Learning to like people

I think in the first phase you take people as they seem to be.  This is naivete. In the next, you realize most people lie just about all the time without knowing they do it, although some do.  In the end, and this is what I am working on, you see the lies, and forgive most of them anyway, and understand all of them.

I’ve been saying for many years that seeing what is in front of you is exceptionally hard, and I was gratified to read in the NARM book that this is in fact a primary developmental challenge for most of us.

I have no use for lies, or easy truths.  The two are quite often the same.  Things quite often are what they appear to be, but what have you really understood even about that?

What passes for learning and knowledge in this country is in all too many cases sad, weak, and even sick.  I personally have invested many people with reverence, only to find I erred.

I do think we can see in many traditional cultures, in the “guru”, an attempted recapitulation of a failed father-son relationship, complete with idealization.

Nobody is your superior.  Nobody is your inferior.  Be yourself, and let others be themselves.  We all bump into walls and fall down.  No use crying about it, or blaming the walls or the Earth.