Using Psychology On Others

5. Using Psychology On Others

Most of us have tried on one occasion or another to “convert” someone to a health regime or to use “reverse” psychology on children, all with varying degrees of success or failure. We all know at least one person so stubborn that we would be better off talking to a wall, too. We will have to know when to persist in hopes of turning a key in their minds, and when to let go of our need to change someone.

Everyone has the same opportunity to see the truth. Those who don’t see it are like someone whose eyes are closed when a shooting star goes by…can they then say that it did not go by because they did not see it?

It is always sad for us when loved ones will not see what we see as true. We all know someone with an illness that we’d like to help if we only could, if they’d only listen, if they’d only understand, if…

It’s hard to know what to say, but if you were to hold up a volume of cherished poetry in front of a person who cannot read and two people who can read, one will see words, one will read words and one will read between the lines of the words as well, beyond to another depth.

It would be difficult to make the book any more than a book to the one who didn’t read at all. It might not be much more than a book to the one who can read, but has less understanding. The third person, the one who sees more deeply, is really talking with the book’s author.

How do you explain your ecstasy after listening to a musical piece to someone who doesn’t feel it? How do you explain that the smell of lilacs is making you delirious with joy to a person suffering from a cold? How would you explain color to a person who is blind? In all of these instances, one can transcend words somewhat and get beyond them to another meaning, but different people will even respond differently to the same stimulus. We cannot expect everyone to see what we see even if they look in the same direction. Even if you hold up the same object, people see it differently.

This is what we must remember when faced with people who see and understand differently, and not become obsessed with changing their minds. We’ve seen parents try to change children, children trying to change parents, husbands and wives who try to change each other, friends who try to change friends, the list is endless. Someone always knows better. They beg and plead, or perhaps if these don’t work, they try trickery, or, finally, give up or become angry.

It is up to us to decide in each individual situation how to handle conversations on lifestyle. After we make the truth known, each person will change only when ready to do so. Some of us have a hard enough time changing ourselves, so we should understand this quite well when we see it in others. Dr Albert Schweitzer said, “Example is not just the best way to teach: It is the only way!” Let us first change ourselves, and let others see for themselves what truth is, manifested in our example. Truth is self-evident. Each person decides whether to live by it. I am reminded of the words in a song of the last decade: “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” Certainly true; but let’s hope some of us can do better than that.

The following guidelines will help you in dealing with other people when the issues of diet/lifestyle come up:

Do’s and Don’ts

5.1 “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?”

To what extent are we responsible for spreading the truth? We already spoke of setting a good example. The power of collective thought is barely even recognized, let lone understood, by most of us. We are all busy travelling through space and time, like millions of voyagers on a journey towards the future, a future that waits for us with population growth, extinction of species, computers, robots, space travel, genetic engineering, prosthetic devices and implants, more drugs and the unknown. Where will we fit in? How can the children of nature keep a healthy perspective?

When the first settlers came to America they were full of passion in their beliefs, ready to make it in the next world. The planet is much smaller these days, and there aren’t many new worlds left for us. What we do now affects one another more than ever before.

We might think that we are only responsible for ourselves, but it is this illusion that is responsible for destroying our life source: our planet. We must not let this happen. We are responsible for ourselves and others. The planet needs to be healed, and people need to live in peace.

Weapons have a way of being very unHygienic, even for people who eat raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. While we fret about the price of shoes and who’s ahead in the World Series, or plan our perfect diets, there are people who are busy making decisions for us, very grave decisions. They hold our destiny in the palms of their hands. Those of us who see clearly, see that just as doctors mesmerize the public with verbal slight-of-hand and drugs, our world leaders are trying to convince the masses that more weapons can “prevent” war. This continual addition of more complex and deadly weapons to our weapons arsenal has created such an over-kill potential (the planet can now be destroyed not once, but many times over) that it is like keeping a bottle of arsenic in the medicine cabinet to take to “prevent a cold.”

There is a riddle going around that asks: “if we are in a closed room with a gas leak and have four matches, how many must you light for an explosion?” The answer, obviously is only one. The nuclear freeze advocates have been trying to tell us something.

So, what kind of a lifestyle change shall we make? Shall we give up candy and pat ourselves on the back? Or shall we learn to weave our physical bodies, our minds and our souls into the whole tapestry of life in the most beautiful way we can imagine? We will be our larger selves, linked to one another all over the planet.

Let us reach out to those who need help. The more love that goes out into the world, the more healing that can take place. There is no greater purpose in life than helping others as we would help ourselves.