Who do we believe and why? In this short talk I explore a few thoughts on how to figure out what is authentic in what others are showing or telling us.
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Andrew
Below is the automatic transcription. It hasn’t been proofed.
THL64b Shoptalk Believing People
[00:00:00] Welcome to a short talk episode of The Hermit’s Lamp in these brief conversations I want to highlight an idea when I see my clients in myself and in the world to answer them provide some ideas for how we might relate to these ideas as spiritual people trying to live conscious lives and being aware of our aims to rule as human beings. So it’s an business living in the world with other people and.
[00:00:36] It’s a sometimes very complicated business to pursue being authentic and to try and assess and relate to other people. While trying to gauge their authenticity and I think that there are a couple of ways in which these things show up most frequently in my life. One is when I was hanging out with my friend Yoav Ben Dov creator of the wonderful CBD tarot deck and now passed on a human being. One of the things he said to me at one point was that when he’s doing a reading for somebody and the first thing that person does is tell him how they are. “I’m a really honest person” “I would never cheat.” “I’m very very capable” or whatever. Right. He would believe the opposite. And this would in fact also apply to sort of more negative traits like. “I’m not good enough” and those kinds of things because in this context the emphasis of the person leading with this so strongly really highlighted the fact that there was what I would call a scripts or some kind of false thing going on behind the apparent truth of the words. And. I find. That this certainly happens in a broader sense in the world too not just in the context of doing readings and so on. So there’s this piece where the more strongly somebody professes to be a certain way. The bigger question mark it raises for me about what’s actually going on in that situation. The second situation in which I am Often unclear what to do with people’s statements is that when somebody gets really upset about something.
[00:02:50] I tend to start by believing them. Not that I necessarily understand or kind of relates but there’s a thing that goes on in our culture at least here in North America where people who get emotional are usually disbelieved right from the get go.
[00:03:15] And it’s easy to want to disengage your disbelief. What’s going on. But I always work to start from a place of believing that something is going on here. And I don’t necessarily need to take it at face value just as I don’t need to take people’s other affirmations or asportation about their nature. Face value but that I can believe that there’s something going on here and that if this is a person that I want to have. A relationship with. Someone who I do have a relationship with that. I need to believe them that something is going on and allow them to engage a process with me if they’re inclined that can get to a place where we can both understand what’s going on. Now you might ask why on earth are you bringing these things up in this podcast which is. Predominantly about spirituality. And I’m doing so because this question of who do we believe and how do we believe people is crucial in walking the spiritual path. Partly because there is a sea of experts out there who are of varying qualities from outright dubiousness to perhaps being totally virtuous and partly because spirituality is often cloaked in this sort of niceness of not being emotional and not getting out about things and not being able to truly engage with our feelings and the feelings of the people that were journeying with is really important to being authentic because it helps us see ourselves more clearly and it helps the other people that we’re with see themselves more clearly over time because authenticity isn’t really a destination so much as it is a continuous practice.
[00:05:30] And I think that these different pieces play out regularly in all of our lives in all of our relationships and all of our communication with other people. Where are we putting ourselves up and making ourselves seem more important or more accomplished than perhaps we actually are. Were we using that to try and convince others or ourselves of something that our actions or time ought to reveal if it’s actually true. And how are we using those things to forward our own secret agendas to get the things that we want from life by trying very hard upfront to convince people of our honesty integrity or skill or mastery or any of these things. And conversely where are we not being believed and where are we not believing others where they are revealing truths about themselves where they are showing us what is going on. But because it is uncomfortable or inconvenient or perhaps because they’re not fully clear about what is going on and it is caught up in some other complexities that the truth of their feelings seems unreasonable or unrealistic to us. How do we relate to life in the worlds where we can move beyond these two things to engage people when they are expressing the things that are uncomfortable or perhaps showing their tremendous need whether we accept it or understand it immediately or not.
[00:07:19] And how do we look past the various conmen aspects of ourselves and the world around us and stop telling stories that are not true of ourselves and start red flagging those stories of others that they’re so accustomed to presenting that really interfere with having an authentic relationship with them ourselves in the world.
[00:07:49] I invite everybody listening to this to sit with these questions and to draw cards to these questions and to go to your journal with these questions. And to start watching how other people are interacting around these ideas with each other and in the world let me know how it goes.
[00:08:13] And hey if you’re enjoying this slide on over to the page or on Link is in the show notes and support the podcast you’ll get more of these kinds of short pieces as well as all of the wonderful ongoing interviews that are part of this podcast.
