Seeing vs respecting.
Respect has, as it’s root, the latin word respicio which means to see.
I think it has a deeper connotation than the meaning we ascribe to the word respect.
I see you vs I respect you.
To me, saying I see you means I see through the surface layers of who or what I may think you are and rather than pushing my own value system on you, I simply place value on you being as you are.
Conversely, saying I respect you, to me says that based on my own set of values, beliefs and state of mind, your behaviour accords with my expectations.
I remember the first time I felt I saw someone. It was not long after my business partner and hero had left this plane. I was in a supermarket and the check out attendant was rather unfriendly. Normally, I probably would have taken this personally but at the time, I remember thinking who knows, maybe she just lost someone she loves. Of course, that probably wasn’t the case but I felt like for the first time, I had a wider lens view on how and why things are as they are. I wasn’t seeing things just through my own tunnel vision.
Now, I find it much easier to not take things personally.
The truth is, people can only ever behave in accordance with their consciousness state.
And if we had their consciousness state, if we’d had their lives, we’d behave in exactly the same way.
So rather than judge, or even respect, we can try to see.
When we try to “see” someone, we attempt to see things as they see them, hear things as they hear them, feel things as they feel them and as a result, understand how and why they do as they do.
Another word for this is empathy. Feeling from within another.
The English definition for the Sanskrit word rishi is seer or more fully, a seer of reality. A Maharishi therefore (maha means great), is a great seer of reality.
The more “rishi” like we become, the more we see things as they truly are. No event is without a cause and no cause is without an effect. The rishi understands this and as such, the rishi doesn’t see things as good or bad, but simply, natural repercussions of the causes and effects that preceded them.
To become “rishi” like, we need to unwind the lifetime of accumulated stress that serves to block our peripheral vision.
The less stress we have, the wider angle lens we begin to see life through.
The more we begin to “see,” the more respicio becomes our way of being and respect becomes less and less relevant.
Sounds counter intuitive but from my experience, the best way to unwind the stress and “see” is to close our eyes for 20 minutes twice a day and practice Vedic Meditation.
Pre studio meditation time with Andy and Nicky.
Empathy is the art of not taking things personally!