Filtered Through The Lens Quotes

but memories aren't always honest, our clearly weren't. They are filtered and viewed through whatever lens we need them to be. And you don't make decisions on that. You can't build a life on blueprints of memories alone.

To her lover a beautiful woman is a delight; / To a monk she’s a distraction; / To a mosquito, a good meal. It makes the point well: how things seem depends on the lens or filter through which we look at them.

Anxiety isn't an attack that explodes out of me; it's not a volcano that lies dormant until it's triggered by an earth-shattering event. It's a constant companion. Like a blowfly that gets into the house in the middle of summer, flying around and around. You can hear it buzzing, but you can't see it, can't capture it, can't let it out. My anxiety is invisible to others, but often it's the focal point on my mind. Everything that happens on a day-to-day basis is filtered through a lens colored by anxiety.

Through mirror neurons and resonance circuitry, we are taking in each other's bodily state, feelings and intention in each emerging moment (Iacoboni, 2009). This gives us an approximate empathic sense of what is happening in the other person, but it is important to be aware that the information is also being filtered through our implicit lens. This filtering colors our perceptions and pretty much guarantees there will be ruptures that invite repairs, as our offers of empathy will sometimes not reflect what the other person is experiencing.

It’s been bothering me more and more that I can’t ever see anything objectively, that every observation I make is filtered through my personal lens whether I like it or not. I mean, all my favorite novels are like that. F. Scott Fitzgerald basically is Gatsby, so obviously it’s Gatsby’s book, and Daisy comes off like a flake. But maybe in Daisy’s unwritten book, Gatsby is a flashy, patronizing asshole who thinks he could win her with money and fancy stuff. And that might be an even better book. Eventually,

When you filter your truth through the lens of approval, you only say things you’ve seen approved of in the past.

before you can see someone else clearly you must first be aware that your mind will impulsively filter what it sees through the lens of your past conditioning and present emotional state

The mind sees reality through the lens of māyā (that is, it sees things as fundamentally separate and differentiated) because its primary function is to produce discursive thought-forms, or vikalpas. Vikalpas are mental constructs or interpretive filters that divide up (vi-kḷp) the world into discrete chunks for analysis (e.g., “Dangerous to me or not?” “Source of food or not?” “Potential mate or not?”). This function of the mind was very useful and important in our evolution, but has led to a problematic situation in which our interpretive lenses are constantly interposed between awareness and the rest of reality, such that it’s very easy to mistake the lens for reality. (To be more precise, we take the modified image that appears in the lens or filter as being accurate, when in fact it’s distorted to an unknown degree, until you learn how to remove the lens, at least temporarily). This is one definition of the ‘unawake’ state or dreamstate.

To write history, after all, is to read meaning into the events of the past on the basis of contemporary views of reality. The events themselves cannot make sense until they are filtered through the human lens.

My mother, after stopping her physical abuse, began conveying my private life through a filtered lens to my relatives via phone. She was the 'dutiful mother' and painted our family portrait as a hardship because of me.

Frame the spiritual journey as a stark good-vs.-evil battle of warring sides long enough and you’ll eventually see the Church and those around you in the same way too. You’ll begin to filter the world through the lens of conflict. Everything becomes a threat to the family; everyone becomes a potential enemy. Fear becomes the engine that drives the whole thing. When this happens, your default response to people who are different or who challenge you can turn from compassion to contempt. You become less like God and more like the Godfather. In those times, instead of being a tool to fit your heart for invitation, faith can become a weapon to defend yourself against the encroaching sinners threatening God’s people—whom we conveniently always consider ourselves among. Religion becomes a cold, cruel distance maker, pushing from the table people who aren’t part of the brotherhood and don’t march in lockstep with the others.

Our world was too small before. Our faith was too shallow, our theology too narrow, our dreams too temporary, our family too isolated, our Christianity too comfortable, our worries too finite, our relationships too homogenous and our prayers too selfish.

