Archives: IQTuneUps

When you take a shower, lather up with the water turned off, and listen to the sounds of the soap being applied to your skin.

Note the various physical sensations, detailed stimulations, and bodily postures you create to complete the task.

Note how varied and loud the sounds are.

Note how smooth or rough different areas of your skin are.

Note how some parts of your skin get much more pressure than other parts.

While washing your head, listen to the sound of your fingers moving on your scalp.

When you turn the water on to rinse, plug your ears with your fingers and listen to the sound of the water hitting your head. Gradually remove your fingers and watch the transition from listening to internal sounds to listening to external sounds.

Ask yourself,Why do I ignore these sounds and sensations when I wash?

Why do I ignore most almost all sounds, sensations and perceptions in my life?

What should I pay more attention to in my life?

What is the process that gradually moves a new sound into the “I don’t ordinarily listen to it” category?

What is the difference between actively listening to sounds and merely hearing? How does it feel at that precise moment when I decide to “direct my attention?” What does it feel like to “make a decision to attend?”

What is the process that gradually moves a new sound into the “I don’t ordinarily listen to it” category? How long ago did I stop listening to my “shower sounds?”

During my daily life, how often DO I attend to sounds?

How often do I find myself “spaced out” and merely hearing music that is playing instead of listening to it with my attention fully directed?

What is my “listening-attention spectrum’s” range? Do I sometimes “absolutely” not hear the sounds around me and sometimes “fully attend” to sounds? Or, are the extremes of this spectrum rarely experienced, and I mostly am listening with some attention to most of the sounds?

Can I consciously control this process? Can I decide to attend most of the time from now on? How long would it take me to “get good” at this?

Can I undo my patterns and begin, once again, to listen to sounds I am presently ignoring? Do I want to do this? Would it just be too distracting?

If all my life I were having a quiet message inside me being spoken, how long ago would I have stopped listening to it?

If something were infinitely always there, how quickly (and how long ago) would I have gotten so “used to it” that I could NOT pay attention to it?

How does a fish notice water?

How do I notice my self?

Another ancient tale retold.

Long ago, when such things were still possible in the minds of many, there were two very large clay pots that had a rivalry. The one pot was new and beautiful and decorated with vibrant colors, while the other had never been beautiful, was a single plain color, and was so old that the owner of the pot had forgotten how it had come into his possession. These pots were across from each other in a courtyard. Each was used to catch rainwater as it came off the roof-an important duty since rain was an infrequent and precious event in that place.

The old pot was ashamed of itself. for in addition to its ordinariness, it also had a thin crack from top to bottom through which water would escape. During the drier months, many times the pot ran almost completely dry, but the family used the new pot more often than the old pot, yet the new pot always had enough water, and more, to spare. And, if the truth must be told, water from it was favored simply because it was new and beautiful.

The new pot was proud of itself, and daily spoke daily about its qualities, and left no doubt about its essential role in the daily life of the family that lived there. The old pot was unable to rejoin with even a single point in its own favor, and, in fact, it agreed with all that the new pot had to say.

Years passed, and the new pot added even more to its claims by noting how little it aged, since it was so well made. Its colors were still vibrant. If anything, the old pot had only changed for the worse, and, daily now, suspected that soon it would be replaced.

One day, a child of the house was walking by the old pot with her father, and said, “Father, this old pot leaks almost all its water. Why don’t we get another pot like the new one?”

The father bent on one knee and pulled the child closer while picking a flower growing nearby. While fastening the flower in her hair, he said, “Your mother would always visit this part of the courtyard. The rains come irregularly here, but, still, it rains often enough to fill the new pot which holds more than enough water for all our cooking needs, but this pot slowly lets out its water, and because of this, all these flowers you see here can grow and be watered just exactly as is needed-especially when the rains are delayed.”

“On the very day you were born, I brought to mother a flower from this exact spot, just like this one, and she took it and showed it to your new eyes. It was the very first gift of love from her to you. Whenever I see these flowers, I think of her and you in her arms that day. And on all our other special days, always there are flowers growing here which then add grace to our celebrations.”

“This pot is the very heart of the courtyard. The crack in this pot is perfect. If it were any bigger, the water would leave too quickly; if any smaller, the flowers would not get enough water. I can always get another pot like the other, but this one is unique and without equal. The finest pot maker could not devise another like it.”

As the father and daughter left the courtyard, the new pot gazed at the old with love and reverence, and from that day forth they were friends.

