Listening to Yourself …

I listened to a commencement speech yesterday.  In it, the speaker said this, “Our mind needs to be our servant, rather than our master.”  Viewed in the light of my eighty years of experience, and perhaps my tendency to put pleasure in the place of learning, I appreciated the power in that idea.  Later in the day I mentioned it to a young friend, who immediately took issue with the idea of subjugating our mind to the role of servant. Her mind, she said, “was her friend;” she went to her mind “for advice.”  In thinking about that, I remember when I was living as I should not have been living, let’s say that I was immersed in “yellow” ideas. I too went to myself for advice and, no surprise, the answers that I got were always compatible with my, then, yellow perspective.  I needed “blue” answers, but it was the blue world that I had vacated; my actions were more likely to be condemned by “blue” self-counsel.  What is the upshot here? Be super skeptical of self-counsel and self-approval.  They are always biased.