I couldn’t hide my sadness in Waco. Partly because the holidays always made me miss Sarah, especially when I was with her brother and parents. But I was also starting to feel detached from my real life, and seeing my extended family perform for the cameras made me realize how much I was playing a part. Nowadays, I see so many people performing their identities on social media, but I feel like I was a guinea pig for that. How was I supposed to live a real, healthy life filtered through the lens of a reality show? If my personal life was my work, and my work required me to play a certain role, who even was I anymore? I had no idea who I really was.

I have seen things. I saw the great Mantis God of Africa fighting a creature from the primordial depths, a billion-year war until finally the Mantis threw the writhing creature from the heavenly sky into the deepest pit. I’ve seen the past through the lens of the Eye and it wasn’t in tasteful sepia. It was etched in blood and death and filtered through a veil of tears.

What Is Emotional Processing? Emotional processing is a method of reflection and introspection that helps you transform an emotional experience or feeling into useful information for your psyche to consider. When applied to your healing process and filtered through a healthy lens, this information can provide the stabilization you’ll need to move forward in your recovery.

Many Christians recognize the brokenness of our world—racism, poverty, and exploitation—and rightly want to do something about it. Contemporary critical theory can be an attractive way of looking at the world because it may seem like a loving and others-centered approach. Don’t we want to free the downtrodden? Isn’t that what Jesus came to do? But the problem with critical theory is that it isn’t just a set of ideas that influences how someone thinks about oppression. It functions as a worldview, a way of seeing the world that answers questions like Who are we? Why are we here? What is wrong with the world? How can this problem be fixed? What is the meaning of life? When people adopt the tenets of critical theory, their answers to these questions are filtered through that lens. It’s no wonder, then, that critical theory stands in contradiction to Christianity at many points.

The unique nature of the revelatory moment—be it during the life of Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad—is thus by definition not a pure expression of God’s will. Instead, it must be viewed as an expression of God’s will filtered through the mindset and mores of its intended audience. Since the purpose of revelation is to communicate that will to a human audience, its content must be refracted through the lens of what that audience can understand at that time.

The beauty of our mind lies in its resources as our creative organizer toward our higher hopes and dreams. On the one hand it is the home of our rational and logical thought, yet on the other it is the birthplace of our creativity, where our imagination floats freely in limitless lands. When you can filter your thoughts through a lens of possibility rather than certainty, freedom instead of fear, belief over doubt, then a powerful inner magic is born.

Melancholy Shakespearean passages provided him with relief. They offered structured, resonant versions of gloom. They organized sad topics and made them meaningful. Reciting dark writings aloud let him project his depression outward so that it was filtered through the improving lens of poetry. The rhythms and images of verse crystallized his private experience in a manner similar to the way his finest speeches crystallized and uplifted the national experience.

Anxiety isn’t an attack that explodes out of me; it’s not a volcano that lies dormant until it’s triggered by an earth-shattering event. It’s a constant companion. Like a blowfly that gets into the house in the middle of summer, flying around and around. You can hear it buzzing, but you can’t see it, can’t capture it, can’t let it out. My anxiety is invisible to others, but often it’s the focal point of my mind. Everything that happens on a day-to-day basis is filtered through a lens colored by anxiety. That nervousness that makes your palms sweat and your heart race before you get up and make a speech in front of an audience? That’s what I feel in a normal conversation at a dinner table. Or just thinking about having a conversation at a dinner table. The fear that other people feel on rare occasions, reserved only for when they jump out of a plane or hear a strange noise in the middle of the night—that’s my normal. That’s what I feel when the phone rings. When someone knocks on my door. When I go outside. When I’m alone. When I’m in line at a store. Everything feels like I’m on a stage, spotlight on me, all eyes on me, watching, judging. Like I’m one second away from total disaster. It’s invisible, it’s irrational, it’s never-ending. I could be standing there, smiling and chatting like everything is totally fine, while secretly wanting to scream and cry and run away. No one would ever know. In my mind, no one can hear me scream. I hide it because I know it’s not understood or acceptable—because I’m not understood or acceptable.