Ask yourself,

Why is it that I surrendered to this story’s premise that pots can be “sentient entities?” Am I still a believe-anything-child, or what?

Are only humans capable of experience? Where do I draw the line when I consider the very subtle gradual spectrum of awareness as I go from human to apes to dogs to horses and so forth-all the way down to atoms, parts of atoms, and yet to be discovered parts of parts of atoms? Where does awareness cease?

When I feel ashamed of some quality of my personality, am I seeing clearly, or is it possible that all things in life have “their place in the great scheme of things?” Can I feel good about being bad? Can I give myself permission to feel okay about myself, and, in fact, look upon my “oddities” as a “watering” of the lives of those around me? Can I allow others think this way too? What about the “evil” persons out there; would I allow them to feel good about themselves? Should I?

What’s more alive and aware: the character I think myself to be in a dream or the chair that character is sitting on?

If my skin is a part of the “living me,” and it has an outer layer that is sloughing off, can I consider the earth around the roots of a plant to be alive? Where do living things end?

From another angle, when I consider that ALL THIS is “actually” chemical interactions within my brain, is there really any case at all for considering inanimate objects to be different from sentient entities?

Why am I so sure that there is really a “there” when everything is, ultimately and primarily, only “inside my brain?” If I was always behind that “mime’s glass wall” (that no one can see except that the mime’s hands seem to feel it,) how long would I have to be behind that wall, before I came to believe that, indeed, the world is “only in my mind?”

Are my senses a glass wall? Do I seem to see through them, but actually they keep me from being in direct contact with “there?” Is this glass wall tinted? If so, is it a rose-colored wall or another color?

Is my intellect another “perceptual tool” like my senses? Do I use it to “see” into life, and my past? Is it tinted? What would a clear intellect be like? How would I recognize it? How could I go about measuring mine for tint?

When I meet a person, can I tell the difference between a crackpot and cracked pot?

What flowers surround me?

Next time you are angry, rate this anger on a scale of 1-10.

Then, with your eyes closed, begin to tap the palms of your hands alternately, right, left, right, left etc. The fingertips of your right hand touch the palm of your right hand. Then left fingertips on the left palm.

As you do this, merely focus on the physical sensation of the tips touching the palms. Make no effort to think nice thoughts or to mentally attempt to calm down in any other way.

After one minute, rate your degree of anger again.

Do this until you are feeling bored or have significantly reduced your anger.

Ask yourself,If given the choice to be angry or to attempt to lessen my anger by using this method, would I choose to lessen my anger, in most instances? Do I sometimes “like” to be angry, resentful, or indignant?

If I can abate the intensity of my emotions using this method, should I make a conscious attempt to do so more often?

What is it about the intensity of anger that depends upon an imbalance between the two sides of my nervous system and that it can so easily be reduced so quickly? What does this say about my initial insistence that the “triggering issue” that “caused” this emotion is to be dealt with intellectually and/or otherwise?

If there were a “magic button” that I could press and instantly bring me to “normal” every time I got emotionally negative, would I? Would I?

What can I do that is preventative that involves maintaining a balanced nervous system? What can I do before I must choose to intervene with a tool such as tapping palms? How can I “own” my nervous system and how it reacts?

Would I push the button if I found myself attracted to a person who was not my spouse/partner? Under what circumstances do I feel strong emotions ARE positive and life supporting?

Do I know how to “go with” an emotion and even help it intensify? If I can help it intensify, can I reverse that process? How would I go about doing that?

Can I be my own psychologist?

Imagine yourself to be on a tightrope that extends in front of you into the distance forever. The rope is bright even in the distance and glows from within. With only the rope visible, you are otherwise in complete darkness.

You look down and see nothing but blackness, but then, suddenly, on one side of the rope is a huge crowd of demons and monsters wanting you to fall into their midst. They pulsate a sickening wave of evil.

At the same moment, on the other side appears a wonderful choir of angelic beings singing of their love for you. Their radiance fills you with bliss.

Now quickly note-on which side are the angelic beings? Right or left?

Ask yourself,What part of me makes these decisions?

How is it that my imagination so easily determine things and create visions, scenarios, probabilities, etc., and yet I do not use this power of mine very often in my daily life to help me make other kinds of decisions?

Why does this imagined scenario seem so ordinary and easily envisioned by me when in reality it is such a fantastic situation?

Am I left handed?

