Dorothy Rowe’s Guide to Life. Dorothy Rowe

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ all make different kinds of observations, but these observations depend on where we are and what we expect to see. What we see and report is not reality but our interpretation of reality.

      This is all that any of us can do.

      We can never know reality directly.

      All we can ever know are our interpretations of reality.

      What you know as you, your life and the world is not reality. What you know as you, yourself and the world is your interpretation of you, your life and the world.

      Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting are always, even at their very simplest, interpretations, just as intuitions are interpretations.

      Interpretations are meanings.

       We are always in the business of creating meanings.

      This is what you cannot change.

      You cannot not create meaning.

      Imagine you’re sitting quiedy in your room and something happens. Your awareness of this happening is your interpretation. The beginning of your interpretation, entirely without words, is, say, ‘a very loud sound’. Immediately, before you stir from your seat to find out why the loud sound occurred, you give the sound a meaning. You might think it was an explosion, or a car crash, or a breaking window and so on. After interpreting the sound you might decide to check whether you were right.

      You don’t have to be conscious to create meaning.

      Even fast asleep, you interpret a happening as being in your body and you move to release your trapped arm, all without you waking.

       It is our interpretations which determine how we think, feel and act.

      Thus,

       It’s not what happens to you that matters but how you interpret what happens to you.

      You ALWAYS have a choice about how you will interpret what happens to you.

      This applies even in the most extreme situations.

      Suppose you are told that you have a particularly nasty form of cancer. How will you interpret this?

      Some alternative interpretations are:

      I won’t let this beat me.

      This is the end.

      This is God’s punishment for my wickedness.

      If I’m a good patient the doctors will save me.

      Conventional medicine is useless.

      And so on.

      Anyone who says, There is no alternative’ has merely rejected all other choices.

      Interpretations are choices.

      A friend who had had a Catholic upbringing and so saw herself, her life and her world as an unchangeable part of the Absolute, Eternal Truths of the Catholic Church told me that the best thing she got from therapy was learning that she had choices.

       You can always change your choice.

      You might initially interpret your illness as, ‘This is God’s punishment for my wickedness’ but later think, ‘That’s silly’ and decide upon, ‘I won’t let this beat me.’

      Having made one interpretation you then interpret your interpretation.

      Interpreting your illness as God’s punishment might lead you to further interpretations such as, ‘I deserve this punishment,’ or, ‘I must be good and accept my punishment and not do anything to get better.’ Deciding that your illness is a challenge to be mastered might lead you to interpret this as, ‘I’ll do everything I can to get better,’ or, ‘I’ll get on with my life as normal.’

      Life has many paradoxes.

      A paradox is not a problem.

      A problem is a question which, in theory at least, is capable of being answered.

      A paradox is a seeming contradiction which nevertheless contains an element of a truth.

      A PARADOX OF LIFE

      Even though we can never know reality directly, to survive and flourish we must always strive to make interpretations that are as close to reality as possible.

      

      For instance, suppose you’re about to cross a busy road. You can’t possibly know the exact speed of approaching traffic, but to cross the road safely you must judge the speed of the traffic as accurately as possible. How do you make this judgement?

      Suppose a friend who is a very successful stockbroker advises you to put your savings in shares that, he says, are sure to increase in value. How do you judge the likelihood that what he says is true?

      We create new interpretations out of the interpretations we have already acquired. We have nothing else to use. We might decide not to bother with sorting through these old interpretations to create something new and just run out on to the road or impulsively give our money to the stockbroker. Or we might think carefully about our past experiences, contrasting one with another, and compare our past interpretations with our present observations to be as sure as we can that our new interpretation is as good an interpretation of reality as it can be. We can compare the speeds of a number of passing cars, or do some research about current stock prices.

      Although we might know about many alternative ways of interpreting some aspect of reality, we each can have our own favourite way of interpreting that aspect.

      However, our favourite ways of creating our interpretations can result in interpretations which are far from reality.

      For instance, we all know that envelopes come in many sizes and colours. Some people, however, when inspecting their mail, see and open white and coloured envelopes but never see, much less open brown envelopes. Yet unpaid bills don’t disappear into thin air.

      We need to be aware how one group of our wishes can dominate all our interpretations. We can choose to see only what we wish to see and thus do only what we wish to do. However, our wishes might not be an accurate reflection of reality, particularly that part of reality which is composed of other people’s interpretations. We forget that other people see things differently from us.

      You must have noticed that no two people ever interpret an event in exactly the same way. You interpret a television programme as being excellent. Your friend thinks it’s rubbish. This is not a matter of other people being mad, bad or awkward. It is an inescapable part of the way we are physically constituted.

      Each of us, every moment of our lives, asleep or awake, is engaged in interpreting what is happening.

      Each of us has only one source we can draw on in creating our interpretations.

      This is our СКАЧАТЬ