Warhol himself was never anything but a kind of hologram. Famous people came to the Factory to hover around him without being able to get anything from him, but they tried to pass through him as you might with a filter or a camera lens, which is what he had in effect become. Valerie Solanas was even to try to shatter that lens by shooting at it, to pass through the hologram to establish that blood could still flow from it. So we can agree with Warhol: `You can't get more superficial than me and live'. And he nearly didn't come out of it alive.

At the very least, we ought to take a fresh look and evaluate with new eyes what Jesus of Nazareth actually taught about the dark foundations of human civilization and the alternative he offers in the kingdom of God. Instead of reading the Gospels through the lens of Constantinian Christianity, where Jesus’s prophetic critique of violent power is filtered out, we should try to refamiliarize ourselves with the revolutionary ideas that belong to “that preacher of peace.” The American church especially could benefit greatly from an unvarnished reading of Jesus liberated from the censoring lens of militaristic empire and its chaplaincy religion. This book is my attempt to do that. At

Your purpose is the lens through which you filter all your business decisions, from the tiny to the monumental. We’re talking about who you work with, what you offer, where you focus your time and energy, and even how you define your audience. Determining the unique purpose that underpins your company of one isn’t always a quick or easy process, and there’s no spreadsheet that can crunch some numbers and spit out the answer. Figuring out your purpose requires actual reflection on both your own desires and the audience you want to serve. After all, doing business boils down to serving others in a mutually beneficial way. Customers give you money, gratitude, and a shared passion, and you address their problems by applying your unique skills and knowledge to what you sell them.

The clear transmission of facts and evidence becomes irrelevant in the hyperemotional space of social media. Facts come from a world external to ourselves—namely, reality. Actually, that’s the whole point. But in the social media world, they are either meaningless or threatening to the self we’re constructing and protecting. The world can’t help but degrade into “It’s all about me.” Deluged with information filtered through the lens of popular self, our internal monitoring causes the world to shrink: Did the news make me feel bad? Turn it off. Did that comment upset me? Blast the messenger. Did that criticism hurt me? Get depressed or strike back. This is the tragedy of self-reference where, instead of responding to information from the external environment to create an orderly system of relationships, the narrow band of information obsessively processed creates isolation, stress, and self-defense.6 Focused internally, the outside world where facts reside doesn’t have meaning. Our communication with one another via the Web generates extreme reactions. Think about how small events take over the Internet because people get upset from a photo and minimal information. There doesn’t have to be any basis in fact or any understanding of more complex reasons for why this event happened. People see the visual, comment on it, and viral hysteria takes over. Even when more context is given later that could help people understand the event, it doesn’t change their minds. People go back to scanning and posting, and soon there is another misperceived event to get hysterical about. One commentator calls this “infectious insanity.”7

Society cannot afford to forget the lessons of the past—nor to learn the wrong lessons. But there is a third danger—and it is the greatest threat of all, if only because it is the least well recognized. Humanity can no longer afford to have only a handful of its citizens and leaders understand the lessons of history. We cannot count on a select few to be the caretakers of knowledge. The elite guardians of wisdom will be rendered useless if the masses are incapable of understanding their language, unable to appreciate their concerns, or uninterested even in considering their advice. This danger is not new, but it is always magnified during those times when a population is empowered at a faster rate than it is educated. And it is worst in societies where the value of any idea is measured only after it is filtered through the lens of politics, partisanship, or ideology. Of the diabolically complicated Schleswig-Holstein affair—as pertained to Denmark and Prussia in the mid-19th century—Lord Palmerston is said to have remarked: “Only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business—the Prince Consort, who is dead, a German professor, who has gone mad, and I, who have forgotten all about it.” We can no longer rely only on princes, professors, and lords to understand the affairs of the world. The professors and Palmerstons of the world must educate—and hence enable—the rest. And they must do it soon. The time will come when the masses no longer listen to their advice—when expertise is unrecognizable because the gulf between those who know and those who don’t is too wide to bridge. That day is almost upon us.

it is worst in societies where the value of any idea is measured only after it is filtered through the lens of politics, partisanship, or ideology.

