The Hidden Three People

I heard an idea once that in a sealed room with two people locked inside; there are not only two people, but in fact there are actually six people in this room.

Have you ever heard the idea that “The camera adds forty pounds”? How about the phrase “mirrors lie”?

Have you ever considered where these phrases may have come from? I doubt even the authors of these phrases understood them themselves.

Two physical people. One locked room. Six conceptual people.

The operative word here is “conceptual”.

So going back to our initial questions. No, cameras don’t add forty pounds and mirrors don’t lie.

Our perception of reality is what adds the forty pounds and our perception of reality lies.

So who are these six “people”? Well, put simply, each physical individual is actually three “people”, therefore, when two people are in a room you have six “people”

Let’s break this down a little further. The three people are 1) the person you perceive yourself to be, 2) the person that you are perceived to be by the person opposite you in the room, 3) the person you actually are in reality.

This first two are easier to comprehend if you think about your dreams for a moment. In your dreams you are everyone. Let that sink in for a second. Again, in your dreams, you are everyone. When you’re having a conversation with a loved one, you are in fact having a conversation with your perception of that loved one. When you are arguing with someone in your dream, you’re actually arguing with yourself or in other words, your perception of the person you are arguing with. When you see yourself or you see a behavior of yours in a dream, you are in actual fact seeing how you perceive yourself to be.

So those are the first two, they are fairly simple. Essentially they are how we see ourselves and how others see us.

Its the third one that I really struggle with. How can we find out or understand who we are in reality? Who is this third person? Could it be that the third person is an amalgamation of the initial two?

Unlikely, because were that the case then someone who despises us and only sees us in a negative light would effectively be partially defining who we truly are. (As a side note, it wouldn’t hurt to reflect on why you are perceived that way and maybe make some changes accordingly.)

Anyway, back to the third person. Many a time the third person is simply a work in progress. We change, we mutate, we evolve, but if we are able to perceive ourselves in a positive light and strive for better, then it goes without saying that the third person will also change and adapt.

Without getting too philosophical (might already be a bit too late for that), in an attempt to answer the question of “Who are you”, Michael A Singer writes at the beginning of his book “The Untethered Soul” that you are an “awareness of being, or consciousness”. I suppose that according to him the ‘third person’ is merely your awareness.

As for me, this doesn’t entirely suffice. I mean, I like the idea - but it doesn’t really answer my question.

I am going to try to answer this as follows. For me, the third person is who you are when you’re alone and no one is around you. When you aren’t “pretending” to be someone, when you aren’t conversing in a specific, maybe even modified, manner. You are just being you and it is this person that we need to connect to, to work on and understand. I believe that when this person improves, as he or she is the source of our being, then the other two “people” are directly affected and are inadvertently changed.

From my experience in raising children I have learnt that we can’t change others, we can only change ourselves, we can change ourselves by understanding that which creates and gives life to those other two “people”. Part of that lessons manifests in how we see people, and how that perception of others can be changed by understanding and relating to the third person. Often when someone has a negative perception of another person, it because they themselves are lacking or are struggling in a specific area and the individual that they are focusing on is triggering some insecurity buried deep within the third person.

As you have probably already noticed from my previous posts, its evident that I try to find a middle ground, guiltium, fearium and the likes, but I think this time it’s not that simple. This time is different. This time I think its up to each of us to try to understand who and what the third person is for us.