With some of my facebook friends – even those I have met – the friendship is more superficial, and exists mostly at the level of everyday chatter about relatively trivial things.

However, with one or two of them, the surface, public chat is only one aspect – and we may discuss things that are deeper and more intimate in private mails. There is one facebook friend who I have never actually met, although I long to do so- with whom I have a great many things in common – similar experiences in childhood, and similar illnesses. We have supported each other over the past couple of years through health and emotional crises, and I genuinely feel much closer to her than I do to many people I see regularly – but who wouldn’t dream of opening up in the same way.

Sometimes I think that online may allow us to get closer than we would in real life.

How much do we ever really understand each other? Thinking back again to the LSD experiences, there were times when we seemed to vividly share each other’s reality – but how much of that was just illusion because the logical, rational part was temporarily disabled or disoriented?

We often take it for granted that we understand the same thinsg when we use the same words…but to me a dog is a big friendly creature and to my brother it is a terrifying monster. And that’s before we touch on words like “ego” and “feminism” which I know Steve and I have some history with…

I do agree that all too often even when we believe we are communicating or understanding someone else, it is all about me, me, me… We project our good and bad qualities on to others, and interpret everything they say as if we were at the centre of the universe.

And yet, sometimes, with people we care about – especially those we love or close friends – it does seem to me that we do make real, meaningful connections. Even across great distances, and communicated only through the keyboard – there have been times when I have felt truly heard and understood – and times when I think I have heard or understood someone else.

Or is that just illusion?

Very recognizable. It’s an automatism, thinking like this. Would be great to be able to break through this pattern…

From this standpoint I felt it was possible to make sense of your writings, though not in detail. At any rate I saw that my approach to life is so different that there can hardly be a meeting-ground in between.

This approach begins and ends with respect: for oneself and others. It would preclude trying to mess with anyone’s head, as gurus do.

And where I fail to see that respect, or cannot offer it, I distance myself. I don’t say this is how anyone else should act.

But it breaks silence, and explains it.

Yes, I believe strongly in the possibility that we know more than we think we’re knowing now… just as I believe that we don’t know how much we don’t know.
I believe this work here, the message that Steve wants to share with us, his readers, invites us to take a journey together. Our minds can work together in this process.
I can see our…attention or… energy or…our presence here like a thread, a thread in a kind of fabric.
This fabric goes beyond our individual needs, it is more, and it is (imho) a phenomenon of our present days. We live our lives partly in the real world, partly in front of our computer. After all, think about how many hours each of us is spending online nowadays…

The mistake we tend to make is feeling we have to defend them and deal with the aggression that this gives rise to.

If we are truly ‘keyed in’ to the other person, I suspect we tend to understand, and this forgive, most ‘transgressions’