Just This: Prompts and Practices for Contemplation

by Richard Rohr

Here is the mistake we all make in our encounters with reality—both good and bad. We do not realize that it was not the person or event right in front of us that made us angry or fearful—or excited and energized. At best, that is only partly true. If you let that beautiful hot air balloon in the sky make you happy, it was because you were already predisposed to happiness. The hot air balloon just occasioned it—and almost anything else would have done the same. How we see will largely determine what we see and whether it can give us joy or make us pull back with an emotionally stingy and resistant response. Without denying an objective outer reality, what we are able to see, and are predisposed to see, in the outer world is a mirror reflection of our own inner world and state of consciousness at that time. Most of the time, we just do not see at all, but rather operate on cruise control.