Recognizing Oneself in Others

Recognizing Oneself in Others

As for humane-ness—you want to establish yourself; then help others to establish themselves. You want to develop yourself; then help others to develop themselves. Being able to recognize oneself in others, one is on the way to being humane. —Confucius

Commentaries on Considering

The following quotes are taken from the Commentaries by Maurice Nicoll. He was a student of P.D. Ouspensky and wrote in his lengthy Commentaries on the Fourth Way ideas:

Inner Considering

“In order not to identify, a man must first of all learn not to identify with himself.”

“All feelings of inner considering show that you are owed by other people, but you owe nothing.”

“Put yourself in other person’s place. Try to see where the trouble lies in yourself as well as the other person. Try not to identify.”

“A man is only offended where he is identified with himself.”

“If you base your life on inner considering, your life will be one-sided, undealt with, undigested, so many unhappy things left lying around and rotting, so many violent and bitter feelings, so much heavy, dense, negative material accumulated which you will not give up. But external considering is utterly different. It cleanses you.”

External Considering

“An hour of external considering can free you from the effects of weeks of inner considering. And the more you can see yourself [and] the kind of person you have been all your life, the more you will be able to externally consider rightly.”

“It is only according to your degree of self-knowledge and self-observation that you can externally consider another.”

“External considering is work on being.”

“And you must calculate second force—that is, the difficulties.”

“Nevertheless, you must never find fault or show that you are finding fault but be ready to bear false accusations. And of course you must be ready to bear the unpleasant manifestations of the other person.”

“We keep one another in the prison of our association about one another. To let people go, to let them be different, depends on our letting them go.”

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The Visitation of Our Lady to St. Elizabeth, Mariotto Albertinelli (1474 – 1515)