Oh my! The stories we make up about what is going on and about other people! It’s the curse of individualism – when we are supposed to do everything by ourselves and not need others, we also do relationships by ourselves. We make up stories based on our best guesses about the motives or reasons in the behavior or words of another then act upon what we guess.

We also take guesses as to the best ways to move forward then take action based on those guesses without ever engaging the other person. We just do what we think is the best thing given what we imagine and having no concrete information from the other person.

I recently went through a situation where being ignorant of one’s inner reality – various assumptions, lenses, chemical states, and such – was highly antagonistic to an otherwise incredible connection. It made me sad that two deeply connected people got trapped in the swirl of illusion and couldn’t find each other through the mess of it all.

When we make the assumption of non-connection it is very difficult to give people the benefit of the doubt that they care about us and then act accordingly. The assumption of non-connection results in us making up stories about a current situation based on our patterns and beliefs from the past. So the other person/people suddenly become remarkably like our parents, siblings, ex-husbands/wives or any other humans beings who have hurt us or, at least, not engaged in a connected way.

There is so much talk about finding your purpose. The general idea is that you will feel truly fulfilled when you find your purpose. Unfortunately, finding your purpose is often obscured by a general misunderstanding of what purpose is.

Without an accurate understanding of what purpose is you can go on a wild goose chase – trying thing after thing after thing trying to find what it is you are “supposed” to do.

I woke up this morning thinking about the notion of giving and receiving. It seems pretty imperative that we have an equal balance of both capacities. If not, here is what I think happens:

If you are a really good giver – if that is your “role” or your comfort zone, then an imbalance can exist where it becomes very difficult to receive.

And if you are a really good receiver – if that is your role or comfort zone – then an imbalance can exist where it becomes very difficult to give.