Who you are is more important than what you do.
You derive who you are from what you do, we all do. But you are more precious than your acts.
You have so many jewels in you that do not necessarily come out in your actions. But we can see them.
We, all humans, can see our jewels through each other.
We are here for each other and that is why we are different from each other. We are different in order to be a mirror to each other, to show the parts that we individually cannot see in us. Only the other can see it. That is why we are not the same. We are different to help each other see ourselves from different angles. And that is why during our psychological growth we first differentiate ourselves, we form different values, thoughts, and perceptions. Once we become these different selves and can be a mirror to another, we start seeing that we are actually the same.
Being there for each other is I believe the purpose of being a human. We can fulfill this purpose when we work with ourselves.
The funny thing about us human beings is that we are animals who have instincts to keep us alive (even at the expense of others) but we also have an innate wisdom to nurture each other. Our innate wisdom can only come out if we work with our “animal side”.
I see three main aspects of our animal side that is a must to work with to unleash human wisdom:
Three instincts to master to unleash our human wisdom:
Labeling we vs them
We automatically label people who are like us we, and who are different than us as them. “We” is safe, “they” is dangerous, “We” is good, “they” is bad. This differentiation comes automatically from our animal nature and unfortunately it is nurtured through our upbringing, education, and social conditioning. We need to be conscious of our labeling and practice seeing the reality - the whole of "we”.
Acting based on emotions
Things, conditions, people trigger emotions in us and we try to manipulate conditions and life so we can feel more of what we like to feel and less of what we don’t want to feel.
Emotions are only automatic reactions, we give them the names. They are actually “heart beating very fast and sweating”, “hands cold and arms heavy” or “lump in the throat”. If we can practice staying in the real sensual experience, we can see the reality truly and take decisions or respond to events consciously from the heart-mind.
3. Choosing the negative
It is ingrained in our system to see the negative - so that we can get early signals of danger and run, flight, freeze. That skill is in us when we are in danger, our limbic brain will take over. When we live in our modern lives where we are not threatened by wild animals and natural disasters as much, our limbic brain is still in control and that causes us to see the world from the “negative lens”. We cannot be present, we cannot enjoy the moment, we cannot see the full picture as our focus is in the negative or looks for a possible negative.
To fully enjoy life, we need to consciously practice being in the moment, seeing the good at the moment, the gift in the events, and experiences.
These three habits that come from our animal nature are there, they are our nature. If we can now how they appear, what it feels like, we can pause and consciously take a wise response. it takes practice and we have all the life in our hands to practice, every day, every interaction.
We are humans, we are here for each other, we are we.
