Relating to Other People

by Friends of Godwin

Emotions arise in connection with the way you relate to yourself, the way you relate to others, and the way you relate to your surroundings. So it shows relationship is a real challenge we have in life.

Many persons have problems relating to other people. Their problem is that they are concerned about what others are thinking of them. Especially fearing minuses.

So the question arises: Why have we given such power to other people that our happiness and unhappiness is dependent on them?

Because we lack self-confidence, because we don’t practise what is necessary for this, we depend on other people for it.

I think everywhere in this world this is a real problem human beings have to face. Let us see how meditation helps us to work with these problems.

I feel this is why meditation of loving-kindness is so important, in the sense that you learn to be your own best friend and if you can really make that connection with yourself, actually feel it, then I think your dependency on what others think of you becomes less, because whatever you need from others you get it from yourself. You will become self-contained within yourself.

Another way meditation helps us to work with this situation is through understanding the nature of plusses and minuses. It is very interesting that human beings have this very strong conditioning to give plusses or to give minuses in any situation, but we never pause to question whether these plusses or minuses are valid, on what basis are we doing this.

It is funny, we really become victims of this mechanism but we never inquire into the way these plusses and minuses operate, under what condition they arise, what is really creating them, what is contributing to them. So when we explore this question we realise that these are really related to thoughts, concepts, which have come due to various reasons from the society that you have been brought up into. Then you see them as part of your conditioning, you see them as a strong habit that we have got used to.