QA237 QUESTION: I want to share with you my excitement and joy at being able to open up to my feelings towards men. When I’m in touch with them, it gives me a lot of pleasure. Yet, I experienced twice in the past two weeks waves of deep contractions, and they came from what I thought was a kind of rejection from him. I would feel a great deal of pain and probably every misconception that I have comes into play. I don’t want to cut off and I’d like help.

ANSWER: Contraction is, of course, an inevitable movement of the universe. I’ve given a lecture on this [Lecture #235 The Anatomy of Contraction]. If the contraction is used productively and if it is accepted as a natural phenomenon, you will see that within it you prepare for new expansion in a most wonderful way.

But when you make the contraction a frightening and undesirable occurrence because you use all your old negative material and fortify it, and then you feel guilty about the contraction and feel you ought not to have it, then you extend the contraction above and beyond its natural organic reality.

Now, the way you are doing this is that the child in you, the ignorant part in you, has turned away from man because you have demanded never to be disappointed, to have a perfect specimen at your disposal [Much laughter], who never, never rejects you, who does not have any problem, and who takes any expression that is undesirable to you as a personal insult.

Then that is, in a sense, a manipulation of reality. You manipulate it so much until you forget that it is a manipulation. And you begin to be convinced of its reality. That is when the confusion begins to be serious. I say to you, if you experience this, you should really see that you both cannot help contracting.

Just as you, so your partner has his fears of further expansion, his problems, his reservations, and you have to allow him this, without painting the whole scene black. Really see how you both have the same thing – that you have to battle with your own fears and resistances; that it is not a tragedy; that each such contraction can become a very constructive springboard. That is your choice. That is what you now can do.

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