I read this somewhere, maybe a quote from American psychologist William James. What an incredible statement, so sober, almost tautological, yet so vast and profound.
Your experience is what you attend to, as I quite vividly experienced last week, shifting my attention from fear, hurt and anger to love and joy all within about 30mn, and observing the great differences in outcome (i.e. in my thoughts, speech and deeds), from being about to hurt my boyfriend to, instead, being able to love him more in a difficult time.
If you attend to your joy, your experience is that of joy. If you attend to your wounds, then your experience is of being wounded. If you attend to your fear, your experience is of being fearful, if you attend to the love inside of you, your experience is that of love, etc, etc. Joy, wounds, fear, love, and all states of mind: we hold them all at once in one embrace, all in the palm of our hand, they are all there together at once and all the time, all with the same One Taste of life.
Which ones are we going to attend to today? And tomorrow? Which will be our experience?
Its not the world we experience, rather our interpretation of the world.
Posted by: Matt | April 19, 2005 at 11:32 AM