Reviews by Hubie Goode: Reality, Duality and The Way We Be

Reality, Duality
and The Way We Be

We people, and I include myself, have an obsession with pigeonholing everything and everyone. We love sports because it defines strength and non-strength in very easy, productive terms. Teams that are strong and overcome, are our favorites, and those that are perennial underachievers suffer at the hands of our ruthless derision. But nature isn’t like this.

Everything in nature has a strong characteristic and also a soft spot. These strengths and weaknesses are blueprinted this way with internal information to exist perfectly within nature’s individual environment. If a situation changed, a solid strength can suddenly become a crippling weakness, and visa versa.

For instance, algae is a major source of food for many different types of sea life. It is also a major supplier of oxygen for the planet. But there are conditions in which algae, if given the proper combination of situations can produce toxic chemicals that will kill fish and the people who eat the fish as well.

When it comes to discernment you recognize the duality of our existence. You see that people are neither all good or all bad, in fact you can embrace each person for their uniqueness, in much the same way that the love of your life can be forgiven for those bad habits and odd ways you discover once you get them in a private living situation. Our love life should embrace everyone in this way, and this makes being judgemental extremely difficult.

But people don’t always think in those terms, loving their fellow man includes everyone, not just those within their reach. Keeping in mind for instance, that if you live in America, you have billions of brothers and sisters in the nation of China, and in fact, more so all over the world. Those starving Ethiopian children are your brothers and sisters, and I mean that physically, not just in a spiritual way, although that too is true. DNA has proven there is no such thing as race. And YOU, dear reader, ARE your brother’s keeper.

So anyway, getting back to my original point, what do those weaknesses that other people have mean to you? Do they present an opportunity? You bet they do. The trick is to make those strengths work for you by filling in the weakness gaps of one person with another person’s strength. By combining strength and weakness you make the whole greater. Differences serve to make us all stronger.

Matching a person’s strength to a weak spot is just good management. If you move a perfectionist into a position that requires meticulous attention to detail, then you have a successful combination. I know that sounds obvious, but hang with me here.

Most folks place a high priority on being buddies with those whom they feel most comfortable with. Bosses often look for those who will fit in and not cause a stir. In fact, managers will tell people who they don’t believe can perform a job that they just aren’t a “good fit”. More often than not, this is just rhetoric to keep them from being sued for wrongful dismissal, but it seems to make logical sense because it sounds right.

However, without a healthy mix of contending view points, you limit any situation to a narrow perception. Well meaning friends and coworkers actually help to keep each other from moving forward. Companies who have nothing but yes men tend to form a lemming mentality because they can’t perceive the entire picture.

Individuals and companies that have too many compatible people involved routinely self-sabotage themselves. In order to get a broader view of the world at large, it’s important to not limit yourself or your company and make it a directive to go outside of the usual complacent and agreeable friends and employees. Encourage those mavericks among you and you’ll get a better, more truthful view of the world around you.

Some people cover up a weakness by taking care of others, and some just take care of themselves and expect that everyone else will do the same. But neither of these directives can be maintained for any length of time. True harmony comes from loving yourself and also those around you.

This idea of independence, of taking care of yourself, comes from years of “Freudian therapy” thinking that focuses you on yourself in a most dangerous way. But we are not made that way, we are made to reach out to others. Just ask some of the medical studies that have been done lately of people who had chronic illnesses and then started to volunteer and give time and work to others. Amazingly, many of them began to get better or even had a complete remission of their conditions. Face it folks, everything is interconnected, even me and you. There is no denying that our complex reality of body and soul is also intrinsically interconnected.

There isn’t an employer you can find on this planet who isn’t interested in the successful interaction of their business with those they do business with. That’s not just a monetary concern, that’s a pre-programmed success model. Businesses are built on the model of a tree because the model works, whether you are an Ash tree or a multimillion dollar corporation. You will not find anyone who is a racist or bigot, who doesn’t somewhere and somehow have to get along and interact with those they have an offense against, unless you find them out in the woods living by themselves. Once again, there are no true rebels, no successful ones, only those organizations that are counter purposed. Even the mafia has to have hierarchy, without it, you have unorganized crime. Most of those people are the ones in prison.

