Ever get all bothered and annoyed and peeved when someone brings up their same old tired been worked on shoulda solved that by now problem yet again? Whatcha do with that? What was your first reaction? How did you end up dealing with it? What was your attachment to the outcome, if any?
Well, I just had a run in with a case like this, right after I heard my friend Tennie say, “What I see in others are what I have to work on in me,” during a recent Real Love meeting. It really helped pivot my thinking and feelings into a positive frame just about as I was going off into the “I can’t believe you want to show me your monkey again” syndrome.
I was all teed up to have judgement on “someone else’s stuff” and was getting into my back swing, getting ready to grip it and rip it…. when internalizing this phrase allowed me to look into me as to what was “triggered within me,” How it really was and always is all about me.
In this case, without getting into specifics, it was probably something like… well, I already know what your issue is… why don’t you go fix it… not the first time we talked about this… etcetera.
Like we don’t all know what the answer to our issues is. Study any new age philosophy and the answer is always to be found where? That’s right, within each of us lie all our answers. The lie is, that the answers are without, when they are within.
So, I was by judging this other person judging myself. How often have we known the answer to one of our own problems, and still not gone with the answers we knew? Guilty as charged… and yet, it can be so tempting to blame another for knowing or should have been knowing the answer… and to bring us the same problem again and again and again to fix for them…
Well, I guess we cannot fix any problem for anyone else. However, we can love them where they are stuck. And, we should notice, if they trigger us, the issue is in us that we are triggered. That is where the monkey becomes ours. Where the problem becomes ours. Not that we have to fix their problem. That we have to recognize that in being triggered, we have judged ourselves in judging them.
Gotta have patience and love. When I changed my perspective to one of patience and love, I felt better, and so did everyone else in the room I think.
What y’all think?
Peace and patience,
Yucel
Yucel-
Thank you for an excellent post.
We’ve all heard the expression “There’s nothing new under the sun”. This relates directly to your post insofar as any feeling you are having everyone else has had in one form or another and vice versa; if only people could realize this is true. A few words come to mind: Patience, Trust, Validation, Judgement….
No matter where we’ve come from, where we are presently or where we are headed we will always see ourselves in others – and the good news is we don’t really have to look that deeply. Troubles, problems, opportunities- however you want to phrase it- are all the same at their core; are all universal. Universal questions, concerns, doubts, anguish, pain, joy, love, happiness, hopes, dreams, strengths, weaknesses, challenges – we see these in others and recognize them in ourselves so naturally we seek validation through or from others whom we trust. If we can have trust in and patience with ourselves we should then have patience with others and trust them to know their answers, as we truly know ours. The validation we seek from others will eventually be found within ourselves and once we realize this and know it there can never be any judgement. So, while there may be “nothing new under the sun”, thankfully we are all basking together under this same glorious sun.
Thank you Nancy,
Yes, I know this expression, “nothing new under the sun.” I hadn’t thought of it in this context, narrowed to the context of seeing and having compassion for others as we recognize ourselves within them does seem an apt turn for this phrase.
Your comment got me racing in a number of directions…
For example, it raises for me other questions, like what happens when we look at this phrase more literally?
That is, have all thoughts been thought? I’ll blog on this separately.
Another question your comment raises for me is, are we all under the sun?
What about folks with green blood in other parts of the universe?
In a nutshell, with regards to seeing thoughts in others, while I feel we might see our depth of feeling, and see glimmers of ourselves in others, even our own thoughts, moment to moment, I believe are each unique.
That said, the sentiment of seeing and accepting others and ourselves, is a beautiful thing.
Peace and gratitude,
Yucel
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