We can also say "No" and refuse to submit to something that appears to be abuse or domination. It might also occur, sometimes quite often, that what we perceived as domination could actually intend to make a request for something justified or serve as a reasonable and even helpful suggestion or instruction. It happens because we talk and ask for things to happen in a way that often sounds like a demand. If our perception tells us it's actually domination ("I know what she/he really means"), we can just say "No" and miss whatever possibility is presented. It is presented badly doesn't always mean the thing itself will do us harm. We can also see the presenter of the information as a dominator for us to thwart with as many No's as needed. That perceived domination and "No" response happens within us, and if we stack up enough "No's" against others and ourselves, our lives can become very restricted, and we find it difficult if not impossible to get much positive done in our lives. This comes as another place to seek balance in perception and response.
To establish our domination over something or someone, or to escape a perceived domination by others, we choose to live in and act from a generally negative past that our meaning perceptive recreates and successfully maintains as an illusion of the present. Our immediate, unquestioned negative responses almost always come from the past and our meaning perspectives formed by that past learning or experience. It interferes with our perception and conception of the present and disallows our full participation in the present. Seeking control means seeking the past. It can become a kind of self condemnation or enslavement to the past.
Unquestioned meaning perspectives always hold us in the past.
When a meaning perspective becomes established, it becomes the way we always see certain situations, certain people, certain objects, and simply becomes the filter which imposes form and color to any possible event in our lives.[71] That filter becomes the way we always perceive and conceive of something, therefore becomes determinant on how respond to it. When we perceive through a meaning perspective that something is a danger, we respond to it as a danger even if in some new context, it offers no risk and might even serve as a help. If I see something as a pleasure, I will always see it as a pleasure even if in some new context it might have become detrimental or even an immediate danger.
Experience in living can establish meaning perspectives about how we perceive, conceive, and conduct ourselves in life. Certainly, many if not most of our meaning perspectives happened and became established quite early in life. They just happen to us without us really even knowing they have happened. We have no immediate awareness that they exist. These unquestioned meaning perspectives simply manifest themselves in our minds as obvious and immutable truths about ourselves and our relationships to the world, to others, and to ourselves independent of all reference to present and future contexts, as we discussed, thus making us live in the past and separated from the present, from what many people call the "Now." That's why we have to work at control so vociferously. Keeping the past in place in spite of the steady and inexorable flow of life into the present and future takes enormous effort. It also tends to preclude a great deal of learning because much real learning opens us to new ways of experiencing the world thus violates the meaning perspective, the visceral truth within us. When we feel that violation, we will feel the very structure of our identity and therefore our world threatened because we use meaning perspectives to give the seeming randomness of the world form. As we have discussed, we all feel the need to find or create forms of pattern and meaning in the world, so that we can navigate the world with some facility. Meaning perspectives satisfy that purpose in their own way, getting us successfully through some experience in our lives, but a meaning perspective that forms in one context of need can become permanent, over generalized, and internally dominating. It may make meeting some other need in some other context nearly impossible.
The child playing with the toy of many pieces faces a life experience which she/he can find confusing and even upsetting. If that confusion and upset continues long and repeatedly enough, they could form a meaning perspective, so the child becomes at peace with formlessness and mess, as we discussed earlier. If someone comes into the scene and says, "Can't you figure this out? This is how you make these pieces work. Try that," and physically shows the child the pattern and makes the child repeat it, "Until you get it right." If the child senses that he gains form and some positive regard, the child may feel relieved and a different meaning perspective can form. The child will insist on obeying the rules as the best and only way of getting things done. In the same situation, the child might feel some resentment about the interference and not like the judgmental nature of the regard, so the child derives a meaning perspective about never taking advice or reading instructions and always reinventing the wheel to get something done. Simultaneously, along with the development of a specific, situational meaning perspective, the child also continues to develop her/his meaning perspective about inner happiness or inner unhappiness.
Twin sisters attended the interviewing class where these discussions developed.[72] One sat in the back, kept her eyes down, said absolutely nothing and looked as if the class offered her nothing of value. Her sister sat in the front of the class and often argued with even very minor points, and I wondered if she too felt the class offered her nothing of value.
After a session of the class, they stayed on and spoke to me. They both assured me that they were really getting a lot out of the class and the discussions. They knew that it could look otherwise, so they wanted to explain. It's just that the behaved in the way they did because, as one said, "That's just the way we are." When we hear that phrase or speak that phrase, we can almost always feel sure that we speak out our defensive ego about our vulnerable and insecure identity. That phrase may also indicate the strong presence of an "I am . . ." meaning perspective.
I thanked them for talking to me because I did have my doubts about what the class held for them. They thanked me for my honesty and said they felt good about getting it cleared up. We chatted on amiably, and I mentioned that I found it remarkable that they were so different in their approach to life. They responded that they became this way when they were placed in an orphanage. They told me that they felt in danger in this institution from the staff and other children. The quiet one said she learned how to seem invisible so no one would notice her, and she would come to less harm than otherwise. The other developed a highly confrontive technique, so others felt a very real reluctance to offer her any harm. Each developed a strategy, and they both worked in the institutional context. They felt and actually were safer—in that context.
We talked openly, and I said that I admired the survival techniques they had chosen. Any response that made a nightmare bearable seemed well justified. Then I suggested that these techniques might not serve them as well when they shifted into other contexts. Even in an interview, such techniques could work against them. A person who cannot talk and provides little information about herself, might find it difficult to get hired On the other hand, a person who responded defensively and confrontively to the interview might also find it difficult to get hired. They responded that they knew that, but that was just the way they were. They felt that had no options at all.
Such a surety of limitation serves as the voice of a meaning perspective, one that may well have developed as a strategy for dealing with life even before the orphanage. That strategy proved extremely effective in the orphanage and became a meaning perspective about life and living globally. But as is the case with meaning perspectives generally, it would not adjust to new situations or contexts. These twins felt absolutely committed to their orphanage meaning perspectives even though in another context those perspectives could well do them harm. Whatever else they felt, they knew that they had to keep control through the application of their orphanage meaning perspective. So long as they continued to do that, they were stuck in the past, one that they wanted desperately to escape. They wanted control, to protect the egos and identities they developed in the orphanage, but it left them with no mechanism to find balance in their immediate lives. Meaning perspectives and the control they demand work in ways we feel we need, but they work against us as well. They keep us from the expression of the becoming self which seeks and manifests balance in ever changing and shifting contexts of daily living.[73] Meaning perspectives may also trap our identity and ego into roles that may threaten our whole being. In the case of these sisters, neither might interview well enough to get the jobs they wanted.