Getting Real

1. The Root of Unreality: False Beliefs & Control Patterns

Most of all we lie because our sense of safety and self-esteem depends on our feeling in control, in control of how other people react to us, of whether we appear smart or foolish, of whether we’ll get what we want.

Early conditioning. From infancy, we develop false beliefs about the world and how to survive, often based on painful or confusing experiences. These beliefs lead us to cut off parts of ourselves and adopt control patterns to feel safe and manage how others perceive us. Examples from the author's life include:

• Expressing wants strongly leads to punishment.
• Shutting down feelings avoids making others uncomfortable.
• Wanting something intensely means you won't get it.
• Judging others avoids painful feelings.
• It's unsafe to talk back to angry people.

Living a pretense. These unconscious beliefs and patterns result in us showing the world only a limited version of ourselves, hiding our true feelings, fears, and desires. We become hypocrites, living in the gap between our ideals and our reality, constantly trying to control external outcomes and others' reactions. This focus on control, rather than authentic experience, is a huge waste of energy and prevents us from living an authentic life.

Cost of control. Trying to stay safe and avoid unwanted outcomes paradoxically leads to those very things catching up to us. The more we try to control reality or relationships to fit our comfort zone, the less prepared we are for the inevitable surprises, complexity, and change of life. This control-oriented approach keeps us stuck, feeling powerless, and disconnected from our true selves and others.

2. The Path to Being Real: Honest Communication

Honest communication becomes your “awareness practice” — your vehicle for noticing what you avoid (your irrational fears) and how you go about avoiding it (your control patterns).

Direct route to wholeness. Honest communication with yourself and others is the quickest and least expensive way to reclaim buried parts of yourself and move towards wholeness. It serves as a practice for noticing your irrational fears and the control patterns you use to avoid them, bringing unconscious behaviors into awareness.

Staying with experience. This practice involves using language to stay connected to your present felt experience – what you see, hear, smell, feel, remember, sense, and intuit. By focusing on direct experience rather than judgments, generalizations, or explanations, you move out of the "morass" of the mind and into the truth of the moment.

Transformation through presence. When you patiently and deeply enter an experience, feeling it fully without resorting to control patterns, it naturally changes and heals. The way out of being stuck is to go deeply into what is. Honest communication, supported by others, is the vehicle for this process, leading to self-realization and a deep trust in yourself and life.

3. Experiencing What Is: Distinguishing Reality from Mind Chatter

Experiencing what is also helps you make the distinction between what is, that is what you actually experience (see, hear, sense, feel, notice, remember) and what you imagine (think, interpret, evaluate, believe).

Focus on present reality. This fundamental truth skill involves setting aside beliefs, expectations, interpretations, and judgments to simply notice and feel what is happening in the present moment – in your body, mind, and environment. It's about distinguishing actual sensory input and feelings from the stories and meanings your mind creates.

Mind chatter vs. experience. Our minds constantly engage in comparisons, judgments, theories, and interpretations, which are attempts to stay in control and avoid discomfort. This "mind chatter" eclipses our ability to simply notice or feel. For example, seeing someone laughing is "what is"; interpreting they are laughing at you is an imagining.

Healing through presence. Avoiding present experience, especially painful feelings, prevents healing. When you allow yourself to fully experience what is, without trying to cut it off or explain it away, you can uncover the roots of your pain and allow energy to flow naturally. This practice connects you to the energy of being alive and reduces dependence on external results for well-being.

4. Being Transparent: The Power of Self-Disclosure

freedom’s just another word for nothing left to hide.

Revealing yourself. Transparency is the ability to reveal to others what you are sensing, feeling, thinking, or saying to yourself in the moment. It's about self-expression without a hidden agenda to make others change or feel a certain way. This openness allows you to be known and helps you see yourself more honestly.

Letting go of secrets. Keeping secrets reinforces the false belief that you are not acceptable as you are. Examining and potentially disclosing secrets, even anonymously, can be a powerful way to see them in a new light and experience acceptance instead of the expected contempt. This process helps integrate hidden parts of yourself.

