Be The Person You Want to Find: Relationship and Self-Discovery

By Cheri Huber

Everything we encounter can help us see who we are, if we know how to look. Our clearest mirrors, and most difficult challenges, are often other people---those wonderful, nagging, kind, selfish, thoughtful, lazy, sweet, arrogant people. Becoming aware that what we see in others is a part of who we are is the first and most powerful step on the journey of self-discovery. This is not a typical how-to book on solving your relationship problems. The focus here is awareness, responsibility, clarity and freedom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keep It Simple Books
• Release date: Dec 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781733707077

Book preview

BE THE PERSON YOU WANT TO FIND

RELATIONSHIP AND SELF-DISCOVERY

CHERI HUBER

Original copyright 1997

Updated 2019

Cheri Huber, Ashwini Narayanan, and June Shiver

All rights reserved

Published by Keep It Simple Books

Cover design by Mary Denkinger

Digital book(s) produced by Booknook.biz

Books by Cheri Huber and Ashwini Narayanan

The Big Bamboozle: How You Get Conned Out of the Life You Want and What to Do about It

What Universe Are You Creating? Zen and the Art of Recording and Listening

I Don’t Want To, I Don’t Feel Like It: How Resistance Controls Your Life and What to Do about It

Don’t Suffer! Communicate.: A Zen Guide to Compassionate Communication

Books by Cheri Huber

What You Practice Is What You Have: A Guide to Having the Life You Want

There Is Nothing Wrong With You: Going Beyond Self-Hate, Revised Edition

The Fear Book: Facing Fear Once and for All, Revised Edition

Transform Your Life: A Year of Awareness Practice

The Key and the Name of the Key Is Willingness, Revised Edition

Be the Person You Want to Find: Relationship and Self-Discovery

How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything, Revised Edition

Suffering Is Optional: Three Keys to Freedom and Joy

When You’re Falling, Dive: Acceptance, Possibility and Freedom

That Which You Are Seeking Is Causing You to Seek

There Is Nothing Wrong With You for Teens

Nothing Happens Next: Responses to Questions about Meditation

Time-Out for Parents: A Guide to Compassionate Parenting, Revised Edition

Trying to Be Human: Zen Talks

Sweet Zen: Dharma Talks with Cheri Huber

Good Life: Zen Precepts Retreat with Cheri Huber

The Zen Monastery Cookbook: Stories and Recipes from a Zen Kitchen, Revised Edition

The Secret Is There Are Are No Secrets: Zen Meditation with Cheri Huber (DVD)

How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

Published by Hay House

Unconditional Self-Acceptance: A Do-It-Yourself Course (6 CD set)

Published by Sounds True

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to all who keep showing up, asking questions, and looking deeply.

A Note from Cheri

Several of the books I have written are of the pick-up-and-start-reading-anywhere variety. They are loosely organized and conversational in tone.

Much of this book was compiled from talks given at the Zen Center and therefore has some of those same qualities. For a change, I attempted a beginning-middle-end format and succeeded somewhat. However, you will probably encounter some unexpected twists and turns,

   kind of like life

      and relationships.

Gassho

Cheri

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note from Cheri

Some typical questions…

In the beginning…

The Five Processes

Belief Systems and Assumptions

Projection

Identities

Disidentification

Centering

Survival

Why can’t people get long?

The Missing Element

Being Right

The Good News

The Duality Slide

Questions to Explore

We often confuse…

A conversation with Cheri

Abandoning Ourselves

Identity Shifts

Living from Center

Punishment

Content and Process

Conditioning Revisited

Passive Awareness

Parallel Reality

How Change Happens

Being Still

We look to relationship…

How?

Books on relationship typically ask and answer questions such as the following:

1. How can we understand each other better?

2. How can we be more sensitive to each other’s wants and needs?

3. How do we maintain our wholeness and individuality (or develop them) while in a committed relationship?

4. What do we do when one of us wants one thing and the other wants just the opposite?

5. How do I find the right person?

6. When we find ourselves in a rut, how do we rediscover the magic?

In this book, we aren’t going to give you tools, techniques, and formulas for trying to avoid or fix difficult situations in relationship.

Our interests are awareness and self-knowledge, freedom and mastery. And so we aren’t going to answer those questions as such.

Our purpose is

to help you see through

and be free of

your conditioned responses

to life,

not find better ways

to operate within them.

To that end, we have restated the questions to reflect how we would approach them. Consider these restatements:

1. How can we understand each other better?

1. How can I understand myself better so that I can take responsibility for my stuff and be more open to my partner?

2. How can we be more sensitive to each other’s wants and needs?

2. How can I know what I want and need? Can I give that to myself instead of demanding it from my partner?

3. How do we maintain our individuality while in a committed relationship?

3. What is individuality? When are we not maintaining it?

4. What do we do when one of us wants one thing and the other wants just the opposite?

4. Which part of me feels threatened when my partner wants something different from what I want? How can I take care of that part of me without requiring anyone to change?

5. How do I find the right person?

5. Can I be the person I want to find?

6. When we find ourselves in a rut, how do we rediscover the magic?

6. What is magic? Where does it reside? How do I keep myself from it? Does it come and go, or do I?

Do you see?

Relationship can mirror who we are if we are willing to see it that way.

All things can.

And the practice of seeing everything as a mirror of who we