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
Successful recovery from addiction is achieved as we make changes that create a more comfortable experience of life. In the beginning of the process, much of the effort will be placed on making logistical and physical changes—sorting out legal, financial, health, interpersonal and familial problems, for instance. But even more important are the changes made on the inside, those emotional, psychological, philosophical, and spiritual in nature. An important place to start is to truly understand that we perceive the world very subjectively. That everything we see and hear goes through a personal filter before it is perceived by us. Without this understanding we are left to simply react to what we perceive as truth instead of questioning its subjective nature. 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 have had emotional impact on us. The more impact an experience, the more inflexible the filter it will create. Without our permission, these filters create a story of the world that we will inadvertently pass all information before we code what we experience in life as having meaning. Through this process, we see the world the way we “expect” to see it instead of how it is. By challenging these accepted truths, and thus the filters they create, we can begin to see the world much more clearly and, often, much less painfully.
