What our heart feels is influenced by what our mind sees. Preconceptions govern what we see and what we perceive. Sometimes these habitual patterns are helpful to us. A very simple example is that when we encounter a door and a doorknob, we know what to do with it. We also have preconceived ideas about how roadways, signs, and sidewalks work. All of those things help us navigate the world, so they’re helpful and necessary. At the same time, our preconceptions can be extremely constricting. When we enter a situation or look at a person, our habitual patterns that we’ve inherited and developed from our experience create a filter between a clear way of seeing and what we’re perceiving in our mind. This is the source of bias. Perhaps in our upbringing we were influenced by the media, and maybe our family, friends, peers, and community around us so that we now see certain people in a certain way.
Part of the goal of meditation is to create more ease, and more of a gentle and open heart—gentle to ourselves and gentle to others. So when we practice meditation, we can have…
