Perception is indeed subjective and influenced by our conditioning and past experiences. Each individual processes and interprets the world around them based on their unique set of beliefs, experiences, and emotions. Our conditioning acts as a filter through which we perceive and make sense of reality.
When we encounter a new situation, our subconscious mind captures various sensory inputs, emotions, and thoughts related to that experience. Over time, these captured experiences become part of our conditioning, forming a lens through which we view similar situations in the future. This conditioning can lead to certain beliefs, biases, and automatic responses, shaping our perception and understanding of the world.
For example, if someone has had negative experiences with authority figures in the past, they may develop a conditioned response of mistrust towards authority. When confronted with a new authority figure, they might perceive the situation through the lens of their past experiences, leading to a sense of unease or apprehension.
Understanding our conditioning and how it influences our perception is essential for personal growth and self-awareness. By becoming aware of our biases and beliefs, we can challenge them and choose to adopt a more open-minded and empathetic perspective. This can lead to a deeper understanding of others’ viewpoints and a more harmonious way of relating to the world.
Ultimately, recognizing that everyone perceives reality through their unique conditioning can foster empathy and compassion. It allows us to appreciate that diverse perspectives exist and that people’s reactions and interpretations are not necessarily right or wrong, but rather a result of their individual experiences and upbringing.
We all experience our own reality; we do not see the same thing even when looking at the same object. This is partly due to our conditioning – how things from the external world enter our internal world. How do you perceive? What does it trigger within you? How does your system react to the external world?
Conditioning as a filter
How something enters your internal world is influenced by everything you have experienced up until now and how you have dealt with those experiences. What conclusions did you draw in intense situations? What beliefs have you formed? What have you come to believe about yourself and the external world? These factors determine our interpretation of reality. When you encounter a situation that evokes intense sensations, whether positive or negative, your subconscious mind takes a kind of screenshot. Everything that occurs in such a situation is registered and stored by the subconscious: colors, scents, tastes, sounds, visual images, emotions, and so on. This is what we call conditioning.
Through conditioning, you develop a sort of setpoint, a lens through which you view, interpret, and experience your reality from that moment onwards. Additionally, conditioning can lead to triggers in specific moments when something matches the moment of conditioning. Allergies can even be activated in this manner. As you can imagine, this is different for every individual. We all have different lenses, so no one experiences or interprets the same, even when looking at the same.
First believe, then see
We cannot see something that we do not believe in or are not open to. So our belief system also influences this. Everyone is familiar with this phenomenon: you buy a new car of a certain color, and suddenly you see that same car everywhere on the road. Of course, they were there before, but now you are more aware of them because your focus and awareness are directed towards it.
The same thing happened to me when I was pregnant with our twins. Suddenly, I saw twins everywhere. This speaks to the power of focus and awareness. Of course, these twins were already there, but I was not aware of them and was less open to noticing them. When I had anorexia, I was thin, but I saw myself as overweight. We see what we believe. Our belief system is very powerful and works both ways.
What is reality? Everything can be reduced to energy, vibrations, and frequencies. All forms, words, and sounds that you perceive have a vibration, a frequency. Everything is energy. Vibrations also influence each other. For example, if you play music too loud in your car, you might notice that some objects in the car start vibrating as well. This is an exaggerated version of how vibrations affect each other. Which part of the vibration is reality – before it was influenced or after it was influenced, or was there no moment in which it was not influenced? What we can say with certainty is that everything is always in motion! Nothing is fixed, because everything vibrates. However, with our minds, we often want to fix, hold on to, and solidify situations, but is that possible? Does objective observation exist? Or is observation inherently subject to influence?
Facts
Perhaps we can state that the factual reality, which can be experienced differently by everyone but for simplicity’s sake, is the actual events that occur. Let’s call this the reality, which is initially neutral.
Our Story
What we think and make of it is our “story” – everything we imagine around the facts. But it remains our own story. With the story, we add our own color to the factual reality. Our emotions respond to this. We allow our programming, conditioning, and all accompanying beliefs about the facts to shape our own story and the corresponding experience.
What it does to us internally is our process. Our process always revolves around ourselves, but it can be triggered by circumstances or by the story we create ourselves. If the story feels constricting and unpleasant, it is not aligned with the truth of our heart.
Personal World
This illustrates how something that was initially neutral can be colored by ourselves, and our emotions react accordingly, putting us into a process. Everything can then take on a life of its own that was initially neutral, and thus, we create and experience our own world.
Neutrality
When we descend more into the level of our heart with our energy, we can stay out of the programs and experience more neutrality. We no longer get carried away by every event. We no longer get stuck in stories and the preferences or aversions of our mind. We then experience the experience that is full and enriches us. We no longer assess and reject reality based on the programs of our mind; instead, we neutralize and harmonize reality through the love of our heart