Your Welcome Sky

I’ve found the rule of charity helps in the process of letting go. In the past I would have let a experience in which I imagined the others intentions negatively overwhelm my inner dialog for days. That’s the thing with such inner dialog is never about the person that hurt us, we aren’t actually talking to them, were talking to ourselves through a imagined them.  Such dialog teaches us more about ourselves then about who they may or may not be.  The rule of charity allows us to recolonize that and let it go.

I like your very possible explanation. no victim or villains just people.

Hi Bell
In relationships we will attempt to heal past relationships. Nothing wrong with that however most of the time its unconsciously so it can prove troubling.

My take on what you wrote is that there is some work for you to do.  You may find the book ‘How to be a adult in relationships’ a helpful guide in identifying what ‘stuff’ belongs to you and what ‘stuff’ doesn’t.

Hi Sky

The other day someone held the door open for me and then when I didn’t say thank you said something negative about me. My behavior was rude however I was thinking about a friend that had passed and didn’t notice. Had the person known what I was thinking about I suspect they would have held the door without expecting any response from me.

The point being that we can’t know why someone does something without talking to them. We often think we know, but we can’t know with certainty.  This is where the rule of charity comes in.

The rule of charity states that if there are multiple possible explanations for an event and there is no way for you to determine which possible explanation is the correct one then chose the most helpful explanation. (The one that won’t have you creating victim/villain stories. )

In your situation you have a choice of talking to the teacher about your disappointment. If you make the choice not to then the rule of charity applies.

Possible explanation. The student that the teacher just talked to told them something that triggered them to retreat within themselves. Perhaps not very professional but we are all human.  Have you ever not been 100% present for someone needing your attention?

A question you might ask yourself is what unconscious payoff might you be getting from moving. If you truly wanted to stop this pattern of behavior you would. We don’t do something like moving unless at some level what we get from doing it has a stronger pull.

One of the positive of moving is that we get to start over. Reinvent ourselves. Of course unless we are very self aware most of us will recreate our ‘old selves’ and so no matter where we go we follow ourselves.

If you truly don’t like constantly moving and not having the opportunity to put down root, my guess is that your trying to heal something. Before you move again you might want to sit with the urge to move (runaway?) and see where it takes you.

That said the experiences from all the moving can be a great foundation for future opportunities.

Begs the question: What defines a mistake? When does a mistake become a mistake?

Dear  uclmerc:

Reading your post the thought that came to mind is that you have already decided the future of this relationship. Their is nothing wrong with the relationship but its missing something. Love is the requirement for all relationships however love does not mean a relationship is meant to be.

If I’m correct you may be unconsciously ‘testing’ your partner and looking for failures. Even setting him up for failures. The failures giving you ‘permission’ to be upset and end things or perhaps make life so difficult he ends things. You don’t  need to seek out this type of ‘permission’.  This unconscious testing can become a unintentional form of ‘gas lighting’ where both parties begin to question there reality – especially the one being “tested”. Having been on the receiving end I can tell you its very painful way to end things.

Re-read your post and ask yourself if you haven’t already made your decision and then be honest with your self and partner.

Be kind to yourself

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by Peter.

As a person with tinnitus what you describe very much sounds like tinnitus. Tinnitus has many causes and or is a symptom of many things such as hearing loss, medication, blood pressure, diet.  My understand is that the brain is trying to adapt to a sound it expects to hear. In a odd way tinnitus is the sound of no sound.

researchers say that the absence of sound caused by hearing loss in certain frequencies, due to normal aging, loud-noise exposure, or to an accident, forces the brain to produce sounds to replace what is now missing. But when the brain’s limbic system, which is involved in processing emotions and other functions, fails to stop these sounds from reaching conscious auditory processing, tinnitus results

That said you aren’t wrong to pay attention as the ‘volume level’ will change, for example when something induces a change in blood flow, so changes in sound can be revealing with regards to how the current situation is influencing you.

For many people who have tinnitus however that act of paying to close attention to the ringing is enough to increase “volume”, which leads to anxiousness, which leads to louder ringing, repeat, until you feel like your going crazy. So, if you can train yourself to pay attention and remain calm it could become part of a spiritual practice.

For myself my tinnitus has acted as a warning when I’m out of the moment (attached to the moment, fear, desire..) and to stop and ‘calm’ myself.

Hi limbikanimaria

I have no Idea why someone would leave a note like that for someone else with no explanation as more often then not the color black is unfairly associated with negative connotations.  I might guess that this person was asked to leave the conference because of a habit of doing this.

Begs the question as to why the color black is associated as being negative. Perhaps as it is associated with death and death seen as “bad” and or sadly perhaps due to false racial associations.

Symbolically the color black is associated with many things with the qualification of good and or bad dependent on context of the person engaged with the symbol.

Black as a color is not a color, or it is the absence of color, which at the same time gives depth and vibrancy to other color. (as does death provide depth to life). As a symbol the color Black is associated with uncertainty/mystery.  In the west uncertainty is something to fear however it is only with uncertainty that learning is possible.

Black is associated with power, fear, mystery, strength, authority, elegance, formality, death, evil, and aggression, authority, rebellion, and sophistication. In other words  ‘Black’ adds depth to experience.

The art of symbolic language is similar to dream interpretation where it is the dreamer the decides what the symbols in a dream means or points to. This is an engagement where nothing is right or wrong, good or bad, and instead a door to learning something about ourselves.

Contemplating what a ‘black heart’ might mean to you could be illumining as long as you don’t attach a sense of self to the process. This is not a ‘fact’ or ‘objective’ exercises but a subjective one where you pay attention to your intuition and discernment.

All the best

Light likes to think it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. – Terry Pratchett