To know you is to love you
some reflections as I celebrate my 32nd birthday and feeling more loved and cherished than ever
In “Drinking From The River of Light”, Mark Nepo exchanges the idea of “love at first sight” for “love at first seeing”, describing the softening of the ego into a presence that allows love to pour in to the spaces that are often veiled by the numbness and sleepiness of our habitual ways of experiencing the world.
He writes in the Book of Awakening, “First seeing is an ever-present threshold to the majesty of what is. Certainly and beautifully, this happens with other people, when we, upon first truly seeing another, fall sweetly into the miracle of their presence. But this is also possible on a daily basis, upon first truly seeing ourselves, our world, our sense of God, again and again.”
Many of us are moving through the world in a way through which the senses are collecting their data as an attempt to reconcile our internal and external sense of reality. Often this information is tunneled into ensuring our self-concept can remain intact and that we are being received as who we imagine ourselves to be. We reject the information our senses receive that indicate something otherwise. If we perceive ourselves as bad, unworthy, ugly, etc., we will often reject the biofeedback we receive that someone might like us or be attracted to us. If we perceive ourselves as someone who is always good or harmless and kind, we might reject the biofeedback of someone being upset with us and may find ourselves contorting that information in order to retain our sense of righteousness.
Our fragile sense of self looks around in every direction to strengthen and confirm its validity. I am afforded a certain amount of psychological security when I can observe something that reaffirms the stories reflected within my ideologies and beliefs, as well as the story of myself and who I am. I might unconsciously look for signs in the body language and facial expressions of others to validate my feelings of adequacy or inadequacy, to try to confirm through external stimuli that I am, in fact however worthy or unworthy, strong or weak, however magnificent or pitiable that I have determined myself to be.
This self-consciousness not only causes us to feel sorry for ourselves, carrying self-pity for our state of anxiety of being in the world, but it actually makes us very self-absorbed and cut-off from intimacy relationally as well. We are so often looking to others merely as confirmation of ourselves, the essence of the narcissistic wounding that occurred during a disruption to the appropriate mirroring being given during the childhood developmental stage of ego formation. We frequently enter into relationships then, not to love, but to prove to ourselves that we are lovable, not in appreciation, but in yearning to be appreciated.
I imagine the self-concept as merely a membrane that allows for us to experience differentiation within a universe of matter and phenomena. It is incredibly helpful to our psychological organization of ourselves, and why I disagree with the misguided effort toward becoming “egoless” while incarnated as a human. The ego serves a purpose, but where it fails is in its inclinations towards reinforcing patterns of distortions. These distortions are often similar to the camouflage that other animals use to keep themselves safe. Recognizing these patterns and masks doesn’t necessitate that we feel shame and self-loathing for the ways we have kept ourselves disguised, nor do we need public self flagellation and punishment, but we can certainly invite deeper awareness of where we remain hidden because that will reveal itself as an area ripe for empowerment and a direction to take in moving towards wholeness.
To cultivate more compassion for the distortions we have carried, recognize the purpose they have served has been primarily for safety. Even if we have been misguided in our perceptions of danger and consumed by limiting beliefs around scarcity, these manipulative adaptations are often created when we are young and quite truly vulnerable. Our safety is ensured only through our acceptance by the group. If we are discarded by our caretakers, we will not survive, so even from infancy we may have been adapting ourselves in order to receive more adequate care and attention. We may continue to distort our true selves as we seek belonging even in adulthood for the same reason, even though we may not be as physically dependent on a caretaker, throughout the existence of our species, we have depended on the cooperation and the support of our group for survival. If the group’s beliefs and values are in contradiction with our own, it is often “safer” to be absorbed into the dominant group, increasing our proximity to power and thereby likelihood of survival.
This power structure is highly visible in racialized patriarchal capitalism in which we are incentivized to deny and reject the self in order to conform to the ideals and demands of the dominant group, which exists as a web or continuum, affording certain characteristics and attributes more access and privilege as allotted by centralized power structures, while those with more marginalized identities and socioeconomic characteristics such as education levels, citizenship, etc. are denied access to resources and experience more direct consequences of the global exploitation and extraction of labor and resources and violence against their communities. The typical family structure replicates this system of reward (privilege/access) and punishment (violence/denial/neglect) as a means to control the behavior of children, giving greater access to the shared resources of the family (including love) to the obedient child, and denying access to resources of the family (including love, food, money, tv/video games etc) as well as inducing violence through verbal abuse, beatings/spankings, etc. to the non-compliant child.
