A lot of what we consider to be an objective contact with reality is actually “interpretation contact”, filtered through stories we tell ourselves about our lives and other people. Our practice in staying in the present – or with simple felt contact –  is to help us detach a little from our perceptions of the future and the past and question their reliability as pointers to what is actually happening.

Much of what you see “out there” is actually manufactured “in here” by your brain …

Only a small fraction of the input to your occipital lobes comes from the external world;

the rest comes from internal memory stores and perceptual-processing modules.

Rich Hanson, Buddha’s Brain

photo elvert barnes