Another exercise: Assessing truth.

Carefully assess some situation in which you had an uncontrollable anger, or felt a deep resentment. Write a brief (10ish words) description of the event, then line by line down the page, write what your mind has to say about the event. Now you have a list of "reasons" from your mind as to why adrenal glands and so on had to be triggered. Go through the list, checking each line by a simple criterion: Is it the truth, a falsehood, or an unknowable? Mark the lines accordingly, and take a look at the quality of the data your mind is running your life on. Be ruthless in assessing the truth.

Here's an example (just a few lines)

The event: Harry came home drunk. I experienced pain. I was angry with Harry and I wanted to chop him in little bits, then stamp on the bits.

the mind says: (and checking it, bracketed)

Harry is drunk again. (true)

Harry is uncaring of my feelings (unknowable)

He KNOWS he shouldn't drink (unknowable)

If this goes on, he'll become impossible. (unknowable - all statements involving future are.)

I'll have to leave him (unknowable)

I won't cope. (unknowable)

I'm scared and it's his fault. (false)

Harry doesn't love me. (unknowable)

He must hate me. (false. Although he may, there's no "must" to it)

He's hurting me. (false)

He's bad/evil/wrong. (unknowable)

So, from this, we could make a true statement: Harry got drunk and I was angry on account of false and unknowable stuff that I believed.

Get the idea?

The mind is in control of your physical experience. It can make glands squeeze that give you an opiate high. It can put you to sleep. It can adrenalise your body into mammalian fight/flight/freeze mode.

These functions are vital, but can become troublesome when erroneous associations are involved.

The body can be in the tension and extreme glandular action of facing intense physical danger, while what's actually happening is just that a policeman wants you to stop to discuss baksheesh (India) or a "cool drink" (SA). No big deal. Not even worth a fear sweat, certainly not worth having a full dose of adrenalin burn unused in the body, poisoning it.

Operating on bad data, making invalid associations, the average mind is in hell. Life is threatening.

It can seem that everything is a punishment for what you couldn't avoid doing, and reward is promised only for what you don't want to do. All from bad data.