150 QUESTION: As to living in the Now and seeing what is there, I have discovered I always need reassurance. This has made me aware that I am hardly ever living in an unselfconscious way. Everything is always geared to obtaining this reassurance. I live in order to be what I would like to be, not what I am. Can you help me with that?

ANSWER: Your need for reassurance is based on doubt that you count, that your intrinsic values are sufficient. You fear that your own opinions are not valid, so you need confirmation or reassurance by others. Any unreal needs have an addictive quality; the more one needs them, the stronger unhealthy striving becomes, and the further one gets from the inner source of all solutions. Also, the more one gets used to it, the more one thinks one needs it.

When you go into the moment, ask yourself what particular reassurance you want. Then ask yourself where you are unsure. The uncertainty underlying your present truth must be brought out. You will then find that a cowardly opportunism exists wherever you shy away from your truth in relation to universal truth. This opportunism based on fear may easily be covered up by apparent rebellion.

This discovery is already the first layer of the moment. Knowing this enables you to go to the next layer, which is exploring the doubt that seems to need reassurance. Where do you, perhaps, forsake a natural law and not even wish to know it, so as not to endanger yourself by opposing what you fear the world expects of you? Do you understand?

QUESTION: Yes, I think I understand it quite well. Now, supposing my doubts and need for reassurance concern my masculinity. How does this apply to what you said about the natural law as opposed to complying with the expectations of the people around me?

ANSWER: You forsake the natural law by not trusting in the benign nature of your feelings. You cut them off. There is deep in you a mechanism that says, “No, I will go no further. I let myself go as far as I have because it is pleasurable, but I will not risk allowing my full nature to take its course.”

You do this partly because you fear the world’s censure, and partly because of a misconception. You have fear but you also feel threatened by natural feelings in yourself and you pay allegiance to a world that seems to say one should not trust these feelings. You deny the universal forces within you. You want to play it safe.

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