Introduction
Always lovely to see all of you gathered together in Honest Inquiry, and today’s topic again is very interesting and a bit of an inversion.
How can misunderstanding—when someone doesn’t understand you, someone misreads your intentions—instead of seeing that as an obstacle, as a pain, as something to transcend, can that be a doorway which can lead deeper into understanding our identity, our ego, and how that stops us from finding true freedom?
The Desire to Be Understood
So when I started seeking, and this is a story of not me, but you will identify yourself in my story, as I started learning more about spirituality, meditation, compassion, and truth, I wanted others to understand me, especially my close family members and friends.
I wanted them to see that I was actually on a sacred journey, on a path to wisdom. I wanted them to grasp the importance of these existential questions that were, you know, burning in me, but they didn’t.
And many times that misunderstanding led to a lot of hurt, anger, frustration, and loneliness. And I realized, as I got more mature and wise on the path, what was going on inside me.
And there is something inside of us—call it ego, or the mind, or the identity—which says, you know, “No, that is not what I meant. That is not who I am. Please see me properly. Please understand me properly.”
We want our inner truth, what we are, to be recognized by the outer world, by people.
And by outer world, I mean people who are close to us, people whom we value. We want a clear line between what we are and what others perceive us to be.
And if you look back in your life, especially when you’re in a relationship, this term comes up hundreds of times:
“You don’t understand me.”
“You misunderstand what I say.”
“This is not what I’m trying to say.”
And what happens when you say that? When you say, “No, you don’t understand me”?
I investigated this when I was initially misunderstood.
The Need Behind Being Understood
And when we are misunderstood, we reach immediately for more words, more explanations, more sentences—a second attempt trying to explain the same thing from a different angle.
Then we go to a third attempt.
And when that fails, then there is either frustration, a dispute, or anger.
For me, it was always a frustration that no one can understand this.
Why can’t they understand this? Why can’t you see what I can see?
And most of us, if we unpack this need to be understood, we’re living with a lot of old unmet needs around being seen, heard, valued, and recognized.
And these needs begin very early when we are a child.
Because the child knows that if you’re valued, you’re seen, you’re loved, you’ll be taken care of. If not, then you might not get the resources or the love or the security that you’re looking for.
And if a child is ignored or judged harshly or not loved, that hunger to be recognized, to be understood, remains.
And later in life, as we become adults, this hunger manifests itself in many different ways.
One can be respect—”You don’t respect me”—or clear communication, or self-worth.
And underneath all this is a simple yearning:
“Please see me as I truly am.”
But what are you truly?
Do We Even Understand Ourselves?
And this is the realization I had one day.
I was like, I want my wife, my parents, my siblings, or friends to understand me—but do I understand myself?
When we look into ourselves, we’re trying to understand the mystery of the mind.
And the more aware you become on the path, the more you see there are so many unconscious and subconscious layers to the identity which you never knew about.
Hidden traumas. Repressed thoughts.
When I truly can’t understand myself or know myself, how can I expect someone else to truly understand me, see me, or recognize me?
Part of that realization, of course, came through reading a lot of J. Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta, and Ramana, because they again pointed out to the “I”—this identity—what is it?
And the deeper I went into it, the more I realized I actually do not know how or where these desires and fears and these loops and this conditioning come from.
Are they me, or are they a part of the society I was brought up in?
So then if I am at a stage where my mind is a mystery, how can someone else unlock it for me?
Image Management and Identity
So when we want someone else to understand us, there’s this identity, an image that we have in our mind, which is carefully crafted.
So it’s like image management.
I need to be perceived as a kind person, but you have misunderstood me and you think I’m unkind.
So my internal image of myself is as a very kind person, and that image management has to be done.
And to someone else, if they misunderstand me and think I’m unkind, of course I want to correct them or feel hurt.
But then it’s that image, that identity, that we’re trying to convey to others.
How real is that?
If it is not real enough, how can we ask others to understand it?
People Meet You as They Are
And you also have to understand that when you’re talking to people, they do not meet you as you are—they meet you as they are.
