Dear Gail:
This is an extension of “Beingness”; however, I’m taking up the space-making side of it. That is that man must make generous room for his fellowman and he hopes that room will be made for him. A lack of space given to an individual, a race, a group can be the result of several things, mainly:
tradition, legendry, attitudes, habits, and pride saving, etc.
When a personality or group is strongly slanted toward conflict so that attention and energy are more often focused by fear and hostility than by confidence and good will, and where the maintenance of pride and security is made to depend upon winning and dominating, disaster lies ahead.
Such a personality or group will tear down what it cannot rebuild; and as the tensions of conflict become the very conditions of its being, it will progressively deny itself the types of growth by which it might save itself. Thus, if allowed to be itself or to make space for itself, those factors may dissolve of their own accord.
If we want others to think broadly and feel deeply in our presence then I must give them room to do so. They must be provided with space enough to hold the sort of thoughts and feelings I ask them to have. lf, for example, I want them to consider all sides of a subject, I must give them the mental chance to walk around it and look at it from all sides. It makes no sense for us to argue them into a corner where they think only how to hold their own against me or how to escape. If I want them to be people of vision, it makes no sense for me to suspend over them, like the Sword of Damocles, my own viewpoint — letting them know that they had better see things as I see them, or else.
Before one yields to the impulse to put another person on the spot, bludgeon him into compliance, or trap him into making a fool of himself, I must decide what kind of person I want him to become: what marshalling of energies I hope to encourage. You must remember that not many people will give you space — they will put you on the defensive by a remark. It takes a generously structured self to make for another person the kind of psychic space in which he can find room for his self-respect and the acknowledgement of his emotional problems and limitations.
Making psychic space for another means, among other things, making room for thoughts and feelings that may not be pretty, brave or noble, but for making him broader and greater and deeper. Sometimes by admitting a self-mistake one gives another psychic space. By admitting fear where it is the case to be frightened gives space to others. People need room to recognize and acknowledge their less praiseworthy thoughts and emotions so that they can manage them while they are still manageable; but even more, perhaps, people need room to turn around when they find themselves going in the wrong direction. They need psychic space in which to correct errors — and move beyond them.
Since man is a mistake-maker, he is bound to his body through these mistakes — but once he is given acknowledgement that his mistakes are not as stupid as he thought, he is given space in which he is freed. He is also an ego-defending animal, for when he makes a mistake and is taunted, punished, etc., he withdraws his space, but if overlooked he makes psychic space and rectifies his mistakes.
I’ll say that 90% of us humans will certainly develop tactics of self-defense that are tactics of self-deception and self-distortion when cast in the role of a fool, etc. We learn
to disown our errors and excuse them, and by the way of compensation, we’ll become hypercritical of others. We don’t admire those who never admit mistakes, who time and again drag up old errors as a basis for new reproaches.
Usually we dodge where our own mistakes are concerned and make it hard for other people to admit theirs. Instead of giving them room to turn around and supportive companionship while they make the turn, we edge them into a corner — where as trapped creatures try to defend themselves.
Now this is what I’ve been calling traps — psychic traps.
If you squeeze the space on others, or let your own space be squeezed in by someone, you are falling into a trap. No space
— all trap! See? But psychic space is not something we can make for others if we can’t make it for ourselves. You must be able to translate all-experience that you have and have not been able to handle into a positive, frank, but imaginative outlook on life.
There are two kinds of neurotics who can’t handle space.
First, is the victim of self-pity, who lives in a world where people do not understand or appreciate him and circumstances are against him. He hates the world and resists any experience which will make it appear less hateful for his derogatory description of the world is his chief justification for his own inadequate conduct of life. The more convincing it becomes in reality the more panic-stricken is his rejection of the world. The second type of self-trapped neurotic is the hostile type. He holds within himself the anger from past defeats, so unresolved and so inclusive that it attaches, constantly, aspects of its likeness. His hostility has several expressions: hyper criticalness, readiness to belittle and disparage; habit of nagging; holds grudges; prejudices, cynicism, suspicion of others’ motives; brings all
conversations around to alarm or deplorement; takes offense quickly and sees public figures as personal enemies; exploits, humiliates, intimidates, defines success in terms of status and power over others; contempt for soft enterprises of reconciliation. He wants to corner before being cornered, and cannot give anybody room for space.
Some forms of self-trapping are: By trimming our words and attitudes to believing derogatory things about others to the presumed dimensions of other people’s understanding.
Second, accepting a success goal which is far too small for ourselves. Third, narrowing the mind or closing it on another whose way of life depends for its integrity upon the mind remaining open.
Free men set themselves free. The practice of self-forgiveness is the way to set one’s self free. Another way is gratitude — this is an emotion that no one feels or can feel until he has grown into it; and the emotions we arouse in a person — particularly a small child when one demands that he feel gratitude — are the very ones most likely to prevent his growing into it. By nagging or being angry with a child only causes him to have an in-turning attention and makes him feel inadequate; when a gratitude is given to the child it creates an out-turning attention, which is natural. Gratitude can never be felt and never is felt except by those who have grown up enough to feel the reality of others.
The maker of psychic space not only releases people from entrapment, but releases them into a sense of actual roominess. He invites them to growth, and this growth is that which brings greater awareness, and this is what the Jivatma is seeking.
More later.
Paul
87. Spiritual Problems