Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning) when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he's done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he's been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn't in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing.

Some things are only real because they represent what we think. When we learn the truth and think it, the old reality is no longer real to us and loses its hold on us. The truth sets us free.

Did I love what I was doing, or did I love myself in doing it?

It takes real feelings to create the illusion that others have power to offend and anger us. Projecting such interpretations upon everything around us is in many ways like living in a box of our own making... you might think of these walls as a falsification of reality-- a distorted way of seeing, feeling, and thinking about other people that makes them seem offensive or malicious or otherwise untrustworthy. Remember, the people are really there, but we all ourselves off from the truth about them by the false way we picture them... Living in a box means being convinced that other people and our circumstances are responsible for our feelings and our helplessness to overcome them. What we can't see when we're in the box is that the way the world appears to us is a projection, and that we are making this projection to justify ourselves in self-betrayal. We cannot see that it's not others' actions but our accusations that result in our feeling offended.

Who we are is how we are in relation to others

Personal growth is not like the development of a skill. It does not take place in observable increments that can be measured and charted. Indeed, as we have seen, when we're growing in sensitivity, generosity, and compassion, we're not aware of it, because we're not focusing on ourselves. The recovery of emotional freedom simply does not have the quality, for most of us, of a controllable sequence of transformations. It's more a career of discovering futher and further weaknesses and shedding them in turn.

When it comes to seeking a change of heart, our starting place must include our present situation, with the people we live with right here and now. It is with these very people that we must learn to forgo all taking of offense.

If we do not suspect ourselves of having been in the wrong, our search for what is right won't be completely sincere. Sincerely asked, the question, "What is right to do?" includes the question, "Might I be in the wrong?" With either of these questions we ask the other; we pull ourselves up short and start over. This is the key: Even in asking this question, if we ask it sincerely, we begin to change in our way of being; we begin to become the kind of person capable of doing the right thing without counterfeiting it.

Living in the box means being convinced that other people and our circumstances are responsible for our feelings and our helplessness to overcome them.

Still is just the right way to be. You rise in the morning to go about your day. You remember a friend who has troubles. You don't quibble with yourself about whether to call her; you don't write a reminder on your Palm Pilot or in your planner to make the call tomorrow. You just call. Simple.

Fable: When we're stuck in troubled feelings we believe that all our feelings are true-- that is to say, we believe that by our emotions at that moment we are making accurate judgments about what's happening. If I'm angry with you, I'm certain that you are making me angry. Fact: Though we truly have these feelings, they are not necessarily true feelings. More likely I'm angry because I'm misusing you, not because you are misusing me.

. . . we dedicate ourselves to finding evidence that we're acceptable and worthwhile. Whatever our particular outward style, from self-disparaging or fawning to arrogant or angry, we live as if we were defendants in a trial. The jury is composed of all of the people whose opinions we think are important; they're the ones we've got to convince. Unsettled by our insecurities, we await their judgement. But the jury members never come back with a final verdict. They forever hold us in suspense. Every hour or so, it seems, the foreman of the jury returns with a demand for more evidence. So we try again to win the jury's favor or at least to be found acceptable in their eyes, but nothing we can do will satisfy them once and for all. Why? Because from their individual points of view, THEY are the ones on trial. They are as concerned to have us validate their self-image as we are to have them validate ours. WE sit on THEIR jury. Therefore what they want from us is not evidence that will establish our acceptability but evidence that will establish theirs. They can't give us their final stamp of approval because they never fell completely approved of themselves.

In a self-betraying condition, how we present ourselves unavoidably becomes of the focus of our concern, and we mistakenly confuse it with how we really are.

Who we are is who we are with others. How they seem to us is a revelation of ourselves.

No se puede hallar una justificación para no hacer el bien a los demás a menos que encontremos, o inventemos, alguna razón por la que se lo merecen (un defecto o una característica despreciable que nos obligue a ignorarlos, corregirlos, humillarlos o castigarlos).

La autotraición se produce cuando actuamos en contra de esos sentimientos que acabamos de describir, cuando hacemos a los demás lo contrario de lo que sentimos que debemos hacer o cuando no hacemos lo que sentimos que debemos hacer.