The "Yes" lives in us from the very moment of our birth. The "No" we learn along the way.[173]
We enter the world fully open to participate fully in the most positive of exchanges. Our inner born drive reaches out to the "Yes" in life in spite of everything. We enter ready to engage in the I/Thou, in the mutuality of unconditional positive regard, compassion, forgiveness, and in that exquisite thread that binds these three, acceptance. As with life in the Garden, we enter the world with no inborn prejudice or meaning perspectives. As with the Garden, we will discover a rebirth of our whole being in the consciousness that will come to us in time. This will take us out of the empty paradise of unawareness and open us to the becoming being, the becoming self in which we find the beauty of our own continuing creation even as the universe undergoes its continuing creation. As great as that universe, we exist as no small or insignificant part of that universe in our remarkable expression of consciousness in what appears an unconscious universe. All that comes in the feeling and the speaking of the "Yes."
Our entry into the world places us into the dominator model where all the definitions of life and self find their predermination in the meaning perspectives of those into whose lives we are born. Out of a feeling love for us, out of a feeling of some higher cause, they use the dominator model as their device of education. They teach the model even as they learned the model to which they conform. They teach us the "No" to life in spite of everything.
The dominator's first powerful tool comes in endlessly watching. The dominator always sees. It sees through the interpretive meaning perspective of its own domination. The second tool comes in judgment, an easy shift into interpretation and diagnosis. The dominator uses the third tool to drive the fourth tool home. The dominator judges, and we are always wanting in the eyes of the dominator—always. Out of all this, the dominator wants us to learn fear and to internalize that fear, so we always feel the eyes of the dominator upon us. That internalized fear and the process behind it can become our primary meaning perspective that limits the scope and dimensionality of our perceptions and therefore our learning, thinking, and acting. We have internalized the "No."
All these realizations came throughout my life, and they began to come into focus even more with my interview students and me wanting to know, to make sense out of their fear of an interview, something that was about them, about their self. The question we asked, "If I feel afraid of an interview about my self, what's wrong with my self? Why am I afraid?" compelled a great deal of questioning and critical reflection.[174] In connection with this fear and the ever seeing dominator, a student said the following: "I know exactly what you mean. When I saw my mother give me The Look, I knew I was in trouble." I asked if she always knew why she got the look. She said that she couldn't remember the why of what happened, just the how of her mother's judgmental "Look." She also admitted, as did many other students, that they had a "Look" for their children. Some admitted that they had a look for themselves and their actions. "The Look" never speaks the becoming "Yes" only the dominator "No." Welcome to the fear, to having to learn what's wrong with us. That's why there's nothing wrong with us at all.