Humanity's Journey to Life: know thyself

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Day 217: Seeing Ourselves: Taking It Personal is Making It Personal

So, in this post I'm continuing from the 'Seeing Ourselves' series, continuing from these previous posts:

Day 210: Can We See Truth of Ourselves in Others?

Day 211: Why Would We Want to Learn From each Othe r?

Here I want to share about a specific point that we can start to focus on becoming aware of, a point that we typically don't yet see that we do. That is, taking things personally.

Did you know that when you take something personally, you are actually 'making it personal'? What?

Here I would refer you to the interviews from Eqafe from the Reptilians series:

Making things Personal - Reptilians - Part 223

Moving from Taking Things Personally to Personal Responsibility - Reptilians - Part 224

I just recently listened to these interviews, and thought this would be a great point to bring up from this series, as this is a really prominent point that we are participating in but don't tend to see it. I know this because I have my own process to refer to, where I was completely oblivious to this myself. I mean, if you had told me some years ago that if I take something personally it is actually me making it personal, I just would have blinked at you in disbelief and just not understanding what the heck you're talking about.

But this is really something we do all the time. Reacting to things others say to us, and then having backchat pop up in our minds about what did that mean, why did they do that, etc. Perhaps the most extreme example of this would be the violence that sometimes occurs where a person attacks another because 'he looked at me funny'.

I'm sure you have had conversations in which you or someone talking to you is discussing some event that happened with another person and analyzing the other person's actions/words/behavior and placing an interpretation on what they meant by this or that. When really, if we look at it, do we actually have a complete understanding of that being's life, their personality, their entire mind, what their whole life has been like or even what their day has been like, to even have a clue what is really going on within how they are particularly expressing themselves in a particular moment in a certain way? No.

We can therefore be certain then that if we are coming to conclusions in our mind without understanding the totality of their being (which of course we don't) about why they apparently acted as they did, that interpretation obviously can't be trusted.

Have you ever been misinterpreted? Surely all of us have in some moment or another, one of those 'that's not what I meant' or 'I didn't mean it like that' moments. From there you can see how this works, which is one of the ways you can use identifying things when others do it, to identify it in yourself. You can see how someone took what you were saying/doing in some interpretation other than what you meant, and this can help you to see that, hmm maybe I do this too.

What you can do in a moment when you have identified that you are reacting to something as if it is personal, or you can even do this with looking back at past moments/memories where you have reacted to someone personally, is you can 'take a step back' and look at the person's expression, and look at your initial interpretation, and consider, is there any other possible explanation for how they were expressing themselves in that moment? And here you can also reference yourself, by looking at have you ever expressed yourself in a similar way, and if so, why? What was going on within you at that time that your expression came out the way it did?

Through applying these points you really get to see how we often are reacting to nothing but our own mind's interpretations, and how this causes so much conflict in our relationships, because we're actually turning our relationships into virtual wars with each other, by always being in a defensive stance in assuming that others are always attacking us. This ties in to the point of how we see each other as enemies which I've shared about in previous posts.

Of course there could be situations where someone is trying to make it personal to you, but even then it is because of there own stuff going on within them, and reacting to it isn't going to help the situation. In fact, by not reacting, you can see what is actually the best course of action in such moments, instead of going into a reaction which could aggravate the situation and cause more consequences.

Another result of applying this is that you gain a more stable foundation of self trust with yourself as you start to sort out reality from the fiction you create in your mind, and really I don't now what is more valuable than an effective relationship with yourself, as every relationship stems from that primary relationship.

I definitely suggest if you can to invest in the Reptilians interviews mentioned above. These interviews provide assistance and support with how to see when we're taking things personally by detailing the physical changes/symptoms that we'll experience when we go into that reaction of defense.

You can start anytime to become more aware of this point in your daily life and relationships, and take an active role in growing your awareness, and preventing much consequence in your life and relationships, and even get to know other beings for who they really are, instead of the interpretations in our mind.

Day 211: Why Would We Want to Learn From each Other?

Now we're going to continue from the previous post, with looking at why it is that we would want to utilize the tool of 'seeing ourselves in others', why is this such an important tool and what do we do with points once we've found them in ourselves?

If you haven't yet read the previous posts on this topic, I would suggest to do so first for context:
Day 210: Can We See Truth of Ourselves in Others?
Day 209: Why Can't We See Ourselves?

