Thread by @Aella_Girl

I'm triggered by people who believe in astrology, or talking to spirits or deities or reading energies or whatever. Am I just overly sensitive or closed minded or judgmental?
Maybe but... I think there's something else going on here.
An analogy:

In circling (or generally good communication), it's a good rule to 'own your experience.' If someone you're talking to says something stupid that makes you angry, recognize your reaction as "fully yours" - don't put it onto the other person as their responsibility 1/

You can take actions like leaving the room, or communicating the anger they're sparking in you, but don't place the burden of the *reaction itself* onto them. It's not theirs, its yours.
This perspective (and habit) comes out of a certain view of the world - that you 2/

recognize yourself as fully agent-y and self-sustained; you do not bleed onto others.
You don't assume you know someone else, and always allow yourself to be surprised by new information that might challenge your preconceptions - which are *also yours*. 3/

Your frame of other people is *also yours*. The way you understand them is a reflection of you, and to forget this, to think you're accessing some fundamental, objective layer of reality in your perception of another person absolutely shuts down your ability to really see them 4/

You can act as though you know reality, but you must hold it very lightly, and be prepared to drop what you think you know as soon as new information comes along. Be curious, be flexible, be wary of ideas that make you feel comfortably in control of your knowledge of others 5/

People who don't own their experience, who put their emotions and frames onto you, make me feel uncomfortable. It comes out in subtle little ways, the whiff of non-ownership, and I get kinda triggered when it happen. Aand I think this is basically my deal with astrology/magic. 6/

Not all people who enjoy astrology-and-co. trigger me, but the majority do.
But this is a terrible trend in spirituality to figure out a frame for an experience and then *use it on the world, including you*. They are *not* curious about other explanations for the sense of 7/

pattern matching, they use their energy reading and astrology and tarot or whatever to understand you, they create a spiritual reality with 'rules' and 'things' that could conceivably be understood and dissected but there's *no desire to do this*.
8/

When I'm around these people I feel uncomfortable at how much their spiritual frames feel like they leak onto me, inform their view of me, without them ever actually trying to get to know me. This can happen *really* indirectly, in ways that are nearly invisible. 9/

I feel very similarly to the way I do with my religious mother, where I know she believes that I'm going to hell, that's just part of her worldview, and she might not talk about it but it leaks into her perception of me, her hellbound daughter, it'll always be between us. 10/

And it might not be as sinister with the astrology people, but it has the *potential* to be; I still treat a gun as dangerous even if the next shot is a blank.
And ultimately this is my discomfort - when I'm around these people, I feel misunderstood, or missed, or alone 11/

in the deep value of curiosity and self doubt, and I feel afraid and uncomfortable at the small possibility they might turn on me in the future because they never were really in connection with me to begin with. I don't like this feeling, it makes me sad. 12/12.