How Do I React When I Believe That Thought?
In Byron Katie's Work (thework.org) the first question that invites us to see our personal responsibility in an interpersonal situation is the question "how do I react when I believe this thought?"
This exploration invites me to examine what it is I'm offering my loved ones, in terms of context.
Context is everything. When I see how I react when I believe an unloving or unkind thought about my loved one (including one that involves them being unloving or unkind to me), I see the context I am influenced to offer them based on the nature of the thoughts I'm thinking and believing about them.
This is also a shortcut to exquisite treatment of my loved ones, if I want it to be.
If I hold a high standard for how I want to show up, I know how it is I want to act and react toward my loved ones. Then I can work backward and ask, "what do I need to think and believe about my loved ones in order to act and react in a way which is aligned with my standards?"
Every thought I might have about the interiority of another human being is a projection, an invention, an imagination, a delusion. The interiority of another person, their desires, experience, and motivation, is unknowable. My delusions and projections are automatic, necessary, and guaranteed flawed.
Knowing this, I curate my delusions to align my interior experience of my loved ones with my own definition of what it is to be exquisitely loving toward them.
I am the one to curate what I believe about those I keep closest to me. I am the one to hold myself to a high standard of thought, word, and deed with those I have chosen to love and keep close.