In the vision, how did I feel about my “role” in the situation? Was it familiar to me in a symbolic fashion? What parts of my real life had me looking at aspects of this scene as “ordinary” after a fashion? How come I did not react to this with fear?

Could I feel this way when challenged in daily life as I have just now felt in this imagined dilemma? Can I be “above it all?”

If I were a saint, would life’s terrors and attractions, be equal to me in the sense that they are both nervous system activities?

If I fell from the tightrope, just at the moment I lost my balance, and I was certain that I was about to fall, would it initially matter to me which side I was falling on, or would my reaction almost totally be that I was falling from a height?

Have I fallen from such a height? When I was born was I floating above it all on my innocence?

Pick your favorite from the following words: love, affection, or devotion.

Now actually feel or at least pretend that you are feeling that word’s emotion. (It is okay to remember a particularly strong experience you once had that contained this emotion.) Identifying that you have accomplished this feat might be merely the recognition of a faint impulse of thinking. This may be an extremely subtle experience, but that is allowed. The key concept here is that “something” within your experiencing at the moment can be labeled by you as love, affection or devotion.

Now maintain that emotion or pretense of that emotion (and/or maintain thoughts about a previous experience of that emotion.) This may not be a steady flow of emotion. It may be a rapidly “flickering” thought process that “now and then” alights upon the chosen emotion.

Now, while having that emotion, think of your worst enemy.

Ask yourself,Does my emotional state color how I think of someone?

Does how I feel predispose me to seeing another person’s good points or faults?

Can I stop any emotion’s effects on the content of the thoughts I am having without having a change occur in the emotion?

What is the value of being able to start up an emotion by putting my attention on the emotion’s descriptive terms or previous experiences of that emotion? Can I use this for a practical tool in “real life?”

Does thinking about my worst enemy create negative emotions in me all the time? Do I have a choice? Can I think of my worst enemy without also having to manufacture a negative emotion during this thought process?

Does my worst enemy cause these emotions, or do I?

What are my reasons for creating and entertaining negativity in my nervous system when nothing in my present circumstances is directly “calling forth” that emotion? Why do I indulge in this manner?

Stand in a place with sounds from the wind or a radio or office machines. While listening to these sounds, start counting inside your mind from one to one hundred. While you are counting and listening to the sounds, tap your hand on the side of your leg in time with your counting and then read something.

Ask yourself,While you are doing all this, ask yourself these types of questions repeatedly:

Who is doing all this activity?

Who is listening?

Who counts?

Who taps?

Who reads?

Who continues activities when I am almost fully attending to something else?

Can I go “fully automatic?” Can I merely observe my thoughts, emotions, actions, etc.? Am I actually doing this now?

What would be the long-term advantage to learning to “let go” and to merely observe the functioning of my nervous system without “getting involved with it?”

If I could “just let go” and observe my life, would this be any different from my concept of God’s methods of knowing about “me?”

Two plus two is fourteen. Awareness being independent of perception is the ultimate truth. An ant can pick up an elephant. Laughter is uplifting. Dirt and water makes good soup. Sunshine often brightens a person’s outlook. Thinking evil thoughts for hours each day is a good hobby. Prayer is silence singing. Water is the ultimate poison. Expansion of happiness is the agenda of life. All television shows are good for young children to watch. Flying in your dreams is good practice. All printers should only have white ink. Rest, balanced diet, lots of water, exercise, earnestness, and gratitude will fix any broken life. Mickey Mouse is the antichrist. God loves. Only bugs know the secret of life. There is a period at the end of this sentence. The world record for speed typing is three words per minute with zero mistakes. The ground state of pure existence is the basis of the witnessing of the awareness of universal consciousness as it plays with qualities that are experienced individually in time and space.

Ask yourself,When I read the above paragraph, did I even once have a doubt about my own existence? Am I beyond the true and the false?

What is truth for me? What is absolutely true? Am I undeniably, absolutely true?

How smart and educated would I have to be to know I was experiencing a thought?

Am I always alive?

If I only thought truthful thoughts for all my waking hours for decades, would that change the witness of my life? Am I immutable?

Is there any thought I could possibly think that would change, harm, or even kill the witness of my life? Am I immortal?

If I INSTANTLY were transported a zillion light years away or was sent back into time a million years, is there a danger I could lose my witness? How do I always know where I am at? Am I omnipresent?

