Circumstances Dictate
How are you feeling? What's your mood?
Chances are you'll answer based on what's going on in your world. Family. Relationships. Bodily health. Financial status. The state of things out there.
For most of us circumstances dictate how we feel. But it needn't be that way.
"Of course it's that way. Something happens and I feel something. That's not a decision. That's just what happened."
It certainly seems so. Such and such occurred, and as a result I feel this particular way. Cause, then effect, with nothing in between.
But look closely. There's a gap between what happened and our reaction ... where something decides what the event meant.
Choosing happens in that space. Not choosing to feel better. Choosing which mind we listen to about what transpired.
"So I'm supposed to talk myself out of grief."
Not for a second. The feeling is not the enemy, and pretending it away only buries the thing that needs looking at.
As the second lesson of A Course in Miracles puts it, "I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me." And when we notice that, we start to see how much of what we carry didn't arrive with the circumstance. We added it. And what we added can be undone.