Facing your fears. Difficulty being transparent often stems from unconscious false beliefs about the safety of expressing certain feelings or thoughts (e.g., anger, vulnerability, sexual desire). Identifying and admitting your "favorite fears" (like fear of criticism, abandonment, or rejection) helps you take them less seriously and clarifies what you are avoiding.

5. Noticing Your Intent: Choosing to Relate Over Control

In most human interactions relating is preferable to controlling because it brings you into the present...

Relating vs. Controlling. Relating is motivated by the desire to know and be known, sharing your present experience openly without trying to manipulate the outcome. Controlling is driven by the need for comfort and safety, using strategies to ensure predictable results and avoid discomfort.

Embracing uncertainty. Relating requires being open to the possibilities of each moment and tolerating the discomfort of not knowing how others will react. It builds self-trust based on expressing your truth, not on controlling external events. Control-oriented communication, conversely, often backfires and leads away from present experience.

Identifying control patterns. We all use unconscious ego-protective strategies when feeling unsafe. Recognizing these patterns is crucial:

• Identifying with a story/script (e.g., the competent one).
• Filtering perceptions through strong beliefs (e.g., the universe is unfriendly).
• Getting buttons pushed (hypersensitivity to perceived criticism, abandonment, etc.).
• Automatic gestures, speech patterns, or repetitive self-talk.
  Noticing these patterns helps you disidentify from them and choose relating instead.

6. Welcoming Feedback: Learning How You Affect Others

Welcoming feedback means that you want to hear the truth, even if it’s uncomfortable.

Openness to impact. This skill involves being genuinely curious about how your actions affect others and being open to hearing their responses, even if they are uncomfortable or critical. It's an essential aspect of relating, contrasting with the control pattern of avoiding potentially negative information.

Building trust and connection. Asking for and receiving feedback strengthens relationships by showing you value the other person's perspective and are open to learning. It clears the air of withheld issues and builds trust. Avoiding feedback, conversely, can lead to problems escalating unnoticed until it's too late.

Practices for feedback. Cultivating this skill involves actively seeking input:

• Asking for feedback "out of the blue."
• Responding to others' comments by inquiring about their experience.
• Noticing something unusual and asking about it.
• Establishing regular feedback rituals (e.g., resentments/appreciations, sharing withholds).
  When receiving feedback, pause, take it in, acknowledge the other, and ask for specifics if needed, aiming to learn rather than defend.

7. Asserting Your Wants & Boundaries: Keeping Your Energy Flowing

Asking freely, instead of inhibiting yourself, keeps your energy flowing.

Supporting feelings with action. Asserting what you want and don't want is crucial for supporting your feelings and preventing energy from getting stuck in unfinished business or fantasies. It affirms your right to have desires and boundaries, regardless of whether they are met.

Overcoming fear of rejection. Many people struggle with assertion due to false beliefs learned in childhood about the consequences of expressing wants (e.g., disappointment, punishment, causing problems). The key is to keep expressing your desires, even if you anticipate a negative outcome, to break free from play-it-safe patterns.

Assertion as self-expression. The goal isn't just to get what you want, but to speak your truth, stay connected to your energy flow, and deepen your self-awareness. Expressing a "no" in the moment is simply stating your present reality; it doesn't define you or predict the future. Using specific language and painting a picture of your wants can make assertion more authentic and engaging.

8. Taking Back Projections: Seeing Yourself in Others

Human beings are like walking, talking projectors.

Outer mirrors inner. We often see things in others that are actually reflections of unresolved aspects or inner conflicts within ourselves. For example, being bothered by someone's controlling behavior might mirror your own struggle with an inner micromanager or a pattern of rebelling against authority.

Owning your judgments. When you judge someone else, it often signals unresolved feelings about the same issue within yourself. The first step in taking back a projection is noticing your judgment and expressing it as a self-revelation ("I notice I'm having a judgment that you shouldn't..."). This takes responsibility for your inner state.

Responding to projections. When someone projects onto you (e.g., blames you for their feelings), their reaction is about them, not necessarily you. While you don't have to accept their blame, you can look inside to see if their projection triggers something in you, revealing one of your own control patterns or inner conflicts. Active listening can help you process their input without immediately reacting.

