BeckoningCat

It has come to my attention lately in my close friendships that people seem to simply not understand actualization. Case in point, a best friend of mine today got quite offended when, after she detailed to me this news report that had greatly upset her, I said that I did not want to moralize it and was trying to look at it from a neutral perspective. This greatly upset her and she challenged me on whether I thought the circumstance (in this case rape) in the news story were "bad" or not. She got defensive of her world views and said she would be moralizing situations because she is a moral person. Of course, I was more than willing to offer an opinion, but she was wanting me to agree with her on the fact that people in the news story deserved extreme punishment. It just made me uncomfortable. What do you do with people who can't wrap their heads around self-development? I am not trying to push my views on people, but I suppose it is evident to them that I am changing. I used to be the kind of person who would go with the flow of the conversation, agree with others about topics they felt emotionally charged over. Now, I no longer have the desire for that and am trying to stay in the middle of the road. The fact is, it's hard NOT to notice (now that I am working on my own self-development) how focused on negativity the people around me are. They want to talk in charged ways about emotional events and get their feelings justified by a third party listener. But if I am looking at things from a non-moralistic perspective, then I am not going to rant and rave about how demonic someone is. I think this disappointed her. Many of Leo's recent videos have helped me understand how terrible I was with moralizing the world and now I want to change that. Yet some of the people closest to me seem the most offended by this personal shift. I have been trying to look at these differences through a very open, non-judgemental lens. I do not judge her for how she reacted, but I do wonder what the future of these types of relationships will be? What are your experiences with people like this and what did you realize about them? Did you have any insights that helped?

Goodness! I left the forum and got busy several days and now I've come back to a 4 page thread! Lots to catch up on. I agree with your statements here. The thing that made me most uncomfortable was because she was wanting a specific response from me, something I just didn't want to provide to her. Her intent was to get me to agree with the notion that "the rapist's father, the judge of the case, and the rapist himself should be severely punished." I recognized the crime the man commitment was not "good"---I myself am a victim of that sort of abuse and I would never not have compassion for someone who went through it. That being said, I did not authentically agree with the notion that other people (outside of the criminal himself) should be "punished." (Most of this is in reply also to Charlie2Dogs who asked me whether or not I felt anything should be done about rape.) Please see my reply above to Mal. I will also reiterate here that I was an abuse victim of that kind of behavior and so it isn't exactly something I would say is "okay." I simply was uncomfortable being asked to examine the offender, plus his father, plus the judge, in this "punishment" judgment. On a related note, I did watch a video from Eckhart Tollie in which he explained the difference of "judging" and "observation" and I realized one of my true faults with this (opening post) was that I hadn't considered it from his POV. While it was true I felt uncomfortable with ranting or agreeing on all of these people being "punished" for the offense, I also felt that by saying my authentic feelings (which would not be very positive at the time, perhaps, given my abuse history?) it would have been passing critical judgment on the offender. Was the crime he committed bad? Absolutely. But I don't derive pleasure from verbally/mentally demonizing other people in general. My responses will be quite limited because I'm working and also having dinner. The thread has gotten very long and I'm not sure how many people I can reply to at this moment.

Thank you! I think that really helped me with clearing up this little issue. I suppose the insights on moralizing were perhaps sleeping on me today; I had forgotten that having a perspective does not equate to moralization. The news story in itself made me very uncomfortable. I suppose my authentic reaction would have been to express the discomfort and just provide my opinion on it. I still have quite a lot of development work to do in this area, but your post gave me a basis to go off of. I need to give my arsenal more attention because I think I've been neglecting it! At the very least, showing disinterest would be far more authentic than just talking about something I didn't want to talk about. Thank you again for your advice. You've clarified a lot of things for me and I think this will do wonders for my relationships as I integrate it into myself

Thank you for the reply! I can understand/relate to what you are saying. I don't judge her for her judgments and I accept it is apart of her personality. I suppose my main issue is just not knowing what to say when the judgments are bounced onto me for thought. For example, I did not want to talk badly of the news story; I wanted to be impartial. But it was because I was impartial (and said I did not want to view the situation as good or bad) that she came to the conclusion that I did not think the story was "bad" in the same sense that she did. When someone is pressing you for a certain reaction, and then gets emotional when you choose to be impartial how do you respond to them? By saying you do not want to discuss the topic? Or change the subject? I am just curious. Sometimes I feel like I am expected to react a certain way in a conversation (which in this situation was only implied because of how she responded to me) but often times I would rather be impartial. I would prefer to respond to situations like this in a way that satisfies the other person but also is in alignment with my self-development work.

I am an INFJ.