Publication Day with Unlikely Cast of Characters

Let’s dedicate today’s blog post to an unlikely cast of characters, the people in your life who are about as perceptive as a fence post. The first person who comes to mind could be an annoying co-worker, a gossipy neighbor, or a relative who never once, in the past decade, has expressed the tiniest curiosity about you and your life.

Give such people what they deserve! Give them a copy of Read People Deeper. It is officially published today, April 21, 2008.They won’t know what hit them because, notice, the book doesn’t have a title like:“Spiritual Reading for Those Who Know Everything”

• “Intuitive Reading for Dummies”
• “Reading Faces When You’re Racially Prejudiced”
• “Aura Readings of People Who Could Teach You A Thing or Two” or
• “Energy Fields R Us”

The subtitle even contains a familiar term: Body Language + Face Reading + Auras. And a wacky thing about body language is that it can seem like the absolutely most outrageously out-there reach of learning about human beings (for those stuck to the surface) or, at the other extreme, a fabulously useful way of grounding (for empaths, as we’ll explore tomorrow).

Body Language is the Rorschach test of Deeper Perception. 

SOCIAL OBLIGATIONS

Some of these perfect readers for Read People Deeper are supposed to get a present from you anyway, due to sheer social obligation:

• Yet another office party gift
• Houseguest present
• A birthday that must be acknowledged
• even, gulp!, an anniversary gift.

Instead of proffering that bottle of wine, you can hand over the slim volume (which, at $14.95 is comparable in price) and let the joke really begin. Chances are, that highly insensitive person actually prides himself on how well he can read everyone in his life.

Therefore, you can pull your tongue from your cheek long enough to say, “You already know so much about people, but I thought this book might have a few things you didn’t already know.”

PAINFUL TALES OF CONTENTMENT

Actually, people like this are one of the target groups for Read People Deeper. In case you’re wondering, you’re not alone in having to deal with people who are true beginners at Deeper Perception. One type of comment I invite here is your most outrageous story about lack of human curiosity/compassion/emotional illiteracy.

I’ll lead off with the prize of my collection, dating from my marriage to David Ramsay, Husband #2. We drove for hours to visit his sister Mary and her family. Mary hadn’t come to our wedding, sent a card, or otherwise acknowledged our marriage. But she did take the time to lay out a very presentable dinner, complete with a large roast chicken. It was picture perfect in a way that Betty Crocker would have admired greatly (provided that fictional Betty had ever existed).

David hadn’t seen anyone from Mary’s family in five years, and they had never met me before. During our two-hour visit, we learned all about their achievements and interests. After we left, David turned to me open mouthed. “Do you realize, they never asked one single question about either of us?”

Yes, Read People Deeper might have made such people smile. One more way to read nuances about what made them so very important! 

INVISIBLE TRAINING WHEELS

Like a two-wheeler with training wheels, I constructed this how-to with body language for easy accessibility. You can go through all 50 categories in the book and focus on guess what?

On the other hand, might it be useful to use body language to read about your dinner guests? In retrospect, I chuckle at the idea of Mary’s closing the door after David and I left, opening her gift, and reading about categories like conformity, balanced give and take, hurt feelings and intimacy.

Take a look at the list of categories here, the 50 categories you learn to read in depth and detail from Read People Deeper. If you were at a formal dinner with an unlikely cast of characters with whom you’re doomed to interact for a couple of highly polite hours (or more), which do you wish they would learn to read about you?

Also during those gaping, and inevitable, silences, what would you really like to read about them? If you’re spiritually minded and motivated, you might spend some of that time praying or sincerely aiming to establish connection; you might do the lovely and practical exercise of affirming “I behold the Christ in you.” You could hold the space you wish to see in the world.

None of these strategies would hurt a bit. Afterwards you could walk away from the table feeling truly satisfied, even blessed.

Yet I believe that it isn’t enough to find an abstract, universal sweetness in people. Or to bestow spiritual gifts equally, no matter who is present. I’ve sat with people who put a bland smile on their faces and seem to be constantly reaching for the perfect affirmation or else they’re squinting into my eyes, looking for that tiny presence of Christ.

Praiseworthy struggles like these don’t honor the individual. Why not supplement them with a way to make the spiritual intent stickier? Find out “Who does this person be?” Read People Deeper can help you find distinctive gifts of each soul.

Don’t let annoying people in your life make you sick and tired. Or boringly benevolent. You can let people teach you about ways to be, as you practice your cumulative skill at reading people in depth and detail. Behold that, then bring on the universal sweetness. With that sequence, you’ll make it stick.