The Blind Spot.

There is something we all do, quietly, constantly, without even noticing. We sort our inner world into two piles: the feelings we welcome and the feelings we wish would go away.

Joy, confidence, peace – yes, please, more of those. Anxiety, sadness, shame – no thank you, let us get rid of those as quickly as possible.

It seems so natural, so obvious, that we never question it. Of course we should try to feel good and stop feeling bad. What else would we do?

And yet, this very sorting – this invisible hierarchy we have built inside ourselves – may be the single greatest obstacle to our healing, our wholeness, and our creative freedom. Maria Sanchez, in her profound book "Der Blinde Fleck" (The Blind Spot), reveals this pattern with breathtaking clarity. What she uncovers changes everything.

From the moment we arrive in this world, we begin to learn which parts of ourselves are welcome and which are not. Our caregivers, our culture, our environment all teach us – mostly without words – that some emotions are desirable and others are undesirable. Some aspects of our personality earn us love. Others seem to threaten it.

And so, very early on, we build what Sanchez calls a "feelings hierarchy" – a ranking system for our inner life. Happiness sits at the top. Depression sits at the bottom. Confidence is prized. Vulnerability is suspect. We spend the rest of our lives trying to climb toward the top of this list and flee from the bottom.

But here is the quiet tragedy: in ranking our feelings, we have divided ourselves against ourselves. We have created an inner war – a war between the parts of us we accept and the parts we reject. And we have been fighting this war for so long that we no longer even see it.

We are more lost than we believe, and more redeemed than we ever dare to hope. This paradox sits at the heart of our condition. We are so deeply entangled in our patterns of rejection that we cannot see them – and yet, beneath all of it, something whole and sacred remains untouched.

Here is where Sanchez's insight becomes truly revolutionary. When we suffer – from anxiety, depression, recurring emotional pain – we naturally assume we are identified with the suffering. "I am anxious," we say. "I am depressed." We believe the problem is that we are too close to the pain, too merged with it.

But what if the opposite is true?

What if we are not identified with the symptom at all – but with the part of us that rejects it?

Think about it for a moment. When anxiety arises, what is our immediate response? We want it gone. We fight it, resist it, try to breathe it away, meditate it away, think it away. We mobilize everything we have against it. And we call this "working on ourselves."

But who is doing the fighting? Not the anxiety. The fighter is a different part of us entirely – the part that says, "This should not be here. I should not feel this way. Something is wrong with me."

This fighter, this inner rejector, is so familiar to us that we mistake it for who we are. It has become our sense of self. And this is the blind spot.

Try this for a moment. Think of a feeling you struggle with – perhaps anxiety, perhaps sadness, perhaps anger. Now notice: is there a part of you that immediately wants to fix it, overcome it, or make it go away?

That part – the fixer, the fighter, the one who cannot bear the feeling – that is where your true identification lies. Not with the pain itself, but with the resistance to it. And as long as we remain identified with the resistance, genuine healing cannot happen. Because the very "I" that is trying to heal is the one keeping the wound in place.

Sanchez offers three beautifully simple questions that reveal how we truly relate to our suffering. She calls them verification questions, and they are startlingly honest.

The first is the Forever Question: Could this symptom, this feeling, stay forever? Not "will it" – but could it? Is there genuine inner permission for it to remain?

The second is the Visibility Question: May others see me when this symptom is active? When the anxiety is present, when the sadness is showing – am I willing to be seen like this?

The third is the Wish Fairy Question: If a fairy appeared right now and offered to remove this symptom instantly, forever – would I accept?

Most of us answer these questions with deep honesty: No, it cannot stay forever. No, I do not want to be seen like this. And yes, of course I would accept the fairy's offer.

These answers reveal something profound. We may tell ourselves that we have accepted our pain. We may have done years of inner work, therapy, meditation. But what we have given our suffering, at best, is a right to be tolerated – not a genuine right to exist.

There is a world of difference between the two. Toleration says, "Fine, you can be here for now, but I am still working on getting rid of you." A genuine right to exist says, "You belong here. You are part of me. You are welcome, exactly as you are, for as long as you need to be here."

