Listening to Pema today, she talks about how difficult it is to change. Not just the actual change itself. The acknowledging the need for change and the gradual gentle shift in ways of being but rather the difficulty in the rest of the world allowing you to change. We all fix each other with mental ideas of who or how they are. We develop an idea of how a person is and solidify them in our mind. In doing this, we close off ourselves to the idea that they are constantly changing and that it is highly likely that our fixed idea of how they are no longer holds true. Pema uses the example of a woman who worked with her aggression to become a more accepting and gentle person and how she said that it took two years before anyone in her life noticed that she had changed. The people in her life had a fixed idea of who she was and had fixed patterns of interacting with her (being prepared for her aggression) so they were never present to the moment and the current interaction with her.
We also do this to ourselves. We build mental constructs of who and how we think we are and tell ourselves over and over again that we are this way and in doing so just solidify the idea all the more. I've been telling myself my whole life that I'm shy, introverted and struggle with interpersonal relationships. When that could all change with some effort and work on my end. I could change it in my next interaction with someone. There is nothing solid about me or who I am. It is all constantly in flux and fluid so choosing to be or act a certain way comes in each moment.
This makes me think that I need to work on allowing more. Trying to give people the benefit of the doubt and the freedom to be who they are in that moment rather than projecting previous actions, interactions, and feelings upon them....and hoping eventually they can do the same for me.
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