Understanding What Perception Means To Us

Perception refers to using our sensory organs – eyes, ears, hands, tongue, and nose to process the information we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. We organize and interpret this sensory information to understand the world around us.

Most likely, we are conditioned to believe that this sensory information is all we need to make informed decisions and take necessary actions. But we fail to recognize that our personal experiences, expectations, and beliefs play a part too.

Take a piece of chocolate as a simple example.

·       You see that the chocolate is dark brown, smooth, and has a tempting appearance.

·       It feels smooth and slightly cool to the touch.

·       You can smell its rich, cocoa aroma in the air.

·       Put it into your mouth, and it tastes sweet and creamy with a hint of bitterness.

Based on this sensory information, you might conclude that it is a piece of dark chocolate. Now, based on the influence of personal factors, you may or may not enjoy the chocolate. If you love milk chocolates more, you might find dark chocolate to be less enjoyable.

If someone told you that the piece of chocolate was expensive and of high quality, your perception of taste might be enhanced. Furthermore, if you believe that dark chocolate is healthier in comparison to sugar-rich milk chocolates, you might enjoy dark chocolate more because of its perceived health benefits.

This example illustrates how your personal experiences, expectations, and beliefs might influence your overall enjoyment and perception of the chocolate.

But should we be ruled by our sensory information, personal experiences, beliefs, and expectations of something? What if we gained a neutral perspective on things?

Young Sing (screams): “Let her go.” Sing demands a bunch of bullies to stop bullying the little deaf girl.

The bullies beat little Sing: “A total idiot and a deaf-mute. What a bunch of losers.” They walk away, laughing at little Sing.

Years later, when Sing becomes an adult, he is conditioned to believe that good guys never win. He recalls his childhood of getting beaten by the bullies to which he tells his friend, “I realized that good guys never win. I want to be bad. I want to be the killer!”

Sing is a character in the popular Chinese movie called Kung Fu Hustle. While he struggles throughout the movie to enter the ranks of a notorious group called the Axe Gang, he journeys through the ups and downs of his own perceptions.

Also, while the little girl he saved as a child grows up, she is the only one who still perceives him as the good guy. She also realizes the internal struggle Sing is experiencing about his misbeliefs but concealing his pain from everyone.

Sing’s perception of himself and the world around him is what one can call only seeing what one is prepared to see.

“People only see what they are prepared to see.”

~R W Emerson

Like Sing, many people only see what they can see in front of them, allowing external experiences to guide their thoughts, decisions, and actions. If a different angle is presented, most people cannot process it.

But only seeing what one is prepared to see leaves hardly any room for growth or progress. The mind and heart should be open to learning new things with a more acceptable perspective. But due to one’s rigid beliefs and stubbornness to not accept that there are other ways to look at things, the soul will always remain on the level and never rise.

The best way to overcome this predicament is by working on one’s Spiritual Quotient (SiQ).

In the process of enhancing one’s SiQ, one can gain the ground of neutrality. Doing this can help dissolve the influencing factors of sensory information, personal experiences, beliefs, and expectations.

Transcending to a state of self-awareness can help an individual see things from a neutral perspective and not be guided by one’s conditioned instincts.

Therefore, unless we transcend above the property of interpretation, we will continue to struggle with one-sided perception.

Here is a profound poem written by Madison Montgomery, ‘On Perception’

You do not see what I see from this river stream.

All the treasures in the world never had but one witness

Though they have been seen by thousands.

We never seen what they saw.

The eyes may have seen the same objective,

You would say…

The mind did not see the same thing.

The word ‘perception’ has been twisted quite a lot.

It has been replaced with ‘seen’ or ‘thought.’

But we cannot see perception.

It is a transition to being.

On a deserted island or in the Antarctic,

Man would say, ‘I’ve seen it first, ‘ but what he

Should say is, ‘I perceived it first.’

With all the creatures in this small world

Who are we to say that no one has seen it before?

No man? Maybe

But a bird’s eye view has seen much far than we.

Who’s to say that it is not theirs?

They have chose to leave it be

For the rest of the world.

Obsession is the same as Depression;

But what similarities does it have to Perception?

It is people’s obsession for possession,

Which comes from our only lonely perception.

A philosopher’s desire for the truth

Is the same as a stubborn man’s for pride.

It cannot be unshaken

And over time gets more wicked.

The seeker of truth looks for his own truth

And the seeker of pride wants for his own pride

Because of perception neither one can be right.

Thus perception cannot be said in words

Nor can a piece of land be claimed as ours.