Doing others a favour

When you are on a trip with others and you think that you have to do "something" to make it a pleasant experience for the others. Or when the other is ill and you believe that you have to do "something" to make it more acceptable for him. Or when someone asks you a question and you believe that you do have to answer it. Or when someone requests you to do something and that you believe that that implies that you have to do what is asked. Or when someone does not react the way that you expected it, blaming yourself for that. Or when there is a silence in your conversation and you feel obliged to fill the empty space. Etcetera. And your only alternative seems to be that when you do not do all these things, that you should feel guilty instead.

This implies that you believe that you are the one who has to come up with the appropriate reactions, in order to uphold the game we play together: that it is pleasant here. You also automatically assign a certain power to the other persons involved, because you somehow seem to be responsible for the way they feel, and that you are the one to avoid or lessen unpleasant feelings. And the penalty that you may suspect when you do not meet these expectations, is that other people will no longer want to be with you, and that you will be left on your own.

Now when you practice the above, you are likely to get stuck sooner or later in the ingenious web your personality has woven. Because you start fantasizing about the "thing" that you should do. During your trip, for the sick person. Or what the answer to this specific question should be. Thus limiting yourself and the others involved to this perception of the situation. This often turns into some kind of challenge, for example because the situation seems to be dominated by your physical perception: when you are visiting a museum for example, or when the other person needs physical care.

The other person asks something from you in terms of an objective statement (a cup of tea, do you want to go shopping with me) and your personality interprets that like the other person asked that inspired by his personality. Because to your personality, something can only com from your inner Self when the initiative comes through you (because he cannot understand any form of interconnectedness, Self is Self and that is from within your body and can be perceived, isolated from others).

That is why there is some sort of automatism that when the initiative comes from someone else, or from a circumstance (or like when you want to please someone else), that you take it for granted that that is an experience seen through the eyes and personality of someone else. Thus immediately limiting the other person to a personality on which you are going to react. So it is a very ingenious way of your personality to maintain grip. You may function from your inner Self, but the other person you only judge according to what you hear and see, so his personality. You do not want to disappoint the other person, and your personality seems the only aspect in you that judges this to be so, and can come up with an answer. Now he has learned that it will not be a very successful solution to tell that it does not mean anything at all, so his motto is to at least play along with the game.

Now whatever you do, whatever you focus your attention on: it does not mean anything in itself, no matter who took the initiative for it. Use it as a gift for everybody involved, yourself included, to strengthen your inner Self. It is not a problem to radiate that it does not mean anything in itself. Before you knew about your inner Self that would mean an immediate attack on the other. But now that you know your inner Self, this same idea offers something of much more value: the remembrance for all of you who you really are.