Heartful Living Corner March, 2010
“Shifting Our Perceptions and Meanings”
Most people have had some experience with optical illusions. In the one above, for example, do you see the older woman with the large nose, or do you see the young woman with her head turned away and a chin instead of a nose. Are you able to see one and then the other, shifting back and forth? Some people have trouble sometimes doing such a shift. But with a little practice, such a shift of your “focus” and intention makes it possible to see one picture and then the other. When I look at this picture, I almost always see the older woman at first, but I have learned to shift back and forth with some practice.
Our brains take in much more sensory information than we can process, and so we learn to focus our attention. But we also tend to put some meaning or judgment on the information we perceive, attaching it so quickly we often times do not notice that there is perception without meaning or judgment. For example, in the picture above, what is the meaning or judgment you place on the older woman compared to the younger woman. For me, there was an initial judgment of “ugly,” “old,” and “undesirable.” For the younger woman, I judged her a “attractive” and “fashionable” when I first saw the picture, even illusive. There are all sorts of meanings we can place on sensory information we take in from our environment.
One of the difficulties with identifying the meanings and judgments we place on information is that it happens so quickly we often mistaken such meanings as something that inherently is associated with that information. For example, my judgment of the “older woman” as “ugly” comes almost immediately after seeing her face. She certainly looks older, but the meaning of older or the judgment of “ugly” is based on my interpretation of the information. Others may see her as “experienced” or “wise.” This often is based on our experience and view of the world.
What does all this have to do with Heartful Living? We constantly take in information every minute we are awake, and we often react to such information, placing a meaning on it as if it were the “truth.” Yet we have a choice of how we interpret such information, just as we have a choice in which picture we see: the older woman or the younger woman. We not only can focus our attention to “see” something in a different way, as with the picture above, but we also have a choice in how we interpret such information. When a man looks at us with a frown on his face, we may well think that he is “rude.” May we also see it as someone who is “sad” or even possibly hurting inside? How does that change how we feel inside, moving from hurt in the first instance to empathic in the second meaning.
This week, how about playing with taking an ordinary situation and choosing a different way of “seeing” the situation or the meaning that we place on it? Not only does it give us a different experience, but often times it also can reduce the stress in our lives.
Geoffrey K. Leigh, Ph.D.
Executive Director, The Center for Heartful Living