S

March   7th

DON’T   TRUST   THE SENSES

“Heraclitus called  self-deception  an  awful   disease and eyesight    a   lying   sense.”

—DIOGENES   LAERTIUS,   LIVES   OF  THE EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS,   9.7

elf-awareness is the ability to objectively evaluate the self. It’s the ability to question our own
instincts, patterns, and assumptions. Oiêsis, self-deception or arrogant and unchallenged opinion,
requires that we hold all our opinions up to hard scrutiny; even our eyes deceive us.
On the one hand, that’s alarming. I can’t even trust my own senses?! Sure, you could think about it that
way. Or you could take it another way: because our senses are often wrong, our emotions overly alarmed,
our projections overly optimistic, we’re better off not rushing into conclusions about anything. We can
take a beat with everything we do and become aware of everything that’s going on so we can make the
right decision.