Interdependence and organization are a part of who we are and they lead to alignment, completion and satisfaction. This happens because it’s the way reality was built, it’s the invisible inside information that proves a reality beyond our own. For how could a dead matter indicate a script for interpersonal relationships that would insure unseen benefit and success within the soul or spirit of a person? We know that an apple tree can produce apples, but can that physical thing of the tree do more than that? Can it show us the make up of the tree as something beyond itself? Can it show us that this is a physical representation of the unseen world that can benefit you? Or is that something we have perceived? If we have perceived it, and seen it work, logically that proves the existence of something beyond ourselves, some information created by intelligence.

A simple truth of the world we live in is that our own survival is in the hands of those around us. Before we can fulfill any desire of our own, we must somehow involve others. Whether that means getting someone to buy a product, so that you can make a profit, or getting someone to become social with you so that you don’t die old and alone. Sales is built on this idea. You must be able to get a person to see things your way, not their way, and if you have ever gone into a car dealership and tried to buy an automobile, you have been hit with this idea full in the face. For they make a living of trying to get you to see things their way, and that’s one reason I will never buy a car from a dealership. Experientially I became aware that they have a deep seeded opinion of the customer as stupid and weak and this supposedly excuses them for lying to you. But I digress. (Oh the blog I could write on this!!!)

I’ll tell you how to avoid the rancid view point of the car salesman. You must expect that the other person will have a VALID opposite point of view. That way it doesn’t become a battle of wills and then develops into a drama scene. If you begin with the assumption that both view points are correct, you respect the other person’s point of view. (Of course, that doesn’t help the car salesman if you think you SHOULDN’T buy a car today.) You accept their opposite point of view, acknowledge it and then validate it. This causes the other person to keep an open mind, and readies them to consider perhaps your own opinion on the subject. There is no other “game” that will work when dealing with people because other games don’t consider us to be connected, just at odds for the same piece of pie.

Again, therapists have told us for years that you can’t control others, just your own actions. But that’s only half true, and discerning our reality will help you to see this. Remember, that how a person deals with you is the direct result of how you communicate with him. How you do things always sets the stage for the reaction you get, it’s the other side of the coin. You and I are both cause and effect. Chickens are both the cause and the result of an egg and this is mirrored in the unseen invisible nature of interpersonal relationships. Again, it’s the invisible inside information. High tide follows low tide and it also gives way to low tide.

The person who sees the reality of this “script” realizes that anytime you get a confusing reaction to your action, it is in part your own fault in some way. Since people are not all good or all bad, as we have said, you don’t waste time trying to make yourself lily white innocent in any relationship gone bad. Instead it’s important to control your approach in order to receive the desired reaction. Ebb and flow, ebb and flow, it’s the inside information of reality.

Therapists have also told us to communicate with others openly and truthfully, so that those we love will never be left guessing as to our true motives. Empathetic listening can only go so far, however; and can be fraught with frustration. But, if we keep in mind the fallen nature of human beings, and also the heights to which they can also reach, we love them for who they are. We don’t judge and we know that often people don’t understand themselves either. But we have a creator who loves them anyway and when we just accept the double nature of people, and also love them anyway, we fulfill a portion of our own natural position of being created in the image of God.

(Just to clarify, I am not saying that God has a dual nature, our fallen nature is not of God, but our ability to love even in the face of tragic weakness... is. Nature has this duality as a constant, but it is not our true nature as God’s creation, to be so, is to be false to our original purpose as a creation and this is what makes us originally created higher than the physical world, well, one of the things anyway. Our fallen nature mirrors the weaknesses of the physical world, not its strengths and there’s a bit of PROOF in that for you to consider.)