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How to tell the difference between thing-ness and beingness… i.e. are you treating another a person or a thing?
I learned, maybe re-learned something from my an email I got from someone who is taking ‘becoming a person’ very seriously… thank god.
He got that only through ‘granting’ personness to another makes you a person. That really you cannot be a person among objects… what you give is what you are.
Very counterintuitive idea, and probably controversial too. But to echo most people’s emotions: a ‘bummer’… too bad.
We all want to be treated as a person, we want to be treated like we are a ‘somebody’, not a thing, and definitely not a ‘nothing’.
I am not sure you know how you do that, or how they do that… so I am going to look… I have never given this a thought, so if it comes out raw… it probably will…
You see, most people do ‘life’ unconsciously, likely you, and it is a good idea to take a sideways look at what the heck you are doing that reduces you to an object.
Or you do it dutifully… and it is clear both to you and me, that only things are dutiful… right? lol
Here is the email from Miko…
I want to use it to teach a certain concern that can and almost certainly does that
With regards to the validation challenge, I talked to an old friend from University yesterday and it was a good opportunity to practice acknowledgement and seeing another as a person. For instance, I acknowledged that her voice changed since we last spoke, that it got more serious. Nothing good or bad necessarily, and yet it felt like it connected with the person there.
Interestingly, at some point I noticed this feeling of pressure inside me, seemingly telling me to go and do something instead of talking to her. But I just observed it this time, whereas before I think I would react to it, and get locked into the extrinsic level view – switch to seeing the other as an obstacle.
I’m starting to see that without these distinctions of value levels, I’ve had the different value levels mixed up, which gave me a very black-or-white outlook; unstable, too. And also that seeing another as a person means that I’ll be seeing myself as a person… with their own priorities, preferences, etc. So that requires me to then take that into consideration, too… so it’s not like I can become selfless through that. Which is a concern I used to have about that.
Two major thing:
1. you say something to another, good, bad, indifferent, but you say it with an agenda.
You know it was an agenda, you know you had an agenda, because you are looking at how it connected, how it landed.
Is this the same as when I speak and moment to moment track if I am heard, if I have an echo, if there is still a connection, or the other person got sidetracked, pulled out of the conversation? Isn’t THAT an agenda too?
Yeah, it could be… it depends on your intention. You want to impress, you want to persuade, you want to look good: agenda. You want to be heard when you speak? Not an agenda. Huh?
When you want to persuade, when you use the other person to make yourself look good, when you want to do something to them (impress), you consider them a thing. A thing to use.
Don’t get upset, or do if it works for you, lol.
93% of humanity, and 97% of my readers consider themselves a thing, an object among objects. Something to protect, something to elevate, and the other objects that are there first to be used, second to avoid, third to knock off, knock up, knock away. You compare. You judge. You disparage. You attempt to diminish… or on the other extreme: put on a pedestal.
2. All from the vantage point of the thing you consider yourself: it needs to be protected.
You may say: I am protecting my energies, my time, etc.
But it is, they are all thing possessions.
It also shows up in how you interact with the inanimate world: everything has the same weight.
You give equal amount of concern to everything…
When you can hone into a person, as long as they are a person, there is nothing more important to do…
Of course the chances that you meet a person are almost zero… given the number of persons on the planet.
But when you do the Validation exercise, which is a method I invented for you to practice ‘granting personness’ to another, as long as you are granting that personness, that reflects back to you and makes you, temporarily, a person… and the interaction a person to person interaction, however long it lasts.
When you use them to do the exercise… no personness is granted…
But when you manage, even just for a moment, leave your ‘self-concern’ at the door, magic happens. I just muscletested and Miko’s ‘about-me’ measured at 91% during that incident.
Self-concern is for the object self. The thing. The person-self doesn’t have concerns for themselves. I have been a person to one degree or another for about 30 years now, and I stopped having concerns FOR myself for a few years of those 30. I may leave the conversation because it’s boring, or it is going to places I have no interest going, but not because I have some SCARCITY concerns.
Scarcity (fear? wanting?) is the main mode things live in. Self-concern is an expression of scarcity.
Abundance, invulnerability is where a person lives… if and when they are being a person. If and when they grant beingness to others and to themselves.
