without expectation
 

Reading through the archives of Secular Connections I came across this:

...the far more influential method isn't command, it's striving to live according to one's own highest standards and allowing that to be the messenger. In that, one need not preach anything, rather strive to live harmoniously and intelligently, exemplifying respect to self and to others and to all that surrounds. Recognizing within oneself what needs to be improved, internally seeking, more than externally preaching.
-Live simply, simply live

Suggesting, basically, that living according to one's own principles is really the only thing we need to concern ourselves with. So many people seem to want to impose THEIR standards on others. So much miserable, and unnecessary conflict results.

Conflict cannot endure. It is not life-giving.
It sucks the life out of any relationship.

I wonder...do people want to impose their will, their expecations, on others, because they feel insecure about themselves? As though if others would concede that their way is right, then they would find that reassurance that they desperately seek to know that they are OK?

just what i needed right when i needed it....thanks.

That is well put, and I think its the basis of so much strife in the world, I never have and never would try to convert anyone (even if I know they are wrong lol), but I can see in so many people, not just addicts, the need to have others accept their world view.

I dont know if such people are really trying to help others or if they need validation, either way, it is the wrong way to go about things.
x

I agree with Ananda, I Really needed this right now. Thank-you!

I don't know if I feel like I'm being manipulated or what when I hear others say they have the 'solution' to my malady. I believe my first reaction to preachy others with all the answers is: doubt. I feel that denying the unknown or avoiding discussion about the chance that the 'solution' may have some serious flaws seems a bit delusional to me. The more I hear others say they have the answers to my problems or life in general, the more I feel they quit searching for better questions to ask, myself included.

What dose this say about me? Well I'm at a point in my life today that I feel I could greatly benefit from asking more questions than searching for answers. I feel comfortable, most reassured with the unknowable or unknown as an highly acceptable function in my life. There is a beauty in experiencing the unknown and explanations take away that beauty for me. I'm finding that meditation is allowing me to touch the void with my mind and it feels so natural to be devoid of answers and questions for that matter. And yet I feel so curiousness about life, love and everything else when I come out of the brief emptiness of meditation. Its like I want to know it all and accept (relish the fact) I will know nothing too....LOL.

Preaching could serve as an ego bolstering function in a projective way. Identifying with a supreme or an infallible object/idea may allow one to feel superior and maintain a submissive projection to themselves and to others at the same time. Kinda like I 'have it' you don't, let me lead you to it. Although one is not 'it', one can bask in the glory of 'it' while maybe unconsciously thinking highly of themselves for finding 'it'. I think what one has found is another way to identify with the idea of a superior ego. Again there many more possible explanations for preaching. Many of them more plausible than mine...LOL. Its just more interesting for me to explore the possibilities than try to confirm an certainty.

I've been thinking a grand lot about this subject of "let me tell you how it is," and more so, "let me tell you how you are wrong," as I've been subjected to it. It's miserably manipulative, I think especially to those of us who might be in a position of recovery from addiction, or any such condition that has recently or perhaps still is causing us to distrust our own best thinking.

It is the ideal, as Zencat suggested, to rather than trust the "solutions" of others, to choose to ask questions yourself. To be OK with the not knowing, and to enjoy the exploring of the discovery of learning.

In doing that, maybe we don't have to feel subjected to the expectations of others? The way others tell us we "should" act, think, behave, or be. I ask this because I struggle with it so terribly.

To decide there is no right or wrong, there only is a matter of perspective, of possibilities, of multiple directions to choose. In that there is no reason for expectation of compliance.

Thank you all for responding to this questioning of mine. I'm glad to see it strikes a chord with others as well.