I noticed when my brother challenged me on a political opinion I immediately began to separate from him. I felt there was a position I needed to defend, the position was part of my conceptual identity. There was a sense ‘I’ was under attack. And that he was taking up a position of superiority over me. There were underlying feelings of resentment, that seemed to underpin my position, and I felt anger bubbling around below the surface. There was a growing gap between us, as I felt frustration with his closed mindedness, as I also failed to notice the solidity and weight of my own presumptions and acceptance of pre-established beliefs. I noticed how I was building a constellation of interdependent and self-supporting substance to my continuing establishing of my position and self-identity through time and space.
When I noticed this, there was a relaxing of the tension I held between my position, and the built-up assumptions around the position that I was identifying as my brother. In this realization once again there was an open playfulness and fluidity about our interactions.
David
Hello David, thank you for this example of how the mind is moving to solidity. You describe how we even in frustrating situations insist on it. My experience was, that we need some effort, not to go in that direction, before we can relax that claim. Again and again I was surprised, how often we can open to new possibilities in each situation.