4 Steps to Understanding

By Aine Belton

In recent years I’ve done a lot of traveling and spent extended periods in new communities (currently in Bali).

I’ve had many amazing experiences, met many wonderful people and shared many magic moments.

Being in all new and often transient environments has also been challenging at times, and always an opportunity for greater self-awareness, being true to myself whilst remaining open, enhancing understanding, etc.

It’s been interesting to witness the different ways people that don’t know someone receive them initially.

Anyone you don’t know is a blank slate for projection.

• When you meet someone new are you perceiving them through clean eyes and an open-heart?
• Are you deciding things about them before you know anything about them?
• Are you witnessing their light or finding fault?
• Are you coming from a desire to love or one to judge?

As I share on twitter:

Be mindful what you decide about someone you don’t know, for it will invariably reveal less of them and more of you.

Even with someone you do think you know well, how much are you seeing them in the light of truth and understanding?

If we’re globally to move to experiencing more loving communities, we obviously need to be more open, accepting and understanding – beginning with ourselves, our families, our relationships, rippling out to wider community circles.

I covered about self-acceptance in my previous piece on Radical Self-Acceptance at this link.

Understanding is obviously most challenging when there’s something you feel at odds with, perhaps something that feels painful, confusing, offensive, in-congruent with your principles, etc.

Below I look at 4 steps for understanding in reference to something you perhaps dislike and find hard to understand.

4 Steps to Understanding

Please note, with the steps below, attempting to understand something you don’t understand may feel like you are making it up (you’ll know what I mean when you do the steps).

That’s OK, for it’s the process that shifts things in itself. We are making up the story of our experience anyway. This process helps you reflect and open to more understanding, however you enter the process.

1) With the person in mind you are seeking to understand in terms of something that feels discordant to you, ask yourself why you think they did what they did. When you ask this question initially a negative intention may come to mind (they were
 being controlling/spiteful/judgmental/arrogant/unkind/selfish/jealous, etc.), or perhaps not.

2) Ask the question again seeking deeper whys beyond the initial why. If they acted seemingly unkindly because they were judgmental, for example, why were they judgmental? Perhaps they were judgmental because they were feeling insecure, threatened, angry, in pain, jealous, etc. Perhaps they were judgmental because they were projecting their self-dislike on to you. Perhaps they are very hard on themselves and in pain about that. Perhaps they were criticized and made wrong during their childhood. Perhaps by making you wrong they experienced a sense of relief from their own shame temporarily, etc.

If you keep asking why you will begin to experience an opening, lighter perspectives, a sense of understanding, and a ‘luminous intent’ that may exist beneath any more seeming negative ones. You will begin to open to more compassion and broader view-points.

3) Why did YOU create or allow the experience? This is the most important question. Taking responsibility creates freedom and empowerment. What limiting belief about yourself or others might this experience reflect, for example? What attitude, pattern, or story? Is it symptomatic of low self-worth? Is it a hidden shadow aspect within you being projected and coming at you from the outside (when, for example, have you demonstrated the same ‘negative’ quality to yourself or another that you may not have forgiven yourself for and are hence judging in another)? Is it a victim story? Perhaps it’s a challenge with a gift that will help you develop greater strength, compassion, resolve, healing, self-love, forgiveness, discernment, etc.

You may have no idea why, obviously, and that’s totally fine! Asking alone gets the focus back on you which in itself is valuable because…

The first place to make a change is within.

4) Accept and forgive yourself and the other person you may be having a challenge with understanding. Seek empathy, put yourself in their shoes, and understand there are deeper reasons.

Take responsibility and compassionately own any shadows, accept and forgive yourself for those, and allow any healing gift, be it deeper awareness or any other gift (greater self-love, letting go, freedom, strength, etc.) that wants to come through the experience.