Fixation 2: “Ego-Flattery” / “Over-Independent”

Every person needs honour, dignity, and a sense of being valued; it is important that everyone lives with the sense that they are alive and important. At 2 , the alarm bell goes off around safety and security issues. Where can we find the security of knowing we are worthy of love? At 2 we attempt to secure everyone’s potential for a full life. Living to the full means experiencing all of life, not just the parts we like or call “good”. Living fully means being present to the joys and sorrows of life, living in the reality of what is. Within the 2 space, we find the domain of Life, Safety, Security, Health or Fulfillment. The 2 space is about taking care of ourselves and others and about the need to process our own feelings. Feeling impacts us at 1. It swells and expands in us at 2. When this goes too far, “expansion” becomes “puffed up”. We appear to ourselves to be bigger than we really are. Fullness, or abundance, of life calls for everything to be included, even those things that we would rather not have and that we want to fix. One characteristic essence is Fear - our fear that we won’t get what we need, not just to survive, but to thrive. Fears here are based on the mentality of scarcity, rather than abundance. There is a psychic poison of envy, mostly organized like the jealousies of 1, but with a distinction: We now feel that someone has more than us, or that we have less than them. Scarcity versus Abundance. This leads to possessiveness, rivalry or thoughts of having another person’s partner, for example. There is not a limit at times. This fixation gives and receives self- esteem, vanity, sense of belonging and a sentiment of authenticity or fakeness. We accumulate pride and narcissistic thoughts - we can think of ourselves as strong, having pride of our “I”, becoming independent, or we can think of ourselves as weak, having pride of others, becoming dependent. And then we defend ourselves by denial, a type of defense mechanism that involves ignoring the reality of a situation to avoid Fears and the conscience of our Pride. It is a refusal of recognisation that guides us distant from humility. Repression comes around, and is the unconscious blocking of “useless” needs (so we can give to the maximum), unpleasant emotions (so we do not get sad), an attempt to minimize the possibility or existence of guilt. The poison of this domain is lechery, na excessive or offensive sexuality; lustfulness and pride connected with our possessions.

The essential trap is the power of self-determination attributed to the will; the quality of being independent of fate or any of our necessities. We tend let our lives free and undecided. Liberty: the power or scope to act as one pleases, a right or privilegie (possession), the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions. The structure of this fixation deals with the construction of our lives; and the organization of our lives, the routine and limitation, is the way for self-realization of the traits within the fixation. Surface will doesn’t last; it expresses the likes and dislikes of the moment. It doesn’t have much persistence and, in the end, not much importance. Today I want jelly, tomorrow jam. Deep will that lasts and informs our life’s choices is not so easily available; we must seek it and deliberately cultivate it through self-observation, introspection. If we get hung up on our vulnerability and dependence, we fear that our needs won’t be met. At the pole of independence, we repress this fear by pretending to ourselves that we have everything we need. At this pole, we act out by working to fulfill our idea of someone else’s need and neglecting our own. Events that knock us off our feet

job loss, divorce, mental and physical illness, flunking out of college, death of a loved one – do not feel like “care”. And they’re not; they are not inflicted upon us “for our own good” or “to teach us a lesson”. They just happen, not “for a reason”, but because we are human. But in these events, we can receive care. Polarities here are represented by the character of someone hard to please and full of unnecessary detail or decoration; a person demanding attention, complaining a lot or worrying about nothing – someone paying great or excessive attention to personal tastes. And, the other character, one of someone messy, characterized by a dirty, untidy, or disordered condition, prone to excessive giving and full of needs, dependent, relying on others, very “out in the world”, living with groups or nurturing attachment to specific people (partners or friends). The former character can be called “strong”, “selfish” and “Independent”, the latter character can be called “weak”, “selfless” and “Dependent”. The former has goals and routine, the latter is flexible and ‘YOLO’. When I try to help while imposing my own agenda, not hearing people, I am actually falling into Pride. On the other hand, if I listen to people and truly receive it their needs, I can deliver what them need from me. I can take into account an accurate and clear-eyed assessment of my own abilities and limitations. This is Humility, the virtue of the 2 space. There is a clear difference: Pride is assumption of one’s needs, Humility is knowing you can’t give everything and that you also must listen to people and trade with them.