Who do we believe and why? In this short talk I explore a few thoughts on how to figure out what is authentic in what others are showing or telling us. 
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Andrew
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Below is the automatic transcription. It hasn't been proofed. We are working on getting professional transcriptions as upport for the Patreon allows. 
THL64b Shoptalk Believing People
[00:00:00] Welcome to a short talk episode of The Hermit's Lamp in these brief conversations I want to highlight an idea when I see my clients in myself and in the world to answer them provide some ideas for how we might relate to these ideas as spiritual people trying to live conscious lives and being aware of our aims to rule as human beings. So it's an business living in the world with other people and.
[00:00:36] It's a sometimes very complicated business to pursue being authentic and to try and assess and relate to other people. While trying to gauge their authenticity and I think that there are a couple of ways in which these things show up most frequently in my life. One is when I was hanging out with my friend Yoav Ben Dov creator of the wonderful CBD tarot deck and now passed on a human being. One of the things he said to me at one point was that when he's doing a reading for somebody and the first thing that person does is tell him how they are. "I'm a really honest person" "I would never cheat." "I'm very very capable" or whatever. Right. He would believe the opposite. And this would in fact also apply to sort of more negative traits like. "I'm not good enough" and those kinds of things because in this context the emphasis of the person leading with this so strongly really highlighted the fact that there was what I would call a scripts or some kind of false thing going on behind the apparent truth of the words. And. I find. That this certainly happens in a broader sense in the world too not just in the context of doing readings and so on. So there's this piece where the more strongly somebody professes to be a certain way. The bigger question mark it raises for me about what's actually going on in that situation. The second situation in which I am Often unclear what to do with people's statements is that when somebody gets really upset about something.
[00:02:50] I tend to start by believing them. Not that I necessarily understand or kind of relates but there's a thing that goes on in our culture at least here in North America where people who get emotional are usually disbelieved right from the get go.
[00:03:15] And it's easy to want to disengage your disbelief. What's going on. But I always work to start from a place of believing that something is going on here. And I don't necessarily need to take it at face value just as I don't need to take people's other affirmations or asportation about their nature. Face value but that I can believe that there's something going on here and that if this is a person that I want to have. A relationship with. Someone who I do have a relationship with that. I need to believe them that something is going on and allow them to engage a process with me if they're inclined that can get to a place where we can both understand what's going on. Now you might ask why on earth are you bringing these things up in this podcast which is. Predominantly about spirituality. And I'm doing so because this question of who do we believe and how do we believe people is crucial in walking the spiritual path. Partly because there is a sea of experts out there who are of varying qualities from outright dubiousness to perhaps being totally virtuous and partly because spirituality is often cloaked in this sort of niceness of not being emotional and not getting