Significantly, we now turn to online news sources that reinforce a particular worldview. As we filter out what does not resonate with us, sooner or later, we fail to see or hear any alternative views. Eventually we find it difficult to interact meaningfully with those who hold differing views. As we view the world through a smaller lens, we lessen our ability to learn from diverse perspectives. Our societies become more fragmented as a result of this increasing myopia.

Much thought and discussion with friends and experts I trust led me to formulate a lens or filter through which to view these newer technologies when assessing their value to society and mankind. This boils down to three questions relating to equality, risks, and autonomy: 1.   Does the technology have the potential to benefit everyone equally? 2. What are the risks and the rewards? 3.   Does the technology more strongly promote autonomy or dependence?

When we look through the spiritual consciousness, the lens of love, we look through and from a totally different context. The conditioned perceptual filters that have been installed dissolve, and we awaken even more fully into the truth of who we are - divine beings having a human experience.

Acclimatizing to its customs and particular brand of bustle, he’d gotten a sense of Wewoka. Without the lens of a fever-induced vision, it proved to be a dense, vertical city of narrow, terraced streets with expansive walkways. Largely devoid of motor traffic, any point could be reached by foot in fifteen minutes. Pictures painted on the sidewalks provided a colorful trail. With a central street lined with shops bustling with commerce, the noise and smell were different from what he was used to. Wewoka had none of the overworked smokestacks from innumerable factories; much of the city was made up by parks. The air had a hint of ozone to it. A collection of buildings sprouted at the heart of the city. Gleaming green and metallic spires in the distance, the sun reflected from their solar panels. A mushroom-like structure drew in sewer water from its “roots” and funneled it to its dome. Solar energy evaporated the water, which was then collected and released throughout the streets, watering the surrounding green spaces. Photovoltaic panels lined solar drop towers. Titanium dioxide reacted with ultraviolet rays and smog, filtering and dissipating them. They had developed similar technology in Jamaica. Vertical gardens and vegetation covered the steep towers of housing units and work offices. The exterior vertical gardens filtered the rain, which was reused with liquid wastes for farming needs. A deep calm reverberated through the city, quiet preserved like a commodity. Desmond

You may think you see the world clearly—that the people in your life and even those you have never met are easily understood—that the things that fill your home, your community, and the world are benign and neutral. But every thing your eyes rest upon, every sound your ears hear, every thought and memory that passes through your awareness is filtered through the distorted lens of your perception. In reality, the people and things that fill your life have only the meaning that you have projected onto them. When we meditate, we pause the perception projector- -however briefly—and we see the world a bit more clearly. It is in this clarity that we find wisdom, compassion, and true healing.

If your awareness is cluttered up, your lens can’t be focused to see the gifts because you’re looking through a dirty filter.

The barrel has a built in suppressor so it can’t be heard more than a half mile away over the flattest land and doesn’t need hearing protection to fire safely outdoors. The sight is a green laser that is invisible without the filter, so you look through the lens and you see the dot – wherever the dot is, that is where the bullet goes. The weapon has a computer processor on board that controls the recoil and adjusts the laser sight dependent on the range of the target in your sites as well as environmental variables like wind, humidity, and temperature. On the side of the weapon is a display you can flip up showing whatever the weapon is aimed at. You have a choice of regular, thermal, or night vision. The screen can also flip to the side so you can hold the weapon around a corner and still see what you are aiming at.” Jack

Humans led with their hearts and it took all five of their senses (six, if you count common) time to catch up. Brains would always try to keep pace, but brains were easily tricked, filtering everything as they do through the heart's chosen lens.

Peter would have said that behaviors are determined by principles, theories. That the difference between Theory of God and Theory of Not God was actually quite slim, each a slightly different lens through which to choose to view the world. One a shade lighter, the other negligibly darker—what mattered was that both were held up to the eye and used to filter our experience. It was easier to change the lens than to remove the vehicle of understanding, easier to adjust my sense of how I fit into the world than reconceive of the world entirely.

