Why is it that other people seem to hold the keys to your happiness? With just a look or a gesture, they can either give you everything you want or take it all away. Somehow you depend on other people for your own sense of who you are. It is like a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows each time someone does something that thought interprets to mean that ‘I’ am good enough or ‘I’ am not good enough. All the old reactions based in fear and self-protection are triggered. Perhaps being with other people can, at times be so uncomfortable that you prefer to be alone. Or perhaps you have forgotten how uncomfortable you really feel because you are so used to feeling that way.
We long for approval, acceptance and love from others and if we don’t get it (however we imagine we should) then we feel worthless, insecure and lonely. We imagine that someone out there can give us that love we long for. We try to fit in with others so that they won’t see how lost and lonely we really feel. If someone tells us we have done something good or even if they give us a smile, we get a sense of pride or wellbeing and when someone criticises us or even looks at us in a slightly disapproving way, we lose that sense of wellbeing and fall back into believing that we are unloved and unworthy. We are constantly trying to get a feeling of wholeness from ‘outside’ phenomena, but perhaps we have been looking in the wrong place…
We are often trying to protect ourselves from perceived threats believed to be coming from other people. Perhaps in the past when you were innocently open towards someone you were hurt or abused in some way. Perhaps just when you felt you could trust someone, they let you down or proved to be untrustworthy. Perhaps you feel you have a certain responsibility towards others and if you fail you feel guilty and bad. Maybe you learnt ways to manipulate and control others because you were scared. Maybe you have innocently copied behaviour that your parents or other role models repeated out of their own fear. Maybe you didn’t have any role model who was courageously open and vulnerable. Maybe the only way that you know how to relate to others is from fear and self-protection.
All of these mechanisms play out because at some point it has been believed that there is someone that needs protecting. And in a sense there is. The physical body does need to protect itself from potential danger or attack. This body/mind has learnt ways to protect itself. Just like when we put our hand in the fire we got burnt. Now we are afraid of getting too close to fire so we don’t get burnt again. It is amazing how this body has this in-built learning protection mechanism!
Instead of being openly vulnerable, this body is ready for action. It is ready to protect itself with the fight or flight response. These reactions are absolutely necessary for the survival of this body. It is simply doing all it knows to do. As it imagines a threat it will respond to it by getting prepared to deal with the situation. The racing heart or the knot in the stomach are a couple of the physical symptoms. The mind is not separate from the body and does the same thing. When a threat is perceived then the body/mind does whatever it can to protect itself.
It is the same with perceiving or imagining a vital need. When the body/mind perceives a vital need, it will do anything to fulfill that need in order to survive, whether the need is a physical need such as food or water, or an emotional need such as love and approval. When we believe that we ‘need’ love then we will do everything in our power to try to get it. These mechanisms are repeated simply because this is the only way that the body/mind knows to get what it believes is needed to survive.
But all the while we long to be more open. We long for a world without fear or suffering so that we can feel safer to be more open. Some people try to change the world to become a better place but this is a pretty big job and could take a while… Some people try to change other people, but this too is pretty impossible. Some people try to hide away and don’t get too involved with other people. But again and again we can see that we have no control over what happens. Can we really get what we need from other people? Can we really be threatened by other people? Instead of facing, and seeing that there is no escape from feeling our fear, we have been trying to change or control the external phenomena in order to avoid this fear. We have been focusing in the wrong place. We have been looking at phenomena that we believe we can control, as a way of avoiding feeling the fear itself. But there is no escape from fear. It will always be here as a way of protecting this body in ways that we may not necessarily understand, and certainly will not be able to control. So there is no point in running from it.
Some people can hurt, insult, not accept, abuse or criticize you. But they are only doing that from their own fear and protection mechanisms. As you start to see how your body protects itself from potential threats, you can see how other people do the same thing. We are all longing to let it all go and love and be loved and yet we can’t help but play out these mechanisms. Seeing how other people are innocently playing out these protections mechanisms just like you are, there can be a relaxation. We are all afraid of being open and yet we all long for it. Seeing your own fear, you know other people’s fear. Your story is their story. Your vulnerability is their vulnerability. There are no boundaries. When we believe our story we also imagine other people to be out there and able to hurt me in here. Seeing that these stories don’t mean anything about who you are, we can see the dance with another as a dance of energy in who you are. Seemingly separate and apart and yet all dancing in who you are.
We have placed so much importance on other people out there and how they can affect me in here. But if you check right now, do you find someone in here? And if there is no one in here, then who needs anything or could be hurt by anyone? And if there is no one in here, then there is no one out there. Nothing is really outside of who you are. There are no reference points anywhere. There are no other people who can help you or hurt you. Other people and the whole world is all is happening in the wholeness that you really are. Even your body and every sensation that is felt, is happening in who you are. So when there is fear felt, this is a physical response of body-protection that happens in who you are. When other people seem to threaten you, or when an emotional response happens as if ‘I’ need something, these are also waves of physical sensation happening in who you are. The sensation happens, the thought-story-sensation happens, the response to the situation happens. It is a dance of sensation that is out of control. You can not control it because it has nothing to do with who you think you are.
We have believed that the thought stories that play with these protection mechanisms or emotional needs, actually mean something and that they in some way refer to me and what ‘I’ lack or what ‘I’ am worth or how ‘I’ can be protected. Believing that other people can give you what you lack or take away your self worth, makes life hellish. Like a beggar, you live on scraps that other people throw you. Recognising that there is no actual person in here, who lacks or is worth anything, you are not dependent on what others say or do. You recognize the wholeness that is untouched by any threat. You can not derive your sense of self from unreliable seemingly external triggers. When you believe that someone else can give or take away your self-worth, you assume that who you are is who other people think you are. If you are honest, you have no idea who you are, so why do you think other people know any better? Everyone is simply reacting according to their own survival mechanisms.
Who you really are is already all the openness, love, acceptance and wholeness that you long for. No matter how afraid or how closed this body’s reaction is, who you really are is always open. Realising this is the only real safety and fulfillment. Seeing that there is nothing outside of you and that who you are can never be touched by any threat, there is a compassion for the body and its ways of protecting itself. These actions and reactions are free to continue being here but they are seen and felt as the physical sensations that they really are instead of believing that they somehow mean something about ‘me’. And in this freedom and acceptance, there is also a possibility for the body/mind to slowly relax some of these old patterns of fear as it becomes more and more obvious that there is no real threat to who you really are. Instead of believing that ‘I’ can be hurt or ‘I’ can get approval from others, there is a shift to identifying as the wholeness that is never disturbed and never needs anything or anyone.
Recognising that these mechanisms of fear are natural survival mechanisms, is a falling in love with fear itself. Usually we are so busy with trying to fix or escape feeling fear because it is uncomfortable. But falling in love with fear means that it is taken by the hand and loved just as it is. Whatever the story is, is heard and whatever the physical sensation is, is felt. It is fully appreciated for what it is without needing to change it in anyway. Knowing that this story and sensation do not mean anything about who I really am, is the freedom to fully love whatever is here just as it is.
Unmani, August 2011
