QA173 QUESTION: What is the misconception that I have that accounts for the asymmetry between the right and left sides of my body? Could it be a conflict in my mind between ideas of femininity and masculinity? Am I not wanting to believe in my womanhood?

ANSWER: Yes, you are absolutely right. This is quite true. As you go deeper into this area, I would suggest that you uncover also specific misconceptions in this respect – possibly the misconception that it is inferior to be a woman and a resentment, therefore, to be a woman.

There are a number of other misconceptions attached to this one – for example, that it is inferior to take on what might be called a more passive role – and your resentment against that. You therefore have an exaggerated positive concept of the privileges of masculinity and an exaggerated negative concept of the implications of femininity. All this is extremely confused.

Wherever there are greater privileges, there are also greater responsibilities and expectations. For example, it is quite true, even in today’s world [1969], that a man has more possibilities in career life to venture out. But then the threat for a man to fail in this respect is infinitely greater – with the existing misconception of giving value to people – than as it is for woman.

If a woman fails, she does not suffer by losing stature in the eyes of the world. This is a tremendous threat for many men, as you will easily find out. In many other respects there are no privileges or disadvantages at all that you conceive of it, because you simply ignore, always, the other side of the picture.

Therefore, I would very strongly suggest you pay attention to every little detail. Do not take anything for granted. Go into every detail of your beliefs together with your Helper; examine every detail of it. Follow it through to the very end. You will see, then, that you are filled with false ideas, in this respect. These false ideas create negative feelings.

I have said, again and again, in all these years, and I repeat it over and over at intervals because it is so easily forgotten by all my friends, that every false idea creates negative feelings – and all negative feelings impinge upon the happiness you could experience and your possibilities to live joyfully.

Behind every restriction in life, every unfulfillment, every pain, must be a negative feeling. And behind the negative feeling must be a misconception, a false idea. If this would really be truly followed through, again and again with all of you – and not just pushed aside and taken for granted as an idea you pay lip service to, but you do not really examine within yourselves – all of you could so much more free yourself from unnecessary restrictions, unnecessary fences.

Now, here is a specific area in your case which will yield so much material for you and you will find a great deal of liberation when you do this – when you see that nature has arranged it in a most beautiful way. To deem one aspect of nature inferior to the other is utter folly.

It would be like judging one aspect of a flower as superior to another – one flower, one branch of a flower, one fruit or any aspect of nature. It would be like saying water is inferior to fire or vice versa. Everything complements one another; each is perfect in its own way and both become more perfect together.

QA173 QUESTION: I want to ask about the particular muscular tension in my jaw and right shoulder. I’ve begun to give up my idealized self-image – it’s crumbling – but at the same time I’m still holding on to other misconceptions. I’ve noticed today my right jaw muscle is very tight and it tightens up not only when I’m speaking to people but also when I’m reading or concentrating. And I’ve been having trouble with my right shoulder. It seems to me there’s a connection with the two strains being on the same side of the body. Could you comment on that, please?

ANSWER: Yes. I would like to say several things here. In the first place, the right side of the body is the side of intellect, consciousness, mind and spirit, as opposed to the left, which is emotional and unconscious. The significance there is your frantic holding on to the known – to the rigid tension in which you hold yourself together. That is one aspect of the right side.

Another aspect here is that the tension in the jaw particularly expresses a combination of defiance and perhaps rebellion, as well as hostility, which must be in this kind of defiance and rebellion. Often – not always but very often – if your shoulder is weak, something burdens you. You are burdened by your own heavy load of your misconceptions that you carry.

Some of those misconceptions are – were but still are now – even in your conscious confusions about things, and need to be reiterated and discussed in your work. Also, I would suggest certain jaw exercises which you will be shown.

Then, in addition to these rigid and tense misconceptions you’re holding onto – and that you are frightened to give up due to the false ideas – there is also the misconception that a little hurt is going to kill you. Therefore you have made, for instance, this shoulder pain much worse than it would otherwise have become. It is the absolute conviction that each little hurt is a very grave injury and shouldn’t exist, as it were.

This misconception is a very painful burden for you, for it is almost impossible to go through life in anywhere near a rewarding and fruitful way with this outlook. I would suggest that you seriously begin to question whether a little pain or discomfort or disturbance is really as bad as you emotionally react to it.

You are truly in a period of intense readjustment of all your concepts, and until the emotions can follow suit, it indeed takes a little more time. So do not worry about it. Just quietly go on your way.

QA190 QUESTION: Can you comment upon the significance of the left-handedness and right-handedness in people, and in what way the two halves of the body fuse or disunify and the effects it has upon the function of the person?

ANSWER: Of course, as in many other such things, there is not one explanation, there are many explanations possible. There is not just one pat answer. It may, for example, be possible that a person who is left-handed expresses in this a predominance on the emotional aspects of his being and a refutation of his intellectual, willing self. That may be one inner motivation.

Another possibility is that, especially if and when left-handedness becomes, as it is in some instances, a disharmonious manifestation in the functioning of the person, it may be an expression of imbalance, it may be an inner expression of a rebellion of some sort. “I will not comply. I will go the opposite way.” It may, in some instances, also be connected with a symbolic expression of saying, “I am wrong, I am not right,” as left is the opposite of right. There are many more that I cannot even possibly go into. But these are, perhaps, the most basic.

Depending on what the innermost motivation is – or there may be several motivations combined – to that degree the functioning may or may not be disturbed. There are left-handed people where the functioning is not at all disturbed, where it is an expression of the individuality, where perhaps one side is stronger and the other weaker, and that is right for this particular person. But if and when the functioning is disturbed, then that may be a message of the inner being that this expresses something.

QA214 QUESTION: Is the left side of the body connected more with receiving? {Yes} Is this true with left-handed people also?

ANSWER: Not necessarily, because, you see, you have to understand that the left and the right side are in that way symbolic expressions of these principles, and they do not need to actually manifest on a physical level that way.

As a matter of fact, the truly integrated person will not be different on the left and on the right side, because both sides must really, truly combine both principles. So there will not be a visible manifestation of this phenomenon. So that it really makes, in that respect, no difference whether someone is left-handed or not.

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