Don’t Take Anything Personally: Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
– from The Four Agreements
I don’t know much about the Four Agreements, but saw this quote on facebook.
It is medicine for a certain fixed and habitual viewpoint, in this case, of taking whatever happens too personally.
But this view, intended to dislodge a habitual and fixed view, can itself be taken as an exclusive truth. The medicine needs its own medicine.
I find that I can take things too personally in two ways.
First, by taking whatever happens as about me.
The correction here is to recognize that whatever someone thinks, feels, and does has infinite causes, stretching back to the beginning of the universe and out to the widest reaches of the universe. It all comes together for this to happen here now. There is nothing personal about it.
Also, they experience, interpret, and respond from their own world of images, just as I do, and that world of images has infinite causes.
The other way I can take things too personally is through identification with the me and I, with this human self in the world and the sense of a doer and observer. When I take myself to be (my own images of) the me and I, then whatever happens is bound to be experienced as personal, whether I recognize what is mentioned above or not.
If this is taken as a belief, it doesn’t help. Then that too becomes a fixed and habitual viewpoint, out of alignment with the vast openness of reality. It needs is own medicine, and this medicine is to find the validity in its reversal – in the conventional view. If someone responds or reacts to something I say or do, can I find the truth in it? Can I take it in? Can I be receptive to it? Can I take it as about me, find the truth in it, take it in, and learn from it? And can I find the validity in the reversal of that as well?
And if it is taken as a pointer and question for own exploration, it can be very helpful. Then we naturally find the validity in the pointer (don’t take anything personally) and its reversal (take it as about you and find the validity in it, and in its reversals).
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- medicine, and medicine for the medicine
- “don’t take anything personally”
- medicine for/correction to most common ailment – taking things too personally
- a medicine for a certain fixed and habitual viewpoint
- but it too needs medicine, a correction/modification (if taken too one-sidedly/absolutely, then becomes poison as any view)
- a question, pointer for exploration
- explore in own experience
- find validity in it, with specific examples, allow it to sink in
- take as too personal in two ways
- first, as about me (all, mainly about me)
- see it has infinite causes, is about them/their expectations and beliefs etc.
- then, identified with this image of “me” and “I”
- medicine for/correction to most common ailment – taking things too personally
- but also – take as valuable feedback, find the truth/validity in it – receptivity, as a confession
- “don’t take anything personally”
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>Don’t Take Anything Personally: Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
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They respond from their own world of images, just as I do, and all of it has infinite causes.