So, here I'm going to get into first the 'why' this tool is so important, and why we would want to totally take advantage of it, because it is in fact a major key to Self Change, something that is so often seen as practically impossible to do. This perception is largely a result of that fact that we have such difficulty in really seeing ourselves, in the first place. Because how can you change that which you don't understand how it works? You really can't. You would even believe that it's impossible, because there just doesn't seem to be any way to change what is largely a mystery. I mean, for the most part, we really have no clue why we do what we do or think what we think, we're just acting out of habit.

Therefore, we have to get to understand ourselves and see ourselves in Self Honesty – that means, who we really are in each and every moment, who am I and what am I living? What is my actual nature? How long would it take for us to really see ourselves if we were alone? If we didn't have 'everyone else' around us to serve as mirrors to who we really are?

I mean, that is really what we should have been doing all along, is learning from each other. Learning what our impact is on others. Learning what appropriate behavior is toward each other and toward ourselves. Utilizing the examples we're living for each other to see the consequences of certain behaviors, actions and choices, to learn what works and what doesn't. What's cool and what's not in terms of living here in this physical reality and coexisting with each other, and all other life here.

Since we're all existing in separate physical forms, how would you know the consequence of your actions without having other beings to interact with to see the consequences of another's actions on you, so that you could learn first hand. So here we are on Earth to learn about consequence and how to live. After all this time being here, it's probably about time we started actually doing that, because, strangely we have been doing anything but.

We've become beings of blame who avoid responsibility in practically every way possible, that it's manifested into our world systems at large as well. For example, if you look at what government is functioning as, it's like we as a whole have tried to put all responsibility on the government to solve problems and made decisions, instead of what the government would be if we were all responsible beings, which would be serving to simply administrate the laws and functions we've decided on, not actually creating policies and changing laws, where essentially the government has been given the power to make decisions instead of all the people together.

We've become beings whose nature is so consequential that we can barely have lasting effective relationships and we become further and further more isolated from each other. Every possible malady we could have is ever increasing, from psychological disorders to diseases, and our participation in the world and community is often nil. We try to live our lives according to the system that is already laid out whether it's really working for us or not, and as a result most of us have to live difficult lives working most of the time to make ends meet.

So, obviously we've got a lot to change in ourselves, to change our nature and stop creating such consequences for ourselves, so we can sort out this reality and our living here and actually have an enjoyable living. We have everything we physically need to do so, so it's only now ourselves that's getting in the way.

And who we are affects us not only on a global/world scale, but on a very direct personal level, within our relationships and our day to day living. For most of us our lives and our relationships are not what we'd like them to be, for one reason or another, or many. So often we are so busy blaming others and everyone else for our experiences, we tend to neglect ever looking at ourself to find our responsibility and thus our power to change ourself, and from there change our world. Thus when we finally have a tool with which to begin to investigate ourselves, we open ourselves up to whole new possibilities to change our lives and living to what we would actually like. Because in getting to know ourselves, we unravel the mystery to how we create consequence in our lives and world, and through understanding, we gain the power to change ourselves, and thus change our lives.

To learn more about Self Honesty an how to practically deal with one's mind enroll in the FREE course DIP Lite.

Day 210: Can We See Truth of Ourselves in Others?

Now continuing from the previous post, where I left off saying that there is a way in which we can develop the ability to be able to see ourselves as who/what we really are, using our ability to see things in others.

Now, obviously the first step is the decision to want to see yourself as who you are, which comes from the realization that thinking and believing you are one way, while living another way in actuality, leads to unfortunate consequences in your world and relationships. Really, it shouldn't sit right with you that you've got one version of yourself that you see in your mind while there is the real version of you walking around in reality, interacting with your world/others, and you don't even have a clue of the consequence you are creating, because you can't even see what you're really doing, what effect you're having on your world and those around you, what the truth behind your actions is, and most importantly, the example that you're living for others to see.

I mean, this didn't sit right with me to be stuck in a delusion of who I am when the truth of me is here always, and the only way you can seem to avoid it, is by lying to yourself and coming up with all sorts of excuses and justifications of why you're apparently excused from the expectations you would hold others to, why you're apparently allowed to do and say things that you don't find acceptable for others to do.

So since we are blinded by our own excuses and justifications, our own behaviors have become so accepted to a point that we don't see clearly and directly who and what we're being, and therefore, why the fact that we can at least see these things in others, becomes so important and ultimately useful. Because, we can use what we see in others, to get to see things in ourself. How does that work?

Since we can see another's behavior without all the justifications and excuses, we can see it for what it is and the consequence it creates. This can help us to identify certain behaviors, so that we can then look for that behavior in ourself, and then even identify the excuses and justifications we used/use in order to justify/give permission to ourself to participate in the behavior.