When I wake up from a deep, dreamless, sleep, why am I so sure it was deep and dreamless? Was my witness there when the experience of deep, dreamless, sleeping occurred? If I suddenly lapsed into that exact state for a few seconds and “snapped back” equally suddenly, how would I describe my having had an experience of such thoughtlessness? Would I doubt that I had had it? Am I omniscient? Am I so sensitive that I can even know the experience of nothing?

How fast do I have to be to turn around quickly enough to see the image of the back of my head in a mirror? How can I meet my soul for a few seconds? How would I describe that experience after snapping back from the meeting?

How would I describe the experience between my next two thoughts? How would I express that experience?

How would I think about it?

Read the following with the background thought “All this is unrecorded truth.”

In the entire universe, astronomers tell us of billions of galaxies, and that each galaxy has billions of stars, and that many of these stars have planets. In all the vastness there are billions of other objects in space; there’s huge clouds of dust and gas, black holes and comets. Almost nothing, NOTHING is known about all of this.

Inside a glass filled with a carbonated beverage, we see bubbles grow in size at the bottom and on the sides of the glass. They get bigger until they break the bond and rise to the top of the liquid where they burst and disappear. Almost nothing, NOTHING of the travels of all the bubbles in all the glasses of the world is known-despite the fact that perhaps trillions of bubbles a day are thus “born”, live a short “life” and “die”.

In deepest jungles, on tops of mountains, in the depths of the seas, trillions upon trillions upon trillions of atoms move constantly crashing into each other. Almost nothing, NOTHING of these motions are recorded by any known agency.

Billions of people on this planet have thoughts, emotions, and sensations every day. They come and go in an instant. They are so fleeting that hardly one in a million is “important enough” to gain the attention of the mind “strongly”. Almost none, NONE of these thoughts are recorded in any fashion whatsoever. And no one complains about this.

Across the universe, twelve billion light years away may be a star so bright that even at that great distance it can still be seen. A few of its uncounted photons of light reach your eyes. Yet billions of light years away from both the star and you may be a deep cave which is straight but quite narrow and only on one night of the year does a few of that very same star’s photons penetrate to its farthest wall. The entirety of space is flooded with such photons from all the stars to all the eyes and walls and dust particles throughout the universe. Almost none, NONE of these photons leave a trace of having traveled these distances or impacted at their “final” destinations.

Millions of books have been written by human beings. Almost none, NONE of the wisdom of these books is known by anyone.

Ask yourself,What do I know, and what the heck does it matter?

In this immensity of time and space, why do I bother caring about anything when I consider the shortness of my life and the utter utter loss of information all around and within my life?

Of what import is a particular memory or record of something when it is one incident or object that has been duplicated or nearly duplicated a billion trillion times throughout the history of the universe? What kind of conceit is it that I feel that anything I have or have done or am is unique and deserves special attention and preservation?

Who cares? Who really cares that entire galaxies with billions of stars and billions of planets can be crushed into “the unknown” by a black hole, and that this happens uncounted times in the history of the universe?

With such magnitude of destruction, with such certainty of the eventual and complete erasure of everything human from the face of history, what makes me think anything is special enough to cling to? Who am I kidding?

What’s the deal with life? What’s so precious about billions of entities eating billions of entities so that billions more entities can be created to appease the hunger of billions of entities?

If God gave me the brain that could do it, and made it my job to track all this, would this be a good job? Or have I been given the reverse of this job, and I’m not very good at it?

Is my memory basically a child’s scrapbook filled with pictures of mud pies I baked?

In all this, ALL THIS, what really matters?

What really matters most: what I experience, how I experience it, or that during the experience I AM?

When I love, what is more important-the love radiating from me or the objects that are lit by it?

Do I need a memory to love?

Ancient tale retold:

So long ago that today’s world would be almost pure magic to them, two monks were close friends in the river side ashram of their guru. In that age, one would see something in the eyes of the guru, and from that point on, one was a dead duck, a total goner, in-the-cult-fer-shur, done deal, and cooked goose. One would wash the clothes, tend the garden, sweep the floors, and do anything to be of a help to the ashram’s community of spiritual adherents, and so be allowed to hang around with the guru.

Over time, by psycho-alchemy and osmosis, the very personality of the guru would be imbued into them-especially those with open hearts. The days passed in strict routine. Same food, same work, same study, same rough cloth robes, same lecture hall, SAME! It won’t take much to imagine how boring it could become-especially to those two young monks I started off telling you about.

They were, ah, so young. Young enough that, despite their love for the guru, their deep understanding about the tenants of spirituality, and their almost desperate need to become enlightened, they still could be had. Yep, had.

