I understand

To the people who have dedicated their lives to the art of Understanding.

You can only dig so deep, until you have expanded way past your point of responsibility and you are now doing yourself a huge disservice.

The art of understanding is, in essence, the art of Loving. Love is to take something as a part of yourself. It is enabled through understanding. And you are definitely right to go about pursuing that understanding.

Understanding is not the problem. Quite opposite, it maybe your best trait. Understanding another is the only way to self-mastery, awakening and real love + authentic connections/ relationships. The problem is that after you have embarked on your journey to understand another, you may notice that they have no interest in understanding you. This is the beginning of the end; you start to try to figure out what was so "wrong" about you that they chose to not want to understand you.

Yes, you read that right. Understanding is a natural desire and preference of ours. It is a choice to not want to understand. This choice is, obviously to everyone else, self-sabotaging. The people who choose to not want to understand someone else are lying to themselves... their own true desire is to expand the knowing of "who am I?". For that they need to truly understand other, since other is a reflection of I.

But!!! It is not your fault nor your responsibility that they made this choice. Even if you can see that their choice is hurting them it is their choice. Their free will.

Time for you to embrace the truth that you cannot go against another persons free will.

The answers we find solely depend on the questions we ask.

If you ask the question "what can I change about myself to make the other person want to understand me?" you will not get the answer you hoped for. Instead the question you should ask yourself (knowing that you are already aware of the answer to the previous question) is : Why do I resist this answer? Where does this resistance stem from?

The answer to the first question is that you can't, there is nothing you can change in yourself because you are not a matter in of this persons desires to understand.

Why can't you accept the understanding that it is a choice to not understand? What is so bad about the futility of being powerless to the decision if someone chooses to understand you or not?

This is the truth, the choice is completely in their hands and you can't do anything about it.

Remember that the natural state of a human is to understand. We naturally move in the direction of understanding. This means that the person who chose to not want to understand you probably associates understanding you with a lot of pain. And in order to avoid this immense pain they chose to not want to understand you. It is a protection mechanism.

If you now ask the question: What is the root of the pain within them that they chose to not want to understand another? you will most likely find an answer that allows you to feel compassion toward this person.

But it is not your responsibility to awaken this person (who is not asking for it!) to the truths behind their pain. Meaning there is nothing more for you here to understand. You can now honor the persons decision to not want to understand you because you understand.

Then you turn inwards, because somewhere within you is this pain of this person. Somehow this person is a mirror of you. As within, so without. The law of mirroring. This is why you manifested this situation in your external reality. So that you may guide a lost fragment of yourself back home.

Look for the pain, what is the painful meaning I assign to the fact that this person chose to not want to understand me? When was the first time I felt this emotion? Perhaps you can see that this exact emotion is what the person is keeping him/herself from by choosing to not want to understand another.

Take a step back and see how this very fear to let others in, is also within you! This is how to really understand oneself.. You realise that all ONE is really ALL and ALL can be found in ONE. Integrating Ego and Oneness.

Photo courtesy of Joe Stellato