We are rather less a single, unitary 'I' than a system or community of parts, each in relationship with one another. And it can be so very revealing, and practically useful, to get to know the parts - their intelligence, their blind-spots, and the very particular projects they've each taken up in our lives.I've written before here about shame, a familiar background mood for me, as it is for so many people. It turns out that there are at least two parts of me that are actively involved in protecting me from shaming by others - one which pre-emptively shames me, and one which more directly defends me from shame. Each has its own form of good intention, and each often causes me difficulty.The first part is an inner critic part. It's so dedicated to me not being shamed by other people that it will frequently take pre-emptive action by shaming me itself. The logic is clear, and compelling: if I can be made to feel sufficient shame beforehand, then perhaps I'll hold back from acting in a way that would cause others to shame me. It's a simple exchange - the lesser pain of my own internally generated shame to protect against the more soul-searing shame that comes from the disapproval of other people.This is the part which would have me hold back from speaking my mind, from becoming angry with other people, from showing too much love, from being a surprise or a disappointment or a bother or mystery. This is the part which, for years, held me back from dancing, having me be ashamed of myself even before I begin. It's dedicated to forever scanning the horizon and keeping me within very tightly contained boundaries so as to avoid the kind of pain it knows I could, once, not tolerate. It is willing to exact quite a price in order to do this: the inner price of feeling some level of shame at all times, and the outer price of holding back what is, most truly, mine to bring.The second part is a protector part. Should the antics of the inner critic fail, so that I actually get shamed by someone else, it throws itself into action. It's not interested in waiting, nor does it have any time for curiosity or learning. What it most wants is the shame to go away. The protector part brings forward my defensiveness, my justifications, my denial. Insincere apologies, pretence, lengthy justifications for my actions, tuning out, disconnecting from people, freezing, abandoning my commitments, bending myself out of shape - all these are the order of the day for the protector part.The protector part is also willing to pay a price to protect me from shame, most notably having me act at odds with myself, with a relationship I care about, or with my deepest, most sincere commitments.And while both these parts have honourable and noble intentions, they are way out of date, having swung into action when I was very small and really needed some protection. They don't take into account that I am an adult now, and that there is another part of me, more akin to the me-myself that exists over the entire span of my life, that no longer needs their help. This part, which could be called essence or self, is really quite able to be in the world alongside shame, and anger, and hate, and disappointment. It is vast enough, deep enough, alive enough, and quite strong enough to experience whatever comes its way. It is curious, open, timeless, and willing to learn.Naming the parts has power. When I see that I am had by the inner critic or inner protector, I am increasingly able to ask them to relax, to step aside - to reassure them that I'm quite fine, whatever happens, and that I do not need them to protect me any more. And, in the space that this affords, I'm more able to step, willingly and without panic or rush, towards genuine relationship and inquiry, and into the world as it is rather than the world as smaller parts of me imagine it to be.
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There are parts of us we know well - those that are in close - and parts of ourselves we know less well - the more hidden, invisible parts. Sometimes, simply giving a part its appropriate name allows us to see it and to interact with it more skilfully. The inner critic is one such part. Seeing it, naming it, entering into a different kind of relationship and conversation with it - all of these can be powerful moves in having it take up a more helpful and life-giving place in the constellation of entities each of us calls 'I'.But there are also parts of each of us that we have disowned or split off and that we barely see as part of ourselves at all. These may be parts of ourselves that we dislike, or judge, or abhor. Or they can parts we long for, but do not feel are available or appropriate for us. But parts of us they are, and since we can't bear to identify our experience of them with ourselves, we readily project them into others.So often, when we find ourselves disliking other people, when we get irritated by them, feel judgment or scorn or disdain or even hate towards them, we're seeing in them what we most dislike or scorn or are irritated about in ourselves. A simple way of saying this is that what we encounter in them reminds us so strongly of what we're trying to get away from in ourselves, that we try get away from it in them too.The very same process can also be in play with those we are drawn to, admire, or put on a pedestal. In this case perhaps we're seeing in the other, first, a reminder of split-off parts of ourselves that we deeply long to be reunited with but do not consciously know as our own. We feel drawn to the other person, or good about ourselves around them, precisely because of the feeling of wholeness and re-unification it brings about it in us.Perhaps it becomes obvious when described this way that the work for us to do with people who irritate us is not to try to change them (which in any case does not address the primary source of our irritation or anger or frustration) but to find out what it is about ourselves that we dislike so much and work with some effort and diligence to understand, turn towards, and accept it.And with people we love and admire the inner work for us to do is much the same if we want to love and admire them for who they are rather than because a hole or an emptiness or a longing gets filled when we're around them.Then, we can find, it's more and more possible to be around a wider range of people with openness and warmth and genuine regard. And it's also more possible to be close and compassionate with those we love most, who are so often the very people with whom we have the most difficulty because it's in them we find parts of ourselves most readily reflected. 
