So I was giving a seminar on Thursday. One of the first people in the seminar came into the room.
And for the first time ever (that I can remember) I saw the person as a real human being.
Now, let me explain what I mean and what my experience was.
Most of the time my mind (and I would suspect most everyone’s mind) is constantly talking to us and giving us commentary about what is happening around us.
So when we first see someone, we might hear that voice in our head (who we think is us – but the voice isn’t us) say, she is cute, he is tall, she is short, he is a cowboy, she is Hispanic, he is unfriendly.
Well, these and all other comments that we make, take away from who this person really is. It limits who they can be to you. It limits them as a human being, in your eyes.
As Eckhart Tolle Would say, you do not grant them Beingness. You grant them your limited view of who they are. And who likes to be limited?
I didn’t even realize it until this morning. How we don’t hear what the voice says as limiting, because the voice only says what is so about the other person. They are cute, or they are a cowboy, or they are . . . etc.
But the reality is, they are not that. They are a human being. They have their own stuff, their own fears, their own hopes, their own Beingness.
And when you believe the voice in your head, and listen to those labels it creates for everyone and everything, you take away the persons Beingness, and replace it with your limited ideas of who they are.
What I got, out of looking at this person as a human being, and not my thoughts of them, is the freedom to just be myself.
Eckhart Tolle in his new book, A new earth talks about this for an entire book. And for the first time, I actually had the experience of what he talked about. |
