| Subject: The Inability to Receive |
Author:
Marc
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Date Posted: 20:58:44 07/22/01 Sun
I'm considering the inability to receive as a central theme in many personal issues. In good hypermasculine fashion, I am habitually inclined to consider what I should be doing, what I'm not doing, and how I might change those things. But I wonder if this tendency is in part covering up a more pervasive pattern, namely, not being able to receive fully.
I've felt met and loved by friends and teachers in the community, but only during this recent WDW did I entertain the possibility more deeply. Allowing this came as something of a shock- oh my god, they really love me. ME? There was no denying it. Where I'd been dismissive (or partially receptive) I was now more deeply penetrated, affected by these "others". Surely such defensiveness permeates every aspect of relationships, even to ourselves.
In a previous message on this forum, Art responded to my self-doubt, "You are speaking up & offering your own uniqueness." I'm grateful for his reminder. But what if I can't fully feel Art's response to me? What if I can't personally allow myself to entertain the possibility of my own uniqueness and what I might offer others?
I'm beginning to wonder if this perhaps a most central issue. What if others love me, hate me, are affected by me or not, and I can't fully register it? It seems to me right now that I don't allow for the full impact of that possibility, much less the reality of it. We are so patterned to a view of ourselves as separate in an objective world, where affecting and being affected is some romantic illusion or childish longing for union. Can we allow that we may truly and profoundly affect and be affected by others, even in the most momentary and fleeting encounters? I'm not driving at some idealistic imposition about "taking responsibility for ourselves"- that can only be considered after we actually feel our effect and our being affected. I'm talking about first coming to terms with non-separation as a psychic and emotional experiential reality. Not feeling this fully is, it seems to me, another form of the pervasive doubt of self and others.
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