QA175 QUESTION: I have a peculiar spasm in my chest that I recently became aware of. I can feel it if I put my hand over my chest. I think I might be starting on a new direction and this might be some sort of anxiety about that.
ANSWER: No, it is more than that. It is not just an anxiety about starting in a new direction, although, of course, that is partially true. But I would rather reverse it.
I would say you are starting in a new direction because you have removed sufficient resistance to be able to face certain feelings. You’re becoming essentially capable of facing certain feelings in you that create anxiety. And that is really the way it is.
QUESTION: Can you give me a little additional information about this?
ANSWER: Yes, I can say it is more anger and hate than you know of, in more specific ways, and also fear of good feelings, fear of letting yourself expand, letting yourself take your birthright, of being the best that you can be.
QUESTION: I feel that if I really took what I really wanted and expanded fully, it would be unreasonable.
ANSWER: Not necessarily.
QUESTION: I mean there has to be a damper on all that in the present time.
ANSWER: Yes, maybe for the present time. But I’m not talking about anything specific at this time. I’m talking about a state of mind, an attitude, of what is coming to you.
QUESTION: So you think the anxiety is what’s coming?
ANSWER: I do not say anxiety is coming to you. I say anxiety is a result of your fear that you do not deserve the happiness in every possible way. That is your anxiety. You have to look into exactly why.
There are false reasons why you think that, and there are real reasons where you, as all other human beings, violate in your integrity where you want something unreasonable. Because you want something unreasonable, you do not allow yourself the best of happiness that is your birthright.
QUESTION: When you say, “Do not violate your integrity,” that’s a magnificent thing. That integrity is different for each person, isn’t it? {Yes} What is it that determines your specific kind of integrity?
ANSWER: I can only answer this with examples, because there are so many aspects that would be applicable. It is a violation of integrity if you sacrifice your good feelings because you want approval from a parent; if you sacrifice your ability to give love and pleasure and receive love and pleasure; if your capacity to have a body that thoroughly enjoys love and pleasure in every way is being sacrificed because one wants approval, that is a violation of integrity.
Another example of a violation of integrity is if you have a gift, your innermost vocation – that which gives pleasure and happiness to you and enriches the world, and this may not conform with the value systems of your surroundings – and you sacrifice this vocation that brings happiness to you and others because it is not grandiose enough or because of your egotistical need to impress the world, then you violate your integrity.
Or still another example – these are overall very frequent ways in which human beings do this, very general, very frequent – if you want in any way to have your cake and eat it too in this neurotic way of playing little games, of wanting to get more from the other person than one is willing to give – and this happens always in the subtlest of ways that can very easily be covered by apparently opposite ways of being, by rationalizations – this is a violation of integrity.
If one makes other people feel guilty in very concealed ways, in ways in which one uses one’s own unhappiness as a weapon against a parent, that is a violation of one’s own integrity, one’s own being. Of course there are many variations, but these would be the most prevalent ways in which this is being done, and these are the real guilts.
One betrays the best in oneself in order to get approval. I’ve said that actually, but these are self-betrayals. And they’re very subtle; they’re not easily seen. It requires a great deal of insight and guidance and work and goodwill before one can even discern these subtleties.
But these are the real guilts that always lead to ways of punishing the self, of diminishing pleasure and happiness, and of creating patterns that are obviously false and unjustified guilt. For let us say, if someone says, “I do not deserve this happiness,” – it is a false guilt.