And this is a very important distinction I learned through a lot of trial and error and a lot of suffering.
So I’ll repeat this line again:
People don’t meet you as you are, they meet you as they are.
That means when people are hearing you, they are hearing you through the filter of their own fears, expectations, projections, history, pain, and biases.
Nothing is clear.
Whatever you say, the other person interprets it based on their conditioning and where they are in their life journey.
And this is the reason there is so much misunderstanding, because we’re not also taking into account where the other person is.
So the other person is like a mirror.
Imagine a clear mirror. It reflects you clearly.
But what if the mirror is distorted because of its own conditioning and bias?
No matter how well dressed you are in front of that mirror, it will give a distorted image.
When you understand this angle, there are two parts to misunderstanding.
One part, of course, is my own identity, my own ego.
And the second part is the person who’s reflecting it back to me.
Is that person a clear mirror?
No.
They have their own conditioning, and they bring that into their interpretations.
So when we are trying to make ourselves understood or make ourselves seen, for lack of a better word, do we really have to do that?
The Spiritual Opportunity in Misunderstanding
What happens if people misunderstand us and we let it go?
Can we do that?
If you see, Christ was misunderstood on a very existential and deep level. Buddha was misunderstood.
There are many teachers who have been misunderstood.
And as you walk the path—and even if you don’t walk the path—you will never be able to control others’ perceptions of you.
Now, how can you use this as a doorway to go deeper?
And that is the beautiful trick.
And this is what I did.
So one day when I was speaking to a friend and I was saying something, and of course they could not understand.
I’ll tell you what the context was so you understand it better.
There is a saying by J. Krishnamurti:
“The moment you want to become something, you’re not free.”
It’s a very famous saying.
And I was talking to this friend. He was pretty materialistic.
And I explained it, and he completely disagreed.
He said it’s a stupid saying because without wanting to become something, how can you gain career success or achieve heights in the world?
And at that very moment, I could sense in me my identity and my reflexive action trying to close that gap of misunderstanding—to start with more words and explanations.
“No, that’s not what I meant. This is what it is.”
And I stopped.
Discovering the Gap
And there was this gap.
And there is always a gap.
If you are still enough, you’ll notice that before any reaction can take place, before you can form the words and take defensive action, there is a gap.
And if you can notice that gap, instead of filling it with more words and logic, if you can stay with it, you can notice that you’re present on both sides of the argument.
You can see yourself as the one speaking.
And you can see yourself as the one misunderstood.
And you can see that all these are just words.
And in not being understood, that presence which you feel in that gap is not diminished.
It’s always there.
And in that gap you will discover that there is something in you which has never waited to be understood.
It does not require any kind of understanding or being seen or being recognized or being validated.
The Presence Beyond Validation
That presence, that beingness, has been there always unchanged through all understanding and all misunderstanding, through all the ups and downs, through all the pain and happiness.
That beingness, that presence, has always been there waiting.
And all it needs from you is just stopping before the mind reactively takes over any of these loops and starts defending an identity or an idea.
Of course, I’m not saying here that you should go ahead and get misunderstood. That’s not the crux of the talk.
There are times when you need to clarify certain things, especially in your job.
But I’m talking about misunderstanding from the ego’s point of view, where you are protecting an image, managing an image, or trying to convey a particular identity to someone else.
Because most of the suffering and conflict comes from those situations.
And you can use those situations to first observe the gap and also observe that whenever someone is misunderstanding you, there is still some part of you that needs validation or recognition.
And the beauty of walking the path, the beauty of the teachings of Buddha and all these teachers, and the beauty that I have discovered, is that you need no validation.
And many of you have encountered and seen those states.
Some have seen glimpses of it. Some have seen extended periods of it where you’re simply being in that state and you know that it needs no recognition, it needs no understanding.
It’s full.
It’s complete.
It’s sacred.
It is always there.
So not only misunderstanding, you can use anything which reveals the deeper working of identity and ego to go deeper into a sense of presence and into this beingness itself.