What essentially happens in the process of really growing up is that you don’t need your mother or your father any more. You don’t need to have your mother inside you, or outside you. In the course of the work of dissolving the mother inside you, you have to deal with the fear that there will be nothing there to support, protect, comfort, or nourish you. But you learn that you do have these capacities in yourself. What takes the place of the mother – first the physical and then the psychological mother – is your Essence. To recognize, realize, integrate, and develop your Essence is to become an adult. Your Essence is you. It is not something you learn from your mother, it is not being like her, or relating to your superego. No, it is being your real self.