Other People

Other People

From our friend, Charles R.

For the most part we’ve focused on introducing and prolonging presence from the perspective of overcoming the various mechanics to which the four lower centers are subject. Expressing negative emotions, identifying, imagination, features, body type and so on. What about being present to other people?

A great deal of my time was, and still is, spent thinking or worrying about what others think of me. The system calls this phenomenon inner-considering. It’s a curious reality that other people didn’t think of me for even a fraction of the time that I imagine. Probably because everyone else was wrapped up in their own inner considering. This state colors our relationships, sometimes to great detriment. One time, I was lying in bed next to my wife while experiencing a medical emergency. I lay there, inner-considering waking her up and letting her know about my extreme instinctive state. Before I woke her, I called (I whispered) the hospital ER line to ‘get some relativity’. Naturally, after I explained my circumstances, the voice on the other end of the phone call seemed baffled, if not incredulous, that I was not already on my way to the ER. Eventually I did wake my wife who was also baffled that I did not wake her earlier. Was I present in relation to myself and my circumstances?

Empty promises and commitments are often made from a state of inner-considering. Often found among family and close friends and acquaintances, cynical or sarcastic comments to and about each other surface. The saying ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ is exactly a description of this particular form of inner-considering. Without presence, one common reaction to observations of one’s own inner-considering is ‘I don’t care what others think of me’. This is also inner-considering, and then words and actions are, at best, simply inconsiderate.

How then, does being present to others avoid inner-considering? Being present to others creates a state of external consideration. Many esoteric traditions taught this. ‘Love thy neighbor’ may be transposed to ‘Be present to thy neighbor’. In relation to other people, when we act or speak from presence, the possibility of it evoking the same in others becomes a probability rather than a possibility.

External considering takes practice. Often we find ourselves doing the wrong things for the right reasons, or doing the right things for the wrong reasons. As we interact more with other students and the Teacher, we learn to say and do the right things for the right reasons.

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Image: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, Musée d’Orsay, Paris