To Perceive or not to perceive?

Posted by Margi on Mar 30, 2010

blue-bird

Happy Spring! Enjoy the blooming flowers and trees all around us! What a grand time of the year!

My past month’s experiences have brought me to this blog’s topic: Perception.

The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz is a book I’ve had for quite some time and—as we all know—sometimes a book’s timing is directly tuned to our own personal experiences and situations in life. There are times when we pick up a book and it doesn’t click or feel right at first, but when the right timing comes along we may view that same book with fresh eyes. Reading The Four Agreements combined with watching a documentary called 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama got me to thinking.

As I mentioned before, there is a HUGE shift occurring in the world around us. This shift is taking place inside all of us. For some, the experience is subtle, and for others this shift is drastic. Throughout this shift, it is important to observe and notice the reactions, feelings and thoughts that we have about these energy shifts and frequencies of change. The concept of perception is what drives our outcome. It is not what you perceive as much as how you perceive. The HOW is the effect. The HOW is the main ingredient. It is our connection with our reactions that effects and influences the aura/behavior in our energies.

If you perceive something in your life outside of you, it affects the energies inside of you, creating aftereffects that may be positive or negative. We have enough negative perceptions in this world to fire up a storm. Take a good look at your personal perception meter – do you find yourself observing with criticism, judgment, or opinions that attract and invite heavy negative energies into your field? Or do you strive to observe and perceive aspects in your life as they are by simply observing with compassion, kindness and/or non-judgment?

10 Questions For the Dalai Lama has a part in the movie that shows a Buddhist monk living in the woods. He walked through a path amongst strings of what are called prayers flags. They are strung from one tree to another, and there were so many! My first thought was how could anyone deface the beauty of nature with material objects strung all over? Boom! I had judged. So I turned inward. And then I tuned into my guides who reminded me that the way those monks live makes them feel peaceful. Being at peace in their habitat included the intentional visual effects/reminders, or prayer flags, around them. Some of us enjoy or prefer things such as altars or pictures, but these monks chose to utilize prayer flags in their living space.

In The Four Agreements, the first agreement is to be impeccable with your word – to speak with integrity. My judgment of the monks was a snapshot of me in a state where I forgot the power of integrity. But instead of being hard on myself, and falling into a trap of self-loathing, I forgave my judgment and recognized that I was judging and perceiving from only my own state of mind (and what is good for the goose is NOT always good for the gander). It’s okay for each one of us to perceive things differently. Though we all have our own thoughts about the things we are exposed to, it is our reactions and how we perceive things that matter. Once I acknowledged the how of my perception and corrected it, I remembered that we all create our own worlds. What we do and do not like about what is outside of us does not matter…what matters is that we all give each other the right to have our own perceptions – and in honoring that is how we gain and have peace.

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