Who is Anyone to Anyone?

How the conceptions we have of others keep us and them from changing or being known for who we truly are

I go through lots of change. The person I was three months ago, doesn’t actually exist anymore.

Except to the people I haven’t seen in three months, that’s how they know me- or even more likely they don’t actually have the three month old model of me but one much older than that which is a compilation of all sorts of impressions and considerations.

Nobody really knows anyone. Each of us carry around our own little versions of other people inside ourselves and have relationships with that version of the other person. 

I’ve felt this so clearly in moments. It’s hard even to articulate but I totally get in moments how my perception of someone else is a complete illusion. The person we think we know doesn’t even exist ….

Other people’s internal visions line up sometimes more accurately than others with our current sense of self or state of being, but not completely and not all the time.

GETTING STUCK IN THE OLD VERSION OF SELF AND OTHER

How many of us experience people in our lives that get stuck in the old version, the old model? How much do we get stuck there with other people? What would it take to update and to receive the person in front of us freshly, for who they truly are in this moment, for who they are becoming?

Family and significant people from my past is where I experience “stuck in the old model” most keenly. The me they think they know doesn’t actually exist, except in their own minds. I am not that person. This can be a little challenging. Especially when they try to relate to me as that person and not as the person I have become. I imagine most people experience this as they leave home, grow and change. After a time away, they return and are met with the old version of themselves held by friends and family and experience it reflected back at them. Inside they may be saying  “Wait a minute, that’s not me… you have the old version…” 

I think this is part of what makes it so hard to change. All the people in our lives create these fixed images and models that they keep projecting at us, saying “This is who you are, can’t you see, don’t you know?” and expect us to function and behave accordingly. 

OUTDATED REFLECTIONS MAKE IT MORE DIFFICULT TO CHANGE

We look in the mirror they hold out to us and think that what we see is actually a true reflection and so then we go back to being and inhabiting that old self. But no. That’s not who you are anymore. The reflection is outdated. I find, if I’m not careful, especially with my family, it is so easy to go back to being who they think I am when they don’t know that I’ve changed.

For that matter I don’t even know who they are. The family that exists for me- my own internal version of them- is not the family that exists in reality. How much am I carrying around my family from the past and how much have I met my new and present family? How much is that true with anyone with whom I have a “history”?  With so much history, it’s so easy and likely that we function from the past and not with who they or we truly are.

THE PARTICULAR CHALLENGE OF FAMILY

This gives me such insight into the perpetual challenge of familial relationships. The energetic imprint of family in childhood is so strong, especially where any sort of trauma is present (and that’s pretty much in every modern family) and we carry it so strongly that many of us function from it almost entirely- recreating that mother, father, sister or brother from our past over and over again. We do it for each other. They do it for us, we do it for them, recreating those energetic patterns and pathways that represent what we think is the solid reality of who they are. They don’t actually exist  for you except the way you have created them. What if you could truly receive them now, with presence in every moment, for who they are and are becoming? 

LET GO OF YOUR STORY OF WHO SOMEBODY IS AND RECEIVE THEM FULLY

Metamorphosis is happening all the time! If only we could see the butterflies not tear off their wings and demand they be caterpillars again. Why do we only see the caterpillar, when someone has actually become a butterfly before our very eyes? What would it take for you to learn to see the butterfly?

Lay down every expectation every story and consideration that you have to receive this new being freshly. Ask yourself of another” Who are you today? How do I be with you now? And now? And now?” How much of your past do you bring to your present? How much of that kills the energy of possibility and creation?

Do I know you now? Can I be curious to who you are? Can I forget every place you hurt me, everything I’ve ever known to be true,  just to be in the wonder of life unfolding?

Don’t assume today that I am the person I was yesterday or that tomorrow I will also be the same. Come along with me in the moment-by-moment evolution and unfoldment of being.