Oh let me tell you, brothers and sisters, had. Yes, brethren, Had. And that started with H back then, and that didn’t rhyme with T, but it stood for trouble just the same, right there in River City. You know, HAD! No matter how much you get your life together, no matter how structured your environment, no matter how deep your intellectual grasp of how evolution works, no matter how spit polished you can get your sandal straps, you CAN BE HAD!

And so it was that the monks would stand aside under a tree between tasks and talk with each other about the life on the other side of the ashram’s walls. And, of course, a great L of a longing arose in their hearts to know something more about the wicked world-especially the warm, soft, cooing parts.

Finally hadness was fully risen, and they determined to sneak out at night and sample the hereinaboveaforementioned wares of those who would willing provide the exact increase in temperature they sought from cuddly cooers.

But, ah, even hadness is not absolute. Yeah, you’re gonna get it leaking into the most retentive communities, but even a heart fully aflame can sometimes weasel out on ya, and the next thing you know, you’re back in the fold without ever having had even a whiff of the fragrances that cloaked the cooers. And so, get this, there they are at the fence, the evening lecture is about to start, and one monk stops hearing the call of the wild.

“I can’t go. I must take a hold of myself. I’m going to lecture.”

“I understand, but I’ve got to go. I’ll be back tonight.”

And over hopped one, and off to the lecture hoped the other.

Now here is the strange part. During the lecture, the hoper imagined the hopper’s exploits.

“Oh, by now, surely he is …… And, I’ll bet that rascal is…… I just know he’s……”

Now, at the end of the lecture, questions and answers were allowed, and this nightly dialogue was where the community would touch upon any issue mundane or spiritual.

But, at least one young monk was mentally asking himself.

“Why didn’t I go with him? Ooooo, I wonder what he’s doing right now?”

Finally, as the night was closing, at last, this young, lone, monk stood and asked.

“Guruji, please help me understand the ways of my heart. Tonight, one of us is missing. I saw him go straight to town, and I know what he was planning on doing, for indeed, I was planning on going with him. But at the last, I knew it was right to stay here. And now, I find I cannot forgive him. It seems such an affront to all that we do here and our great love for you and your life’s work. He’s been gone for hours now, and, alas, I can only imagine what now cannot be undone.”

All eyes were on the guru’s face. All knew who was missing. All knew what the town offered. All knew that the guru would know how to properly separate hopers from hoppers, and guide them.

And, lo, it was so. This guru wasn’t faking ANYTHING. Infinity was his middle name. If turned into a human being, Righteousness would have been found supplicating before him. We’re talkin’ GURU here!

Just as the guru was about to speak, everyone could see that the his eyes had become focused on someone just arriving at the back of the room. Without even turning around, all knew that only one person could possibly be coming there at that hour. It was, indeed, the wayward monk.

The guru spoke.

“Tell me.”

Without hesitation, the young man spiritually sank to his knees, and looking downwards began to describe his exploits that evening with complete honesty. And soon they all knew that, now, fully entered into the history of ALL THIS, all that their uppercase F Fear could have trepidated about had happened. After he stopped speaking, the silence in the room went from not-a-sound to not-a-thought. Everyone waited for the guru to speak before they would think again.

“How did it feel?”

Can you imagine the one single thought everyone in the room had next? Well, I can’t, but it must have been a doozy, eh?

The young man sank even further, and now, whatever had kept his body standing evaporated-flaming to nothingness-in an inner conflagration fanned by shame. He collapsed to the floor with a sigh, and again, recounted his actions and told how it had felt to be tortured all night, how, he could not stop seeing the guru in his mind and imagining what the guru would think, and what the guru would do, and what the guru would say to him. Well, you get the picture -this kid could have been a human balloon for all the eating-himself-up-inside he had done that night.

The guru spoke:

“How many here knew he was missing tonight?”

All hands rose.

“So, for this I give thanks-that one of you spent the entire evening with me.”

With that, he stood, and the evening was over.

Ask yourself,

Just what do I pay attention to all day long? What’s the message here? What’s my “top ten list” look like?

What’s the moral of this story? Really now, do guilty thoughts constitute love? Is attention in any form, well, attention? Could I feel angry at someone I love and yet that would still be love?

When I consider all the evil of the world that I DO NOT pay attention to, just what am I doing when I see some itty-bitty speck in the eye of another?