My anxiety is invisible to others, but often it’s the focal point of my mind. Everything that happens on a day-to-day basis is filtered through a lens colored by anxiety.

essentials to remember on tough days: practice patience accept what you feel do not punish yourself make sure you get good rest give yourself ample kindness accomplish smaller goals that day do things that will calm your mind a bad moment does not equal a bad life struggle can be a space for deep growth this current discomfort is not permanent before you can see someone else clearly you must first be aware that your mind will impulsively filter what it sees through the lens of your past conditioning and present emotional state

I've learned having insight means you can gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person or thing. In my case, the deep intuitive understanding was of my core self, and how it contributed to my illness. Insight, or what I call "in-sight"-looking in- is the key to developing self-awareness. You need insight to be introspective, to examine and observe your mental and emotional processes and make changes accordingly. It involves the ability to have a flexible perception that can see from many angles, not only from your pre-existing lens which often gets distorted by your belief system. I can now see cause-and-effect both on my part and by others-how they intertwine with one another and how interactions get filtered through the lens of our experiences, beliefs, and expectations.

Individuals assess risk as they assess everything else—through the filtering lens of individual worldview.

You can't control how others receive your energy. Anything you do or say gets filtered through the lens of whatever personal issues they are going through at the moment.

Let me point out two ditches to avoid regarding experience. First, watch out for experiential abuse. Some base too much on experience. They do not filter experience through God’s Word. This can lead to mysticism. This is dangerous, as it can lead to heresy and all kinds of problems. God’s revelation must be primary. We must understand our experience through the lens of Scripture, which alone is perfect.

Not speaking Hebrew is not a moral flaw, and today’s American Jews have no access to Hebrew because of decisions that other people made. Nor can their lack of knowledge of Hebrew be fairly seen as an indication that American Jews are not wise or do not care. Their lack of facility with Hebrew, however, even on the most rudimentary level, limits them to encountering Israel through the lens of what the English-language press decides they should read, without direct access to Israel’s press, literature, music, television, or culture. How passionate could any human relationship be if almost every interaction was lived through a filter someone else had constructed? WHETHER JUDAISM IS A religion or a people is no mere academic matter. It is also not a matter of right or wrong. American Judaism had good reason to be attracted by Judaism-as-religion. Zionists had equally good reason for opting for peoplehood over religion. What is critical for us to understand is that the divide that Jews now confront reflects the roots of each of these communities and how Jews in each place define what it means to be a Jew.

Nina looked at her. 'Everyone describes him so differently.' She paused, unsure. 'He was one guy, but there's no consensus about what he was like. For Peter's mom, he was a blowhard who drank too much; for Millie, he was the kindest man in the world who made endless time for her.' Eliza shrugged. 'People change. There's forty years between the William that Peter's mom knew and the William that Millie knew. Parents get stuck in the amber of childhood, right? Whenever my parents visit, I feel myself becoming a cranky fourteen-year-old. I saw William through the lens of being his wife; I look at Millie only as her mother... You see what I mean?' 'Sure. So I'll never see my dad properly, only through the filter of other people's opinions.' 'Or maybe it'll average out and you'll be the only one who sees the real him.' Nina laughed. 'Maybe there is no real thing for anyone. Maybe all of us change depending on where we are and who we're with.' 'And that's why you like to be alone.' Eliza looked at her and smiled. 'How do you mean?' 'Because you prefer who you are when you're alone.' Nina shrugged. 'It takes a lot of energy to be with other people. It's easier to be myself when there's no one else there.' 'Some people take energy; some people give energy... Occasionally, you get lucky and find someone whose energy balances your own and brings you into neutral.' She paused. 'My God, I've been in Malibu too long. I said that completely without irony.' Nina laughed. 'It was really convincing. I think I even heard a tiny temple bell ringing somewhere...' Eliza made a face at herself. 'Your dad used to say being with me was as good as being alone.' Eliza laughed. 'I think he meant it as a complement.' The two women looked at each other. 'I think we're overthinking this,' said Eliza. 'More wine?

discovered that you can’t simply invite brokenness into your home and not to some degree be broken by it. You can’t hold abused innocence in your arms and not on some level lose a sense of your own innocence as a result. You can’t hear stories of the deep fractures in others’ lives and not see the cracks in your own and understand that on some level we’re all the same—broken humans in need of redemption.

