You said something you thought was awkward. You feel a flush of heat and embarrassment. They all feel disgust with you now.
Is that reality - or just a feeling?
Someone was late to work. Surely they are lazy and don't care about your project together.
Is that reality - or just a thought?
You read some comments online and feel insulted. They are obviously a callous jerk.
It seem so convincing, but are we able to own our impression as ours? ... instead of automatically assuming it's how things are? Not everyone has this perception, after all.
Let's get into impressions a little further and try to inspire a direct taste for yourself:
"Don't let the force of an impression when it first hits you knock you off your feet; just say to it: Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test." — Epictetus
Appearances can be SO convincing. The initial feeling in our experience can be so strong, hooking us into believing without a doubt: it. is. this. way.
But in this core discipline of Stoic practice, we're interested in reality, and seeing through appearances, through impressions.
What is real, underneath my complaining. Underneath my judgement. Underneath this awful feeling. What is really real?
Catching impressions is about questioning feelings and thoughts, and questioning what can appear to be the wallpaper of our experience. Our reality. It seems this way. But what we come to discover as we do this work is that seems isn't reality.
The trick to catching and questioning impressions is to not leave anything out. No sacred cows.
Anytime we see through a false impression, our experience improves. It's always a trade up.
What hooks us is the juiciness of false impressions. That little twisted pleasure we get from insisting someone is just bad, or there is DEFINITELY a problem here, or that they are a jerk!
What happens when we catch these things and see through them, is that we get so much wellbeing back. False perception becomes clarity and wisdom. Hatred and judgement becomes safety, okayness, happiness, and friendliness.
Let's try it out for ourselves in the section below:
Find a recent life event where you thought someone was a jerk, something should've been different, something went wrong.
Call up the memory. Get a real feeling for that quality of that impression - any wrongness or judgement. Can you find the shape of the impression?
The basic instruction to begin to reveal impressions more and more is: How is it like?
Here's some more detailed questions to answer to help get going:
Can you trace its borders in your experience? Can you get a sense for how big it is?
Can you imagine it as a three dimensional shape? How would it look.
Can you describe what it feels like? Hot? Cold? Dull, sharp? Tense or relaxed?
If it were a color, what color would it be?
Practice questions like these help us to gain skill in noticing and catching impressions. They ask us to draw our attention inward to notice the impression and its shape, rather than simply move as merged with it.
The more we practice catching and then questioning/exploring these judgements instead of automatically going along with them, and the more clear we will get in different situations.
Once we catch an impression, we no longer have to mindlessly go along with it. We get to inhabit our lives. We get to choose.
The big Stoic recommendation is to know what's our business, and what's their business (and life's business). In other words: What is actually within our control here? Let's say we have this impression come forward as a thought and feeling of dread:
"They must think I'm such a jerk."
First, we can catch and notice the impression, rather than just assume it is reality. Second, we can see that their beliefs are not within our control. It's not our business. What are we doing trying to control something that isn't our business? So we can just drop it.
Third, now we can look at reality and be in reality directly, instead of references ruminating thoughts.
Simply by catching it (meaning we notice instead of going along with its world view) is already a gamechanger.
We don't want to just go along with all the random thoughts like "he's a jerk" - if that's the foundation for our interaction with someone, how will we act towards them? Even if we don't say anything overt, we probably are less friendly, more closed off, and so forth. We'll adopt an inner position as a victim.
Remember, "this is only an impression." It may not even have much to do with actual reality!
This is empowerment in a crazy world. This is how we gain the capacity to meet difficulty from our nobility, instead of our judgmental selves.
So, do we want to be free, clear, and wise? Or do we want to be a slave to arising phenomena, arising conditioning?