QA218 QUESTION: I’ve discovered in me a very, very needy child who needs mother so much and is terrified of being alone. It triggered a very, very frightening experience. It’s almost unbearable at times. Can you help me with this?
ANSWER: Yes. In the first place, I want to say to you, it is only unbearable because you think it is unbearable. You fortify the conviction and the misconception that it is unbearable. The moment you question that idea, you will see it is not unbearable. It is a soft feeling that is not annihilating, that is not diminishing nor is it humiliating.
It is these ideas you have to question and exchange for a new attitude that says, “Well, maybe it is not so terrible. Maybe I will not be devastated by it. I will give it a chance. It is in me and I will accept it and be it and travel through it in good faith that I will encounter on this particular voyage, within the voyage, something that I have not found yet, and that I may find of extreme value.”
For whatever reality is being denied, to that degree you shortchange yourself. If the reality is pain or helplessness or neediness or negativity or whatever it may be, the denied reality is your deprivation in life. And then man runs around in a circle. He thinks because he is deprived he must be negative, but he is really deprived because he denies what is.
Therefore I say to you, it is not anywhere near as difficult as you make it. It is the thought that it is difficult that creates the barrier. The fact that you have found that part in you is the measure of your progress, for before you have denied it so arduously that you could not even become anywhere near aware of this part. So you are becoming aware. Give to it with faith. Travel through it.
Let yourself feel it, and you will find a unitive strength that is very different from the kind of strength you tried to acquire forcefully as a result of denying that part in you. You will find your real strength that is also softness.
QA222 QUESTION: I am ending a long relationship and I find that I go between a place of pain that seems too hard and too tight. Then I tell myself in a hysterical way that I won’t bear it, or else I cut off and I find myself just grabbing for a self-image to fill the void. This seems part of a psychic pattern of mine, of extremes that I always swing between. I would like some help in this area.
ANSWER: It is very important for you to understand that it is not this particular situation that brings forth or creates these feelings in you. The feelings and this attitude that you describe are already there. There is, on the one hand, an extremely strong demand connected with your feelings of need.
On the other hand, there is a defense against that need and the urgency that is created in you – the sense of pressure you put into yourself. There is an “I must have it” in you, an unwillingness to let go of what you wish. That enslaves you and then creates a further defense of frightful false unneediness.
In other words, there is one level of false neediness that is a result of “I must have it. I demand it. I cannot stand not having something I want.” As a result of the pressure that this creates, a false unneedfulness says, “I do not need anything,” which is what you perhaps describe with this self-image.
Both states are false. They are counterfeit needs and unneedfulness. It is absolutely necessary to sail through this, to work your way through this in order to find the center in you where you can have real needs that do not have to be fulfilled – where there is a soft flow. From there will come a real fulfillment, whether or not you get what you want at the moment. That has nothing to do with the pride of the ego.
It is impossible to have a truly rewarding relationship or to be rewardingly by yourself, as it were, without you learning these steps and discovering the falsity of your needfulness and your unneedfulness, and an acceptance that it is not the end of the world for you if you feel a pain or a need and you do not have.
