When we interact with people, our mind receives lots of information which when put in right perspective tells a lot about a person we are interacting with.
The question is, are we aware and conscious enough of our own state of mind - of what we think, of what we feel, why we feel, why we get particular emotion- to receive all the information that is given to us by people we interact with. In most of the cases the answer is no, the information that comes to us from people is absorbed by our mind and leaves a subtle feeling of what that person is. This is because our own state of mind is clouded by our emotions, fears, insecurities, and it is this cloud that pervents us from understanding what others are.
Therefore the key to knowing others is to know one own self.
In most of the cases, the repression of emotoins that we practise since our childhood leaves a big clould of unanswered questions that were never anwered in the first place. Emotions are the value repsonses to the objects we perceive- good for me or bad for me.
To say it simply what we expereince when we are under high emotoins is nothing but the feedback that we receive from a merciless computer that works in our brain. This is the computer which has recorded vast amounts of data in its memory and does the integration of this data when we perceive an object. It is this integration of data that gives us emotional high or low. There is a possibility that the data which is recorded in memory is a wrong one because of our childhood expereiences, and reressions of feelings and emotions that we practised since our childhood. The wrong data will lead to wrong emotoinal response.
For eg. how many of us can clearly describe the values we hold supreme in our own mind and how we act to retain these values. There are vlaues which were given to us by our parents and which have overshot their utility and are not workable today. They remain embbeded in our memory and lead to corruption of the data which in turn leads to wrong emotional repsonse.
To understand our emotions we need to understand our values. Are they life enchancing or life negating. A life negating vlaue which give pleasure to the body will ultimately lead to destruction of the body. For eg. a shot of heroin gives emotional and physcial high to the body but what does this lead to ultimately is the destruction of the mind.
The words that we speak follow a concept in our mind and once we are clear of our own inner state, we can understand the facets of people from the words they speak. The words directly lead to concepts and concepts will then lead to their inner states. The key to understanding people then is the undersanding of our inner state- our emotions, our values, and our thinking.
As written in Upanishads:
The day I know my inner self is the day I touch my infinite potential!
Do write back with your feedback!
Ashish Anand
I think if you see others in a light where u do not expect anything for
favours done and love in an unselfish way,that u can enhance relationships
with others.
The moment you expect a barter in your relationships,it is then that things
start turning wrong and relationships sour.
Simi
One way is to try and enlarge the picture. We can never see the whole picture
but we can definitely try and see more than we are currently. There are so many
examples of misunderstandings which arise because of each one's limited picture.
The moment you see what the other is seeing the misunderstanding vanishes.
Whenever we experience a misunderstanding if we just try and understand the
other person's perspective and where they are coming from, rather than reacting,
I am sure most times the other person will also attempt to meet you half way.
Nira
[FOCUS AND PERSPECTIVE] [THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT] [The Arjuna Factor] [Window into Ourselves] [The Tree in the Storm] [HOLISTIC LIVING HOME]
� Meenakshi Suri 2002