Rather than
reflecting
reality, your own subjective evaluation of what's going on with
another person is really nothing more than your own private
movie about that person which captivates and enthralls
you as you watch it, yet doesn't
reflect
reality as much as it's loosely based on reality - it
has at best a tenuous, dubious correlation with reality.
This is really simple. It's not rocket science. People are
who they say they are. They're not who you
think they are. Really!
Believing your own thoughts about, buying into your own assumptions
about, agreeing with your own assessments of, accepting your own
evaluations of what's going on with another person without
confirmation in conversations with that person is like
watching your own private showing of a movie about that person,
except you don't distinguish you're watching a movie. You've got it
that your private movie is reality. You've got it that your
private movie about that person is "the truth" about
that person. You've got it that your thoughts, assumptions,
assessments, evaluations of what's going on with that person really
are what's going on with that person.
That's the idea I'd like to entertain for this conversation. The
value you'll get from it (the value you'll get from any idea,
actually) doesn't come from whether you believe it or not, nor from
whether you agree with it or not. Even if you do believe it, even
if you do agree with it, there's at best only marginal value to be
derived from believing an idea or from agreeing with it. Rather,
any real value and power an idea may have is unleashed by
standing in it like a
question,
like a possibility, and
noticing what opens
up.
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