CHENNAI: Can you ever have peace by seeking security behind the walls of your fears and hopes? All your life you have withdrawn, because you want to be safe within the walls of a limited relationship which you can dominate. Is this not your problem? Since you depend, you want to possess that upon which you depend. You are afraid of and therefore avoid any relationship which you cannot dominate.
If you could dominate the cause of your present disturbance, you would be at peace; but since you cannot, you are very concerned. We all want to dominate when we do not understand; we want to possess or be possessed when there is fear of ourselves. Uncertainty of ourselves makes for a feeling of superiority, exclusion and isolation.
Are you afraid of being alone, of being left out, of being made uncertain? ‘You see, all my life I have lived for others, or so I thought. I have upheld an ideal and been praised for my efficiency in doing the kind of work which is considered good; I have lived a life of self-denial, without security, without children, without a home. My sisters are well married and socially prominent, and my older brothers are high government officials. When I visit them, I feel I have wasted my life. I have become bitter, and I deeply regret all the things that I haven’t had.’
‘I now dislike the work I was doing. It no longer brings me any happiness, and I have abandoned it to others. I have turned my back upon it all.’ You have no idea what it has been like for me to see my brothers and sisters with position, prestige, and money. I have cut myself off from them, and I rarely see them. I have shut the door upon all relationships; but as misfortune would have it, you came to this town, and now everything is wide open again, all the old wounds have come to life, and I am miserable.