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I was really pleased to receive all of your emails in my inbox this morning; it's been the most mails on here in a while, I'd be willing to bet. I'm glad to see that people are still contributing on here, and I hope that those of you that didn't write in will join us.
I noticed a theme in all of the emails, that of rejection. I think that this is a perfectly normal feeling for anyone to have, whether or not they have issues with socializing, however I don't think that it's as much of a worry in reality than it is a worry which we create. What I mean is, we really don't need to worry about everyone rejecting us (which it seems to be) because there are just too many people for everyone to reject us. Anyway, you might find it interesting to discover that I was a little uneasy about writing my email yesterday. I wanted to get something going here, but I worried about offending someone, and how it would turn out and if it would make sense or whatever. I wanted to just put it out there and ask "what's your problem" because I knew that this would spark some conversation, however I also worried about going too far, and this would have previously stopped me dead in my tracks. I went ahead and did it anyway and, hopefully, I didn't offend anyone so badly that they don't want to have discussion with me anymore. :-) I wanted to get my email out there and, even though I was a bit worried about what might or might not happen, I got it done. Maybe someone has a comment about this or something...
I wrote a while back a bout how we all have an internal map of reality, however maybe I could be a bit clearer about this topic here. Everyone has their individual way of looking at the world, in escence their own map of the world, and most people fall for the idea that this map really is the world; they believe that the map is the taretory which it represents, forgetting that is impossible to drive on the lines representing roads or swim in the places marked out to be watter. It seems pretty common sense to think this way, however when you stop to think about it it turns into some interesting stuff. What I find interesting is that in one person's world something may be one way (the sky being blue for most people for example) and totally different for others (the sky being no culler for me). Because one person has one set of beliefs about the world, based on past experience, he knows that the sky is blue and that most others would aggree with this very common sense and real belief; it is interesting to note that the sky isn't really blue, but only appears to be so due to the earth's atmosphere... However for someone who is blind and has no experience with the sky, other than being told about it the person has no concept of a blue sky and hence this idea is not real. Being that I'm blind, I can understand this, however I still "know" that the sky is blue because others have described it to me. I don't know what blue looks like, or what the sky "is", however I can have a "sky is blue" belief in my map because so many other people believe it.
Now stick with me here. I believe that the sky is blue because everyone else does, because most people agree that this is so, and because this belief is resourceful for me (it wouldn't work very well for me to deny viamently that the sky is blue simply because I haven't experienced it). Many things in our internal map of reality work in this way: we now know that the earth revolves around the sun although the guy who discovered this fact wasn't believed at first. However we often believe other parts of the map--parts which not many other people would agree with--in the same way as a blind person believes that the sky is blue. One such belief might be that people reject me, which isn't nearly as "true" as the sky being blue.
Now here's another interesting part. When looking at beliefs, it is easy to see that whatever someone believes is true for that individual. You know some people who believe firmly in something which obviously isn't true and, no matter how much evidence they get to the contrary, they still hold this belief. Or two people may believe two totally different beliefs--polotics is a great example of this--and both experience their belief as true. I find that, rather than evaluating beliefs on whether or not they are true, it's better to evaluate them based on whether they produce resourceful outcomes or not. For me, believing that I will get rejected isn't very resourceful, as it would result in my not sending the email. It could also result in my sounding stupid, and hence someone might reject me based on that; however I would have to believe that they might reject me for this to happen.
I'm still learning about this material, and when I describe it to others I find out really quick what I do understand and what I could do some more investigation on. I'm really interested in helping people, and am really interested in creating my own comprehensive map of this teratory so I can do an even better job. I'm not quite sure how to go about this, so I'm hoping that this forum will be an opportunity for me to do that. however if I'm going to learn from you, and if you're going to learn from me, I need to learn what is valuable information and what isn't. Let's see if we can work together to learn about ourselves, because I firmly believe that if you're not growing you are dying. I also believe that you don't have to get it right, just get it going; I hope to have done that here.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this or anything else, and I especially appreciate chriticism or missunderstandings of what I'm saying. Often times we don't want to chriticize another because it might make them feel uncomfortable (or even force them to reject you) however this is the best way for me to learn. And if you do have a chriticism and are thinking twice of sending it, or are worried in any way, your contribution is probably all the more important. Thanks, and be well.
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