Allan Watts famously quipped that trying to know our own mind is like trying to bite our own teeth. In Romanian, we'd say "like trying to kiss the back of your own head." But, who knows? Maybe if you circle the world as quickly as The Flash and Superman combined...
And that puts us in a pickle🥒(funniest sh!t I've ever seen, pour les connaisseurs), because as Jung framed it…
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life from the shadow, and you will call it 'fate.' "
Now, before I bore you with the quotes, the point is - as I mentioned in last week’s post - our Unconscious Mind is in charge of our behaviours, and hence, of whatever we (don't) get in life. So, if it's not working out for you, how do you figure it out?🤔
Want to discover? Read on.
What I'd like to pass on today is that we don't perceive the world as it is (If you want to further nerd out on the subject, I encourage you to delve into this philosophical review of the matter.)
For instance, some birds see colours🌈 we couldn't even dream of. They have cells in their retina which are sensitive to extra wavelengths of light. And others also literally see the lines of Earth’s magnetic field, which enables them to migrate according to very precise directions.
Bats don't just incubate hazardous viruses,🦇 they can also hear sounds with far higher pitches than our ears could pick up. Meanwhile, whales can hear their songs travel over hundreds of miles, at frequencies way below our auditory threshold.🐋
Dogs smell 10K times stronger than humans,🐶 and like many other animals, are also far more sensitive to vibrations in the ground. That’s why they can sense an earthquake coming long before we even sense the first tremour.
And then, we each also process our perceptions very differently from one another, as individuals. Neuroscientists estimate we receive up to 20 million bits of information through our sensory organs every second.
That’s a yuuuuuuge amount (go ahead, you can imagine me like a certain political figure,🥭 doing the “accordeon hands” that go with that pronounciation). In fact, it’s great enough to fill your phone’s memory in just a couple of hours, and it’s far more than our Conscious Mind can process all at once.
So, our Unconscious Mind filters all we see, hear, feel, smell, and taste - through our own distinct language, memories, emotions, attitudes, beliefs, values, and sense of space, time, matter, and energy.
In the end, we’re left with just an Internal Representation of what’s happening outside us - 134 bits of information per second worth of pictures, sounds, feelings, smells, and tastes. It’s like all the grains of sands from all of the world’s beaches poured over your nervous system, and you could only grasp a fistful.🏖️
That could be some pearly white sand from the Maldives, or a pinkish hue from the Phillipines… or even better yet - black sand ground from volcanic rock in Tenerife. It could even be golden sand from St. Tropez, with music discretely humming in the background from the decks of moored yachts.⛵
Or… it could be a fisful of sand mixed with rotting algae, broken seashells, and cigarette butts from a rundown beach that has seen more cheerful days.
The difference doesn’t lie so much in the external physical event per se, but rather in how each of us processes it mentally. (Check out this video for another funky phenomenon of how our neurology creates even some of our most basic perceptions of physical reality.) That's why you hated the same party your friend raved about, and adored the film that got cr@p reviews from others.🤩📽
It means we still inhabit the same physical world (as lopsided as the past few years have been, we’re not going through some “Black Mirror” episode… or are we?😵💫), we just each perceive and experience it distinctly - as we are.
Further still, it means there are now hundreds of versions of this newsletter running in unique perceptions through each of your nervous systems - and hardly any of them has anything to do with what I think I’ve gotten across.🤪
And that’s ok. As I like to put it - even though we gaze at the world through different lenses, we can still attune our focal points, and ultimately see eye to eye - with our goals, and each other.🧐 How do we harness it to our benefit?
So, we actually perceive the world as we are. Therefore, the best way to know our unconscious minds, the root causes and structures behind how we behave - is to observe how we respond to our environment.
⚜️Pay attention to what naturally draws your attention! Those 134bps in our Internal Representations intertwine with how we feel inside, what our bodies do (our physiology), and hence, our actions and outcomes. Thus, your judgments and perceptions become self-fulfilling prophecies. Your unconscious gladly takes in all information that conforms, and filters out what doesn't.
⚜️… which brings you good news: if you really like something you notice about someone else - great!🥰 That's a reflection of your own deeper structure. Still(?) good news: if something pushes your buttons and triggers outrage,🤬 that's also about you! It just means you have stuff to learn from it before you can dissolve that emotion.😌
⚜️And that makes for a highly useful framework especially in couples. Most people go into relationships waiting for their partner to fulfill their emotional needs. But that’s like drinking seawater to quench your thirst - you’ll only further dehydrate. Instead, if you understand that your partner will act no better, nor less so, than how you already perceive and expect them to, you can use their behaviours and what they stir for you as an opportunity for growth.
🔱In fact, I’ve put together a program that blends a live learning and self-discovery experience with dedicated one-to-one work for that very purpose. We flesh out the patterns that have prevented you from thus far enjoying the relationship that fits your heart, then I guide you to let them go, and build what you want, instead.
🔱Whether you don’t have someone special, and you wish you did, or you want to deepen and uplift your current relationship, check out the event right here, enroll, and then join me in the paid section of the newsletter for more practical mindhacks on how to harness Perception is Projection.😎
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