Perceptions: How the Mind Separates the Whole

I came to realize clearly that mind is no other than mountains and rivers and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars. ~ Dogen

Our entire world is viewed through the lens of our perceptions. How we view ourselves, others, and objects. Our entire world is created by the thoughts we project outward from the beliefs and conditions we have built since childhood. We experience things as being independent and outside of the mind, but our experience of life is just a projection of the mind. In our power to perceive is our power to create the experience. This is our intimate connection with all that is. Because everything exists only in the way I perceive it to, I am deeply and intimately connected to all things in this way.

I am not saying that things do not conventionally exist. Things exist: I sit in a chair right now as I write on my computer. I do not deny that my body is here, fingers tapping away on the keys. Brian exists, yet I don’t exist the way others perceive me to exist. Even I view myself through the lens of my own perceptions, so I only exist to myself the way I perceive myself. And I exist to you only the way you perceive me as well. We often see someone or something through the lens of our perceptions and have a fixed view of it as static and unchanging, when the reality is that everything is constantly changing, in constant flux. For example, if I had a piece of chocolate cake and presented it to two people, one may say, “Yum I love chocolate cake!” The other may have had a negative experience with cake in the past and think, “Yuk I can’t stand chocolate cake.” This cake now exists as two different things, one that is a source of pleasure and goodness and the other as a source of aversion and disgust, when in reality it is just a piece of cake that is dependent on an infinite amount of circumstances to exist. Perhaps I left the sugar out of the cake, when the chocolate cake lover takes a bite, he or she may grimace and think, “Yuk I don’t like that chocolate cake.”

This is a simplistic example of what we are doing all the time to things and people, including ourselves. We may think, He is an angry person, she is a spiritual person, and so on. Both things and people are constantly changing; our bodies and minds are in a state of constant flux and in fact are conditions that depend on many factors to exist.

All masters have realized that by changing our minds, our perceptions, we change our lives and the world around us. Einstein said, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” The decision is ours, and in fact many believe that the only real choices we have are in how we experience the perfection all around us. We have the choice to experience the moment, and it starts with our thoughts, which create the emotion, and thus how we experience life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force—that thoughts rule the world.” In the past several blogs We have been investigating how our beliefs and views create our thoughts, which create emotions that lead us to action, or inaction, which physically create our worlds. The simple act of shifting our perceptions can be very powerful in our lives.

There was a woman known as Peace Pilgrim who walked the Earth bringing her message of peace to all who would listen. She once said, “If you knew how powerful your thoughts were, you would never think a negative thought.” Our minds are very powerful tools and players in creating our reality, so wouldn’t it be wise to be able to go in and shift our perceptions?

I recently heard a person talking about a celebrity, saying how she didn’t like him because he was a jerk and a pig. I asked her if she knew him. She replied that she didn’t but had heard a story of him doing something or acting in some way one day. I asked her if she ever had a bad day or a time she regretted saying or doing something. Of course she had, don’t we all? I then proposed that perhaps this man is not as bad as she perceived. Perhaps he was having a bad day. And in his case, the bad day or act gets publicized worldwide.

I do not know this man, and wasn’t defending him, but was pointing out the fact that we fix people into labels. We do this with ourselves all the time: we may have screwed something up or perhaps we were picked last for the baseball games in gym class, and now we have this perception that we are a bad baseball player. I must be terrible, we think, I screwed up in the last game, I am always picked last. Even if we are a mediocre player we have the power to change if we wish. Yet we will never change if we keep the fixed perception of being a bad baseball player.

Think of a perception you hold about yourself and analyze why you see yourself as such. If it is negative and you wish to change it, investigate all the causes and conditions that led to that belief and perception. Perhaps it started when you were told something as a child.

So who do you think you are? Make a list of ten things you perceive yourself to be. Try doing five positive and five negative. Now look at the five negative things and investigate why you perceive yourself to be this. What can you do to change that perception of yourself? Do you perceive yourself to be lazy? Why? What actions can you take to change this? Remember it starts with the view, the perception, then the action. If we are lazy, chances are we have a view of ourselves as being such, and so we live up to that view. Yet, once we change our inner world of perceptions, our outer world changes as well.

Do you wish to be a slave to the perceptions of others, or the perceptions of yourself? You can never control how others perceive you, but you can control how you perceive yourself. Do not worry or fret how others see you. If I give a talk to 2,000 people, there will be 2,000 different perceptions of who I am. But the only one that really matters is the perception I have about myself. When we change our perceptions, we change the way we look at ourselves and thus change ourselves. When we change our perceptions of the world and other people, we do the same. It is your choice.

We can practice observing our preconceived notions of others as well. We may see a homeless man, and all these preconceived notions may come flooding in: perhaps that man is an enlightened being or perhaps not, but we will never really know if we allow the prison of preconceived notions to keep our minds narrow. Maybe we see a holy man and think he or she is all knowing and good. He may well be, but may not be as well. The movie Kumare comes to mind, in which a man pretends to be a guru: he dresses like one, grows his hair long, and wears a beard. He plays off of the perceptions of what others believe a guru should look like and be, when in fact he is just a hip, thirty-three-year-old filmmaker from New Jersey pretending to be an Indian guru, or at least that’s the perception he projects.

The words from the wise Baba in Shambhala come echoing in, “Sometimes what we see isn’t necessarily what is there.” This is not to say there aren’t dynamic, wonderful people in the world, or despicable ones who cause much harm, but when we allow the automatic response of preconceived notions to mold the man, we aren’t really being very open minded to the possibilities.

When we realize that everything is only a perception of the mind—it exists, but it doesn’t exist the way we perceive it to exist—then we realize that we have a beautiful and intimate connection with everything and the ability to change it simply by changing our mind, which is perceiving it. You may say, “I don’t care how much I change my mind, this person will always be rude and difficult.” To a mind that perceives the other to be difficult and sees only a shallow flaw in another, then yes, but wisdom will reveal a person who suffers, a person who may be misunderstood, and perhaps then we can change our view from one of annoyance and avoidance to one of understanding and compassion toward another. This is one example of many.

Let us start with ourselves and the things we see in our world. Again I ask you, “Who do you think you are?” Because as Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”

An excerpt from “Small Steps to Giant Leaps”