Incorrect Judgements Archives

Prologue

This poem examines what it means to observe, to remember, and to imagine within the limits of human awareness. It follows a chain of simple “if–then” reasoning to explore how perception shapes reality, how memory reshapes the past, and how expectation invents the future. It does not claim answers, but traces consequences—drawing from ideas in physics, psychology, and everyday experience—to invite reflection on what we truly know when we say we are present.

If time is a line we feel but never see,
Then now is the only place our mind can be.
If light can act as wave until we stare,
Then what we watch may change what is there.
If measurement turns the spread into a point,
Then seeing may fix what was once disjoint.
If the observer plays a hidden role,
Then knowing may shape what we call whole.
If we can only stand inside the now,
Then all that we know must happen somehow.
If each thought is bound to present sight,
Then past and future are made in this light.
If memory is built from fragile trace,
Then truth may bend as we give it a face.
If minds rebuild what they think they recall,
Then stories of self may not be all.
If witnesses often disagree,
Then memory is less than certainty.
If the brain fills gaps it cannot see,
Then fiction may feel like history.
If we imagine a future ahead,
Then we walk through thoughts, not paths we tread.
If fear can paint what has not come,
Then the future can feel already done.
If we compare ourselves with those we meet,
Then identity forms from what we see on the street.
If aging is known by watching others decay,
Then we borrow time in a secondhand way.
If the body changes beyond our control,
Then time writes its mark on the living whole.
If the mind resists what it cannot keep,
Then loss becomes a thought we bury deep.
If we observe ourselves as we think,
Then we stand both inside and at the brink.
If self-awareness splits the view in two,
Then we are both the watcher and the view.
If attention selects what we hold tight,
Then reality narrows within our sight.
If what we ignore fades into the blur,
Then absence can feel like it never were.
If focus acts like a quiet gate,
Then what gets through may shape our fate.
If perception is filtered before it is known,
Then the world we see is partly our own.
If language frames the thoughts we keep,
Then words decide how ideas speak.
If simple terms can carry deep weight,
Then meaning can grow without ornate state.
If emotion colors what we perceive,
Then feeling decides what we believe.
If fear and hope both guide the eye,
Then truth may shift as they pass by.
If logic follows what we assume,
Then flawed first steps can lead to gloom.
If we test belief with careful doubt,
Then clearer paths may sort things out.
If science shows limits in what we can know,
Then certainty is softer than we show.
If quantum rules suggest chance at the base,
Then order may rise from a shifting place.
If randomness lives beneath the seen,
Then control is less than it may seem.
If cause and effect still guide our day,
Then patterns help us find a way.
If we learn from error and revise our view,
Then growth is built from what is not true.
If each mistake can refine the mind,
Then wisdom is error redesigned.
If we live through moments one by one,
Then life is never fully done.
If each “now” replaces the last we knew,
Then we are always becoming new.
If identity shifts with time and thought,
Then the self is a process, not a spot.
If we cling to who we think we are,
Then change may feel like a distant star.
If awareness can soften rigid belief,
Then seeing clearly may bring relief.
If we accept limits in what we know,
Then honest thought can still grow.
If meaning is made from how we attend,
Then purpose depends on the lens we send.
If we choose where our focus will stay,
Then we help shape our lived display.
If reality meets us through mind and sense,
Then truth includes both world and lens.
If we question gently what we assume,
Then thought can open a wider room.
If no final answer is firmly sealed,
Then wonder remains unrevealed.
If we stand in the present, aware but unsure,
Then the human condition remains obscure.
:::

DCG

After putting some thought on my current everyday experiences, I reflected a great deal about just what the root cause for some of my current perspectives were bound to. Again the discovery of being “mindful” is an important factor in reexamining prior perspectives that may be operating in the background of our everyday thoughts. While we manage our day to day experiences, our possible misdirected thoughts are fed into our analysis for each and every day and if they go unchecked, they will skew our conclusions. The information we receive from the eyes don’t amount to much, if the mind is blind. Being “Mindful” is being aware of the false conclusions one can draw if one is misdirected by prior incorrect habitual modes of thinking that may not be accurate. They may indeed be formed earlier in ones life, but continue to influence that person through-out their lives if these principles in their analyses go unquestioned, unexamined, and unchallenged in the process.

The practice of attention enables one to wake up! Awareness transforms experience. There is no right or wrong way; there is only being more or less conscious. The goal is to become more fully conscious of ourselves, not to correct ourselves. Because they rely on memory, efforts at self-correction are always removed from the immediacy of the moment.
Jealousy – unconsciously give way to hatred. Struggle against it by thinking equates to guilt. We must instead examine the thought itself and attempt to understand the context. Thought and feelings can then become windows to awakening.

Right Thinking was examined by Gautama Buddha and incorporated in his Eightfold Path that reveals some of the challenges of how the mind can distort experience.

“Thoughts” as Emerson put it, “rule the world” for the simple reason that thoughts determine feelings and actions. We can think ourselves into happiness or a deep depression. Evidence can show that we can think ourselves into healthy state or into unhealthy illnesses.
We can think ourselves into a narrow, limited world characterized by procrastination and paralysis, or we can think ourselves into a noble creative life and the actions that give it shape and substance. If we only take care of our thoughts, our feelings and actions will take care of themselves.
For better or worse, we give to others the fruits of our own thinking by the same token, we are influenced by the thinking of those with whom we associate. It certainly helps to make friends with people who have made friends with their own minds. Observe people who are chronically bored or depressed, and you will find they dwell on negative thoughts. Observe people who are consistently happy, creative, and productive, and you will find remarkable similarities in the quality of their thinking. By our thinking, we create our individual and collective experience of reality. Changing our thinking for the better improves the quality of our own lives, and in doing, uplifts all around us.

The subconscious patterns of thought that can emerge out of an individuals upbringing, training, or exposure from a previous time in their lives to ineffective measures of dealing with their experience in the world can duly proselytize that persons mind set. What is even more difficult to circumvent is the dream states these people experience and are susceptible to unpleasant derivations of their conscious lives if the sleeping untrained mind continues to revert to the faulty subconscious training from an older learned program from the past when they dream. Since they are unconscious in a dream state, the mind will resort to programming fed from the unconscious mind that often takes hold of their dreams.