Two Views. . .
A crucial skill for minimizing emotional chaos and sustaining clarity in your life is the ability to distinguish between your experience and your interpretation of your experience.
Your experience is simply whatever is happening in the moment—a sound, a taste, a bodily sensation, an emotion, any kind of interaction, etc. Your interpretation is your mind’s reaction to that experience. One way to understand this difference is to picture that when you are directly experiencing a moment of life, you are within it; when you are interpreting it, you are outside it.
When we start to interpret an experience, the thoughts generated by our reactive mind become our primary experience, as opposed to whatever is actually happening that needs our full attention and considered response. Usually we continue on with the activity, but our attention is split or less than complete. Is it any wonder that we don’t do our best under such conditions? And sometimes we just can’t continue the activity.
That is where interpretations step in. . .Once you begin to recognize that interpretation is only your view of an experience, it becomes possible for you to begin to release your compulsion to interpret every moment.
Ideally, your goal is to create a new habit, a new default setting for responding rather than reacting to all types of experiences. Establishing this new habit starts by staying with the experience. When you find that you’ve jumped to interpretation, just notice the difference. The noticing gradually becomes automatic.
There are many activities in your life that you do automatically—driving, cooking, typing, etc.—and that you more or less notice without noticing. In the same way, you can develop the habit of automatically noticing the difference between your experience and your interpretation of the experience and grow in better ways for better days
Peace and Love, Jim
#twoviews #thedailybuddha
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