There are as many perceptions as there are people … and perceptions change constantly … even for each individual.
One of the things we are taught early in life … one of the “programs” that we adopt as a belief, is that the worthiness of our perception is based upon the opinion of others.
Parents teach us (as they have been taught) that the inherent value of our behavior is determined by their opinion of the behavior. We are rewarded when we please them and are ignored, or worse, punished when we displease them. This is carried over into our years at school and finally in our interactions at the workplace, in the families and friends we create as we move along the path of life.
So we begin to learn quite early to base our self evaluations on the opinions of others, rather than the crucial information we can receive from our own Inner Being … our source consciousness … our higher self.
This creates such rampant confusion, when we are looking to others for their agreement or disagreement with our perceptions … and basing our choices on their opinions … feeling bad when someone disagrees with the way we perceive anything.
Of course, if we remember that the purpose of our emotional body is … to be a guide to remind us when we are perceiving things in alignment with our Inner Being or not … then we would immediately realize that if someone disagrees and we feel bad … we are feeling bad because we are thinking that the other person’s opinion is determining the “right or wrong” of our perception, not because the other person is right and we are wrong … our emotions are simply reminding us that we are not paying attention to the only agreement that matters … the agreement between ourselves and our Inner Being.
I listened to Esther Hicks the other day, and heard Abraham saying, “We are interpreters of vibration …” and that is a very important point. We interpret vibrations through our senses, and then begin the process of labeling what we are interpreting as “good/bad, right/wrong, beautiful/ugly … and so on. We also interpret vibrations through our 6th sense, or our clairsentience … we “feel” things and those things are sent through the usual channels of interpretation filed in our brains.
Everything we experience has a vibrational basis in this Universe of energy. So what is really being interpreted by anyone at any moment is vibration.
We all understand that each Human has unique qualities, such as our fingerprints … no two are alike. That should tell us something about the individual nature of our expression.
Just like our fingerprints, our perceptions are unique to us. There may be similarities shared with others, but ultimately the details of the perceptions are unique. If we can remember that, we can wrap our minds around the possibility that there is a purpose in this uniqueness … that we are meant to perceive things in our own way that is not dependent on the perceptions of others. The same is true for all of us … in other words; the differences between perceptions may be purposeful rather than annoying misunderstandings.
As an ER nurse, years ago I was taught about perception in an interesting way. The human heart has an electrical conduction system … these electrical waves of energy follow specific pathways in the healthy heart. Each segment of the pathway activates heart muscle movement, which activate valves opening and closing … heart rate, strength and coordination of specific muscles pumping the blood.
Some ingenious being figured out that if we could watch the energy moving through the heart … we could “see” areas of disease or dysfunction in the heart without cracking the chest open to watch the heart in action … thus was born the concept of electrocardiogram … something so common now, that we don’t think twice about how it works.
The way the ECG functions, is through the concept of perception … in order to get the whole picture about the heart and how it is working, we have to be able to “see” it from 12 different angles, or locations around the heart … so we place electrodes across the chest and on the limbs … and each electrode “sees” the heart from the perspective of where it is located, and it only “sees” that aspect of the heart … and it reports back to the brain or the computer of the ECG machine, which stores that information and waits until all of the electrodes have reported back their pictures or perceptions of the heart.
After all the perceptions have been recorded, the computer blends them together like the pieces of a puzzle until there is a whole picture and then and only then … it determines what the picture means … then it gives a diagnostic summary of findings for the physician to use.
If the physician took action based on one or two of the messages sent from the 12 electrodes, there could be a grievous error … so we wait to get the bigger picture, all the while knowing that each of the electrodes sees from a unique vantage point … and their information helps us to see the whole picture.
Perceptions of each human being are like the electrodes. Whatever we are observing, or even experiencing, is perceived according to our vantage point in relation to the thing we are observing.
Earth life is like a wheel … a circle, and we stand in a specific spot on that wheel, observing and perceiving what is in the center … (our focus). We move along the wheel during our life, and experience things from different spots along that wheel depending upon our life experiences, what we have observed, and what we have been taught to believe.
Imagine that you are perceiving something right now … perhaps it is what I am saying … or perhaps you are thinking about something else … whatever it is, you are having your own unique experience … your own vibrational interpretation is happening right now … and anyone else who is observing or experiencing the same thing is having their unique experience too … and their vibrational interpretation may be slightly different, or extremely different than yours.