What’s worse, me putting the almost absolute inner power of my nervous system on an evil concept, or for a few seconds, physically and mentally “messing up a bit?” How do I compare “the time consumed finding fault” to the spending of a much lesser amount of time and thoughts actually being at fault?

When I AM single-minded, well, am I REALLY single-minded? Just how many thoughts in a row about ANYTHING can I have? What’s my record-like six maybe? If a monkey was jumping from branch to branch looking for the sweetest piece of fruit, would that remind me of my attention span?

What about this guru stuff-do I have anyone or creed in my life that could “HAD” me like that monk? How dangerous would that be to have something, anything, mean that much to me? Something external? Does that sound right to me?

This whole guru business-how do I fit with that? Is truth universally available or not? Is everything important already inside me right now, or do I need some holes filled in? Do I have a hole in my head? More than one?

Do I have a Guinness Book of World Records number of holes in my head?

More?

Okay, let’s say that I “allow” a guru to be a living embodiment of eternal truth to me? Can I justify that since I am, after all, the one who’s interpreting the poetry of the guru’s life, and that certainly whatever meaning I come up in that process will have to have had its origin from the “pool of verity” that we all contain, right? Right? Only truth from within will resonate with its reflection found without, right? Right?

But, if I really believe that, then why would I choose to “read guru poems” instead of diving right into the pool itself and finding out what he’s writing poems about?

Pool? An ocean really, right? Am I spending my life on the beach “looking good” or am I “hanging ten?”

Am I a surfer or turfer?

Time to make some faces. As will become quickly apparent, this exercise is best done alone. Read the follow-up questions BEFORE the exercise and use them to be aware of the emotions you feel when you do the exercise.

Do all the following facial “postures” without a mirror. Hold each one for a few seconds. After you have done this list, then do them all again in front of a mirror.

Stick your tongue all the way out with your lips tightly encircling it with equal pressure around the girth. At the same time lower your eyebrows and stare straight ahead.

Do the above but look to one side. Then look from side to side rapidly WITHOUT moving the tip of your tongue.

Bite your bottom lip so that it is entirely inside your mouth, and at the same time, crinkle your nose and flare your nostrils and raise your eyebrows.

Keeping your lips closed, push your tongue as much as possible up into the space between your upper lip and front teeth, and cross your eyes.

Smile as broadly as possible-way way beyond normal, as much as you can. While doing that, look from side to side rapidly. Then repeat this with your eyebrows lowered.

As much as is possible, open your mouth, open your eyes, and raise your eyebrows.

Do the above face and stick your tongue out and try to touch your chin with it while looking from side to side rapidly.

Puff out your cheeks with air as much as possible, scrunch up your shoulders as if to hide the sides of your neck, and squint your eyes.

Pull your bottom lip out with your hand and place it so that it overlaps your upper lip as much as possible. Let go with your hand. Then, look downwards.

Smile as much as you can without opening your lips. Once “in position”, alternate back and forth with opening and closing the lips so that the smile is maintained throughout the movements.

Purse your lips and push them out as much as possible while looking from side to side.

Hide your lips inside your mouth and look upwards.

Ask yourself,Why does my emotional “set” immediately change with these expressions?

Do I use my expressions like “spice” that I add to my communications or do they arise “by themselves?”

What would be the payoff to becoming more aware of my face movements during communications with others?

How often do I suppress facial expressions when I communicate to withhold my true feelings from others? What is my typical method for doing this?

When no one is in the room, and I am sitting quietly, what is my face saying? Do I communicate with myself like this even though I cannot see the results without a mirror? Are facial expressions a type of “mumbling to myself?”

When I manipulate my face, does it feel more like an object I am moving or that I am “moving me?”

What is the perfect facial expression that expresses the true me? Could I make faces in the mirror and find a “me” expression?

Why did I feel silly sometimes, even though no one saw me doing this? What part of me demands that certain “masks” are not to be worn?

Which expression in this exercise was the one with which I am most familiar or is a similar to a face I have used many times in my life?

If I could always be aware of my face, would that help me know the emotional content of my mind better?

What would happen if I did these faces in front of an authority figure in my life? A boss? A teacher? A religious leader? A psychiatrist? A person I have just met? Would challenging myself like this help me be freer with emotions? Why is a making face in front of others so intimate for me?

What face do I use to tell the truth?

When I look into the mirror and have “just a blank expression,” what do I look like I am “saying?” What would this face be used to mean to others if I gave it to them?

Why don’t I make faces to myself in the mirror “a lot?” Why don’t I need to see my outside’s expression of my inside?