I would like to share with you my answer to this question, “Why do I hold myself back?” which I believe we all ask. We may hold back from our partners, from our children, from our friends, or from deepening ourselves in other ways. Regardless of the context, I believe the following excerpt from David Brooks’ book, The Social Animal, addresses the reason why we hold back.

Brooks’ tells two stories in his book. One story explains how our minds work. The other story demonstrates what this looks like in the lives of two people, Harold and Erica, who by the end of the book have shared a lifetime, and marriage, full of memories.

“Erica came back out onto the porch and dropped the tray she way carrying and screamed and rushed over to Harold and grabbed his hand. His body had sagged and was inert. His head was on his chin and drool was coming out of his mouth. She looked into his eyes, the eyes could see no reaction there, though he was breathing. She made a move to run to the phone, but Harold’s hand tightened around hers. She sat back down looking him in the face and weeping.

“Harold had lost consciousness but not life. Images flowed into his head the way they do in the seconds before one falls asleep. They came in a chaotic succession. In his unselfconsciousness, he didn’t regard them the way he would have at an earlier time. He regarded them in a way that was beyond words. We would say he regarded them holistically, somehow feeling everything at once. We would say he participated in them impressionistically, rather than analytically. He felt presences.

“As I put them down on this page I have to put them in one sentence after another, but this is not how Harold experienced them. There were images of the paths he used to ride his bike on as a boy and the mountains he looked out upon that day. There he was doing homework with his mother, and also tackling a running back in high school. There were speeches he had made, compliments he had received, sex he had had, books he had read and moments when some new idea had broken over him like a wave.

“For a few moments, consciousness seemed about to flicker back. He could sense Erica weeping out there and compassion enveloped him. Inside, the swirls in his mind were still interlooping with hers. They were shared swirls that leaped across from her conscious world to his unconscious one. Categories fell away. Tenderness was out of control. His ability to focus attention ended and at the same time his ability to interpenetrate the souls of others increased. His relation to her at this moment was direct. There were no analytics, no reservations, no ambitions, no future desires or past difficulties. It was just I and Thou. A unity of being. A high state of knowledge. A merger of souls. At this point his questions about the meaning of life were no longer asked, but were answered.

“Harold entered the hidden kingdom entirely and then lost consciousness forever. In his last moments there were neither boundaries nor features. He was unable to wield the power of self-consciousness but also freed from its shackles. He had been blessed with consciousness so that he might help direct his own life and nurture his inner life, but the cost of that consciousness was an awareness that he would die. Now he lost that awareness. He was past noticing anything now, and had entered the realm of the unutterable.

“It would be interesting to know if this meant he had also entered a kingdom of heaven, God’s kingdom. But that was not communicated back to Erica. His heart continued to beat for a few minutes, and his lungs filled and emptied with air and electrochemical impulses still surged through his brain. He made some gestures and twitches, which the doctors would call involuntary but which in this case were more deeply felt than any other gesture could be. And one of them was a long squeeze of the hand, which Erica took to mean good-by.”*

* Excerpt from David Brooks’ The Social Animal

When I read this passage, I touch and sadden myself to realize how armored and defended most of us are. What are we protecting? Our identity…our ego…our sense of self? To be conscious means that we have an identity, an ego, a sense of self—but if we develop our consciousness beyond a certain point, we can then give up our unnecessary defenses so that we more deeply connect with those people we love. This is the purpose of Green Psychology.

Please continue reading the comments posted below. This subject has generated meaningful conversation, and there is room for you to join our conversation.

What follows is my response to him. Please share your responses.

Dear Michael,

Thank you for sharing  some of your recent experiences from your intensive dharma leadership program.

You have invited us to consider “how we take refuge in our lives.” I wasn’t completely clear about this concept until I explored some Buddhist texts, and I came away with the understanding that instead of looking for any external savior, Buddhism suggests that one can take refuge in oneself. We can protect ourselves. Specifically, Buddhist scripture states, “One truly is the protector of oneself, who else could the protector be?”

The idea of protecting myself feels a bit foreign to me, because I do not feel under siege. But the idea of creating safety for myself is something I relate to. So this is how I approached your question. How do I make myself feel safe? And, since you also asked us “how do we take false refuge,” I asked myself, “how do I fool myself into thinking I’m  safe when I’m really not?”

I fool myself, or take false refuge, when I become overly ambitious. I create a false sense of security by fantasizing about a grand future. This is a very familiar state, one that was primary to my way of being in my teens, twenties, and thirties. The way I know that this is false refuge is because I end up exhausting myself. Being exhausted is not safe. I do this less and less as I live more in the present and less in the future.

I take refuge—make myself feel safe—by honoring my own rhythm. I know what rhythm works well for me. When I honor this, I feel safe.

However, so as not to be overly ambitious, I want to acknowledge that when events in my life have been extremely chaotic, such as when my brother was dying, I did not find refuge—certainly not at that time. My rhythm, even when I could access it, seemed overshadowed by a more powerful rhythm. I know that the more powerful rhythm is also a part of me—a fearful part of me—it is not something external.

Consistently, the best way for me to take refuge is by conducting myself well—maturely. This sounds simple, but for me, it is profound. If you want to know more about what I mean by “maturely,” please read our article, “How To Become Emotionally Mature.”

Thank you again for asking this question. I’ve been busy so it took me a while to reply, but I connected more deeply with myself as a result of answering your question. I hope and encourage others in the community to consider and respond to your question. I perceive this as a valuable question, deserving of attention.

“Today, I struggle me with the heaviest of hearts. I experience me in a dark space. What do you do when you find yourself in such a place?”

Welcome to the conversation.

Jake Eagle writes:

…

Jake Eagle writes:

I enrich myself with your answers to the question, “What stops you from being your self?” When I read the answers what jumps out at me are the following concerns:

1. The need/desire to please other people
2. The idea that being one’s self is hard work
3. The notion that we don’t have the time to be our self or connect with our self.

Aren’t we crazy? We’ve actually set ourselves up so that we make it hard to be us. Hard to be who we are. But we don’t have to do this to ourselves.

There’s an easier way.

To be one’s self is to be a unique individual. The word “individual” is defined as undivided or indivisible. So all I need to do is claim all of who I am. Yet, I resist claiming all of who I am—because I don’t like all of who I am. I judge parts of myself as not okay, bad, wrong, or unacceptable—to me or to other people.

Once I make that judgment, I cut off parts of myself—and this is how I stop myself from being who I am. As soon as I cut off parts of myself, hiding my true thoughts, feelings, and needs…I’ve stopped being myself. I no longer claim my individuality.

One answer…

…the only one I’ve found that works—is the NO PRAISE/NO BLAME concept that’s at the heart of Green Psychology. When I step out of duality—the labeling of good/bad, right/wrong, etc.—I enter a new way of being. This doesn’t mean I transform everything about myself that I’m not happy with. It means that I accept myself and stop hiding.

For example:

There are times when I hear music and just want to start dancing. But, I make myself self-conscious. Instead of judging myself as bad and then hiding, I just say, “I’d love to dance but right now I’m making myself self-conscious.” That’s me at this moment. There is nothing more I need to do or say. Maybe tomorrow I’ll conduct myself in a different way, but this is how I’m doing me now. I claim myself. This is the key for me to enter the world of NO PRAISE/NO BLAME. If I do enter this worldview fully enough…I may even let go of my inhibititionsthis fully enough…I may even rip off my inhibitions and start dancing.