I remember the moment with gratitude, though it was tough at the time."You have no idea how self-judgemental you are", Andy had said to me. And it had cut like a knife. But he was right. I was thirty-five years old and had over many years become seasoned to the harshness of the world.I didn't know it as harshness to be so filled with self-doubt and such worry about how I was doing all the time. It was just the way the world was. Unquestionable. Invisible. And I had no idea that it wasn't so much the world that was harsh but my own inner experience.Andy's carefully timed observation was one of those moments when what had been in the background for so long came crashing into the foreground - when what I had been swimming in for so long was made apparent to me.It was a doorway into a profoundly new world in which I began to see that most of what I thought others were thinking about me was actually what I was thinking about myself. And that I no longer had to believe everything I thought so completely.Eleven years later, I'm still sometimes out-foxed by the shape-shifting cleverness of my inner critic. But I am more often, and more quickly, able to spot it and see through its ways of holding me back and of pulling me apart.And, more and more, in the space that envelops me when it steps aside, I'm able to feel a quiet and genuine kind of joy.
When you're talking with another person, remember that there are always more than two of you present.At the very least there's you, and them, and your 
We discover early in life what the people around us expect from us. And we find ways of doing just that. Even if we've completely misunderstood what was being asked.Meeting these expectations becomes, before long, central to our identity. We know ourselves as this or that kind of person, and then actively work to keep the identity we've established going. It feels familiar and comfortable to keep having people around us respond to us in the way to which we've become accustomed.I learned early on to be the peacekeeper: the pursuer of harmony, making sure I and everyone around me remained undisturbed and untroubled; listening, supporting, staying quiet, defusing conflict, avoiding anger (my own and other people's).All these ways of being seemed, unquestionably, to be me.And of course they affected and shaped what was possible in any kind of relationship with me. Peacekeeping can be a great gift to the world, but also stifling and frustrating for others when anything genuine and troubling and sharp needs to be said.Other people around me took on other kinds of identity - the helper, making sure everyone is cared for and nobody is left out; the achiever, getting ahead and making things happen, knowing themselves through the outward signs of success; the challenger, being sure to be in control, using assertiveness and power to have things happen.We have powerful inner forces that keep us inside the bounds we've established - among them the 
Lizzie and I were live again this morning, The source for this week's conversation was Mary Oliver's powerful poem '
In recent days I have been studying my relationship with time, and how much trouble it can bring me. Most often there is not enough time. And I become sure of this as I become sure of all the poor choices I have made, all the hours I have wasted.Sometimes, if I'll quiet myself and look afresh, I'll see the questionable construct upon which all this stands. It starts with "there's something wrong" and includes "there's something wrong with me". It assumes that time is inevitably in short supply - that whatever I have done can never be enough. It assumes that enough is not, in fact, possible. And that I must use whatever time I have left in an impossible game of catch up, an attempt to atone for my mistakes, to redeem uncountable time already squandered.But what if it is the case that things just take the time they take? That trees take the time they take to grow? That the sun takes the time it takes to rise? That it takes the time it takes for human beings to live?What if we were to live lives in which we learned to trust in time, to befriend it, rather than run from it as if it were an enemy, or something to be grabbed at with desperate hands? What if we learned to savour time, like we might a good wine?And what if sometimes we trusted that we, and the work of our hands when attended to with diligence, attention and care, grow at a pace that is quite natural and not ours to control?
