Relationships as my mirror

[thaddeus]

I came across a bit of knowledge that I want to meditate on because I somehow feel it's true, just having trouble understanding it...

The idea is that your relationships mirror what is going on inside you. For example, if you feel someone you care for is ignoring you, it means you are ignoring some aspect of yourself. If you feel someone is mean to you, you are doing that to some aspect of yourself. This idea that your relationship dynamics are mirroring your internal dynamics is very interesting. Being lazy, I was wondering if this rings true for anyone else and if you can give an example of how you understand that to be. I'm having trouble thinking of specific examples of this principle...and I feel somehow it's significant..

T

[thelerner]

It certainly rings true for me. We project so much. I think there is one true world that we share, but its experienced a thousand ways with a million interpretations.

 

Michael

[sean]

Some go so far as to say that what is inside you is what is outside you, for instance, in the sense that the ego is not a separate little machine (as it often imagines), it actually is a complex relationship arising between "objects" both internal and external.

 

I think Yoda should chime in on his Hicks stuff, because I believe he's gotten a lot of value out of actually practicing this position almost as a jnana yoga, cultivation the perspective that you literally create your entire experience down to the very last detail: "How you feel about another is exactly how they feel about you." Yoda, you around?

 

 

Sean

[neimad]

projecting is a form of a curse... except the curse is mirrored in you and in the other person.

 

Here's an example... you meet a person that behaves a certain way towards you and you think to yourself "god, she's such a bitch!"... and there is the curse - firstly by identifying her as a bitch you'll ignore or warp any evidence contradicting your innitial projection...

 

secondly because that person only really exists in your mind (have you ever seen/exprienced someone outside of your own body/mind?) then you're cursing part of your self... specifically the behaviour that triggered this response... it means you contract on, and have a fear-response to this behaviour in yourself... so if you see someone behaving similarly, you project that contraction onto them and therefore have a fear-response to that person - and to keep yourself comfortable in your bubble you need to somehow de-humanise the person/fear/contraction and so you call her a female dog

 

This is a relatively drastic example... but we do this all the time without realising it, maybe on a smaller scale. Just notice what it is that makes you like a person or dislike a person, then try to find such a quality in yourself to see how this is mirrored in yourself.

 

here's a personal example: I saw this dude behaving in such an arrogant way I couldn't beleive it... he seemed like a complete dick to me. So I look inside myself, and at first I get monkey-mind justifications for my dislike of this person... but just keeping with it and tuning out the concious 'noise' you can get to the true unconcious reason - which for me was that I'm truly afraid of acting confident/arrogant... so my own protection mechanism is to denounce anyone that has this quality and displays it powerfully.

 

cool bro... your on it.