I have been studying the ideas of Eckhart Tolle recently. He and Byron Katie have a lot on common in how they process the world. I feel pretty comfortable with their ideas. I do not know what the truth is, nor do I believe anyone will ever truly know what the truth is, and still, what they say feels true for me.
When it comes to the conversation about relationships, they both have similar things to say. They both say that we have never truly met anyone. That who we think we know in another person is a projection of our mind’s interpretation of that person, not who they really are. We cannot truly know each other because our minds continually use our experiences to translate what we see in other people. It is more a reflection of our past and our mind, than of that person.
We are a judgmental species, humans are. We are also very ego driven. Some people think that when people say ego, we mean someone who thinks they are better than others. Ego can be that, and ego can be about thinking less of yourself too. Ego is the sense of “self”. It is the identity we create for us. It is our “story” of who we think we are. It is actually no more real than who we think other people are. We, as a race of humans, tend to be very attached to our stories about who we are. That story is ego, no matter if the story is a positive or a negative one, if you think you are better, worse or the same as others, ego drives that story.
If I took a survey in a room of 50 people who I have known for a variety of timeframes, and they each got the same 5 questions about my personality and characteristics, what do you think would happen? Would all 50 people rate me the same on all 5 points? Would they be close to one another? How would that change if the 50 people were from different times in my life, different types of relationships, people who have and have not met me personally? If I also did the survey, would what I say match what they said? It is an interesting prospect to think about. In my lifetime I have been seen as many things. Some of that I agreed to be true, some of it I did not. I now realize that it was all true and none of it was true. It was true in the sense that it was real for whoever it was that believed it to be true, even if that was not me. It was not true in that no one is any one thing or set of things permanently, even if they are that for a moment in time.
Impermanence is the only consistency in the physical realm. Everything else is constantly in flux, decaying, growing, shifting, changing. The moment you think I am this, I change. The moment I think you are that, you change. Yes, people do change, even when we do not want them to, even though we hold on to our thoughts about who they are and try to stop it, they still keep changing. Who people I knew in high school thought I was, I am no longer that person. None of them are who I thought they were either. It is a little overwhelming for me to think about. No one that I know is who I think they are, were, or will be. All of those thoughts are about me, and how I see them and the world.
Do the thoughts we have about others, our judgments about them, match up with their judgments about themselves sometimes? Yes. They do. Do our judgements about them often match up with the judgments other people make about them? Yes. They also do. That does not make them true. Our current president is an excellent example of nothing anyone thinks about another person is real or true. I can ask 50 people what they think of him, and 50 people will give me 50 different answers. Depending on where I find the 50 people, the opinions will range from savior to devil, and everything in between. In truth, he is neither of those things. He is neither a savior or a devil, no matter how hard you want that to be true. He isn’t. He is just a man, doing some things, we may or may not agree are the right things to do.
We are no different from him in that way. We are just people, doing things, that others may or may not agree are the right things to do. How can we know what is truly the right thing to do? We cannot. I think I am digressing a bit. The point is that we are constantly judging other humans by our personal standards of right and wrong, and those standards are in no way universal. You might think they should be universal, or even think that they are, but that would be incorrect. The ideas of right and wrong have been debated since humans could first debate them, and there has never been a universal consensus of what it means to be right and wrong.
In terms of relationships, us judging others by our standards will always serve to drive us apart, not bring us together. While in the beginning our ideals might match up and we are going along smoothly, there will be a point at which we do not match up, and things will begin to fall apart. That is if we relate from our ego minds rather than from our true selves, our soul selves.
Soul selves, or higher selves, are not judgmental. Our souls know that we are all exactly who we are meant to be at any moment in time. As humans, we do not see the bigger picture of life, but our souls see the biggest picture of why each of us is here in this 3rd dimension of life. Our souls are living in the 4th, 5th or higher dimension and can see the universe for what it truly is, vast, limitless, abundant. Humans see all of life as limited to their ideas of what life should and should not be. It is a small view of existence. We limit others we are in relationship with also in this way. People have unlimited potential, and we will judge them and try to box them into our view of who they are, who they should be, and how they should fit into our world, and world view.
As soon as someone starts to do that to you, you choose. If you like how they are drawing you in, who they think you are, are comfortable with the box they are putting you into, you will be attracted to them and being with them. If you like who they see you as, even if you do not agree that is who you are, you will like them more. If their energy and your energy match up in comfortable ways, you will try to be with them more. On the other hand, if they do not see you in ways that you want to be seen, even if you see yourself that way, you will move away from them. This can be true no regardless of whether what others believe of us is positive or negative.
If my story about myself is that I am not worthy of love. When I meet someone who loves me, I will be elated at first, maybe I wasn’t right about myself. Over time though, if we stay together, and they continue to love me well, I will fight it. I will actually start to question their love. I will find evidence to how they do not actually love me, how they criticize or judge me unfairly, abuse me, cheat on me etc. They may or may not actually be doing any of that. If I believe they should do it because I am unlovable and they profess to love me so they must be a liar, I will believe it. I will interpret their actions as unloving, when they are not. I will tell them they don’t love me enough and are mean, regardless of if they do or do not. What another person loves about me is not me anyway. It is who they interpret me to be, so they obviously don’t really love me or even see me. That last part is true, but not in a bad way like you might think. I might actually leave this person who loves me because I think they do not, because of my mind creating an unreal view of it.
