A very common, thus unexamined, everyday expression signifies something of what we really think happens between people. Everything is a limited and having based exchange. When I act with care toward another person or directly help another person, the other will often say to me, "I owe you one." The assumption, the meaning perspective reflected in this phrase makes our possible mutual kindness into an agreement and an exchange. It speaks of one ego to another, one identity to another. We act, it says, only in benefit or hope of benefit. When someone says, "I owe you," that person implicitly says that she/he feels a kindness of any type makes for a debt of some kind, and that imbalance puts the receiver of the kindness under an obligation to repay or remain at a disadvantage when dealing with the giver of the act. Again, we see the extreme vulnerability of the conformist identity and the defensive nature of our ego. The becoming self takes what the act offers intrinsically, the rightness of the act itself. The extrinsic value of an act in material, social, or image gain means little in a being way of seeing and experiencing the world. The becoming self does experience something as a result of a compassionate and altruistic act: gratitude. The becoming self wishes to act in the world in a way that enhances that world, so every chance to do so makes for a cause for gratitude. Indeed, many acts of compassion and altruism occur with no obvious exchange at all.[106]
We all long for unconditional positive regard as we have noted many times. Since our birth, we have felt that need strongly. Somewhere along the way, we seem to have lost, given up, our belief that we can ever encounter such an experience. The experience of a compassionate, altruistic exchange offers such an experience every time someone offers it to us. When that happens, we turn it into a bargain of some kind. The unconditional is not bargain. The unconditional comes freely, unconditionally as it says. No matter how unconditional something is meant and offered, when we respond to it as a bargain, we lose the chance for the unconditional even though we still may receive the act. We don’t lose that gift. We give it away. More—we shun it with the demand to bargain and not simply receive with gratitude.
Thinking about it now, it may be that we shun that gift of the unconditional because we no longer find it in ourselves. It may happen that our need for identity and ego has grown so strong over the years of the denial of the unconditional, that we fear any association with the becoming self—that place within us wherein the unconditional finds expression.