Myths of Life – Identifying and Removing the Myth of Limitation

I particularly liked this quote which reminds me of how we come to know our Being – through relationship – not just with other beings but our physical, social, spiritual, natural and ideological relationships.

“The universe is one great kindergarten. Everything that exists
has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches
stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests,
lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous
glaciers and crystal snowflakes every form of animate or inanimate
existence, leaves its impress upon our soul.”

Orison Swett Marden, 1850-1924 (Adapted)
American Author and Magazine Founder

I recently shared an opportunity with someone whose response was ‘I don’t like the person who is heading this up! I am not sure what my strong negative reaction is but it is there and I will come back to you on this later’. Neither of us have met this individual face to face.  We discussed our very different perceptions of the person involved, realising that I euologise about his abilities and integrity and she, because of different experinces with his team, was resistant to the new opportunity he presented.

Who really knows this person?  His name is Brian.  I eulogise about Brian, have positive associations and see anything related to him in an expansive and positive light.  She is critical of his intentions and finds it hard to see beyond her reactions of who Brian is.  Brian does not exist, of course, as a separate fixed entity.

We only have ‘Brian – the Observed’.  The only Brian I know is Me and the only Brian she knows is her. Existentially, our unfixed nature of being means we are co-created and relationship is the inter-subjective experience of each other – despite our attempts to make objective this organic, phenomenological process.

The following quote sums up the ubiquitus nature of choice – even if sometimes the choices we have are so limited that they only involve choosing how to think about something.