2014 How I Stopped the War on People
Changing Conflict and argument into Care and Consideration
I
remember when I first started vlogging and blogging in the beginning stages of
walking my process of investigating the mind, investigating reality and finding
solutions for the problems that I as an individual face within myself in terms
of my emotional and mental experiences and the problems that we as a collective
face in this world, such as poverty, starvation, rape, murder, etcetera -
whenever someone would comment on a vlog that I had made or a blog that I had
written that from my perspective didn't immediately give off the 'vibe' that
they agree with what I had to say, I went into heavy reactions of anger, which
I experienced within myself as this stance of 'righteousness', wherein I felt
like I was this crusader out to defend the truth against all who opposed it.
'The truth' being that which I at the time believed about reality.
Then from
the starting point of that internal reaction to the comment of the specific
person, I would start activating thoughts in my mind at a very fast pace of all
the things that I could say to this person to disprove their stance and to
prove that my point which I was conveying and sharing was 'right' and that they
are 'wrong'. In my mind I would have these entire speeches at the ready that
were the product of my desire to just find a way to get this person to see and
realize and understand that their view and understanding of reality has all
along been 'wrong' and that what I am showing and telling them is 'right' --
wherein I was basically almost expecting some kind of 'revelation' to take
place within this person, and for them to go 'Oh My God! You are absolutely
right! I cannot believe how lost I was in my own beliefs and thoughts! Thank
you so much for showing me the light, Oh Great Master!'.
This
reaction within myself of anger and frustration when someone didn't immediately agree with me,
which I would within my mind always interpret and experience as a blatant
attack of my words, my opinions and my person, wouldn't only take place in
online discussions and conversations, but also occurred in my home environment
with the people close to me. I would get into many heated discussions with my
mother and her partner, whom I lived with at the time, and with my friends and
family members, wherein the starting point of the discussion that always turned
into arguing was that I was trying to defend myself against a perceived enemy
based on the idea and belief in my mind that they are against me as what I am
expressing in my words, which was mostly some statement that I had made about
'how things are', like about how politics and the economy should be changing
and how people should change because the world is going to hell, etcetera --
just because they didn't immediately say 'wow Kim, yes I see now! You are so absolutely
right! Thank you for sharing this insight with me and please help me to
change!'.
This
tendency of being so reactive towards people in relation to discussing matters
of the world didn't only come up at that specific time in my life when I
started walking my process of Self-Change, even though it may have appeared
that way, because I was getting into arguments with people in my immediate
environment as well as online almost on a daily bases -- within my quest to
'defend and spread the truth', which was in other words my quest to push and
force my personal agenda onto everyone else from the starting point of
believing that I am 'right' and that everyone who doesn't agree with me is
'wrong' and so now I must 'fight' for what is 'right' and wherein I wasn't
aware that, from an observers perspective, I was kind of turning into a little
dictator on a small scale in my relationships with the people in my small world
of influence.
That
reactive and self-righteous nature was actually already existent within myself
ever since I became a teenager and had acquired some reasoning and logical
thinking skills and so from the age that I was able to form
'thought-constructs' in my own head through connecting information that I had
learned and picked up in my world and environment -- that had now become 'my
information', 'my opinions' and 'my perspectives' which I believed contained my
'identity' as a being, a belief that explains why I felt like I had to defend
those opinions and perspectives against all those who might question or
criticize them. It was however only once I started exploring information and
ways of looking at reality that was different from what I had learned and come
in contact with in my life so far, that this little self-righteousness demon in
the mind became visible and was lured out of its lair - because what I found is
that as long as the information that I identify myself with is the same or
similar to that of the people in my environment, then we will agree on pretty
much everything, because we think alike
- but from the moment that there is a shift in that information, when
for instance one person comes in contact with a specific group in 'the world
out there' who present different information in the form of opinions, ideas,
perceptions and beliefs, then conflict arises because now there are differences
of opinions coming up.
It’s the
same phenomenon that plays out between people from different cultures,
families, religions, ages and other types of backgrounds. There is essentially
just a difference in information contained in the mind of these individuals -
depending on the environment that they grew up in - and so a difference in
values, norms and beliefs in relation to reality, which often then makes way
for conflict to arise between people from different backgrounds as each
individual is in defence mode in relation to the information they believe
represents and defines 'who they are' within and as their mind.
