Meeting You Again: A Practice of Seeing Beyond Labels with Jennifer England

In this companion to my conversation with Joshin Byrnes on The Vowing Mind, here's a short practice of seeing those you love—and those you judge—with fresh eyes.

We all carry fixed ideas of who others are: the reliable one, the difficult one, the person we think we've got dialed. In this guided meditation, you’ll be encouraged to loosen those ideas, and to meet others anew, with curiosity and compassion.

This practice will help you recognize the complexity and unfolding nature of those around you—their strengths and struggles, the systems that shaped them, and the mystery beyond what we think we know.

You'll experience:
– A short grounding and breath awareness
– An inquiry into see someone you love as whole, dynamic, and unknowable
– A closing invitation to meet them again and again with curiosity.

Whether you’re working with a loved one or someone you find challenging, this practice offers a potent return to presence and reconnection. 

✨ You can listen to this practice before or after the Joshin Byrnes episode on The Vowing Mind, or return to it anytime you want to meet another human being more freshly.

Gratitude for this show’s theme song Inside the House, composed by the talented Yukon musician, multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Jordy Walker. Artwork by the imaginative writer, filmmaker and artist Jon Marro. 

Transcript

Meeting You Again: A Practice of Seeing Beyond Labels with Jennifer England
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[00:00:00] recently I spoke with Zen Priest, activist and Community Builder, Joshin Burns, and we talked about releasing our grip on fixed ideas of other people. Not just those who we don't know and who are from vastly different politics, socioeconomic or different cultural groups from ourselves, but also the people that we love the most.

If we can release the grip on who we think people are in the moment, it's easier to let go of stories and be more present. And for Joshin and I. I feel the relational domain, what happens in between the space of myself and another is one of the hardest places, but the most powerful places to practice 

so here's a practice [00:01:00] for you this week, and it's a guided reflection. So I want you to find a comfortable seat where you can lie down and as you do, let out a breath or to, and just allow yourself to come into your body right here, however you are arriving. And feel your body, your feet on the floor or your sit bones on your cushion , and just feel the weight of your body and how it's supported by the chair or the cushion and just how naturally your spine holds you.

And if you can just notice if you're holding any tightness in your body as I guide you, I can feel my shoulders tensing. So I am relaxing them as I walk you through this.

Let's see if you can soften with your breath in that place of tightness.

[00:02:00] I'd like to invite you to call someone to mind, someone you love or even someone you feel you know so well that you rarely see them freshly anymore.

So as you let this person come to mind, what image or story arises first about them? A story or image about who you believe this person to be.

For example, it might be, oh, they're the solid one. Oh, that's the person who is the adventurous one or the self-centered one.

Whatever image or story that first arises, just notice it without judgment. next I want to see if you can just set down that story or that image, almost like it's a sweater that they're taking off and putting down.

And now I want you to see them in your mind's eye [00:03:00] as if you saw them for the very first time. Maybe you can remember when you first met them and bring that to mind. And what do you notice?

Who is this person? Beyond your ideas of them now,

what do you not know about them?

What is curious or mysterious about them?

What feels unknowable?

Can you see the child in them or the elder they're becoming?

Can you see how their strengths and their struggles coexist?

Can you sense the wider systems? The culture, the history, their family of origin, and how that's shaped them.

Can you feel into all the ways they [00:04:00] resist being pinned down? 

Can you hold this tension of how they are both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time?

Just notice what opens up inside of you, or even how a shift in perspective opens something for you.

And then finally, if it feels right,

let a, promise arise, not to fix or change them, but to meet this person again and again with curiosity and compassion,

and when you see them next, I invite you to ask yourself. Who are they today?

My hunch is that by practicing this, with the people that we love to see them as a constant surprise as someone who's actually unknowable to us [00:05:00] to some degree.

Someone who is in their constant expansion and becoming and in ways that we cannot anticipate. There's something really freeing and exciting and spontaneous and fresh about recognizing that the people that we think we know, these people that we've fixed in our mind's eye cannot be. If we can do this with the people that we love, then we can expand our practice to people that we find challenging people that we reject, people we fundamentally disagree with, and even strongly dislike.

And my hope is that this could become, a back pocket relational practice that we can all bring to mind when our, relational field feels a bit devoid of life, or crunchy with conflict, you know, is [00:06:00] there a way that we can relax our grip of who we think someone else is in order to allow the relational field to become more free?

Jennifer: A few final words about practice. Practice is different than a tool or a technique or simply a mindset shift practice is like an ecosystem unto itself. It's more like a world that invites your playful curiosity. It invites you to pay attention differently.

What can you learn, see, feel, sense from a new doing, a new action? What you'll experience will be different than me or a friend who does the same practice. It's experimental. It's designed to be fresh and alive, dynamic, and relat. And what I emphasize [00:07:00] is practice is a gift of learning from your own direct experience, not from experts, coaches, sages, teachers, but from you.

Practice centers, you as the awake, and attuned one that you already are. Practice is the invitation.

And direct experience is your greatest teacher. I'm Jennifer England. Thanks for practicing and being on this journey on the tension of emergence