Perception

An old Sikh saying is, "You learn 25% of what you know from your teacher, 25% from yourself, 25% from your friends and the other 25% comes with time."

Perception

From the moment we journey into this world and to the moment we depart from this life, our body is constantly taking in signals from our environment through our five senses. These signals are interpreted, processed and stored in the cells of our bodies, i.e our memory cells. During the journey of life, the way our body interprets and processes these signals has a profound effect on the way we see the world and our reactions to events, thus giving rise to our perceptions. Furthermore, our brain is constantly making decisions that we are not consciously aware of. As we keep an open mind, live in the present and examine situations from different angles, our perception changes. An old Sikh saying is, "You learn 25% of what you know from your teacher, 25% from yourself, 25% from your friends and the other 25% comes with time."

Perception is a learned phenomenon - happiness is in the hand of the beholder

Although perception (the way we view the world and events and our reactions) may seem to be happening automatically; perception is learned. In other words, the way we react to situations is learned. What's already stored in our memory affects how we interpret and react to new events and situations. In other words, a person’s interpretation of any new situation is based on his experiences of the past. Our past is layered and buried in our memory cells, with happy times, hurts, sadness, anger, joy etc...Although we may not be aware of it, the past is alive inside of us, thus our body interprets new events based on the past, our knowledge, beliefs, past memories, frozen memories, hurts, etc... which influences how we view new situations and our reactions to new situations. We become unique in our own way, as no two people have the same thoughts, thus, each person will interpret an event differently. As a result, the way we perceive(react to) events could make our journey through life satisfying, fulfilled, miserable, dissatisfied or unhappy.

Our perceptions determines how we react - a reaction at the stop light

While I was driving home from work one day, a car stopped in front of me at the green light even though there was no reason to stop. A few days later, another car stopped in front of me at the green light, and a week later I stopped at the same green light. I could just imagine all the people who stopped at the same green light. I concluded that the reason we stopped at the green light was because our subconscious mind perceived something different other than the green light. Frozen patterns in our memory made us react this way. Here is a clue. A 4-way stop sign was recently replaced by this traffic light. When the 4-way stop sign still existed everybody had to stop at the intersection. Although we saw the green light with our eyes, our subconscious mind was strongly programmed for months or years to stop at this intersection. Even though the traffic lights replaced the 4-way stop sign, we had perceived something completely different from what was actually happening, based on frozen memories of the past as though we perceived the 4-way stop sign as still existing.

By changing our perceptions we can have a fulfilling and rewarding journey through life

A well known saying is "you can’t teach an old dog new tricks." The fact is everybody can change. If we change our perceptions (the way we see things) then we can change our experiences in life where we could become more fulfilled and satisfied. To change our perceptions we must have new interpretations of events with an open mind in the present and not on frozen patterns, hurts and memories of the past. The important thing to realize is as we process new information, we can have new perceptions (views) based on present moment awareness and thus we can learn new habits and patterns, which can become dominant over time, even when our past memories still exist.
While on my journey of life, I know my brain is constantly making decisions for me even when I'm not consciously aware, therefore, by doing positive things, forming good habits and behaviours, my body at a subconscious level will automatically make wise decisions when new situations arises, even when I’m not aware. As we learn new behaviours and habits, this will become dominant, even though memories of the past still exists.

We perceive, therefore we are

So choose your path carefully on your Life’s Journey, for all signals entering our bodies are programmed and stored into our memory cells even if we are not aware of it. Although perceptions (the way we react to the world ) seems to be happening naturally, it is in fact learned. We perceive, therefore we are.

By Brian Ally