have you ever been in a situation where someone complements you on your dress and you simply thank them for the complement ?
sometimes they might ask, where did you buy that ?
and perhaps you made it yourself and you simply say "i made it myself"
but did you make the cloth ?
did you base your dress design on some combination of other dress designs you've seen ?
did you invent cloth ?
did you grow the cotton ?
who was the first person to grow cotton and spin it into thread ?
should you give them credit ?
Why does it bother you that I refer to sources?
You want me to be thankful for stand alone insights?
I am.
You don't want me to be thankful to people?
you can be thankful if you like
an attitude of gratitude can be good for the soul
i just find it interesting
i think of ideas like dresses
you can complement me on my ideas
just like someone might complement you on your dress
if they want to know more about the idea or the dress
i'm more than happy to engage in that conversation
but i would never "take credit" for inventing any of the ideas i wear
because they all came from somewhere
and if i really thought about it, most of the sources are ultimately unidentifiable
just like a dress
I am happy to receive a compliment and say ‘thank you’ and then mean it.
That would end any conversation about a dress or an idea.
Which means that neither the person who pays me the compliment nor I would be interested in a further conversation about the dress or the idea.
As for our encounter here specifically, I said to you that your thoughts on how you experience and describe yourself reminded me of the Buddhist view on the subject of identification.
I said that the desire for non-identification is also an identification with not identifying with anything. I implied that you could have such a wish. You could say that what I implied is not true. Instead, you let me know that the reference to authority was not necessary.
I could have made my statement without reference to Buddhism, that is true. But in fact, this idea did not originate with me, but was a result of those who dealt with this topic long before me and put it into an order that was coherent for them.
For me, every religion is an attempt to reduce the complexity of life in a way that provides the human mind with clues that it actually searches for. Often for a lifetime.
For my part, I am grateful for such reference systems because I spent a long time of my life denigrating them and not perceiving what they had to offer me in a positive way at all. I was more like someone who thought I had it all figured out. I spread the ‘I know now’ attitude and basically did nothing different than anyone else.
A friend once said to me: "You and your strange ideas. They're just the pipe dreams of gurus and people who have too much time on their hands!" Her objection was not unjustified, because today I agree with her that much of what can be found comes from charlatans and profiteers who have made something their own that they believe they have understood through and through, but have little credibility precisely because they do not refer to sources at all ("I have discovered everything myself! I am enlightened from now on.") or refer exclusively to sources, but do not allow any debate about the sources ("Everything comes from God! Period.").
As I tried to explain, this is like a transshipment station where there is a coming and going and it is actually difficult to meet exactly when one is arriving and the other is departing. To experience the confrontation with spiritual themes in such a way that there is agreement amongst travellers seems to me to be a deep human need. In my view, this can neither be achieved by merely confirming each other (echo chamber) nor by rigorously rejecting the other person's view.
Funnily enough, rejection happens when one person says to the other: ‘That's just from your own head and you have nothing to officially confirm it, so who are you to presume wisdom?’ But one also says: ‘It's not all based on your own ideas, you got it from so-called official sources, but who are they to presume wisdom?’
Nevertheless, in my view there is nothing to be said against analysing official systems of order to see what seems coherent about their statements and working with them. I can't work with what doesn't seem coherent to me.
If I have given you the impression that I have portrayed you as ‘And who are you who have discovered wisdom?’, I apologise. I didn't assume that you were looking for confirmation and that I got to know you as a friend of debate in principle.
As for my way of communicating, I need to get better at giving compliments (without just thinking them) but also saying them openly.