Keep Your Eye on the Apple

One of the ways we unconsciously avoid really understanding ourselves is not to know what we are doing. It takes a conscious effort to see what we are up to. Again let's start with simple, non-threatening observations. Notice, when we start to eat an orange or an apple, how we really enjoy the first bite, "Wow, it tastes good." But after the first bite our attention starts to lapse. After the first bite or two, we can eat the whole orange or apple and not be aware of it at all. Unless we learn the art of observing ourselves, we kind of fall asleep to 90 percent of our experience..

Notice how hard it is to observe how we cut up a whole orange to eat it. We kind of check out after the first slice and the cutting goes on by automatic pilot. We listen to a favorite record, for the first few notes maybe, then it kind of goes on without us. When we start to see this we can get some idea of how odd it is that depression doesn't just go on without us too. We get some idea that maybe we are hanging on to it. We may start to wonder how we hang on to every nuance of depression, but not hang on to half the notes of a favorite song.

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