Sensation and perception depend on each other: First we sense an object with our five senses and then we perceive it with our brain. Our mind judges it and gives it value.
Psychology explains that the purpose of sensation is to detect and send the information to the brain. The purpose of perception is to make sense of the information received.
How to Change our Experience of the World
But how you experience that what you perceive is a decision you make before you even begin to sense anything.
In other words: If you want to see for example true beauty in a flower, to the extent that you feel awe or gratitude, the desire to experience awe or gratitude has to come FIRST.
The Desire to Experience
This is how it works: The following steps can be taken in an instant in passing, but it also can be an hour spent in meditation.
- You desire to experience joy and beauty
- This automatically makes you stop what ever you are doing and places your awareness into the NOW – into this present moment.
- Now you are able to allow your awareness to “fall” or sink inwards.
- When you look at the flower again, you look from within. You see much more than just a flower – you connect to the flower and experience it truly.
Changing the Direction
When a stone is thrown up in the air, at a certain point the stone loses its momentum and begins to fall down. The movement has changed its direction.
This example so perfectly explains how perception and experience are in opposite directions: The movement upwards requires effort. So does perception.
The movement downwards – the falling – does not require any effort. This is allowing the experience unfold.
Us humans, we invest an awful lot of of mental effort in wanting or desiring to percieve. The letting go as such does actually not require any effort. But we are afraid of letting go. Or let me rephrase this: it the ego that is afraid to let go. Because when we let go, the ego loses its reason for existence. And it does not want to cease to exist.
Letting go is also a sense of allowing beauty and love to unfold instead of wanting to grasp or wanting to have. It is a desiring to know while patiently waiting to experience truth.
When we allow mind and spirit to unfold as we look within we are able to transcend the perceptual realm and actually see the majestic beauty and divine love in the whole world around us.
It is as if we find a new set of inner eyes to look at everything without the distortions of fear. We realize that everything is alive, and that everything is part of us.
Paradoxically we have to search inward first in order to be able to become aware of the super-conscious dimension on the outside of our body. The way to experience freedom, joy and happiness is always a journey within.
Searching Within
If you want to find truth, you have to search within. Many martial art and spiritual traditions locate the source of power somewhere within the body. Often that location is visualized near the heart or below the navel.
A whole set of energy points have been assigned to various locations spread across the body which are widely known as the chakras.
To have a point within your body from which to direct true vision, can be a great help. Especially if you identify yourself with the body – and most of us do. That point of reference somewhere within becomes the lens with which we experience ourselves and the world around us.
But it is not necessary to locate a point in the body a such, since it is the mind that does the the actual seeing and not the body.
The Direction of Vision
I have been studying A Course in Miracles since 2008 and I am still continuing until the present moment. This is an illustration of the Spirit Mind Body Connection compared to A Course in Miracles.
Percepetion always travels towards the perception screen away from knowledge and oneness.
As you allow your awareness to sink within, your vision begins from a different level. Instead of just perceiving through your senses, you can now “see” past the perception screen.
If you connect witht the object of your observation on the mental level you may marvel at the intelligence within it. If you connect on the spiritual level you may experience deep gratitude, joy and love.
To experience reality we do not need sensation and perception in any shape or form. Instead we have a need to know.
Read next:
- Inducing Consciousness in a Fight: The ability of inducing consciousness when you are with a person transforms the meeting from a feeling of hostility and dislike to one of understanding and acceptance. It is a very similar mechanism to the one explained here in this one Sensation and Perception
To help your understanding read also:
- Soul, Spirit Mind and Body: Are soul and spirit the same? A thorough explanation on how spirit, mind and body relate to each other, using an illustration 1.
- Consciousness Model by ACIM explains the three levels of human consciousness and how they relate to each other, inspired by the book “A Course in Miracles”.
- How the Mind Works: Combining the conclusions from the two articles above and finding a relation between the spirit, mind and body, and the super-conscious, consious and subconscious mind.
Return to the Spirit Mind Body Connection which is an introduction to the articles above and the current article Sensation and Perception.
More related to A Course in Miracles
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