WEEKLY MEDITATION
It’s a rare person who glimpses the expanse of his own subjectivity, who knows that everything before his mind’s eye is the Hindu’s maya—an elaborate dream of the world worthy of a god, but reverie just the same.
-A General Theory of Love- Book
We perceive the world very subjectively and often our addictions arise as a very reaction to this subjectivity. Everything we experience throughout our lives goes through a series of personal filters before it is given meaning and acted upon by us. The filters that we use to process the information around us are not random in their effect, but specific to the experiences in our lives that had emotional impact on us. The more impactful an experience, the more inflexible the filter it will create. Through these filters, we inadvertently pass all information before we code what we experience in life as having meaning, creating a story of the world consistent with our expectations. Through this process, we see the world the way we “expect” to see it. In recovery, we must learn to embrace the subjective nature of perception so that we can expose, challenge, and eventually change the way we move through our lives. In this way we carve out a more conscious and less painful experience of life, one that doesn’t require the mechanics of addictions to help us navigate.
