This post is inspired by Gail’s post on her blog titled “A Critical Eye“. The post started off being about what one sees when taking a photo and then evolved into a discussion about perception and experience. So rather than clog up her comments box with a lengthy rant I thought I’d post about my thoughts here.
“Perception is projection” I was once told by Christopher Howard, a leading authority on the psychology of wealth and accelerated personal achievement.
What Chris is saying is that what we see is the result of the cumulation of our entire life experience i.e. of all the inputs into our psyche, our memory. It’s always fascinating how two people could look at the exact same thing and have different interpretations of it. So that tells us that it’s nothing to do with what is being observed but more to do with the observers themselves. Or as Gail so put it “and all of that takes place in the brain”.
So here’s the question: are we really in charge of our perceptions, and our thoughts?
Moving into the psychological realm now, Eckhart Tolle presents in “A New Earth“, the best-selling follow up to the powerful “The Power of Now“, his concept of ego. Note this is different to Freud’s explanation of ego.
As Tolle puts it:
The ego cannot distinguish between a situation and its interpretation of and reaction to that situation. You might say, “What a dreadful day,” without realizing that the cold, the wind, and the rain or whatever condition you react to are not dreadful. They are as they are. What is dreadful is your reaction, your inner resistance to it, and the emotion that is created by that resistance.
I am very concious of what Tolle is describing and have observed many occasions where myself and others have unconsciously reacted to situations and allowed the ego to take charge. Tying this back to the topic of perception before I digress any further, I would suggest that the eyes are the lenses, and the mind is the camera/processer.
What you see is what you want to see.