lectures into Traditional Chinese became a path of its own. It was not just about accuracy; it was about resonance. Every sentence asked to be felt, not just understood. The challenge wasn’t only linguistic; it was also cultural, emotional, and energetic. Many of the terms in Pathwork don’t have direct equivalents in Mandarin, especially not in a way that carries the same emotional truth. And so, we listened closely. We revised constantly. And we held each line with care.

After living in the United States for decades, my Mandarin had grown distant. There were quiet gaps – between the language I remembered and the way it had evolved back home, and also between the words I once knew and the person I had grown into. The translation process became, in part, a re-learning – a way of speaking from the soul in my mother tongue. It was humbling, and also deeply nourishing.

What began as a translation project became something more spacious – a kind of spiritual home. What once changed my life, now became its own gift – a way of giving back, and of receiving even more.

A Lighthouse Rooted in Taiwan

The image of the lighthouse comes to me often when I am working with the translations. It feels like a quiet message encouraging me to stay grounded in who I am and where I am, even if the light sometimes feels dim and distant. And yet, it also feels like a message telling me, as long as the light is steady and constant, people will find their way home through it.

Pathwork is not just knowledge to be understood intellectually. It is a journey from the head to the heart – one that must be lived, felt, and integrated through real-life experience. Therefore, alongside my continued translation work, I am now starting to offer lecture studies in Mandarin.

These lecture studies provide a space for those who want to engage more deeply – not just with the ideas, but with the living truths behind them. For those drawn to inner work, seeking more connection with life, with others, and with themselves. It’s a space where the wisdom in the lectures can come alive through dialogue, reflection, and shared experience.

At the heart of this offering – and all that it may one day become – is the same deep longing that began this path. And underneath it all is the story of who I am, not just where I live, but the deeper roots that shape how I walk the path.

I carry within me more than one story.
I was born to parents who journeyed from China to Taiwan.
The land of my birth
where I was raised and shaped.

For over forty years
I have lived in the United States 
learning how to listen across cultures,
walk between languages, and
speak from the deepest truth of who I am.

I offer this work from the rootedness of being
Taiwanese – Pathwork in Taiwan
is not just a translation of language 
it is a translation of soul,
of love,
of honesty,
of healing,
of reclamation.

This is not a neutral space.
It is a clear and intentional one.
I do not have to reach everyone.

I only have to stay aligned with what is true in me
and trust that those who are meant to find it, will.

Teresa Yang (楊繼昭)
May 2025

Published in InConnection newsletter June 2025