A YOGI CHA BLOG

Looking for understanding in all the wrong places

How many times in your life have you asked for advice from different people and gotten complete opposite opinions?

We feel lost and alone. All we want is that encouraging feeling of someone showing us the way. We even become masters of asking as many opinions as possible, just to end up feeling even more confused.

We might be lucky enough to have family and friends who are willing to listen to us when we need to be heard.

However it might not always be the best solution. Not for us. Not for them.

Because at the end of the day, we are all interacting with each other from our own very personal perspective.

Expecting them to have the right answer for you is a misunderstanding on your behalf.

Have you ever waited impatiently for something to happen, a person to call you or a program on TV (you know, back in the day when we couldn’t choose what time a program came on) to start and when it did, you urgently needed to go to the bathroom?

Well, all of a sudden your priorities changed.

And this is the case everyday for everyone. No matter how much you friend wants to be supportive of you, if their priorities are different that day, they might not be there.

We know as well, that from this person we’ll probably get this kind of reply. So now, we choose who we ask what so that the reply will go in accordance with what we hope. And that is a key in the puzzle. Because what you really are seeking is to find clarity in your own opinion. Without knowing it, you have the answer deep down. We could call this “our Truth” or instinct.

But because we have come so far from listening to that, we keep “looking for love in all the wrong places”.

We keep asking for others to tell us what to do and what to think.

Since we are all walking around in our own little universe, other people will gladly tell us what THEY think. And this is the reason they are not willing to do so for eternity. Because if you don’t actually take their “advice” (agree with their opinion), soon they will feel misunderstood in return and exhausted by trying to help you. The relationship loses it’s balance, we can’t just keep asking and not giving and we end up feeling more lost and alone.

People have asked for advice on their life choices since the beginning of time. The oracle in Delphi would answer in riddles though and the inquirer had to interpret for themselves. If we have to make sense of the answer ourselves we will naturally find the answer that corresponds to where we are at in that moment. The divination strategy is to not personalise the reply.

But that only worked because people expected the oracle to answer that way. It was the oracle’s role. It would not work as well if our friend or brother does the same.

Two things are important to remember:

1. As my toilet example earlier suggests : you need to set off a time for being heard because things come in the way otherwise.
2. The person listening needs to be aware of their own filters, colouring their opinion when they give you advice.

There is a time and a place for everything. And when we seek help from someone, we often don’t take under consideration if it’s the right time for them. Even the person we’re asking is not always aware if it’s the right time and place. And that first point goes hand in hand with the second because only a person aware of their own filters will be capable to see that maybe today isn’t the right moment.

After the ancient Greeks and the mystics, we confessed to the priest when religion became the order of the world. The answers weren’t riddles anymore but opinions from a book that in itself was subject of interpretation and it wasn’t until we took an interest to the hidden parts of our consciousness that Psychology became a thing. When we realised that what we think and say might not be the depth of our being, we also understood that we need a mirror that reflects the image back to us instead of new information.

This is what the therapeutic process offers. It’s a sounding board that allows us to see what comes bouncing back when we verbalise our inner world.