There is a guy in my Get Guidance from your Future Self who has been in the banking industry for 30 years. He wants to become a CEO… Chief Executive Officer. In the workshop his Self suggested that he picks up the Dale Carnegie book: How to win friends and influence people.
Why? Because until and unless he learns the language and the counter-intuitive way to get what you want… he’ll never become the top dog who will be happy and fulfilled. Of course the ‘thing’ he is can claw their way to the top, over dead bodies, but it won’t be fulfilling… because people will fear him, hate him, despise him, and spite him.
But he can, through using Dale Carnegie’s teaching, become a person who grants people ‘personness’ and becomes like a hot knife in butter… irresistible.
Here is what the book teaches:
- Become genuinely interested in other people.
- Smile.
- Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
- Be a good listener. …
- Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
- Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
These are, as a unit, the hallmarks of a person who grants personness.
The more you do it, not for an agenda, but because it is lovely!!! to be this way, the more your personness opens up… Your own.
And fulfillment, joy, can be yours… wherever you are, whatever you are doing.
He can become a CEO and be joyful and fulfilled. Or he may not even want to become a CEO and be joyful and fulfilled.
An interesting counter-to-the-public-opinion example is Steve Jobs. He wasn’t an easy person to work for, and he expressed his displeasure loudly… And yet, he granted beingness much of the time… muscletest says: he was a person.
So you don’t have to be nice-nice to be a person. I certainly am not often nice… and when I am, I am a thing concerned for being liked or losing a client.
- When I don’t tell you that your promises are pie in the sky and you cannot possibly do what you so earnestly say you will do… in that moment I am a thing.
- When I yell… are you being an as*hole? I consider you a person who want to live as a person, with integrity… not as a little clod of ailments complaining that the world doesn’t give him what he wants. 1
And for those of us who are not British: clod is a fool, a stupid person…
A person lives in reality. A person is aware of what they can do and what they can’t, what is a fantasy and what is possibility.
A person can also see that the way to get from A to B will require many small steps… and each step is made of moments, and each step needs to be accurate… and to know if it is accurate, you need to look around and be in reality.
Yeah, like the way cats eat… smell it, take out a little bit and taste it, play with it… BEFORE you actually eat it.
And when the going gets good, stop and check if you should do more of what you have done…
A cat eats like a person… Have you observed how you eat?
If you are not fulfilled, if you are going for stuff to make you feel good and it fails to do the trick, you may want to look into the possibility of becoming a person… a being… not just by vernacular, ‘human being’, but really.
I am running a challenge, I call it the Validation Challenge. You go and look and hopefully see something of value… and acknowledge it.
The Dale Carnegie book is an excellent tool to learn how to actually go about it. It is inexpensive, and the practice plus the capacity activation I give you can, over time, open up personness.
The capacity is SEEING VALUE…
because most of you don’t see value. Neither in others, nor in yourself. That makes you a thing. And things are incapable for a lot of things your soul, your spirit wants to experience, soaring, fulfillment, love, caring, joy.
Things can pretend to experience it and they do… that is, they do pretend.
They are lying. All of those that claim that? Yeah, pretty much all of them.
Those that can’t do it, teach it… Those that can’t experience it, talk about it. Write poems, books, whatnot. Paint it.
It’s, I still remember!, is a miserable existence.
OK, if you FEEL you are ready, if you are ready to commit to at least 30 days practicing it… even though it may be the hardest thing for you to do, it probably is, then sign up to the Validation Challenge.
It cost $45. For that I turn on the capacity ‘Seeing value’ for you, and check every day if your new capacity is still open. If it isn’t, I turn it back on for you.
I also write you an email every day, and send you to a chart of everyone in the challenge to show where you are at.
The about-me score is an indicator if you see yourself and others, even just a little bit, as a person. The lower the number the better.
Mine is 7%.
The little-sh*t score shows to what degree you do what you said you would do… i.e. the practice. Here is the same stands: the lower the number the better.
Mine is 3%
As soon as I get your $45 I turn the capacities on, add you to the mailing list, and add you to the chart sheet.
Join the Validation challenge: become a person- There is the true joy of life; to be used by a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; to be thoroughly worn out before being thrown on the scrap heap; to be a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that life will not devote itself to making you happy.