God has a way of giving by the cartloads to those who give away by the shovelfuls. CHARLES SPURGEON

As my friend Joel Lindsey has written, “A gospel-centered church is so because the gospel is the engine that propels its mission. . . . The gospel is the primary lens through which to view the world and the people and things in it.”5 In other words, the gospel isn’t just a fad or style you lay over your philosophy of ministry—something traditional, something Baptist, something Reformed—as if “gospel-centrality” were an Instagram filter for your church.

God didn’t call you to this because He thought you could handle it, and He certainly isn’t surprised by the fact that there are those times when you can’t. He called you to this to show what He can do through you—not just handle it but accomplish beautiful things through it—through you. He is using you, a mere human, to help resolve a seemingly insurmountable human problem.

Every aspect of foster care is composed of equal parts good and bad, joy and sorrow, beauty and brokenness. It’s a good day when a child is placed in your home, a transition representing safety, security, and an opportunity for that child to be loved and cared for in a way they likely wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. It’s indeed a good day when a child is placed in your home—but it’s at the same time a really bad day: a day marred by hurt and brokenness, a day in which, though so much gain has been made available to a child, loss has ultimately led them to this point. In too many cases a recurring cycle of family brokenness has perpetuated itself into the lives of the next generation—abuse, neglect, and/or abandonment have become a part of their story.

As excited as we may be about fostering kids, we can be fairly certain that they’re less than excited about becoming foster kids. It isn’t our personal sense of excitement, but their personal tragedy—their heartache—that drives our efforts. It’s about our desire to see good come out of bad. Our willingness to embrace what is broken and do whatever it takes to bring healing. That’s why we do what we do. It has to be.

Elizabeth Oates wife, mom of five (including three biological and two adopted through foster care), author, blogger, speaker

The deepest need you and I have in weakness and adversity is not quick relief, but the well-grounded confidence that what is happening to us is part of the greater purpose of God. JOHN PIPER

A pithy Zen aphorism goes like this: To her lover a beautiful woman is a delight; / To a monk she’s a distraction; / To a mosquito, a good meal. It makes the point well: how things seem depends on the lens or filter through which we look at them.

Nina looked at her. 'Everyone describes him so differently.' She paused, unsure. 'He was one guy, but there's no consensus about what he was like. For Peter's mom, he was a blowhard who drank too much; for Millie, he was the kindest man in the world who made endless time for her.' Eliza shrugged. 'People change. There's forty years between the William that Peter's mom knew and the William that Millie knew. Parents get stuck in the amber of childhood, right? Whenever my parents visit, I feel myself becoming a cranky fourteen-year-old. I saw William through the lens of being his wife; I look at Millie only as her mother... You see what I mean?' 'Sure. So I'll never see my dad properly, only through the filter of other people's opinions.' 'Or maybe it'll average out and you'll be the only one who sees the real him.' Nina laughed. 'Maybe there is no real thing for anyone. Maybe all of us change depending on where we are and who we're with.' 'And that's why you like to be alone.' Eliza looked at her and smiled. 'How do you mean?' 'Because you prefer who you are when you're alone.' Nina shrugged. 'It takes a lot of energy to be with other people. It's easier to be myself when there's no one else there.' 'Some people take energy; some people give energy... Occasionally, you get lucky and find someone whose energy balances your own and brings you into neutral.' She paused. 'My God, I've been in Malibu too long. I said that completely without irony.' Nina laughed. 'It was really convincing. I think I even heard a tiny temple bell ringing somewhere...' Eliza made a face at herself. 'Your dad used to say being with me was as good as being alone.' Eliza laughed. 'I think he meant it as a compliment.' The two women looked at each other. 'I think we're overthinking this,' said Eliza. 'More wine?

Survival-Me has no time for fun. That’s for those lucky children whose mom cares enough to schedule fun for them between nap time and twenty minutes of daily reading. To smooth over tough days for my family, Survival-Me looks for ways to make my children happy with no regard for myself. Art classes, swim lessons, summer camp, music lessons, family vacations, new toys, free-time activities—Survival-Me filters everything through the lens of what is best for the children.