Seeing Beyond

I have always been proud of my ability to read people. Those who know me well, will attest to that as well. But whether others agree or not, this is something I have knows about myself. My ability to recognize people for the most part very accurately, has made my life much easier and less of problems. It`s an intuitive awareness but it may have been sharpened by my studies in Psychology and later on as a result of meditative practices. 

When I look at someone I can go beyond who they are and the titles they carry. It seems to me that my awareness can rise beyond the tags we attach to people. Whether we like or not, we live most of our lives and our thinking, framed by what we are taught, we learn in our younger years, people we surround ourselves with, the bigger society we belong to and the values and labels associated with individuals. For as long as I can remember, I have gone beyond these frames. Whether it was my father, mother, relatives, siblings or friends I have had less loyalty to those definitions and values places by society and are encouraged to have by those around you, so that I can see the person. 

Let me explain myself.

In the culture I grew up in, it is impressed upon by our parents and elders and society that we respect those who are older to us. The rationality being that they have more experiences and more knowledgeable than someone younger, therefore those who are younger can benefit by listening to them and respecting what they know. I do not believe in this for my own experiences with my aunts and uncles, in my younger years, have shown that just because people are older to us by the number of years that they have lived, they are not capable of teaching the young ones of something worthy of listening and something worthy of trying to live up to. 

I saw the same with my father. Unfortunately, I had very little respect for who he was and what he stood for. For me what he told us were simply words that carried little weight. So, my nature inherently was to grow up questioning things around me. I was never cynical and to this date I am not. But I do question things and people, if what they say and do don`t match up. 

It did not matter who they were as in older or younger, or titles they held, parent, grandparent, boss, friend, I always took them for what they showed themselves as. Therefore titles, labels did very little in how I saw people and how I approached them. Therefore my relationship to most people was not congruent of the society I grew up in. Most did not like it and still don`t. Unlike in the UK, US or Canada, Asian countries seek people to confirm to the ways of thinking and expectations of society and those in it. I did little of that. The little I confirmed was because it was what I wanted. 

People did not like it much especially if it was not beneficial to them. Of course the punishments that are conferred to those who go against such norms were naturally placed upon me. But I never really felt it nor could they use them to tame me either. I once realized that how frustrated my supervisors were because of my  ability and lack of fear of standing my ground. But they did not fire me because I was good at what I was doing and I never put myself or the organizations I worked in trouble. In fact it was the opposite. 

But this ability became my own nemesis at a point of time in my life. I was good at seeing others. But that made me very judgmental. I had an attitude of being better than everyone else because I thought I could see them and that in itself became my attitude.

It was much later that I started my practice of meditation. During the last eight years of my practice I have mellowed quite a bit. I have become less judgmental. That is not to say that I cannot see beyond the labels and tags and frames of society, nor does it mean that I ignore them, but for me its a way to see things for what they are but not to get entangled in them. Its was to not fight with things but to leave them as they they and go my merry way, unless I am required to do something. 

More than any of the reasons mentioned above, the greatest is being able to see myself beyond the frames, titles, labels imposed upon myself. I realize that the reasons why I am able to observe people beyond their labels, titles is because each individual lives within a world of his or her own. If others do that then it must be same to me. I must live within my own world with its own unique labels, definitions, frames. This was the turning point for me. 

When I started investigating my own labels etc I realized that I was confirming to some of those myself. I was living in a little cell. The worst was that I was in my cell judging and laughing at others who live in their cells. What was the difference. I did not want to be living in my cell just to be an expert at understanding the other person and their little prison. Whether they marched up and down the cell in the morning or afternoon, whether the cell was big or small and all the rest...this is an analogy to explain me reading people. 

I realized that perhaps I ought to shift the focus on my cell and what I did within it. When I started doing this, to my surprise I found that I too confirm to ways and expectations of society. From what studies to do, to what college to go, to which job I did and what company I worked for, how I dressed, whether I had a boyfriend, whether I was married, what kind of a wife I was to many things....basically my entire life. I realized that there was little difference from me to the others although for a while I thought I was above most of them.

Then I started to investigate what makes us confirm to these things. It is when I started investigating the reasons as to why we want to be labelled, need to have a definition that was accepted, I played the part that was given to me, that I realized how to get over them. 

I have changed much over the years. I still pose a challenge for those around me because of my unconventional thinking and behavior but this is not purely because I am questioning every tom, dick and harry. But its because I am questioning myself. I realize that I can change and that is okay. That we need not confirm to things unless that is what I want and it makes sense to me and my own development and well being. My motives to being different is not to fan my own feathers so to speak but to bring about a sense of ease and peace within myself. 

Each one of us have expectations of our own selves. We define who we are. We give importance to certain parts of ourselves and less to other parts. We like certain things about ourselves and dislike other things. We feel comfortable with certain parts and things about ourselves and less comfortable with others. We have a need to be accepted and cherished and loved by those closer to us and by larger society. We need to receive a sense of value for our contributions. All of these things and more, are our own cells, frames and boundaries. 

When I questioned myself, I asked why must I have frames and boundaries for myself to begin with. I realize to the degree of the views, affirmations of myself to that degree I will behave and operate in. But what about what I cannot see and or don`t want to see. I realize that I must go beyond. 

The more I did this the more free I felt. This was not and still is not an easy journey for me. This also does not mean that I live in a way that is harmful to myself and others around me. Quite the opposite really. 

I have found that the more I lessen myself of these boundaries the more free I become but it also comes with a lot of accountability towards own self. Therefore I am disciplined by my own freedom..I`m sure that sounds like a contradiction but as ironic as that sounds, that is exactly what it is. I have so much accountability towards myself that I don`t waste the time I have anymore. 

I don`t work except for about 10 hours of volunteer work I do. So quite frankly I ought to be very up to date about all the reality TV shows, news, whats happening to my friends and relatives and sleeping plenty. But I don`t have time for much of it. I am busy with myself. I meditate almost everyday for an hour. I do exercise on a daily basis. I read a lot. I contemplate and watch my thoughts so that I have little time to engage in fantasies and thoughts of future and past. I spent little time grappling with things that I cannot control but wold love to have the illusion of doing so. I keep a blog. I cook very inventively. Play the piano and teach myself new songs. And when there is nothing to do, I do nothing at times and if not then I will watch some TV. 

So see beyond myself has been a revelation and a transformation. My work is not yet finished. I believe I will do so until my last breath. But I have also never felt the level of meaning of my own life and the worth of my life as I feel it now. I feel a sense of accomplishment, joy and a sense of well being I have never felt before even when I was at the peak of my career earning lost of money with praise from society and those around me. I don`t have people cheering me on from every corner and praising me what a great job I do. But I feel it in my heart from deep within. Although I won`t go as far as to say that the external acknowledgements aren`t completely important to me as of now, I find that I expect it less and in the absence of it I don`t feel sad or isolated. I feel more connected than ever before.

Again I want to state that this has been a journey of eight years and I am not finished. It`s evolving as I write my blog. Even I am curious as to how it will evolve in the future. The journey beyond myself is the most fascinating journey I have ever undertaken, it is also the most time consuming and slow journey of all, reading myself is the hardest and digging deep through self imposed and self accepted barriers is the hardest of all. But it is also the most educating, most transforming and most rewarding journey of all. I intend to continue it.