(self) images

Wednesday Dialogue
1

(SELF) IMAGES

Few personal reflections after today’s’ dialogue

Six ways to say the same thing…and one question

1. Without self image, there will be no need for other images to exist
2. All images start from self image
3. Self image generates all images
4. All images serve the self image
5. Self image can’t exist without other images
6. Behind all images is my self image

Can I see you without my self image?

2

No, it is impossible. Therefore in looking at you it is only myself I am seeing. What aspect of myself are you revealing to me? That’s really the question.

3

“Therefore in looking at you it is only myself I am seeing.”

  • yea, this looking can be a fantastic self discovery tool. So, I look at another, I imagine I see him/her face and character, and in the process of observing you I see my evaluations, my limitations, my judgements ? Nevertheless, I might capture a bit of your character, cause personally I don’t think I am so absorbed in my own self images to be so insensitive and not see anything of you.

What aspect of myself are you revealing to me? That’s really the question.

  • so here, Paul, you are saying that the display of my judgments (self images) is an occasion for me to reveal to you, something about yourself ?
    Yea, I don’t know the answer … maybe we open this question to discussion on Sunday dialogue

(PS I think K calls this “interaction/exchange” The mirror of relationship. )

4

Yes, it is the mirror of relationship. Suppose I call you arrogant or hypocritical - that’s really only my own arrogance and hypocrisy I am looking at. It’s a tremendous revelation to find out the truth of something like this.

5

Suppose I think I am a very kind person, and I believe kindness is my predominant trait.
When I meet you, I’ll look to see if you are kind or unkind, my self image(s) being my scale to “measure” you.
In other words, at the center of my observation of you is/are my self image(s).

I find it is difficult to see another without my self images.

6

So do you think you are a kind person? Personally, I am neither kind nor nasty. I am what I am depending upon only what happens in relationship to you. When two people are very close, they don’t even think of each themselves in terms of nice or nasty, kind or cruel; such labels are irrelevant. When these labels no longer apply in our own immediate relationships, it is very easy to live without images. While one thinks of oneself as kind, caring, clever, or any other such positive attribution, the only possible effect of this way of thinking about oneself is to find unkindness, greed and stupidity in the rest of humanity. So we alone therefore have created the very thing we are trying to change.

7

Yes Paul, I think I am a kind person, and I acknowledge that this self created image follows me in any relationships and in any judgment I make about others.
I have not dropped this self image, and I have no power to do it now, even if I want to.
I am powerless in this sense. And I do not judge myself for being powerless.
Is saying I am powerless another self image ?

8

What would it mean to have power over one’s own psychology? That surely would indicate the absence of all love and compassion; it would make for the unkindest of all kinds of human beings. Powerlessness is our nature; it is a fact. As a woman, you have lived with this fact all your life, for centuries; and because most men don’t understand what this powerlessness means and have run away from it in droves, caught up in their collective power-seeking masculinity, we can see very clearly what a mess has been made from seeking something which doesn’t and can’t ever exist.

Powerlessness doesn’t necessarily mean kindness; and wielding power doesn’t necessarily mean cruelty. In our relationships with one another we are playing with feelings of power and powerlessness all the time. However, when we watch this game together, carefully and honestly, finding out about it from our own and others’ reactions, exploring the actuality of our psychological lives, the whole range and depth of it, doesn’t something else happen? Isn’t there a feeling awoken which has its source in an entirely different field of energy? It is this energy alone which destroys our images and makes a mockery of them all. We could call it insight or love; they are the same thing.

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