So
basically in those beginning stages of walking my process of Self-Change and
Self-Realization, I felt like my relationships with the people around me was
like a war-zone and like I had to fight people - because I was fighting for the
information that I had at that time come in contact with and that I had now
come to identify myself with, which was information in relation to why one
should walk a process of Self-Change, why the world needs Change, why people
need to Change, etcetera --- and so basically I was fighting for my existence
and survival as an 'Identity' - this 'Identity' being a system/construct of
information in the Mind.
How I
over time as I furthered into walking my actual process of Self-Change and
Self-Realization changed this inner nature of reactive self-righteousness in
relation to other people and specifically in relation to myself as who I
believe I am and what information of and within myself as my Mind I believe
must be defended - is through having first of all realized and taken my
responsibility for my own mind, meaning that I not only became aware of how my
experience that other people were 'attacking me' when they were 'not agreeing with me', was in fact more
my own perception of the situation that was coming from and existed within the
Ego within my mind wherein I had defined myself within specific 'opinions' and
information about 'reality', but I also changed this attackative relationship
with other people in my internal and external reality.
In other
words, a very valuable gift that I have learned in this process is to be humble
in my expression towards other people and to, when I see that reaction coming
up within myself where I want to go into a fighting mode towards another
person, which is a specific conflictual experience within myself - rather than
expressing myself from that experience and actually going into conflict with
another person, I stop myself and apply the realization and understanding that
this perceived 'conflict' in relation to this other person and their words is
nothing personal but is actually rather a consequence of the fact that we both
come from different backgrounds and we use different vocabulary and words to
describe and define different things.
This
means that I have to now become firstly honest with myself about the words that
this person is using that I am reacting to within myself because somewhere
along the line I have accepted and allowed myself to define those words as
'bad' and 'negative', because it is those internal definitions of words that I
am actually reacting to with resistance and not so much to the person
themselves. And then from that starting point of clearing my own prejudices and
judgments of words, I can start seeing beyond the words and start investigating
who this person really is as a being within the words that they speak -
considering that they may use different words to describe the exact same thing
as what I am describing and speaking about, just because those are the words
that they have learned throughout their life to form part of their vocabulary
and so that is what they will use to describe who they are within themselves
and to express themselves within. So it Is up to me now to find that starting
point of firstly what this being is really expressing and secondly where the
vocabulary and the words that they use actually come from.
Because,
we human beings are in a way systems of information and the information that we
will express is the information that we have throughout our lives come in
contact with and aligned ourselves with. So if I go and just react to someone
because I don't personally like the words that they are expressing and how they
are expressing themselves within and as the words they speak, then I am in fact
reacting from the most superficial layer of my own mind wherein I do not see
this process that I have walked myself in my life in relation to learning
specific words and aligning myself with specific words that I have throughout
my life come in contact with - and so I will also not see that process within
another.
What I
found for myself is that to start seeing that process within another, meaning
the process that they have walked to become who they are and how they express
themselves in the words that they speak - is where you make a shift within
yourself from being and existing as an Ego within the superficial layers of the
system of information that is the Mind, to existing within a genuine Care and
Consideration for other beings. And that is where real communication with
others can start forming - as communication will now not be from the starting point of internal
reactions but from the starting point of really getting to know a person and
finding ways to start understanding a person and to start speaking to and with
who they are as a being within themselves and so not the system of information
that they have become throughout their lifetime here on earth. And that is a
gift that can only start unfolding once you allow yourself to be open when
communicating with another being, where you look past your own internal
reactions and you stand within the realization that this other being's
expression is one and equal with your own expression - they are just using a
different vocabulary to express who they are. So, the words may be different
and the 'system of information' that is being expressed may be different, but
the being at the core of it is one and equal with ourselves.
There is
a Free Online Course - DIP Lite - that will assist and support you to start
walking the first steps in the process of investigating and understanding who
you are within and as the System of Information as the mind -- and so to start
understanding why and how it is that we sometimes go into conflict and
arguments with other people based on and because of the words that are being
spoken, as a consequence of us not actually understanding who we are within the
words that we speak.
