As we begin our journey into understanding forgiveness,
we must begin to comprehend the basics of human interactions. I could start it simply by saying every
single thing you do and say and everything someone else does and says to you is
perfect just as it is, just as you intended because you wanted something from
the interaction. However, that might be
a bit much to take in without more background.
So, let me get a little more basic for a moment. Often when we break things down to the
tiniest component parts we can, we will be better able to understand what we
are dealing with.
I will start with a theme I have
written about in my other works – Environmental Psychology and
Conditioning. Let me explain: Environmental Psychology as I use the term,
creates our conditioning and includes all of the people who and situations that
have influenced us over the span of our lives whether we are consciously aware
of that conditioning or not from our first moments of being very young and
impressionable to the present.
As we have lived our lives,
Environmental Psychology has conditioned us all. Think of it this way, if you
put your hand in the fire, you learn fire is hot so you are careful around
flame provided your mind is capable of retaining memory and you have no
sadistic tendencies. Your conditioning has
formed your perceptions of the world.
Everything that you experience first hand is and will always be filtered
through your conditioning and subject to your perspectives formed by your
perceptions, assumptions and beliefs.
Every experience we have brings
us some type of knowledge and we are malleable and intelligent creatures and so
we modify our thinking and behavior accordingly when we perceive a threat
whether or not the threat is real. We
form beliefs based on our patterns of experience. Sometimes if something even remotely resembles
fire, we run so we won’t get burned.
Does this make sense?
Another tid-bit of understanding
is that your ego is part of this conditioning.
Your ego is your consciousness in physical form. Its job is to protect you physically,
mentally and emotionally while you are physically present in this dimension to
the best of its capability. If through
conditioning your ego perceives a threat even where there is none, you may
react accordingly to protect yourself.
This is completely normal and rational behavior for the most part
considering the function of your being to protect itself from harm.
Your ego representing your
physical consciousness is like armor.
That armor picks up dings and dents along your journey and it is through
these dings and dents that somewhere inside your psyche, you will seek out
interactions with others to attempt to gain understanding not about them and
how crazy they may be but what also is crazy within you. I use the term crazy in a very silly and loose
manner simply to reference our “emotional stuff.”
In a sense, we are all crazy –
even those most sane among us have weak spots in our armor and will protect
those spots sometimes at any cost even to the point of collateral damage to all
that surround us. In a sense, this
sense, the individual is doing the only thing they instinctively know how to
do.
When someone comes along and
exposes one of our weak spots, our seemingly automatic first response is to
protect by any means necessary. So, we
engage in this innate seeming need for self-preservation at any cost and will
use words, actions either outright or covert via passive-aggressive or other behaviors
to protect ourselves, get even with people who expose our wounds and that
somehow makes the ego feel better for a few moments. I liken this to polishing a dent in the
armor. The dent is still there but the
spot is shiny for a little while.
As we go on, that ding or weak
spot in the armor is still there and we know that if we take another blow
there, it may pierce our external self and enter the core of our seeming safety
and solace and that just will not do.
Another important thing to consider here is that putting a ding or dent
in someone else’s armor just won’t fix yours.
Strange concept I know but it is a fact.
Strangely enough, we will make
decisions that will lead us right into the very things we think we do not want
because we unconsciously wish to heal; to make the armor fully smooth and
perfect again. We will semi-consciously continue
to try to expose our own wounds through interactions with others who will
naturally trigger us until we tire of the pain and finally learn that it wasn’t
anyone on the outside victimizing us but us victimizing ourselves in a way with
our own thoughts, perceptions, assumptions and beliefs. Ironic a bit, I know. But, true regardless. You can strive to become aware of this fact
thus giving yourself precious seconds to step back from an ego-protecting
exchange and understand it or you can slip back into auto-pilot and go back to sleep
at the wheel. The choice is yours
ultimately.
Human interactions are the basis
of our greatest learning in this life.
We learn very young that some people just do not play nice in the sand
box. Some do this unintentionally and
some quite intentionally. It isn’t
really up to us to decide which is which or assume which is which. It is up to us to understand our own
reactions to what we experience during human interactions and make the best
choice we can in a moment. What is even
a bit more difficult to understand is that another person’s conditioning is not
about us even if they direct a very personal assault on our being. Likewise, our psychological conditioning is
not about another person even if we feel we have every right to blame them for
the way that we feel.
Blaming or victimizing thoughts
impede our progress and keep us mired in the engagement with teachers we may
not really wish to study any longer. But
then again, that too is up to us. Every
person we interact with is a teacher. We
are teachers and students in human interactions in every exchange. We engage with another for the length of time
it takes us to learn what we most wished to learn from a specific teacher. If we can begin to understand that at the
basic level our human interactions are based on psychological conditioning and
then begin to understand that we engage with people who have complementary or
opposite conditioning to learn from, we can begin to disengage from promoting
our own dis-ease and dis-comfort. We can
learn from these human interactions and move into a more compassionate and
loving space from which to operate, live and experience life.
That is ultimately the goal
whether you have arrived at this understanding as yet or not. Again, the choices are up to you regarding
what you teach and what you learn. Me? I’m into efficiency. My physical span here is limited and so I
wish to learn as much as I can consciously and in full awareness so I do not
waste time repeating the same interactions with different people while never
getting the lesson. It’s all about life
lessons truly.
So, this concludes our basics of
understanding the human exchange. Realize that this could go on into infinity
but I’m attempting to be brief for this little pocket book of mine. To
reinforce the ideas presented here, I want to summarize what we’ve covered:
- Every human being, through Environmental Psychology is conditioned into assumptions and perceptions that form belief.
- Every human being, until they become aware, thinks that their beliefs are facts.
- Most of humanity will fight for their beliefs often in order to save face either suffering or inflicting suffering in the process.
- Truth is different than belief. Belief comes from the outside world and is given to us by others. “Truth is true,” as friend of mine often says.
- We have all been through conditioning and will seek interactions to help us overcome any unhealthy conditioning.
- We can understand our conditioning and release ourselves from suffering human interactions by understanding the basis of the actions of others.
- Forgiveness is about understanding.
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