#605 Perspectives Evolving

     How we feel, how we are, and how we perceive is one indivisible unit. 
     With mindfulness, we learn to monitor how we feel, and recognize this as a constantly changing energy, flowing through. When we lightly hold anything in spacious awareness, we are no longer stuck in it or identified with it - it is no longer who we are, and it no longer, or at least less strongly, distorts our perception of reality. We are spacious awareness, not the ever-changing energies passing by.
     Self-concern (egocentricity) seems to be a step on the path to developing a healthy sense of self. Then concern for one's immediate family's welfare, then one's ethnicity, religion, country, etc. are only expansions on this same egocentric theme. Ideally, by one's 60s, one is progressively letting go of egocentricity / tribalism, and is developing a wise, grandparent-like nurturing attitude toward all of humanity, nature, the cosmos.
     Having a grandchild helps promote this allocentric / ecocentric shift. A grandchild brings joy that helps keep open the heart-mind, that can hold everything in spacious awareness.

McFrost69   www.dpreview.com

#506 How Accurate is "Self-talk" - the Stuff We Keep Telling Ourselves?

     Many of us, by default, take our self-talk, opinions & perceptions as objective truth - a direct readout on reality. Furthermore, we assume these are stable, unchanging. Interestingly & paradoxically, we also recognize that "who we are" has a major impact on all of these. In other words, we know very well that different people have differing takes on the same experience. We also know very well that we see things very differently now than when we were 2 or 12 or even 22 years old. So the more closely we investigate phenomena, the less puzzling the statement:

     “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”                 Anais Nin

     In other words, we project our constantly changing inner state of being onto the outer world. When we're down, the world looks like a miserable place, when we're up, the world miraculously transforms into a joyous place.
     So the tone or quality of our self-talk might be more accurately interpreted, not as caused by what's out there right now, but rather as our current mood, which is brought about by many factors (internal, external, past, present and or future).
     Can we simply observe our mood as a transient energy and nothing more? Can we hold it lightly instead of merging with it (cognitive fusion)? What happens to transient states?

Steve McCurry   stevemccurry.com