I've been thinking a lot about something Rev. Ike said: “I meet no one but me.” I've heard him say it before, but this time it stayed with me. You know how that happens. You hear something a hundred times, and then one day it follows you home and starts going through your things.

At first, I understood it the way I believe he intended it. The people and conditions in my life are showing me something about what I believe, what I expect, what I accept, and who I believe myself to be. Fine. I can work with that. But then I started looking more closely at the disappointments that seem to repeat themselves through different people, and I noticed how many of my thoughts began with “I feel,” “I need,” or “I want.”

Well, wait a minute. Is all of this about me? Am I the problem because I want honesty, depth, reciprocity, encouragement, or simply a direct answer? Am I expecting too much from people? Am I somehow creating these experiences and then blaming everyone else for what is really being reflected back to me?

This is where spiritual teachings can get a little tricky. An idea that is supposed to return us to our power can quietly become one more way to put ourselves on trial. Instead of asking what an experience is showing us, we start asking what is wrong with us that made the experience happen. Those aren't the same question, and I think that difference matters.

In Rev. Ike’s Secrets for Health, Joy and Prosperity for You, he teaches that the way we relate to ourselves affects the way we experience other people. I believe there is truth in that. If I continually place myself last, dismiss what I know, accept whatever is offered, or stay where I am repeatedly diminished, I am participating in the condition. At some point, I have to look at myself.

But I don't believe my self-image writes another person’s character. People have their own minds, histories, motives, limitations, and choices. A person can love themselves and still encounter someone dishonest. They can respect themselves and still have someone attempt to disrespect them. Knowing who I am doesn't place everybody else under hypnosis and compel them to act right.

And then I remembered something else Rev. Ike said, and honestly, it made this whole thing come together for me.

He talked about taking a long rod with him on his morning walks. The rod was there in case he encountered a dog, an animal, or a person who didn't recognize the God in him.

Okay?!

Rev. Ike believed in God-in-me, but he also believed in a long stick. Apparently, knowing who he was didn't require him to pretend teeth, aggression, or foolishness had disappeared from the earth. He could recognize the God within himself and still be prepared for something—or somebody—that didn't.

Now that is a spiritual principle I can use.

The rod is the practical part of self-concept. It says I can believe in my divinity without abandoning discernment. I can expect good without walking around pretending that everything I encounter is good for me. I can see the highest possibility in another person and still pay attention to what that person is actually doing.

Maybe “I meet no one but me” isn't saying that I created every person’s behavior. Maybe it's saying that every encounter eventually brings me back to myself. It brings me back to what I see, what I keep explaining away, what I continue hoping will change, and what I do after the pattern has become obvious.

I may not control the first disappointment. I may not see the first broken agreement clearly. Sometimes I need more than one encounter before I understand what I am looking at. But once I know, I become responsible for what I do with that information. The other person remains responsible for their behavior. I become responsible for my continued participation.

That was the recalibration for me.

Sometimes a person genuinely cares about us and still doesn't have the capacity to show up in the way we keep requesting. They may mean every reassuring word they say. They may have perfectly understandable reasons. But affection isn't capacity, and intention isn't a commitment I can use.

I think we make this harder because we listen to what people say and then add what we hope they mean. We turn “I want to” into “I will.” We turn affection into reliability and history into obligation. Then we wait for their actions to catch up with the meaning we placed inside their words.

When they don't, we act as though something unexpected happened.

No, ma’am. This may be the same answer wearing a new outfit.

This is what it means to ask a dry well for water. A dry well doesn't have to be evil. It doesn't have to be plotting against me or withholding water just to cause me pain. It may sincerely wish it had water. It may explain why the water is unavailable and assure me that it hopes to produce some soon.

But the well is still dry.

After I lower the bucket enough times and bring up nothing, the question can't remain, “Why is this well dry?” At some point I have to ask, “Why am I still treating this as my water source?”

