All our impressions and impulses are labeled concepts that give rise to the cognitive-behavioral patterns we employ when manifesting our thoughts as objects through verbalization. If we observe consciousness from the self-aware, placeless perspective that constitutes our nature in its primordial state, we see that the very means we use to defend ourselves against past violations are what we subsequently turn against ourselves—manifesting as self-criticism and feelings of inadequacy. This obscures our connection to our primordial or basic face—its relationship to the spaciousness within us, to spaciousness itself, to the placeless nature of consciousness, and to the clear awareness that articulates our experience of the primordial ground we share with others. We cannot accept or unreservedly tolerate this without our own defenses intervening. We cannot accept it with genuine compassion toward another because we do not possess it in an undistorted form regarding ourselves—beyond the rejection of the acceptance and compassion we encounter in relation to that aspect of our own being.