24 Seven September 2020

M
Most of us share the mistaken
belief that if we could get enough people to approve of us, then
we would feel some relief from the ache in our soul that is always
trying to figure out who we should be.
As a result, we are kept in a secret form of captivity. But we
can break free of its bonds, and this liberating process starts
by asking ourselves: What happens to someone who is always
looking for approval?
The answer is clear: We sell ourselves! This unconscious,
self-destructive behavior has become so habitual to us we don’t
catch it. But if we’re paying attention, we can see it when we
watch other people.
Just listen to a group of people talking over lunch and you
can see that the casual conversations of human beings are really
fencing competitions — one person saying something and then
another person trying to top it. There is this continual tug of
war, a real competition going on. Lunches in a social situation
can be exhausting!
Then there are our families. At a family dinner, all the old
business is brought up, with everyone competing and trying to
prove they did better in life than we did.
If we can see this is so, it raises some important questions:
• Why does this go on? Why do we take part in it? What is
taking place within us when there is a continual longing for
acceptance? Why do we feel that if we’re approved we’ll finally
find our real self?
• Why is it that anyone can look at us askew, or someone can
say the smallest thing and all the king’s horses and all the king’s
men can’t put us back together again!
• What is the root of the endless compromise where we want
to be accepted, but to be accepted we have to gain approval –
and we’ll sell ourselves to get that approval, no matter how we
must do it?
• Why is that even if we are actually confirmed by someone,
we need two “someones” to confirm us after that? Why is it
never enough? Why is it that there are there never enough
possessions, never enough power, never enough authority, etc.?
The root within us of our endless search for acceptance and
approval is a part of us that is forever telling us that we are
unacceptable as we are. Something lives in us that actually
causes, by its very nature, a feeling in us that as we are, we are
just not enough.
And then, ironically, doing what that part of us says to do
actually makes us more vulnerable.
For example, perhaps you think to yourself, “I’m not enough.
I need more money.” So you go out and make more money. But
then maybe you lose the money you had defined yourself by,
and what happens then? You go straight down. You crash. And
now you have to find something new to define yourself by!
We must understand that no definition of anything, including
ourselves, exists without having its root in comparison.
Comparison is fine when it comes to practical thought, to hot
vs. cold, to knowing what route to take to get home, etc.
But it isn’t right when it comes to questions like “who am I?”
or “what’s my life about?” If I try to know who I am, what my
true nature is, by comparing myself to some external measure,
then I’ve made myself dependent on the thing I’ve compared
myself to.
We want to be free, and to be free means to understand what
the path of freedom is really about. The path of freedom is not
about winning acceptance from the world around us; in fact
the path of freedom, of coming to possess our own life, cannot
be gained by anything we might imagine.
If we are to be free, we must begin with discovering what it
is within us that causes us to see ourselves as needful of those
things we now sell our souls to win.
If we will agree to let go of whatever we find that binds us to
the false idea that we are somehow incomplete – then freedom
follows naturally. It is done for us. And we will know that Life
and Liberty for which our heart longs.
About The Author
GUY FINLEY
Guy Finley is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher
and bestselling self-help author. He is the founder and
director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for
transcendent self-study located in Merlin, Oregon.
To Learn More Visit:
www.guyfinley.org/online