Yesterday. 'Be more, Do more'. The tag-line for a personal training company written on the back of a van in front of me on the drive into town. The narrative theme of our times, the poetry of our shared culture, as revealed by the advertising and marketing that surrounds us.When we live in the narrative of 'more', every action, every conversation, every relationship becomes dedicated to an unending project for which we feel continuously responsible. More money, more stuff, more experiences, more trips, more friends, more relationships - yes. But also more capable, more powerful, more self-determining, more authentic, more persuasive, more reasonable, more peaceful, more compassionate, more successful, more loved, more happy, more fulfilled. When we orient towards ourselves this way we become the project, the objects of an unending self-improvement effort that requires our constant vigilance.And anything can be appropriated in service of the project of self-improvement. Excellence, which once meant living a life as an expression of virtue, comes to mean standing out from the mass. Learning - a means of getting the best test results. Art - a way to look (and think of ourselves as) cultured. Meditation and other spiritual practice - a way to have an untroubled life of peace and tranquility. Exercise - a way to get a body that others will be attracted to. Our own development - a way to gain unlimited power to do what we want, when we want it, and to have others support us and love us for it.When we live in this way, convinced that we're always due an upgrade, there is nowhere to rest. But, more importantly, we distort ourselves with a gross misunderstanding of what it is to be human, a misunderstanding in which we secretly imagine that it's possible to be a god. After all, who else but the mythical gods stand out, in all circumstances, from others? Who else has endless power, beauty, fulfilment? The capacity to summon abundance and tranquility upon a command, the ability to avoid suffering, accident and happenstance? Who but the gods have an existence in which there is no death, loss, disappointment, or illness? And who but the gods get just what they want, when they want it?When we live as if we're supposed to be gods, or entitled to be gods, we shouldn't be surprised at the harshness of our disappointment and self-criticism, our endless comparison with the lives of others, and the way we're hurled from grandiosity (I've made it, the all-powerful me) to deflation (I'm so small, and the world is so big, and there's no hope) and back again. And we shouldn't be surprised at what a fight we get into with our lives - lives that often surprise us, let us down, show us how little we know, throw us about, all without much regard for whether we're getting what we want.When we stop trying to improve ourselves (and often the people around us) all the time, we can start to appreciate in a new way the very natural and quite beautiful capacity of human beings to develop; to unfold like the buds of a rose. And we come to see, I am coming to think, that the path of our development is not trying to be gods, but finding out that we are ordinary.To be ordinary is to discover that we share the same heritage and future as all human beings, and all living things - a heritage and future that we cannot escape. To know ourselves as ordinary is to find out that we have bottomless capacity for compassion, kindness, wisdom, beauty and contribution as well as for selfishness, cruelty, denial and stupidity. To know ourselves as ordinary is to understand that we'll die, that there are consequences to our actions, that the earth's resources are limited, that we can't just have what we want because we say so. And to know ourselves as ordinary is to see that the vast world was here long before us and will be here long after us, and to find out that our contribution - if we're willing to make it - ripples out through the other ordinary lives that our life touches, both those who are around us now and those who are to come.To know ourselves as ordinary is to discover humility, finding out that we're not bigger than life but neither are we smaller than it; to take up our place in the weave of living things in which we find ourselves.When we know ourselves as ordinary we discover that we're all in this together and, because of this, we have some justification for hope: the understanding that our skills, capacities and deepest commitments can be an immense source of help even when we cannot control the outcome. We have a reason to love and care for others who are as messy, conflicted, confused and life-filled as ourselves. And we find ourselves able to step in on behalf of life, rather than lose ourselves in fairy stories of optimism (it will magically all get better whether or not I take part) or pessimism (in which we're all lost, whatever we do).