Have you ever started a discussion about an issue, at home or at work, with the intention of having a very rational, adult-to-adult conversation to come to the best solution … And then, five minutes later, you find yourself vigorously, passionately defending an opinion, that you didn’t even know you had five minutes before! What happened?
”Ego” happened – pride, self-justification, judgement, “I’m right, you’re wrong!” …And it happens to all of usall the timeunless we know how to avoid it… And that defensive/aggressive, tension-filled reaction is, actually, a reaction of FEAR… fear that you will ”lose” the argument, and/or your ”space”, your ”control”, your ”dominance”, your ”esteem” or your ”status” in your own eyes and those of others …
And this happens when we you are talking with your loved ones – partners, children, family – as well as at work! What‘s going on?
What’s happening is that fear has gone beyond the boundaries of its true responsibilities of protecting our physical self from harm. Instead of just protecting the ‘vehicle’ that carries the higher aspects of your humanity, it thinks it has to control and protect them, too.
Fear has taken total possession of our emotions, our thoughts, our psychology, even our spirituality!
This is because fear has no understanding of the purpose, the beauty or the potential of these aspects of our self that it has annexed for its own purposes.
Like an overbearing, over-anxious, over-controlling authority figure, it panics at the first sign of challenge, of change, of a falsely perceived threat and it totally locks you down. It hijacks all your resources and traps them in the prison of its own primitive, crude perceptions.
And when you act through fear, you are acting from your ‘reptilian’ self – you are less than human!
This short video describes oneof the main reasons behind all the conflict in the world – from the personal to the global.
We all know that it is impossible to “see” what another person sees – we all perceive things from a different perspective. Even if we are looking at the same thing as another, our internal filters – our beliefs, values, past experiences, needs etc. – will mean that our internal perception/understanding of that thing will be, to a greater or lesser extent, different.
I see one thing. You see another. Other people see different things, too. What I see istrue – for me. What they see istrue, for them. The TRUTH encompasses all of these perspectives. In the greater reality, it is never “this or that”, it is always “This andthat” – a day is both light anddark, “life” is both creation anddestruction, joy andpain, success andfailure…
