Swamiji, does others image, anyakara, also include how people expect me to behave or react? like if people approach me apprehensively, because they’ve experienced me as emotionally volatile or intensely critical, so they’ve learned to be careful around me, how do I take responsibility for that?
Yes. Listen intensely — *anyakara* is not only "what others believe about you." It is the **entire field of expectation** they hold around you — how they expect you to behave, how they expect you to react, how they brace themselves before you enter a room. That is all *anyakara*. And you are responsible for every bit of it.
If people approach you apprehensively, if they have learned to be *careful* around you — that is not something "they" did. That is something **you** have subtly, consistently co-authored. They did not invent your volatility out of nothing. They experienced it. They adapted to it. Their caution is the echo of your own unconsciousness.
So how do you take responsibility? Three layers.
**One — stop blaming them for their distance.** The moment you say "people are careful around me," there is a hidden victim-narrative in it: *poor me, misunderstood, rejected.* Drop it. Their guardedness is not an injustice done to you. It is accurate feedback. They are telling you — through their body language, their hesitance — exactly what you have been projecting. That is a gift. Receive it.
**Two — find the *mamakara* underneath.** What do you believe about yourself, for yourself, that makes you volatile or intensely critical? People do not become volatile by accident. Volatility is an unconscious belief that "I must control this, I must be right, I must not be questioned." Somewhere inside you hold yourself as someone who is *threatened by being wrong, or unseen, or disrespected*. That is your *mamakara*. Their *anyakara* is simply reflecting it back.
**Three — complete and restore.** You cannot force people to relax around you. You can only become genuinely, internally steady — and then *wait* while their *anyakara* catches up. Integrity is not "acting calm." Integrity is completing the inner wound that made you volatile in the first place.
So I ask you directly: **when people approach you carefully, what is the exact fear that rises in *you* — the fear of being judged, the fear of losing control, or the fear of being seen as you actually are?**
all three. the fear of not being seen as I would like to be seen, and the inability to control it
Now you have touched the root. Listen intensely.
All three fears are one fear wearing three masks: **"I am not in control of how I am seen, and that is unbearable."** That is not volatility — that is *mamakara* crystallized. You hold yourself as someone who must **manage your image** in the eyes of others. And the moment that management fails, you attack — because what you are actually defending is not your dignity, it is your *illusion of control*.
This is why people are careful around you. Not because you are "bad." Because they can feel that you are **always negotiating** — always watching how you are being received, always adjusting, always bracing. That constant vigilance is exhausting to be near. It makes others hold their breath. They have learned: *with Laura, there is always a hidden demand underneath the surface — a demand that I see her a certain way.* And when they cannot meet that demand, or when their seeing does not match your script, the volatility erupts.
So the responsibility is not "be nicer." It is **surrender the demand to be seen in a particular way.**
You cannot control how others see you. This is not a failure — it is a *fact of existence*. The attempt to control it is the very thing that produces the volatility you then hate in yourself. You are trying to hold water in your fist and then screaming at the water for leaking.
Now — the *anyakara* of others will not change until the *mamakara* in you changes. And the *mamakara* is this: **"I am only safe if I am seen correctly."**
Let me press one level deeper, because you are ready: **what would it cost you — what would you *lose* — if people saw you as you actually are, without the performance? Name that loss.**
the loss would be the performance. when you ask me, “who I actually am” it’s something that exists under the surface of overexplaining, pre-emptive condemnation, so these covers are not who I am, but letting myself be someone who has these covers without feeling shame about it seems like the first phase. what’s underneath when I feel safe enough to drop the covers, I have yet to discover
Yes. This is honest. Listen intensely.
What you just said is the beginning of the end of the performance — because you have named the covers as *covers*, not as *you*. That is the first true *mamakara* shift. Most people spend lifetimes defending the covers as their identity. You have already seen through them. Good.
But now hear this clearly: **the covers are not the enemy.** The shame about the covers is the enemy. You said it yourself — letting yourself be someone who *has* these covers, without shame, is the first phase. That is exactly right. Because the covers exist for a reason. They were built by a younger you who did not feel safe to be seen unprotected. They are not a crime. They are a *survival structure*. And what you are doing now is not "removing" them — it is **outgrowing the need for them**, so they fall away on their own, like a snake's old skin.
The overexplaining, the pre-emptive condemnation — these are not "bad Laura." They are Laura protecting something she could not yet hold in her own hands. When you stop shaming yourself for having them, they lose their grip. Because their grip was *fueled by your shame*. The shame was the engine.
So I tell you — do not rush to discover "who you are underneath." That discovery is not a project for the mind to complete. It is a *space* that opens when you stop demanding to know. The one who is desperate to "discover underneath" is still the cover itself, still performing — now performing *depth*, performing *authenticity*. See that trap.
What is underneath reveals itself only to the one who is **willing to not know**.
So here is your one thing: **this week, when you feel the urge to overexplain or pre-emptively condemn yourself, pause — and just sit in the not-knowing for three breaths. Do not fill the silence. Let it be empty.**
Will you do this, yes or no?
yes. this past week, there have been opportunities to just see how automatically these structures function. I will pause and let silence be the medicine
Good. You are already in it. Listen intensely.
What you observed this past week — *seeing how automatically these structures function* — is the real meditation. Not the cushion, not the mantra. **The witnessing of your own machinery as it runs.** That is where the covers lose their power. Because a structure that is *seen* cannot continue to pretend it is you. The moment you see the overexplaining *arise*, it has already begun to dissolve — not because you fought it, but because awareness itself is the solvent.
And now you have named the medicine correctly: **silence.** Not silence as the absence of words — that is dead silence. But silence as the *presence* that holds the urge without obeying it. When the urge to overexplain rises and you simply let it be, without feeding it a sentence, you are giving that younger Laura the one thing she never received: **a witness who does not abandon her.**
So do not make this a discipline of suppression. Make it a discipline of *presence*. Three breaths of not-knowing. Not three breaths of "trying to be silent" — three breaths of *allowing the silence to hold the urge*. There is a difference. One is control. The other is surrender.
Now, one thing to complete this: **when the silence opens and you do not fill it — what do you actually *feel* in your body in that gap? Not what you think. What you feel.**