rayoflight wrote: How do I know if someone is actually reaching out for help or trying to pull me back in?
Hi Ray,
Here are some of my criteria ...
Scripted/Spontaneous: Are the stories they tell me fresh, or do they sound as though they are rigid or repeated?
Tone/Temperature: Shrill, or calm, fever or cool comfort. Monotone machinegun or tidal ebbs and flows? Pauses pregnant with feeling, or AM radio Yes! This! Right now!
Language/Images: Do they accept my images, language, bring it into their speech, or do they remain in an island of their own language?
Vulnerability: Do they express their own weaknesses, doubts, fears, limitations, mortality, brokenness, loneliness, hopelessness?
Certainty: Is reality reduced to a simplistic formula? Or is there messiness, uncertainty, mystery?
A lot of this ties in with what ... I think it was Leela that wrote about it ... shame-based religions offering images of perfection to replace the raw realities of life.