“No two people have ever met.”
- Byron Katie
All I can ever know of you is what I think I know of you.
All you can ever know of me is what you think you know of me.
Which means no two people have ever actually met.
That means no one will ever meet me. No one will ever know me. And no one will ever understand me.
This is good news. It simplifies life tremendously.
The only person I’ll ever meet, ever know, or ever understand is me (if that)!
Which means the only person I’ll ever need to meet, ever need to know, ever need to understand is me (if that)!
If there is an authentic me, no one will ever glimpse it. The only thing anyone will ever know of me is what they THINK and BELIEVE about me. That’s it. And that’s THEIR business. Not mine.
So what sense does it make to seek to be truly met or known or understood by anybody else? It is literally a hopeless effort. It’s why people-pleasing leads to so much stress. It cannot be done...
...except by my OWN assessment. “Yes they appear to be yelling at me (is it true?), talking behind my back (is it true?), plotting against me (is it true?), wishing I were dead (is it true?), even shooting at me (is it true?) but My experience is the only reality I can know.
The best I can do is to be compassionate with them in their apparent nightmare - because their nightmare is just MY nightmare, because they’re just me: a projection of my mind. If anyone is suffering, it is I who am suffering because the only suffering I can know is the story of suffering in my mind. How can it be anywhere else with any certainty? All I need to do is question my thinking and return to peace.
My work is to find peace in this world and to be pleased with reality. To love what is.
And that all comes down to me.