Really seeing the other leads to freedom

A post from our archive by Kaspa:

This week my teacher Dharamvidya David Brazier has been in Israel leading some workshops on psychology. In one of them he talked about how really seeing the other can set you free.

What he describes is also the philosophy that underpins this whole project, and I owe a great debt to him, and others, for teaching me.

"...the focus is upon discerning the truth of the other and achieving spiritual maturity. One achieves liberation for oneself by releasing others from the attachment generated by one's own deluded and stereotypical perception of them. The self-construct is the mirror image of these false views of others. To see the truth of the other is to release them and thereby, incidentally, to release oneself from one's self-construct." Love and Its Disappointment blog

As we more clearly see the other, the other moves away from being what, on some level, we want it to be, and becomes more real. In this way we release the other and give it freedom to exist - and we release ourselves too. As we take away the prop to our 'small self' and grant it existence, we become liberated.

The truth shall set you free.
(John 8:32, The Bible)