--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Another thought here: How can you possibly "not > care" that there are several people on this forum > who *routinely and deliberately* tell falsehoods?
Great question! Speaking for myself alone, it's because I know them, and I know how much weight to give their postings. If they touch my heart, I thank them, inwardly or outwardly. If they don't, I ignore them. They are who they are. Arguing with them, as I used to do from time to time when I first came to FFL, felt like Brer Rabbit's kicking the tar-baby. The tar baby didn't get any cleaner, and I came away needing a good scrub. To change analogies, on closer look I found that I was trying to comb the mirror to fix my own unruly hair. The part of me that was irritated by them was often the very part I saw in them -- my inner fundamentalist, the one who was so certain he was right, the one who never saw the need to change, the one who had so little integrity he was projecting all his sins out onto others and damning them. Over the years I've come to see that almost always this little self- righteous guy is generally *not* absolutely right -- in fact, he's almost always wrong, he didn't see the bigger picture. In my case, the bigger picture has turned out to be my feeling-level. On the feeling level, he's in pain; I am not as attracted to identify with the self-righteousness of the fundamentalist crusader as I once was. Nor do I hate him, as I once did -- the hate and the unconscious identification being two sides of the same coin. I've found this is the only way I can really reach the little guy -- through detachment. By neither hating nor identifying with him, I am free to love him, as he is. And that's more important to me than his being right or wrong. This is not to say that any of this is what You should or should not be doing, of course. Who am I to judge You? As far as I can see, I think what you're doing and who you are, is great. I am just trying to clarify why I "don't care" about their falsehoods. It's because I found that just behind caring who was right and who was wrong, was caring for the being who cared so much, and that being was in a lot of pain. Identifying with that being exclusively, had become intensely painful. Whether I was right or they were -- neither way worked for me. Either way, I lost! Or to put it another way, my "belly" won -- but my "heart" lost. For me, since then, it is generally a great relief to realize "it's not me; it's not them; it's a pattern between Us." <snip> > I truly don't understand that kind of thinking. > Resistance to dishonesty should be a *reflex*, an > instinct. It *should* be an addiction. If you're enjoying this stance, I think it's great -- more power to you. For me, resistance = projection/identification = pain, and I generally prefer detachment/love, in this moment. *L*L*L*
