QA116 QUESTION: I have a strong tendency for self-sacrifice. What can you say in that respect?
ANSWER: The self-sacrifice you take upon yourself is as a substitute for yourself. I will explain it in this way: you’d rather take a great deal of hardship upon yourself, much more than constructive or necessary for you or your surroundings, rather than giving of your real self, of yourself.
Because you are so afraid of this and keep yourself contained, you have to make up for that. It is then that your inner self establishes the balance in the wrong way. It is because you pull into the wrong direction by keeping yourself back that you give too much on the other hand. Therefore, you give what is not so helpful and retain of yourself that which would be life giving. Does that make any sense to you?
QUESTION: Yes, only I get confused when you give just everything you have, including your money, your feelings and all. What is it you’re holding back?
ANSWER: You hold back yourself. You’d rather give your money and your time and your efforts and your things and your worries and your taking burdens on your shoulders that are not your own – all that to your unconscious psychic life seems preferable than to let go and be and give yourself out and go with the stream of life, and let your feelings that you feared so much, be.
You constantly hold a rein on your feelings. The fear of letting go of these reins is so tremendous that you keep them in fists. These reins comprise all your feelings, your emotions. If they were free floating, they would fill you and others with a vibrant life force. Instead you give that which needn’t and often even shouldn’t be given.
Now, you are not the only one in this predicament. This applies to many, many of my friends. It may not always manifest in the same way, but even for those where it does not manifest with an extreme drive toward self-sacrifice as it does with you, inwardly the clearness is a very similar one. You try to make up for the holding of your self-contained self and saving of yourself, holding yourself back in fearfulness, caution and lack of trust to life, which keeps you locked and blocked and hardened inwardly. And then you make up in this other way. Do you understand what I’m saying?
QUESTION: I understand. What you’re saying is that when I get working on these problems in my private sessions, I get completely lost on it.
ANSWER: Yes, because there is this great fight, this great struggle in you. And my advice here to you and for anyone else where it may apply to is this: approach it, not with the idea that you have to change and let go of yourself. Know that you have a perfect right, if you choose, to go on containing yourself, but wish to see why. This will help relieve you of a struggle and a battle and resistance.
Do not feel so terribly wrong. Because in feeling wrong, and being wrong, there may also be a world of difference. Something may be wrong in the sense of not being constructive, not being worth life. And to recognize something wrong in that sense will not make you use a whip on yourself. But the way you feel when anything may be wrong, you feel like a criminal. You feel you have no right to be wrong.
Now, you do have a right to be wrong. You are on your own. You are grown-ups and God does not punish you. But you punish yourself. If you realize you have a right to be wrong, you may have a much easier time finding the reason for this imbalance I just explained, for the edge that makes you contained in yourself, for not giving out, for holding on to the reins of all your emotions, your feelings, your outgoingness.
