“Don’t be intimidated by other people’s opinions. Only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risks and do what you really want to do.”
–Paulo Coelho
Why do we care so much what others think? For so long I believed what everyone told me. It definitely made my teenage years hell. I gave everyone space in my head without charging rent. I started curing myself of this by running away at seventeen and joining a religious cult. For five months I tried my best to make myself into what other people who told me they loved me told me I should be. Even when I saw contradictions in their own characters I tried to force myself into the shape of their ‘loving instructions’. One day I had had enough and had a strong sense of the THIS IS WRONG’s. I left and returned cross country to my home. I was shattered. My belief system had fallen and it couldn’t get up.
Now I was back to people telling me familiar opinions of how reality was. The only difference was that now neither their version nor the cult’s version worked for me. I tried charismatic catholicism. Wow this was cool. I find few things as attractive as pure faith. However it can be pretty awkward being the only person in church who isn’t speaking in tongues. Strike one more off the list.
Over the ensuing decades I tried to force myself into so many different shapes, each suggested by others. Gradually I came to realize that just by virtue of being open to so many, I was flying in the face of almost all of them. They all seemed to have some truth to them and work (to various degrees) for those practicing them but how could all be right. These thoughts formed in my head quite awhile before I started reading Ken Wilber and other Integral writers. Somewhere along the line I developed a sense of humour about it all that helped. I still might throw myself into something headfirst but now at least I realized that it probably wasn’t THE answer and almost definitely was only part of My Answer but I went into things honouring the people following them and open to whatever would come.
A large part of what I wanted to do was to understand. From very early on I grasped that understanding how a person defined the universe and themselves in relationship to the universe was a key component in understanding the person and so the more beliefs I can understand, the more people. They all can be given a voice as long as my inner voice, the one that speaks quietest remains paramount.
Blessings, G
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Rise by G A Rosenberg
Eye Journey by G A Rosenberg