dailydatewithgod

As humans, it is natural for us to notice distinctions, to be able to separate things out.  Our brain categorizes information by sorting things by their differences.  Those who are alike belong to one group and the things that are like that are in another.  It is a way of processing the information automatically so we do not have to be conscious of what we are doing with all the information coming at us.  It is almost like our brain is a big file cabinet and since the idea, we heard yesterday is like the one we heard a month ago it will go into that idea file.  If the person in front of us looks a particular way we can put them in the same file as someone else who looks or acts like them.  We would run out of fuel really quickly in the course of our day if we were to mentally be aware of all the automatic distinctions we were making.  This is a helpful mechanism but it can create fences in between the different files like fences between houses but we can’t see them.  We can literally have a difficult time combining two people or ideas because, in our minds, they are separate.  We experience it as confusion.  It is like the first time I came across my neighbor at the grocery store.  It was not like I had never seen a man I knew at the grocery store, but usually, when I see him he is entering his apartment.  We both saw each other and reacted with surprise.  We had just crossed a fence in our mind.  There are stronger fences we have built in our mind which do not get crossed by surprise.  Those are the fences we need the courage of our hearts to see through.  We all know what they are . . . the people who have hurt us, the idea that sounds preposterous, the experience that can never be fenced with ones we are willing to try again.  Our hearts create passageways through and above the fences.  Our hearts know that while according to our mind it looks like the fence we have up keeps us safe, it actually keeps us locked in our own yard.