In any group structure rooted in domination and violence, the experience of love and our needs being met becomes a highly conditional one. Our fundamental relationship to compliance is often formed of these early childhood experiences which are forced to either reject the self at some level, and/or identify ourselves as a rejection of the authority figure, both as an attempt of self preservation.
If we have cultivated a strong ego identity, we may be able to identify with the role of the rebel, becoming reactive and defensive towards compliance and feeling powerful in our pushing against. But if that obstacle is removed, we may also suffer an ego death because our orientation of our “self” was still completely formed around the other, causing us to still be externally preoccupied, rather than having a deep connection to our internal compass. This doesn’t have to be either/or however. Rebellion is a sacred and essential energy, but it can suffer distortions and prevent the self-awareness that would allow us to see ourselves in what we are against. When our self concept and actions are rooted in our own self knowledge and self awareness, rather than a core self concept of shame and need for acceptance or rebellion, it is easier to create a differentiation from others’ beliefs systems and programming that is self-determined rather than externally derived. That is, if we are able to accept ourselves as we are, rather than being ashamed of who we are, we will experience the boundaries of the self as being less enmeshed with others, while also not becoming merely an embodiment of unconscious reaction.
In addition to camouflaging to blend into the group, another way that we seek safety is by attempting to disguise our vulnerabilities. Imagine the moth that is able to disguise its wings to appear as the face of a predatory owl, even while it remains incredibly fragile. Its appearance is intentionally deceiving. We often hide our own vulnerability, behind a variety of strategies to defend ourselves from others being able to perceive how fragile we really are. In our cultural avoidance of death and fear of acknowledging our own mortality, we also collectively have agreed to disguise our vulnerabilities through a number of defensive strategies to make us feel more distant from the facts of impermanence and the triggering of deep emotional wounding stemming from our traumas, hurts, and childhoods. In attempt to disconnect from our vulnerabilities, we try to hold an image in our mind of the world and ourselves that is often “paused”, static and unreal, unable to recognize the flow of our existence of life very much includes death and decay and fragility. Our defenses when activated in a true threat response to protect and preserve our organism, are then meant to soften when the threat is removed. But many of us, remain stuck in these defensive mechanisms, holding our fragile wings stiff and immobilized to appear tough and strong, rather than allowing our wings to return to their other uses, to flutter in flight, movement, and flow.
Anything that distracts from the vulnerable aspects of ourselves, our sex appeal, our humor, our accomplishments, can allow us to appear as an image removed from our wholeness, from our fullness. Trying to sustain those appearances at all times is what becomes problematic and exhausting, because we are not static. It is not the humor that is the problem, it is not the sexual prowess, it is not the achievements, but the need to only appear as such. If we think of ourselves as animals with our unique defense systems designed specifically for our organism and form, it makes perfect sense that until we are proven to be in safe company, we are likely to more plainly showcase our stronger qualities. On the flipside, some people may play up their vulnerabilities, in a display of helplessness so as to avoid responsibility or not be seen as challenging to dominant power. And even still another strategy may be too remain completely hidden and unknown, as an animal might effectively blend into the surrounding leaves or brush, their bodies disguised and thus safe and unassuming.
In intimacy, we express and experience the whole range of one another, across our strengths and our vulnerabilities. When we are empowered, we recognize our unique qualities through presence and self-awareness, neither denying our power in any given moment by over-identifying with our vulnerabilities, nor by denying our vulnerability in over-identification with our toughness. We see ourselves as we are in any given moment, circumstance, or experience, not as a static image. The static image is always the narcissistic reflection, never the true self, because we exist responsively to our environment and conditions and the unfolding of our understanding and awareness.
To love ourselves then, is to see ourselves not in self-conscious comparison to our idealized self-image, but to witness ourselves in the truth of our impermanence, our constant flux…not a sight, but a seeing.
