"We all have relationships, and if you can complete your relationship
with your
parents,
you can have incredible relationships, magical relationships,
miraculous relationships."
...
"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish
things."
When I was a child I looked at
the world
childishly. I'm not alluding to so-called
"beginner's mind"
nor to the innocence of looking at
the world
through the oft-touted "eyes of a child" although both were surely
present somewhere in the totality. Rather I'm alluding to looking at
the world
without mature judgement in a way a child does without even realizing
it. Most if not all of the assumptions I made about life as a child
were like that. Thoughts that I considered to be my own were in fact
just automatic by-products of a machine spewing out glib
defense-mechanisms which would protect my best interests ie my
survival, but were really not my thinking at all.
I thought (or rather it thought) that my mother couldn't
be trusted, and that my father was over-bearing, assumptions which
appeared to me as the truth. And really, how could they
not appear to me as the truth? Moi, the child,
thunk those thoughts after all, so obviously they were
true for me ... or so it seemed. Not having the maturity to distinguish
their lack of maturity, those thoughts and their
assumed-truth became woven into the fabric of my
epistemology
about
my parents
ie the way I would be about them for years to come. All
they did was
love
me - to which I added "untrustworthy" and "over-bearing", then
acted
as if it were true about them.
That (in and of itself) caused problems for me. How so? When you relate
to something ie to anything as true when it isn't, then
it's going to cause problems. There'll be problems in the making, no
matter what the actual issues are. Later more offshoots of problems
appeared, resulting from, adding to, and compounding the
epistemological
foundation
of the way I was about
my parents
which in turn began morphing into much, much bigger issues. I was
building my life on shaky ground.
To wit, "My mother can't be trusted" was becoming (so subtly I was
barely aware it was happening at all) "Women (ie
all women) can't be trusted.". "My father is over-bearing"
was becoming (so subtly I was barely aware it was happening at all)
"Men (ie all men) are over-bearing.". The
epistemological
"My mother can't be trusted" was the way I related to all women not
just my mother. The
epistemological
"My father is over-bearing" was the way I related to all men not just
my father.
Having said that, this conversation isn't about any of the above. Oh?
So why bother to articulate it at all in the first place
Laurence?
To set up ie to distinguish the logic system of the mind,
its rules of engagement (if you will), the system which
has it that all women can't be trusted and that all men
are over-bearing when
originally
I only added those "truths" to my mother not to all women, and my
father not to all men.
OK, so everything is the same as everything else, so if my mother, a
woman, can't be trusted, then in my mind all women can't
be trusted. Everything is the same as everything else, so if my father,
a man, is over-bearing, then in my mind all men are over-bearing. And
look: that's not just the logic system from which an entire
epistemological
wall
is constructed so that whether it's true or not, it's the way I
be'd about all women and about all men from then on. No,
it's more / worse than that. It's the logic system with which we assess
/ process everything that happens right now
and ... right now and ... right now. Everything.
No exceptions. Not one.
Look at it closely.
Discover it for
yourself.
Try it on for size. It fits. Now: what then is the "... except not
always" component of
this brick
in the
epistemological wall?
"... except not always" is as capricious as it sounds. The logic system
of the mind says "I'll treat everything the same as everything else ...
except when it doesn't suit me to do so; I'll regard everything the
same as everything else ... until it no longer benefits me to do so.".
The mind will do anything in order to be right, including
betraying its own logic system, including lying, including re-writing
its own rules of engagement to suit itself. Look closely: it always
leaves an "out": "Women can't be trusted" (the rule) "... except some
can be" (the out); "Men are over-bearing" (the rule) "... except some
aren't" (the out). This is the epitome of capriciousness.
Given the rule, "... except not always" (the out) has no integrity. And
it's fait accompli the logic system of the mind will
sacrifice integrity in order to be right. There's nothing to be done
about this. It's the way the machine works. Noticing it happening
creates an opportunity to reinstate integrity by 'fessing up / taking
responsibility.