"how am I relating to this?" I tried interviewing a friend about some wisdom/insight she has about being able to choose to trust life, since that nearly directly contradicts my orientation to choice/trust, and she shared this question, which helps you take your stance as object
"How am I relating to this?" as a way out of stuckness
9 tweets · July 2024 · 39 likes · 3 retweets · read on Twitter
part of what I like about "how am I relating to this?" is that it doesn't presuppose that you should be relating to it in any particular way. it doesn't try to get a particular orientation to occur; it merely makes it salient that you have an orientation which could be different
like when people say "you can't choose what happens to you. you can only choose how you respond" I sort of agree but I'm frustrated because in practice I can't often find the choice, and it hooks into a blame structure where now my suffering is my fault
she shared that "you have a choice" means more like "this is one of your muscles"—that doesn't mean your muscle is strong or coordinated, or that you should already know how to use it in this situation in general!
there's a sort of recursive process you can follow, to yield looseness: A: I'm really mad at X B: how are you relating to that? A: I don't like being mad but I can't help it! B: and how are you relating to that stuckness? A: I'm... trying not to look at it? huh
so "how am I relating to this?" helps you notice some place where you do have choice or where another option is possible, without presupposing what that might be.
while the sensation of being stuck is absolutely real, it's actually impossible to ultimately BE stuck in the absurdly-large-dimensional space that reality is. stuckness is a property of your map, not the territory. (LH not RH 🧠) "just move around"
your experience of stuckness is real but that doesn't mean you're really stuck (although your experience of stuckness sucking is real and that does mean it really sucks. 😔💔🫂❤️🩹)
oh man this idea I had back in early 2022 was actually basically the same premise: repeatedly take your stance towards your situation as object