That doesn't automatically mean I suffer from low self-esteem. Sometimes it's loyalty. Sometimes it's familiarity. Sometimes it's the years already invested. And sometimes it's because I give people what I want from them and assume they understand the agreement.

I encourage you, so naturally you will encourage me. I make room for your becoming, so surely you will recognize mine. I listen when you bring me something that matters to you, so when I bring you the thought that has lit up my whole mind, I expect you to come into it with me.

But the other person may never have agreed to any of that. I created the contract through my own behavior and then felt disappointed when they didn't honor terms they had never accepted.

That realization doesn't require me to become cold or stop being generous. It means reciprocity has to be observed. I can't establish it by giving more. I have to pay attention to what the other person repeatedly brings without adding my intentions, my hopes, or their potential to the evidence.

The same thing happens in conversation. There are people with whom an idea immediately comes alive. You can feel it. They enter the question, turn it around, challenge it, add something you hadn't considered, and suddenly both of you can see farther than either of you could see alone.

Then there are times when you present what feels like a genuine revelation and it lands with a thud. Nothing. Now you are standing there wondering whether it was only exciting in your own head.

Maybe it wasn't a weak idea. Maybe it was the wrong room.

Paul Millerd writes in The Pathless Path about the need to “find the others.” People trying to build or become something unfamiliar often need relationships with people who can recognize a direction before it has become conventional, profitable, or fully proven. That doesn't make us needy in some shameful way. We are formed in relationship. Certain parts of us become more visible around people who can actually see them.

The lesson isn't that I should stop wanting meaningful exchange. It's that everybody with access to me isn't automatically equipped to meet me there. Familiarity does not create range.

This becomes even more important in close relationships. When someone repeatedly diminishes us and then tells us the diminishment exists only in our minds, we can spend years trying to explain the experience well enough to finally receive acknowledgment. We present examples. We refine our words. We soften the delivery. We come back at a better time.

Meanwhile, the person who benefits from our self-doubt gets to decide whether our perception is valid.

Absolutely not.

At some point, the question is no longer, “How do I make this person understand what this does to me?” The question becomes, “What does the woman I now know myself to be do when this happens?” My self-respect can't force another person to change, but it can change my participation. It can change what I remain present for, what I continue explaining, and what receives access to me.

This is also where I have to be careful not to turn every unfinished result into an identity. Psycho-Cybernetics makes an important distinction between failing at something and deciding that failure is the kind of person you are. Something didn't work. A project hasn't produced the result I expected. I made a poor decision. Those are facts I can use.

“I am the kind of person who can't succeed” is a sentence the mind may spend years trying to prove.

A healthy self-image doesn't require me to deny what happened. It allows me to look directly at the result without turning it into a permanent description of myself. I can say, “Well, that didn't work. What did I miss? What needs to change?” The result becomes information instead of an indictment.

That is what self-trust looks like to me now. It doesn't mean every instinct I have is correct. It means I stop automatically overruling what I know because somebody else sounds more certain. Advice can inform my decision, but the person giving it doesn't have to live with the outcome. I do.

So no, I no longer hear “I meet no one but me” as an accusation. I hear it as a return. Every encounter brings me back to the self who already knows when an answer is no, when an exchange is unequal, when a room cannot hold the conversation, and when I have received enough information.

I don't need to turn the dry well into a fountain. I need to stop insisting that it become my source. I don't need everybody I encounter to recognize the God in me before I can recognize it in myself.

I know who I am.

I can still carry the rod.

And when the well is dry, I can stop lowering the bucket.

Source Notes

• Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II, Rev. Ike’s Secrets for Health, Joy and Prosperity for You, especially “Lovers Are Winners,” “Treat Yourself Right,” and the publisher’s description of the recorded teaching “I Meet No One But Me.”

• The morning-walk anecdote is presented as a remembered paraphrase of a Rev. Ike teaching; the exact recording has not yet been identified.

• Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics, especially “The Self-Image: Your Key to a Better Life.”

• Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path, especially “Find the Others” and “Find Your Tribe.”

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