9. Holding Differences: Embracing Paradox in Conflict

It takes more than one blind man to “see” the whole elephant!

Beyond dominate or submit. When faced with disagreements, the common choices are to try to force your view or give in. Holding differences, however, means maintaining your own perspective while genuinely being open to and considering others' views. This allows you to see more of the whole picture and embrace paradox.

Expanding consciousness. Learning to hold two seemingly conflicting views simultaneously expands your consciousness and allows for more creative problem-solving and intuitive decision-making. It moves you beyond dualistic thinking and helps you see how different perspectives can be complementary parts of a larger whole.

Practices for holding differences.

• Active Listening: Disciplining yourself to accurately restate what the other person said helps you truly hear their perspective, especially when it's difficult.
• Contact-Withdrawal Exercise: Noticing and honoring differing rhythms in relationships helps you tolerate differences without taking them personally.
• Staying in the Impasse: Allowing yourself and others to remain in a state of unresolved conflict for a period can lead to deeper insights and transformative shifts, rather than premature compromise.

10. Sharing Mixed Emotions: Accepting Your Complexity

Do not assume that one feeling cancels out the other(s). Both (or all) can be true.

Beyond simple feelings. It's common and normal to experience multiple, sometimes seemingly contradictory, feelings at once (e.g., anger and appreciation, fear and desire, gratitude and irritation). Trying to force yourself to have only one clear feeling can lead to confusion and suppression.

Expressing the layers. The way out of confusion is to allow whatever feeling is in the foreground to be expressed first. Once that layer is shared, other feelings or thoughts may surface. Expressing these mixed emotions, using "and" instead of "but," allows for greater depth and genuineness in your communication.

Situations for mixed emotions. This skill is useful whenever your response has multiple components:

• Caring for someone but disliking their actions.
• Wanting to express anger but fearing the outcome.
• Appreciating intent but resenting execution.
• Asserting boundaries while empathizing.
• Having an immediate reaction followed by a considered thought.
  Sharing these complexities helps you stay present and allows others to see your full, authentic self.

11. Embracing Silence: Trusting the Unknown & the Void

The most authentic response to a situation arises from a place of spaciousness, of silence, of not knowing.

Silence as creation. Authentic communication relies on silence – the pauses between words and the space left for others to respond. Silence is the fertile void from which new ideas and feelings emerge, both within yourself and in the interaction.

Avoiding the void. The ego-mind fears the unknown and discomfort of silence, often rushing to fill it with words, answers, or control patterns. Asking a question and immediately answering it yourself is a common example of avoiding the anxiety of waiting for an unknown reply.

Practices for embracing silence. Learning to tolerate and value silence helps you become more present, receptive, and trusting of the unknown:

• Pausing before speaking: Checking in with yourself and connecting with the other before talking.
• Using a "talking object" in groups: Allowing space for reflection before speaking.
• Meditation: Cultivating inner stillness to access deeper truths and become more present.
• Word fasting or silent gatherings: Experiencing nonverbal connection.
• Free association: Allowing uncensored thoughts and feelings to emerge with space between them.
• Asking vs. Telling: Shifting from controlling the conversation to being open to others' input.

12. The Payoff: Serenity, Presence, and Compassion

Serenity, presence, and compassion are the three words that best describe the qualities we begin to embody when we Get Real.

Serenity through acceptance. As you practice the truth skills, you become less identified with your ego's need for control and more accepting of yourself, others, and circumstances. Identifying with the "noticer" or witness consciousness brings inner peace, as your sense of self is no longer threatened by external events or fluctuating emotions.

Presence through attention. Getting Real cultivates your ability to be fully present in each moment by freeing up energy previously tied to control patterns and unfinished business. This energetic aliveness and open attention allow you to participate fully in life and respond creatively to whatever arises.

Compassion through openness. As you become more open and less defended, you develop the capacity to be genuinely moved by others' suffering without needing to blame or fix. This compassion arises from a place of relaxed attentiveness and a sense of unity with the world, embodying a state of being that is both grounded and expansive.

Last updated: May 4, 2025