02-16-2018, 01:13 PM
(02-16-2018, 10:48 AM)rva_jeremy Wrote: The trick is to know when militancy IS necessary, because it's always going to take everybody out of their comfort zone. It is so incredibly difficult to suss out the distinction between something being uncomfortable and something not resonating. I still am working with that wisdom. And it is in that spirit of continuing to balance on this matter that your thoughts are genuinely appreciated, Jade, as bringing out truth within me that I was having trouble reconciling.
Sometimes our minds go through all sorts of convoluted mazes, fragmentation, and intellectual sidebars to avoid seeing truth and keep ourselves protected from it. I observed this in myself when I saw a counselor many years ago. I have always read prolifically, so I already knew a lot about psychology at that time. Over the several months I saw her, I was familiar with almost every device she was using to break through my defenses. It's not that I didn't consciously want those defenses to break down, but my subconscious mind, which had protected me in my childhood from trauma, was firmly in place doing its job like a loving sentinel.
I could actually feel myself inside veering away from certain things like light bending around mass. I was experiencing my own emotional survival kit, which had successfully helped me as a child.
The way I have found to counteract this protective tendency now, in adulthood when a less extreme version of this survival mechanism kicks in with everyday concerns, is to bravely and openly face myself no matter what. For example, if I find myself blaming another for an event, even if it looks objectively like I was a "victim," I try to push past resentment and find my part in it. In this way I have trained myself to loosen the grip of this particular survival instinct, whose job it is to protect my ego and my mental and emotional stability.
Regarding the conversations here, and especially in this most controversial subject—what to eat—the biggest block, as I see it, to understanding each other (not agreeing with each other) is taking offense. Taking offense is a great message to self. When I feel myself taking offense at anything, it is a signal to me to find my part in the exchange or event. Just as soon as I turn my attention in that direction, I feel the sense of being offended melt away. So being offended is useful to us. It is an opportunity to look at ourselves, not point the finger outward. But if we follow through with the natural tendency to point blame outwardly (only) to that which has ignited the feeling of being offended, the whole subject we are discussing becomes something else—a back-and-forth defensive position with sides. And this parallels exactly what my subconsciousness mind was doing when it was deflecting light from the childhood trauma it was protecting.
I may be simplifying the complexities of communication, but my purpose was to comment on the above challenge of discernment, and hopefully shed a little light on it.