I don’t have to worry about other people.
There’s no need to wonder what they’re going to do, no need to strategize how to overcome their resistance, no need to ready myself for a battle, no need to please or impress anyone, or to convince them to start or stop anything, or to live up to my standards, or even to consider them….
The only actions for me to wonder about, the only resistances to overcome, the only battles to wage, the only preferences to accommodate, the only impressions to impact, the only skepticisms to address, the only standards to live up to …are my own.
There are no “other people.”
That person over there? That person is what I think and believe they are. They are a reflection of my own mind. They are nothing more than a window into my own mental state.
Ego gets nervous when it hears the idea that there are no other people. It sounds like an invitation to isolation, selfishness, self-centeredness, permission to be a heartless bastard. But when I get quiet and really look, I see that it’s quite the opposite:
In order to have the impulse to keep myself away from others or to keep things for myself and away from “other people,” in order to discount the needs of, or connection to, “other people,” in order to withhold love from or go to war with “other people,” I have to believe that the world is separated into “me” and “other people.” Selfishness and self-centeredness are just expressions of this mistaken belief.
Without this confusion, I live in a reality where everything is one perfectly balanced thing before I have a thought and believe it. In that reality, you are me. Whatever you are, I am. Your hands are my hands. So whatever is in your hands is in my hands. So selfishness doesn’t make any sense.
When I see that there are no “other people,” everyone I experience is just me. What would I ever gain by trying to separate from myself, from being heartless with myself? What could I ever take from another person that I would not be taking from myself? What could I ever give to another person that I would not be giving to myself?
The perspective that there are no “other people“ is the most generous perspective I can have on the world, generous both with the world and with myself. And when I hold this perspective, there is nothing about my experience that is not completely in my hands:
There is no war out there that isn’t being waged within me. I can stop and find peace.
There is no one who needs pleasing but me. I can go in search of the truth and find that, in truth, I am the only one I can please.
There is no one who needs impressing but me. And I am the only one on whom I can make an impression.
There is no one who needs convincing but me. And I am the only one who can do the convincing.
There are no standards but my own. And I can work with my standards and my orientation to life until I can’t fail to live up to my standards.
There is no one to connect with but me. And no one who can stop me from connecting with anyone or anything,
And the beautiful thing is that, because they are a reflection of my own mind, “other people” will always show me exactly what work I still have to do to pacify, please, impress, convince, satisfy or connect with myself.
And so everything done by “another person” is a gift.
And therefore nothing to worry about.
Ever.