When we allow ourselves to be seen for who we really are, in the truth of our ongoing evolution, responsible for and accounting for ourselves and our energy in fullness, the ego is then just a conscious but clear membrane between self and other. Its transparency in displaying the contents of the self does not mean everyone has access to our entire contents, our sovereignty of being includes being able to define the terms of access by cultivating and maintaining healthy boundaries.. but much like the surface of water, as you experience closeness with a body of water, the distinction of the “surface” simply dissolves upon entering it, it easily allows a merging, while retaining the integrity of its own material substance. The ocean or lake may ripple or reflect light, but upon closer examination, it’s surface is exactly the same as its interior contents. This is similar to how we might experience intentional intimacy, as Esther Perel writes “into me see”. We allow ourselves to be entered and experienced, while retaining our own integrity. Sometimes in relationship, we can also find ourselves transformed into a version of ourselves that feels entirely new, but I often still consider that to be more of an uncovering of our integrity and essence than anything else.
As James Baldwin wrote, ““Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
We can experience a wholeness that is alchemically derived from the experience of sharing and being shared, seeing and being seen. Only when we actually allow ourselves to be seen, can we feel truly loved, and only when we can truly soften our perceptions to self-awareness rather than self-consciousness, can we truly behold others.
We may feel much less threatened behind our well-crafted personas designed for both self-defense and greater belonging, because if the persona is rejected or ridiculed, it is not really “us”, we can tolerate our persona being rejected more than our real self, our vulnerable self. It is only when we risk being seen for who we really are, that we stand in the risk of rejection, driven to recall our survival fears that are deeply embedded in our nervous system, which attributes rejection and isolation to a death sentence. While violence has often forbid those who stand apart from the group from being able to stand in the full truth of themselves, we forget it is also violence against the self when we discard and condemn parts of ourselves and our truth as well.
When we identify with a more flexible self-concept that can include being both good and bad (and everything beyond and in-between) without collapse, our ego can stretch to be a more realistic container for the totality of our fluctuating psycho-emotional contents, as well as being a more authentic pathway for our self-expression. We are then neither god nor beast, but human, grounded and aware…capable of committing great violence and creating great masterpieces, capable of experiencing great love and great pain. In Tibetan literature they say, “Embrace your ten thousand horrible demons and your ten thousand beautiful demons.”
As I have integrated the parts of myself that have felt unloved, unworthy or unacceptable, or too bright and hot and bold, I not only perceive myself with greater affection and connection, but I no longer experience the constant negative self-projection that our judging egoic mind uses to compare and categorize ourselves as being inferior or superior to others.
I did not always feel this way, I carried myself with a sort of stiffness that was derived of a desire for perfection, to achieve some state of being that was beyond critique, my own desire for safety in the world. Some somatic inner tyrant always held my body and posture in a certain tautness, that was always ready, always “on”. I had related to my body for many years as a machine to be refined, abused for athletic performance and held in idealized ways to try to maximize my attractiveness. I only felt actually free when I could melt into music by dancing or into someone else’s body within a sexual experience or within pushing the limits of myself to sheer exhaustion through intense physical activity, there I could be who I truly was, not just soft and not just strong. I had a paradigm shift actually wandering the streets of the red light district in Bogota, Colombia several years ago, seeing women who were not holding their bellies in, whose outfits and environments were brilliantly chaotic. Though I had long idealized models who had also stiffly appeared in magazines and runways, I found myself reckoning with a truth that was the attractiveness of the sexual energy held by our bodies far exceeds the attractiveness of our three-dimensional self, our flattened visual appearance. The awareness changed my relationship to myself, and in further embracing my own throbbing blood and unrelenting eros rather than aspiring to any static images of “perfection”, I have continued to flow ever more freely, ever more vitally.
Through all those experiences, a re-education of my cells and a re-structuring death and rebirth process of my ego was occurring to find the true balance I was meant to carry between spaciousness and structure and between assertiveness and receptivity. As an aspect held in my subconscious or unconscious now floats to the surface, it is welcomed, embraced, held and celebrated in the orgiastic cacophony of the symphony of my self-expression.
I not only feel more secure from having embraced the full flow and spectrum of my being, but I can also feel and experience love from others throughout my entire self expression, rather than for any single point of reference someone might have. Instead of hiding part of ourselves subconsciously from our awareness, we can learn to both know ourselves and love ourselves, wholly and unconditionally, compassionately allowing that love to serve as the basis for our becoming, our natural unfolding...forever released from any static arrangement or organization, and dropped back into our full aliveness and vitality and growth.. free to be, to live, to be known and seen truly, to love and be loved.