When was the last time you said that to your anxiety? To your sadness? To your fear?

You could only be wounded so deeply because your heart was so wide open. Beneath your wound, the sacredness of an open heart still breathes. This is perhaps the most tender truth Sanchez offers. Our deepest wounds are not signs of weakness – they are evidence of how open and alive we once were. And that openness has never left us.

Sanchez draws a crucial distinction between what she calls Love 1 and Love 2.

Love 1 is the love most of us know. It is conditional, preferential love. I love you if you are kind. I love you when you succeed. I love this feeling but not that one. I love the parts of me that are strong and reject the parts that are fragile. Love 1 picks and chooses. It has a hierarchy. It is the love of the ego.

Love 2 is something else entirely. It is unconditional, all-embracing love. It does not rank or sort. It does not prefer joy over sadness, strength over vulnerability. It gives a genuine right to exist to everything – every feeling, every part, every wound, every fear. Not because these things are pleasant, but because they are real. Because they are here. Because they are us.

Try this as a gentle practice. Choose a feeling that you habitually resist – perhaps a familiar anxiety, a recurring sadness, or a shame you have carried for years. Instead of trying to release it or transform it, simply sit with it. Say to it, inwardly:

"You may be here. You have a right to exist. I am not trying to change you or get rid of you. You belong."

Notice what happens in your body when you say this. There may be resistance – a part of you that says, "But I do not want this feeling!" That is fine. Let that resistance be here too. Give it the same right to exist.

This is not a technique for making feelings go away. It is the opposite. It is a practice of letting everything be here – and discovering that when we stop fighting, something unexpected begins to shift on its own.

We are in Love 1. This is not a mistake – it is exactly right. This is where we stand. Sanchez does not shame us for our conditional love. She does not ask us to leap to Love 2 through willpower or spiritual effort. She simply invites us to see where we are, clearly and honestly. Because seeing where we stand – without judgment – is itself the beginning of Love 2.

Perhaps the most liberating insight in Sanchez's work is this: transformation happens. It cannot be made.

We cannot engineer our healing. We cannot strategize our way into wholeness. Every attempt to "achieve" integration is still the ego trying to manage the process – still Love 1, still the same hierarchy, dressed up in spiritual clothing.

Transformation cannot be made – it happens. It can only be the consequence, never the goal. When both sides of an inner conflict are truly allowed to land – when the symptom and the resistance to the symptom are both given a genuine right to exist – something begins to move on its own. Not because we made it happen, but because we stopped preventing it.

This is deeply aligned with everything we explore here on The Way of Creation. Surrender is not passivity. It is the most courageous act of trust – trusting that when we stop forcing, controlling, and fighting, life itself knows how to heal us. Our symptoms are not enemies to be defeated. They are allies, messengers, pointing us toward what needs to be met with genuine love.

Here is a practice you can carry with you. The next time you notice yourself trying to fix, heal, or overcome something within you, pause. Take a breath. And ask:

Am I giving this feeling a genuine right to exist – or only a right to be tolerated?

Am I trying to make transformation happen – or am I creating the conditions for it to arise naturally?

Is this inner work still a subtle war – or is it becoming a genuine peace?

There are no right answers. Only honest ones.

At the deepest level, what Sanchez describes is what we might call inner homecoming. As children, we could not fully land with our caregivers in our wholeness. Some parts of us were welcomed, others were not. And so we learned to leave parts of ourselves behind – to become homeless within our own being.

The blind spot is this: we have been trying to come home by rejecting the very parts of ourselves that most need to arrive. We have been trying to love ourselves whole by excluding what we find unlovable.

But wholeness does not work that way. Wholeness means everything gets to come home. The joy and the grief. The strength and the fragility. The light and the shadow. The healer and the wound.

When we stop sorting our inner world into acceptable and unacceptable, when we lay down the weapons of our inner war, something extraordinary happens. Not because we made it happen. But because, finally, we stepped out of the way.

And in that surrender, we discover what was here all along: an open heart, breathing quietly beneath everything. A love that does not choose. A wholeness that was never truly broken.

We were always home. We just could not see it.

That was the blind spot.