I saw no solution except to confess to Clara what was on my mind.

I told her what bothered me the most was that I seemed to have reached a standstill in my recapitulation.

"What is causing it?" Clara asked.

I admitted that it had to do with my family. "I know now without a doubt that they dislike me," I said sadly:

"Not that I didn't suspect it all along, because I did; and I used to get into rages about it.

"But, now that I have reviewed my past, I can't get angry the way I used to, so, I don't know what to do."

Clara eyed me critically, moving her head backward to size me up.

"What is there to do?" she asked. "You've done the work and found out that they disliked you.

"That's good! I don't see the problem."

Her cavalier tone annoyed me.

I expected if not sympathy, at least understanding and an intelligent comment.

"The problem," I said emphatically, on the verge of tears, "is that I'm stuck.

"I know that I need to go deeper than I have, but I can't.

"All I can think is that they disliked me, whereas I loved them."

"Walt, wait. Didn't you tell me that you hated them? I distinctly remember..."

"Yes, I did say that, but at the time I said it I didn't know what I was saying.

"I really loved them; my brothers too. Later I learned to despise them, but that was much later. Not as a child. As a child I wanted them to pay attention to me and play with me."

"I think I see what you mean," Clara said, nodding. "Let's sit down and discuss this."

We sat down again on the log.

"As I see it, your problem stems from a promise you made as a child.

"You did make a promise as a child, didn't you, Taisha?" she asked, looking at me squarely in the eye.

"I don't recall making any promises," I said sincerely.

In a friendly tone, Clara suggested that perhaps I didn't recall because I had been very young when I made it, or because it was more of a feeling than a promise actually stated in so many words.

Clara explained that as children, we often make vows and then become bound by those vows even though we can no longer remember making them.

"Such impulsive pledges can cost us our freedom," Clara said:

"Sometimes we are bound by preposterous childish devotion, or pledges of undying, eternal love."

She said that there are moments in everyone's life, especially in early childhood, when we have wanted something so badly that we automatically fixed our total intent on it, which, once fixed, remains in place until we fulfill our desire.

She elaborated by saying that vows, oaths and promises bind our intent; so that from then on, our actions, feelings and thoughts are consistently directed toward fulfilling or maintaining those commitments regardless of whether or not we remember having made them.

She advised me to review, during the recapitulation, all the promises I had ever made in my lifetime, especially the ones made in haste or ignorance or faulty judgement.

Unless I deliberately retrieved my intent from those promises, she advised, intent would never rise freely to be expressed in the present.^

I tried to think about what she was saying, but my mind was a mass of confusion.

Suddenly I remembered a scene from my very early childhood.

I must have been six.

I wanted to be cuddled by my mother but she pushed me away, saying that I was too old for cuddling, and told me to go clean up my room.

Yet the youngest of my brothers, who was four years older than I and was my mother's favorite, was always cuddled by her.

I swore then that I would never love or get close to any of them ever again.

From that day on, I seemed to have kept my promise by always remaining estranged from them.

"If it's true that they didn't love you," Clara said, "it was your fate not to be loved by your family.

"Accept it! Besides, what possible difference could it make now whether they loved you or not?"

It still made a difference, but I didn't tell Clara that.

Clara went on, "I too had a problem very much like yours.

"I had always been aware of being a friendless, fat, miserable girl.

"But through recapitulating I found out that my mother had deliberately fattened me up since the day I was born.

She reasoned that a fat, homely girl would never leave home; and she wanted me there as her servant for life."

I was horrified. This was the first time Clara had revealed anything about her past to me.

"I went to my teacher, who was definitely the greatest teacher one can ever have, for advice about this problem," she went on:

"He said to me, 'Clara, I feel for you, but you are wasting your time because then was then: now is now.

"Now there is only time for freedom.

"You see, I sincerely felt that my mother had ruined me for life: I was fat and couldn't stop eating.

"It took me a long time to get the meaning of 'Then was then: now is now.'

"And now there is only time for freedom."

Clara was silent for a moment as if to let the impact of her words settle on me.

"You have only time to fight for freedom, Taisha," she said, giving me a nudge. "Now is now."