“Know thyself.”
“Our experience of life is a process of selection, organization, and interpretation. At every stage in this process, which happens subconsciously and reflexively, our past experiences have influenced and determined our particular way of doing this. Life shows up in an infinite number of ways in each moment. It’s too much for one to take it all in, and so we make choices and select a limited number of things to focus on. Those specific things you select are related to the way you have been conditioned by your past experiences in life.
The next thing we do is organize those things we have chosen to focus on in accordance to a mental model, framework, story or script we have created about the world. Our minds recognize patterns and we make mental models out of them.
The last step of the process is that we apply meaning or interpretation to what is happening, which we derive form whatever mental model or framework we have attached our experience to. In every moment of life this is what we are doing -> selection, organization, interpretation, all of which has been influenced by our past experiences.
For example,
1. A young girl (Mary) grows up, abused by her father.
2. Mary becomes an adult and has two marriages with men who turn out to be abusive.
3. Mary’s boss at work is manipulative and suggestive.
4. Mary develops a mental model that says “men are a threat.”
5. Mary is at the grocery store. Out of all the things going on around her, what she most seems to notice is a man that seems to be looking at her. Mary’s mental model pops up – “men are a threat.” The man begins to approach Mary as if he may speak to her, but Mary pretends not to see him and quickly moves on to another section of the grocery store.
6. The man recognized Mary because they both have children with Autism, and he remembers her from a symposium they both attended about children with Autism.
7. The connection between the two may have been mutually beneficial in very significant ways but Mary’s mental model was an obstacle.
We have mental models for everything – ourselves, God, others, life itself, etc… and we force life to fit into those mental models. We just do it subconsciously and reflexively.
But what if our mental models are false? What if our mental models are limiting? What if our mental models sabotage our lives? What if God, truth, self, others and the way things truly are is bigger and beyond what any mental model is capable of holding? How much of the life you desire is outside and beyond the mental models you are doing life with?
This is why Socrates wrote, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” In other words, until we spot and deconstruct our mental models about life, we are slaves to them. Jesus said if the eyes are good, the whole body will be well. In other words, how we see the world will determine our experience of it. To perceive things as they truly are is to free oneself from suffering.
We have heard the aphorism, “Know thyself.” I went to seminary and earned a Master of Divinity degree and was a Senior Pastor for many years. I operated with the premise that what people needed most was correct doctrine about God. People knew God inside and out; the problem was that they did not know themselves.”
- Jim Palmer, Notes from (Over) the Edge