If my story about me is that I am unworthy of love, and I meet someone who I believe does not love me, even if they say they do, and they treat me poorly. I may actually think that is how it should be, that even that is love in some twisted way because it is what I think I am worth. I will find evidence of how they too do not love me, and also why they should not love me. It will look different in that this person is treating me poorly in ways that most of the world might agree with. They do cheat, lie, steal, hurt me emotionally or physically, and yet I think I deserve that because I am unlovable, and so I might stay in this relationship for a variety of reasons. I might think I deserve it. I might think I can change them or me. I might think it’s all in my mind, which it sort of is. People do what they do. We either stay in connection with them or we don’t. We do have a choice here, even if we don’t think we do. We chose from the beginning to believe we were worthy of true love or not.
If I believe I am worthy of deep, true and abundant love, then no one can treat me poorly or hurt me. I see everything as an act of love in one way or another. Even if someone is mean. I an see how they are hurting and trying to feel better by hurting me. They are not hurting me because I deserve it, because I know that I do not. They are hurting me because they are hurting themselves and that has nothing to do with me, and I can love them, and I do not have to stay with them, or I can stay and not take their actions personally. Their actions are not a reflection of me. They are a reflection of them. I an choose to be around them or not, love them or not, and it has nothing to do with what they do or with how they see me. It is all a reflection of how I see myself.
Here is how tricky minds are though. When someone judges you, sees you and puts on you their interpretation of you, you may or may not agree with it or like it, it doesn’t matter. You will judge how they interpret you as positive or negative, regardless of what they actually believe about you, you will interpret their words and actions as having a particular meaning of what you think they think about you, and you will judge that interpretation. You may or may not be even close to interpreting it correctly. It does not matter. You will cling to this interpretation forever if you can possibly do it. That is, what many or most humans do. I do it myself.
This week I ran into a couple of people that I knew who used to be in my circle, but no longer are. We didn’t part in an unfriendly way, just got different jobs and moved a part. We were not necessarily close to begin with, thought fairly friendly in our relationships. I hadn’t seen them in a while, and when I did, I was happy to see them, as they seemed to be to see me. They smiled and hugged me. In my mind though, I also held a judgment about each of them. That judgment was not a positive one. I am not sure why I created the judgments in the first place. It may have been because they abandoned me at our place of work and moved on to something else. I had to justify why that was a good thing for them to leave me, and so I decided that they were bad people in some way. I can certainly look into my memories of them and tell you stories that validate my interpretation of them. In my mind I call them unethical, liars, insincere, and some other mean things. And as I said, my memories can validate those opinions.
I also know that my memories are made up stories of things I think happened, and may or may not be anywhere close to accurate, so my judgments of them are also not accurate. I have learned recently that my judgments of other humans are completely untrue in all cases, in fact. That is that they are untrue representations of that other person. They are true representations of my thoughts of them, which are incomplete pictures as best, and complete fabrications at worst. They are mostly somewhere in between.
So, as I interacted with them this week, I did not act on my negative thoughts about them, but I did notice the thoughts. I noticed how they made me uncomfortable, made me feel uneasy, insecure and nervous. I then realized that none of that was real either. I had no reason to feel those things. I worked on just being present. That is I interacted with them only in the now of the interaction. Not with my made up past of who I created them to be, not with my made up future of who I thought they were going to be, but just with who they were in each moment.
I also tried to do that with the new people I was meeting. No judgments, just presence. It was really hard not to put my story onto other people. As I worked hard to stop this from happening, I realized just how much “my” story of others was dictating how I interacted with people, and actually limiting my ability to be present with them. Not just my old acquaintances, but everyone. As soon as I made up a story about you, I clung to it, and any time you stepped outside of the story I was telling myself about you, I ignored it, twisted it, or changed it into something else that validated who I thought you were. It was absolutely crazy how quickly I was doing that.
I am back to my original statement. No one knows anyone else. No one has ever truly met anyone else. All we have is our story of who we think other people are, which may or may not even be close to who they are, who they think they are, or who their soul is.
Recommendations: Know that is what you do. You tell yourself stories about other people. They are not truths about them. They are stories you made up. Try really hard not to cling to those stories, good or bad. We can get into just as much trouble telling ourselves that someone is good for us when they are not, as we can telling ourselves someone is evil, when they are not. All of it is about you and can serve as a guide to you to show you who you are, how you think, what you feel about life and other people. It is a reflection on you; how you see your world, not on them. They are who they are. It is you who makes them into something that you can love, hate, enjoy, avoid, “take”, etc.. They are just who they are, nothing more or less. You choose how you see them, and you can change that too. It is about learning to be present with them, with their soul, on a deeper level than your surface thoughts of them. It is about working to let all thoughts and judgments of others go, and just be present with them. Easier said than done. I know that first hand. I also know, when I can do it, I am happy all of the time, no matter who I am with or what they are doing, saying or being.
If you want to practice being present with others, go to thework.com and try on a “Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet”. It’s all free to try there.
Namaste (the love in me, loves the love in you)