Chodron’s book on compassionate living reminds us that the people we encounter everyday activate the karma that we haven’t worked out yet.
They mirror us and give us the chance to befriend all of that ancient stuff that we carry around like a backpack full of granite boulders.
It’s another one of the many risks of intimacy. People in our lives trigger our unresolved shit. Even complete strangers.
We’re commuting to work on the train one morning, and with the passing glance of fellow passenger, we suddenly find ourselves needing to deal with some defect we never knew we had, or worse yet, some old habit or compulsion that we thought we had already eliminated.
No wonder eye contact is an endangered species.
People aren’t afraid of looking up from their phones, they’re afraid of looking into their own shadows.
That’s what intimacy means. Into me I see. Through our closeness to someone, even during the briefest of moments, we are confronted by a new awareness of ourselves.
But it’s actually a good thing. Maybe the best thing. Because all growth is interpersonal. We just can’t sit in a corner and perfect ourselves. Only through real encounters with others do we enter into the transcendental healing atmosphere.
Here, then, are the questions:
How will we respond to people who have been sent to teach us about ourselves?
What happens when the human mirror tells us that we’re not the fairest of them all?
When life throws us into situations where we are forced to confront and acknowledge and develop our disowned selves, will we shut own or open up?
It’s a choice worth making. Because there is still much mystery beneath the surface of our being.
Might as well dive in.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you ready to be filled with what life will teach you?
* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
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