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The Power of Perception
Perception describes the way we organize, identify, and interpret sensory information through our nervous system. Our perceptions are shaped by learning, memory, and experience-what we already know. They generally occur automatically, outside our conscious awareness. If our experience tells us that life is cruel, we may continually perceive suffering rather than being able to taste happiness. If our learning and training tells us that trees are resources to be used for building materials and paper, it is unlikely that we'll perceive the sentience and wisdom of a tree.
Our perception is also affected by our expectations, our motivational state or intent, and our emotional state and personality. If I expect to be supported and appreciated within a group, and my past experience confirms that possibility, I am far more likely to perceive supportive experiences, and ignore or brush off unsupportive ones. If I have an aggressive personality, I will be quick to identify aggressive words or situations.In other words, our perceptions create our reality.
Humans and other creatures rely on perception to identify safety, food, danger, and so on. The other day I stopped to watch a Western Fence Lizard (blue belly) stalking a honeybee. Though I was five feet away, the lizard stopped hunting and instead focused on me for at least a minute. I continued to stand still until the lizard turned back to its prey, catching the bee in its mouth. This was perception at work.
Our physical and mental processing mechanisms tend towards confirming what we know, and shaping the world as we already see it. This is natural: perceptual experiences shape our responses, and those perceptions are based on existing responses and beliefs. In general, we do not perceive or experience things we do not think are possible.
It is very important to understand this dynamic when we want to effect change.
Perceptual Defense
Our perceptual defenses are based on the stories we tell ourselves, the assumptions we make, our cultural predispositions, and our personalities. All of these, in turn, are based on our experiences. These boulders of belief can strongly limit possibility.
Emotions are the end product of our experiences. The body reacts to scary experience with fearful emotion, to pleasant experience with openness to more. When we hold onto our emotional responses to an event, they are memorized by our bodies and imprinted in our fields; the longer they stay, the deeper they are held and the more they affect our subsequent emotions and expectations. Habits are held 95% in our bodies, and only 5% in our minds, according to scientist Dr. Joe Dispenza. So every change of intention, and every affirmation, requires that we "unmemorize" any emotions in the way and replace them with different experiences, resulting in a different emotion.
Working With Energy Instead of Mind to Make Changes
Working with our energy to release the old and fill with something new helps us change our perception and change the stories we tell ourselves. Working with our energy and the energy of fields we interact with is easier and more effective than working with our minds.
For many westerners, conditioned to be conceptual, this may be counterintuitive. We spend a lot of time in therapy (and with our friends), talking about what happened and who did what to us. Every time we repeat the story, we embed it more deeply in our bodies; we cement the emotions we connect to the experience. When we have another, similar experience, our bodies automatically draw on the previous emotions and apply them.
For example, a child has parents who expect a lot from him. When he gets a "B" in a class or only hits a single at his softball game, they say "You could have done better," rather than "Great job!" Hearing these responses over and over, the child grows up feeling like he's not good enough, or that he can never please anyone. Naturally, these emotions are stored in his body. When his boss asks him to change part of a report he's written, the boy-man's body remembers not-good-enough and he thinks, "Oh, the boss doesn't like my work," even though the boss only asked for a change. This emotional perception may morph into "I'll never get a raise" and more misery for the boy-man. When he goes home and his wife asks him for the fourth time to take out the garbage, the boy-man may explode with rage: again he's not enough. He'll blame the wife, while she is saying, befuddled, "But I just asked you to take out the garbage!" Every time the boy-man brings this story, his stored emotion, into the present, he reinforces his old perception, feels lonely and separate, and deepens the divide between his reality and what others are saying and doing.
This experience, or another like it, is deeply familiar to all of us. Even when we have managed to figure out the root emotional responses that we bring to the world, even when we "know" and "understand" the dynamics that affect us, it is continually a challenge to change the dynamics. It is continually a challenge to shift into a different perspective-reframing our story-so our emotional response can match the actual situation.
Trauma-induced emotions-those we store in our bodies from abuse, rape, prolonged violence, warfare, or accidents, including those our ancestors experienced-are even less prone to mind understanding. It is the limbic (reptilian) brain that triggers our animal-like, fight-or-flight responses. This part of our brain does not respond to words at all. Trauma experiences and their associated emotions are essentially walled off from conceptual understanding. More and more research tells us that to stop the nightmares, and to stop re-enacting the trauma in our families and workplaces, we have to replace the trauma experiences and essentially create a different identity.
No matter what experiences and emotions we have, when we want to widen, change, and open our perceptions, we have to consciously push the boulders aside and release whatever stands in the way. Then we have to be willing to try new things, and fill ourselves with different experiences!
The key to changing our perception is releasing the old and heavy energy, what no longer serves, and replacing it with new, lighter, more appropriate experiences. We could also think of this as unlearning and relearning. It helps to reflect on and formulate our intent in changing perception. It helps to try to experience as a child does, with "fresh eyes," without the barriers of ideas, rules, and filters between mind and heart.
In the beginning our intent may simply consist of openness and willingness to experience. Our openness and willingness to experience might prompt us to try sitting with our back to a particular tree, listening every day for a week to see what happens. The first step is trying something new. The shifting of perception follows experience.
The Book!
As some of you know, I've been working pretty intensely on my new book, Creating From the Heart of the Universe: Living Energy, Fields, and Our Future. It's interesting and challenging to put into practice the energy work, consciousness, and perception I write about for you each month!
From time to time, I'll share parts of the book-as I do this month-to further the conversation we are having as we move through world changes together. All feedback is welcome!
Meg Beeler/Earth Caretakers
Copyright � 2012
 | | Connection Despacho, Mt. Tamalpais |
"Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web." -- Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, 2nd c. CE |
