Intellectually colored glasses

Do this exercise, step by step. Innocence is helpful here.

Step One: Look around your room by turning all around, and in about 30 seconds take in the view. Mentally name a lot of things. Note the many separate items like desk, wall, floor, pencils, keyboard, basket, several dozen Beanie Babies, Amazonian poison darts, velvet Elvis, stuff like that, and only then continue reading this.

Step Two: Now look around the room again at all these things, but this time, in addition to the naming process that you did previously, also continually insert this thought during the scan: “A stranger is coming here at any second who I want to impress.” Do this, and then continue to read.

Step Three: Repeat your naming and scanning again and have this thought repeatedly during the scan: “I just won the lottery, and I want to upgrade this room and the stuff in it.” Do this, and then continue to read.

Step Four: Repeat your naming and scanning again and have this thought repeatedly during the scan: “The building is on fire. Grab something and go.”

Ask yourself,

Why do the values I place upon objects and my emotional response upon seeing them vary so strongly with only this little “twisting” added to them?

If this technique is so powerful that it can change how I perceive my environment, what SHOULD I be thinking when I look at anything?

What happens to my perceptions when I am having a big emotion? Is an emotion a little, a lot, or absolutely like having a repeated thought?

Could I “pull off” purposefully going through my daily life and trying to have “good thoughts” or “supportive thoughts”? How long could I keep that sort of thing going?

What would happen if while I was having a negative emotion, I manufactured the opposite kinds of thoughts? Could I “tone myself down”? WOULD I do this?

What is it about anger, hate, envy, sorrow, depression that is so delicious? Why do I cling to them? What power do I give them to continue when I indulge them so?

All things considered, in general, if my intellect decided to have happy thoughts while I was having a strongly negative emotion, “who” would “win” the tug-of-war?

If I am not angry, but I purposefully have a thought about something that “makes me angry”, do I get angry? Do other thoughts rapidly then begin to grow along those “lines?”

How tough am I? Are my emotions hair triggered or can I take a “pretty good punch” before I am “really set off?”

If a friend in a bookstore handed me a book and said, “Don’t read this. It is the most evil book I have ever read in my life. Every single page has the most vile concepts. I felt dirty reading it.” would I open the book? Would I want to?

What do Pandora and I have in common? What’s “in boxes inside me” that I keep opening up for a peek?