260617 What I learned in my studies this morning 6

Today's Meditation(s):

It’s bad. It’s dangerous. It’s awful. It’s mean. But is it? How quickly we, as the Noah Kahan lyric puts it, “state a feeling like a fact.”

We take our initial impression of something, our partial view of an entire event (past, present, and future), and decide we know what this is. We then add our judgments. They are bad people. They are wrong. This is a disaster. What began as a feeling hardens into certainty. Our reaction becomes reality and our feelings become the truth.

...

When we decide our emotional reaction is the truth, curiosity disappears. Humility disappears. Patience disappears. We stop trying to understand. We stop listening. We stop seeing things as they truly are.

So instead of mistaking feelings for facts, let’s pause. Let’s get curious. Let’s be humble. Let’s be patient. Because the way we feel about something in the moment is rarely, if ever, fact.

Feeling as fact . . . a favorite sport nowadays, it seems, (though I've little doubt our forebears had similar thoughts).

Strip away the additions and tell the impulse 'You are not what you seem. You are but an impression and not the real thing!' 

Don't multiply entities beyond necessity. What presents itself is sufficient, without need for my opinions to color it in one way or another.

Know my mental / emotional / psychological tendencies. Guard for them. Account for them. Undo them. Don't let them bypass our instructions above.