This like any skill one is developing will not be so easy at first but would get easier with time and application as you develop the ability to see various points within yourself, and then it actually becomes quite a fun and fascinating journey of developing self awareness, and 'unlocking the puzzle' in a way, of what we have become, as this riddle of self justifications and beliefs in contradiction to reality. It becomes quite fun to when you identify a point within another, to then investigate to find out where/how the same point exists in you.

So a practical example of this would be for example where you see someone who is distracted in a moment and therefore not being very considerate of what they are doing or where they are going, and then trip right into some object that they hadn't noticed was in their path, or maybe they even ran into you because they weren't looking where they were going, and you think or say something like 'why don't they watch where they are going??'. So the point here to investigate within oneself would be where are you in moments distracted and not aware of everything in your environment and you create some sort of consequence from not being aware and paying attention?

So what is the point of doing this? What do we do with this information? Once I have identified a point within another, and then found it also within myself in some aspect/area of my living? That we will get into in the next post, where we'll look at how this tool of seeing ourselves in others, is one of the most effective tools in the process of Self Change, which can be one of the most difficult things to do, and how this is of the utmost benefit to oneself. How the key to our true potential has been here all along, we just haven't been able to see it yet because we haven't been able to see ourselves.

Day 209: Why Can't We See Ourselves?

Throughout our lives, we never really learn to investigate ourselves, in fact, just the opposite – we learn to practically completely separate ourselves from who and what we really are. What do I mean by that? Well, we tend to form an idea about ourselves, the kind of person we are, that is based on ideas and thoughts in our mind. We have a certain perception of ourselves, that others will not always have of us. This is how we can end up being or feeling like we're 'misunderstood'. Like, 'they just don't get me', 'nobody gets me'. And that's because we have a separate version of ourselves in our mind. In our mind, exist all the justifications for why/who/how we are, all the dreams of what we 'wish we could be', all the imaginations of 'who we would be' if things had gone differently, all our self definitions of 'who I am' in relation to this or that - “I'm miserable when it rains' or 'I like this kind of music and hate that one', who I can/can't be around certain people or in certain situations. It is a whole lot of information we contain within ourselves, that isn't actually 'out here' in reality, where everyone else can see it. So, we can have a very different view of ourselves than others might have.

We never learn to investigate ourselves – this is leading to how others serve as mirrors to assist us to see ourselves as we really are, because we have been so geared to miss that, that this actually probably won't even make sense to you, until you actually witness it for yourself, which requires self investigation. You've got to really look at who you think you are, and who you are in reality – what values are you living out toward others that you wouldn't, for example excuse others form acting that way toward you, but that you've apparently justified it in your mind why in some situation/scenario you would act that way to another and so you don't even see when you are doing the same thing.

So, this is how it is that we can actually be completely oblivious to who we really are. I'm sure, we've all had those moments where we notice what someone else is doing, and we have the thought ' how can they not even see what they are doing right now??' or 'don't they even realize what they're doing??'. Like if someone makes a comment toward you and makes a certain face and you take it as they are being nasty toward you, and you are thinking 'how do they not see how nasty they are being right now?'

You see, it's easy to see it in someone else, because you're not in their mind, having the same experience as them, having had the same life as them, and everything that goes along with that which has led up to this moment where they are acting in that certain way. Now, it's quite different when you are the one acting, because you do have all your thought patterns and established patterns of behavior that you've developed over the years of your life that determine how you'll react in a certain way toward something, and so in that moment it is just going to 'make sense' why you are reacting how you are and you won't even question it. And so, that's why the other person apparently isn't noticing their own behavior either.

This is largely because as children, we're actually trained to act and behave in certain ways, you know, to 'do as your told', so we don't develop an understanding of ourselves and behavior in any way, we simply learn 'don't do this' and 'do that'. Thus, we basically learn to act in ways that will hopefully avoid a negative response, and that's about the extent of what we learn about behavior. We view our actions in terms of trying to avoid certain consequences. So our behavior becomes all about outward appearances essentially, where we're geared toward presenting ourselves to others in certain ways, and there is no focus on who we really are within ourselves, and what the starting point is behind our behaviors and actions.

It is important that we get to understand this point, so that we can start to develop a self awareness and get to understand ourselves, because the way we are living currently for the most part is very consequential, in all aspects of our lives, as we can see that the world is busy falling apart due to our negligence.

Luckily, we can utilize the function of how it is seemingly so easy to see what another is doing, to unlock the secrets to our own behavior, which is quite a fascinating, illuminating, and ultimately self-empowering process, and I will continue with that in the next post.