Dorothy Rowe’s Guide to Life. Dorothy Rowe

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СКАЧАТЬ No two people ever have the same past experience.

      Identical twins might begin life with the same genetic components, but life in the womb differs for each of them, one is born after the other and from the moment they are born they have different experiences.

      To the extent that two people create similar interpretations they can communicate, but even when two people speak the same language they create very different interpretations. Thus two people can live side by side, speak the same language, yet each interpret the world in totally different ways. It’s often said, for instance, that men and women inhabit different planets!

      So here we are, each of us in our own little world of interpretations, yet, at the same time, we are born social animals.

      We are physically constituted as social animals.

      When you were born you didn’t just search around for a food-bearing nipple. You also searched for a friendly face. You were born knowing how to recognize a face and preferring to look at a face than at anything else.

      If a friendly face hadn’t turned up for you to talk to, you wouldn’t be reading this now. Without a friendly face, even if you’d been adequately fed and kept warm, you would have either died in the first few weeks (it’s a condition known as ‘anaclitic depression’) or you would have gone on to become one of those strange individuals who are unable to see other people as being in any way different from other objects.

      Out of the bond we develop with a mothering person in our own first months of life grows our sense of right and wrong, guilt and reparation. Babies who don’t get the chance to develop this bond grow up to be conscienceless people. They might lead apparently quite ordinary lives, whether criminals or company directors, but their personal relationships are always a disaster.

      A PARADOX OF LIFE

      We are each a unique individual living in our own individual, self-created world, yet we need one another in order to survive.

      

      The interpretations we create don’t just exist on their own. They arise out of the set of interpretations we have created in the past and they also determine how we think, feel and act.

      Whatever we think, feel and do has endless consequences.

      This is another aspect of life which we cannot change.

      It has to do with the nature of reality.

      Whatever reality is, it does seem that it is a vast, ever-changing interconnectedness. Everything is constantly moving and everything is connected to everything else. Physicists say this, and so did the ancient Hindu, Taoist and Buddhist philosophers.

      Because everything is connected to everything else,

       All our acts have consequences.

      Don’t kid yourself that what you do will have no consequences, or very limited consequences, or that you can decide what the consequences will be. A father might say, ‘I caught my son stealing. I gave him a good hiding and that was the end of it’, but he is deluding himself. The father’s actions will have consequences beyond the father’s control as a result of how the son interprets what his father has done.

      Everything you do has consequences and these consequences spread in all directions and go on forever.

      A PARADOX OF LIFE

      Everything that happens has good consequences and bad consequences.

      For instance, you win the lottery.

      Good consequences: You give up working and plan a round-the-world luxury voyage.

      Bad consequences: Your entire family comes too.

      Remember that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are not Absolute and Eternal Judgements existing outside our human life. We each have our own interpretation of good and bad. Some people believe that lotteries are wicked. Some people wouldn’t want to go anywhere without their family.

      A PARADOX OF LIFE

      Every interpretation we can create has good and bad implications.

      

      Suppose your interpretation of the right way to behave includes the belief that you will always tell the truth.

      The good implication of this is that people always know where they are with you, and the bad implication is that people are sometimes hurt by what you say.

       Because every interpretation has good implications and bad implications, and every action has good consequences and bad consequences, life can never be perfect.

      The longing for perfection is the longing for an illusion.

      If you want to be miserable, believe that you and the world ought to be perfect.

       You will always feel guilty, angry and disappointed.

      If you want to be miserable, don’t try to make your interpretations as close to reality as possible.

       You will always feel surprised, confused and fearful.

      If you want to be miserable, believe that you, your life and the world are reality, fixtures which you cannot change.

       You will always feel trapped and hopeless.

      If you are miserable and want to change, say to yourself,

       The way I interpret myself, my life and my world has implications and consequences which make me miserable.

       What alternative interpretations can I discover for what has happened, is happening and will happen to me?

       Which of these interpretations will give me the most satisfaction and happiness?’

      Let’s look at the important components of ‘myself’, ‘my life’ and my world’.

       CHAPTER 3 You and Your Own Truth

      IF I WERE to ask you, ‘What kind of a person are you?’ and you were to answer truthfully, would you say,

      ‘Other people looking at me think that I’m a very together person, that I’m competent and confident, get on well with other people, always cheerful, kind – but they don’t know the real me. Underneath I’m very different. I’m not as confident and competent as I make out, and I’m not a nice person at all. I try not to let people know me as I am.’

      If I asked you, ‘If you were a house, how would you describe yourself?’ would you say,

      ‘As a house I’ve got lots of rooms that represent different parts СКАЧАТЬ