So … who is right? Which interpretation is the correct one? … Imagine what you are observing or experiencing is in the center of a wheel … a circle of life … and you are standing somewhere on that circle, seeing the thing from that vantage point.
Remember that there will be a different interpretation from anywhere else on the circle … the “view” will be different.
You receive your unique perception … and then, rather than taking action based on that … perhaps you can gather more information … like the ECG computer … how do you get the messages from the other vantage points and untangle them from the filing system lodged in your mind that classifies them right or wrong?
Fortunately, while we are intentionally experiencing and creating from our unique vantage point from moment-to-moment … we also have an easy way to access the rest of the information, to help us “see” the bigger picture … the whole puzzle.
We exist in form (our human body) and non-form (our Source consciousness or Inner Being) simultaneously. I like the term “Inner Being”, because it does not suggest a hierarchy … like “higher self” sometimes does … it honors both experiences as equally important … a partnership of peers sharing a “human” experience in the third dimension.
Let’s say your Inner Being in non-form … has the ability to interpret vibration from a vantage point that is inclusive … it takes in what can be “seen” from each point along the wheel … it sees everything from a perspective of inclusiveness … and so does not categorize things as good/bad, right/wrong … but rather as pieces of the puzzle.
That can be very useful in avoiding distress in response to perceptions different from your own.
Let’s say you want to buy a used car that you have seen on craigslist. The ad includes two photos of the car … one shows the front and the other shows the left side view. Before you buy the car, you need more information. You could stick to your interpretation of the two photos … both of which look like the car is flawless … and you really want that car.
But what does it look like on the right side … the rear … the interior … are the seats intact … the headliner … does it have any body damage that is not showing in the two photos you can see? Of course it would be much easier if you had someone take a picture of the car, then move a foot to the right and take another and repeat that over and over until the photos have completely circled the car and then gone inside the car and taken photos of the front and back and the floors and the headliner and the dashboard … you get the picture (no pun intended)
On the other hand … someone could take one picture of the small dent on the left fender and post that … you might think … oh, that car is damaged … I don’t want it … but you might never find out that the car has all the options you are looking for … low mileage, and is perfect in every other way … and the dent can be repaired easily for a very small fee … you might misinterpret the value of that car completely and miss a really good deal.
So there are two things to consider here that can make your life much sweeter:
I know this may sound simplistic … and it is supposed to be
. We have adopted beliefs that we have to measure our interpretations against (and I emphasize against … it is a resistant thought) … the interpretations of others … and that we must have agreement from others in order for our perceptions to be valued … this makes us nervous and defensive about our perceptions … and invites us to experience disagreement, or diversity as threatening … and react to it from our primal fight or flight mechanism … and feel fear or anger in response to the “disapproval” of others.
See … they are not really disapproving … they are suffering from the same beliefs and they are trying to find agreement and approval of their own unique perceptions in the same way. This is a lose/lose set up
Second, we have trained ourselves to believe that we can only make decisions and take actions based on our unique perceptions … and because of that belief … when we hear the disagreement … or the difference in perceptions from others … we feel negative emotions … we feel scared, mad, doubtful, annoyed, disgruntled, judgmental … and on and on … those icky nasty thoughts that we create in response to the differences of opinion, create the negative emotions that we feel … and we don’t understand what those emotions are telling us.
We believe the opinions and reactions of others are causing those emotions and we want relief so we think that those other people need to change their perceptions to match ours … or worse, that we have to change our own perceptions to match theirs … and we feel awful.
Why we feel awful … is not because of the differences … it is because we falsely believe the differences determine right and wrong … and when we think those thoughts … we are so out of alignment with the truth … the value of the diversity in giving the whole picture the unique vantage points and views …
Being out of alignment that triggers the distress … the emotional distress.
So when we find ourselves caught in that distress … how can we embrace our unique perception of the moment and also embrace the diversity?
Easy … we take a breath, and call on our Inner Being (you remember, the part of you that has all the vantage points simultaneously) and you ask your Inner Being … “how are you perceiving this thing in this moment?”
Your Inner Being will show you the bigger picture that allows you to have your unique perception and allows everyone else to do that too … It is like a magic elixir that takes you out of your false beliefs and into relief …
And there is more … when we play with the concept of inclusiveness without losing our unique expression, we can begin to see the way the circle of life holds us and supports us and connects us eternally … deeply … in the heart.
[pro-player width=’530′ height=’253′ type=’video’]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p7OJmAod78&feature=related[/pro-player]