Some people are bad people but not me-I am a good person.” If you think these words to yourself in earnest, you might find that there is something deeply childish about the gratification that they evoke.Ĭonditional self-approval and self-rejection are powerful mechanisms of self-control: the application of psychological force upon oneself. That feeling of gratification is core to what we really mean by the word “good.” It is worth exploring: repeat to yourself, “I am good. To allow oneself that acceptance feels deeply gratifying to deny it is deeply uncomfortable. Eventually we internalize the rejection as self-rejection-guilt and shame-and we internalize the conditional acceptance as conditional self-acceptance. Many modern parenting practices leverage that fear: the accusatory “How could you!” “What’s wrong with you?” “What were you thinking?” and, perhaps even more pernicious, the manipulative praise that says, “I accept you only if you do what I approve of.” We learn to strive to be a “good boy” or “good girl,” the word “good” here meaning that Mommy or Daddy accepts you. To engage that mortal fear is tantamount to a gun to the head. A baby mammal left alone too long will cry piteously for its mother, attracting every predator within earshot-a risk preferable to the certain death of separation from the nursing mother.
Our training in the use of psychological force begins in childhood with conditional approval and rejection by the parent, which taps into perhaps the deepest fear of any young mammal: abandonment by the mother. It refers to the leveraging of motivations tied to basic security, in particular the desire to be accepted by the group and by the parent. Then there is psychological force, a term that is more than mere metaphor. Similarly, economic force rests on the association of money with comfort, security, and survival. Legal force, for example, rests ultimately on physical force: if you ignore the directives of the court, sooner or later a man with handcuffs and a gun will show up at your house. The threat to survival can be quite subtle. Or I could put a gun to your head-any threat to your survival is also a form of force. I can ask you to give me money, but how could I make you? Well, I could, if you are frail, physically force your hand into your pocketbook. To make something happen is to use some kind of force.
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Put another way, we become capable of things that we don’t know how to “make” happen. Only then can we accomplish things that are, to the separate self, impossible.
Remember this! Indeed, the vulnerability and the power go hand in hand, because only by relaxing the guard of the separate self can we tap into power beyond its ken. The same interbeingness that makes us so immensely vulnerable also makes us immensely powerful. It is not something we attain it is something we are born into. What if I give and do not receive? What if I choose to believe in a greater purpose, and am deluded? What if the universe is an impersonal melee of forces after all? What if I open up, and the world violates me? These fears ensure that ordinarily, no one enters the new story until the old one falls apart. To enter it, one must leave behind the seeming shelter of a control-based life, protected by walls of cynicism, judgment, and blame. It is the vulnerability of the naive altruist, of the trusting lover, of the unguarded sharer. The state of interbeing is a vulnerable state.
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