Judging Books by Their Covers
February 2, 2024
You are invited to join us in this series of Daily Reflections on "Judging Books by Their Covers."
We all make various hunches about people and circumstances. Our hunches frequently turn into judgments, and judgments turn into actions. The two primary sources of our hunches are:
1). Our ego mind's interpretation of reality.
2). Our soul's impressions of reality.
When our ego interprets reality, it does so according to its perception of the world. Remember, the ego's perception of the world is biased because of its response to our wounding. We’re all wounded uniquely, and therefore we all have different twists on the nature of the world and how we fit into it.
The ego’s Holy Idea was its essence's way of experiencing the world as a soul child. But the Holy Idea's perception of the world was forgotten after our wounding when the ego and its perception took control of our lives. The ego replaced the Holy Idea's perception of reality with the ego's fixation. The fixation became the lens through which it interpreted everything and everyone. The fixation is a compensatory reaction to the loss of essence and, therefore, is not reality-based.
The reason why we judge a book by its cover is that our ego puts the book into its various categories and comes up with its analysis of the book according to its biased perception. The problem is that life is complicated, deeper, and more involved than it appears to be. What our ego perceives is not only subject to its biased perception, but it acts on that perception as if it were totally accurate.
When I meet someone, if I am not conscious, my ego tends to pigeonhole them into a category based on my ego’s perceptions. My ego often attributes things to people that are simply not true. For example, if someone speaks eloquently, I tend to elevate them to a category of the intellectually gifted. Experience either confirms or denies that perception. The truth is that many eloquent people may not be intellectually gifted and many plain-speaking folks can be.
The soul has a different way of perceiving. It perceives from its Holy Idea, which does not give a person a stamp of approval or rejection. Instead, in presence, the soul receives impressions of the person during the following continuous inquiry: What of Spirit is being revealed to me now?
Inquiry: Under what circumstances would you trust your ego's interpretation of reality?
Dear God, I look through a glass darkly. Free me into clarity. Amen
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