Make a list of areas where wanting, your wanting dominates the situation. Where you are in the situation purely or mostly because you want something.
What can you want? What do you want? How to find it? Look for where you want
- to get married?
- deferred fame/light… something by association with someone who has it, fame, money, friends…?
- pity?
- business connection, deals, etc.?
- a raise?
- a high? a feeling?
Now, do a mental experiment, leave the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow:
Mentally imagine you leaving the situation. A job, a “friendship”, a marriage, a group.
Notice if there are any difficulties.
If you notice that leaving leaves you with a loss of benefit in the future, stop for a second, and examine yourself.
Wanting is like the banana for the monkey: it is hard to let go, and it traps you. You want to keep the benefit, imagined or real, and you want to leave at the same time.
The wanting is invisible… what clues you in is the misery, self-hate, hating the other.
- the wanting corrupts
- the wanting makes you a whore (sex or love for pay)
- the wanting makes you powerless
- it’s your achilles heel
How does it work and why does it work that way?
Humans are hardwired to honor the saying: a bird in the hand is better than two birds in the bush.
Is that true? No, it is not true, but it is true for the machine that operates genetically in humans.
A bird: a current business, a current relationship, a current way of eating, a current profession seems like a sure bet even if it is not all you could have or strive for.
Going out on a limb is risky, and as I have said before, humans I hardwired to avoid risk, unless unavoidable.
- The woman who wanted to deal with animals as a profession is afraid to leave her current job and potentially upset her marriage to fulfill her dream. But… big but… she needs to resent her husband for it. Needs to… Unavoidable.
- You are stuck in a friendship because you get paid, free whatever, dinners… and although you are treated as s-h-i-t, you stay… for the dinners, for the money, for the bird in the hand. But… you need to resent the other… you need to.
What the heck is going on?
Without integrity nothing works. Integrity is an inside job: it is between you and you.
And although in the world, out there, you may be a pillar of integrity, inside you are a fraudster, a pretender, a greedy bastard, or whatever you call yourself inside.
Why? Because you know that you are only staying because of what you want, the goodies, the security, not because you really want to stay.
You really want to go for that other job, that other relationship, that other whatever.
So, inside, for yourself, you are a perpetrator. You would not tell the truth, because it is ugly. So you withhold it…
The dynamic is called Perpetration/withhold. The two sides of the coin.
Most of your anger, resentment, hate comes from there.
Eric Berne – Games People Play
Clean it up. Inside.
I had this type of relationship with my chiropractor. He treated me for free, and I was trapped by this wanting to continue. The affinity disappeared and was replaced by hate, anger, resentment.
Two weeks ago I started to pay him for the session. Unilaterally. He didn’t say anything. But I now don’t hate him. I am free.
Just one more thing: if you didn’t find YOUR perpetration/withhold through the wanting, try another way. Look for resentment and anger.
Resentment and anger ALWAYS covers up a perpetration/withhold. Where there is smoke there is fire.
The way to extinguish that fire is through stop the perpetration (wanting) or stop the withholding… and tell the truth. It often gets you kicked out… Yaaay, freedom.
