What if the “reality” you see isn’t as “true” as you think it
is?
Perhaps it’s the reality of your health, or what doctors have
told you about your health, or what you’ve seen in the news
and in those around you…
Or perhaps it’s your finances, the economy, and again what you’re
“seeing” around you.
And then you bump into someone who has great health or great
finances or a great outlook on something that doesn’t look so
good to you, and you wonder, “what planet are they on?”
Well, today I have a suggestion, and a fun puzzle that will
anchor what I’m talking about.
The suggestion is that when you next meet someone or learn about
someone who has a “good” experience with something that you’d like
to have, too, but currently aren’t (e.g., a good experience of a
particular person, or of their own health, or of their finances
or business or of the economy…) how about releasing some of your
own tight hold on the “reality” you see, and being willing to
suspend your disbelief for a few moments—–long enough to consider
seeing things a different way, and even to adopt the belief, or
way of seeing things, that the person has who has the results or
experience you want…at least long enough to start to “see” and
experience things differently, too?
A little too abstract?
Think about this for a moment in terms of one or more areas of
your life that you’d like to be different.
How attached are you to your current way of seeing things?
Now click below to see an amazing “puzzle” that illustrates how
much our brain is conditioned to “see” in certain ways, based on
what we’re comparing to…or paying attention to…
(Personal confession: in the puzzle you’re about to see, I
actually had to print out the chessboard and cut out the actual
squares and hold them together before I could “see” the “truth”!)
Here’s the puzzle (click here).
Let me know your own experience of “seeing” differently and what
helped you shift your perspective on something that was important
to you in the comments below.
To a prosperous and joyful 2009 for you,
Dr. Ben
Things are probably not always the way we “see” them, or experience and interpret them with our human abilities. It is comforting that there seems to be a consensus about the way things are sometimes.
The chess squares really looked different to me, and I had to cut and paste them into my photo software to compare them side by side, too. That puzzle proves that what we sense, and how we interpret them can trick us.
I have heard that science has proven, as the observer, our beliefs and ideas affect the reality we experience. But you are the MIT graduate, so you must know more than me about that!
To that extent, we at least affect, if we do not create the world we perceive. Then — what we sense through our bodily senses are futher filtered through your belief system.
I have heard it said that Science has found out that we are aware of only 2000 bits of information out of the 400 Billion bits of information your brain is processing per second.
So there is far more that we are processing and simply not aware of? It must be there, or our brains wouldn’t need to bother processing it. I guess it is our subconscious mind that deals with most of what we sense . . .
Furthermore, there may be far more out in our reality that the 400 billion bits, but our sense systems aren’t capable of picking that information up to even feed to our brains in the first place. What are you not perceiving, that we simply are not hard wired to “pick up”?
I don’t think that everyone is aware of the exact same 2000 bits of information, and tho’ we each perceive a slightly different reality, there seems to be a general consensus . . . and we communicate that consensus with our words.
It is a leap into radical thinking for me. It has something to do with Quantum Mechanics, I think.
Heisenberg (1901-1976), core discoverer of quantum physics, said atoms are not things, they’re only tendencies, so instead of things, you have to think possiblities. They’re all possiblities of consciousness.” This in a nutshell describes my total understanding of the Principle of Uncertainty and the Wave-Particle Theory, which is basically; “When you are looking/measuring, “it” will be a particle of experience; when you are not looking/measuring, “it” will be a wave of possibility.”
You might think that what is good is good and what is bad is bad, but I’ve learned that is not true. The past 10 years have been a decade of uncertainty about what is good or what is bad, for me:
I love my healthy husband and make an appt. for a colonoscopy . . . that’s good!
No, that’s bad . . . he has cancer.
That’s good, early detection and chemo get rid of it.
That’s bad, there is one sneaky bit of cancer that grows back in his liver.
That’s good . . . it is so small it can be taken out with healthy margins and we can give even stronger chemo this time through a pump directly into his hepatic artery
No, that’s bad . . . tho’ it is true that there is no more cancer, the chemo had deadly side effects on his liver and fried his biliary system
Here’s the good . . . he can get on the list for a transplant
No, that’s bad, he is close to death in renal failure and there is a shortage of livers and people die everyday waiting for organ transplant.
That’s good . . . instead of getting a cadaver liver from who know how healthy a person . . . our son steps forward to donate half of his young healthy athletic-type liver . . .
Things are not always the way you “see” them. Right now the balance is on the good. There has been a consensus of both evidence and belief for each step along the way. I choose to believe that good wins the battle over evil . . .
I, too, had to print out the squares and compare. I have had many experiences in life where things are not always what they seem like. As time progresses, we find out the different story from our own perception. I am actually thankful that we do not always have things as we see them. There would be no room for belief or faith.
Anais Nin said,
“We do not see things as they are. We see them as WE are.”