Assumptions

Why is it that I never make any assumptions about my fellow travelers
that are healthy and progressive and positive?


"I haven't heard back from XXXX...I bet she's involved in a meditation
or is helping someone. I'll send some love and light!" Hasn't tended to
happen.


No, most all of our human mind's workings tend towards the negative,
the despairing, the detrimental.


We also bring our own truckload of baggage to everything we 'see' and
interpret; we think we know what is happening because the lie in our head
seems so real and so concerned for our well-being. We perceive reality
through the stained filters of experience, past hurts, expectations,
and pattern. Assumptions.


What if I decided that--short of putting myself in physical danger or signing
away my money--I would decide to fill my heart with love and compassion every
time I did not truly know what someone else was doing. Just assume the best,
not the worst. Err on the side of lovingness. Give the benefit of the doubt.


It doesn't matter what's 'true' or not. We hardly ever know what that is
anyway. But we'd feel better....about ourselves and others. We'd be more open
and trusting and giving. Maybe our continence would bring about a better
reality, too.


What makes me such an expert on another person anyway? I've had 42 years to
figure myself out and haven't made much progress yet. Why is another perfect
complicated mysterious creation somehow able to be summarized into a convenient
soundbite? Doesn't seem fair. Or accurate.


It's merely another example of choosing fear over love when we select a
nefarious assumption of another, or gossip, or roll our eyes to suggest that
something "must be up." Why is it so easy to curse another? Why is our first
instinct not to embrace and love and support...just the way we wish another
would do for us.


Defenses. Fear. Pretense. Selfishness. Competition.


Let me clean up my true bad habits, instead of assuming those of another.