Lens Of Perception Quotes

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are──or, as we are conditioned to see it.

Seeing the glass as half empty is more positive than seeing it as half full. Through such a lens the only choice is to pour more. That is righteous pessimism.

We must look at the lens through we see the world, as well as the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.

But I never looked like that!’ - How do you know? What is the ‘you’ you might or might not look like? Where do you find it - by which morphological or expressive calibration? Where is your authentic body? You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images.

Perception is everything. If you see everything through the lens of the naysayers or through a victim perspective, then it’s hard to get what you really want in life.

As I grew up, everything started getting grey and dull. I could still remember the amazing intensity of the world I'd lived in as a child, but I thought the dulling of perception was an inevitable consequence of age - just as a lens of the eye is bound gradually to dim. I didn't understand that clarity is in the mind.

Dissociation, in a general sense, refers to a rigid separation of parts of experiences, including somatic experiences, consciousness, affects, perception, identity, and memory. When there is a structural dissociation, each of the dissociated self-states has at least a rudimentary sense of "I" (Van der Hart et al., 2004). In my view, all of the environmentally based "psychopathology" or problems in living can be seen through this lens.

Only when we accept the fact that the world is never exactly as we see it through our individual lens of perception will we be able to accept ourselves or the mystery that is life itself.

Where was the lens between me and the world? Was it my eyes, my skin, my mind? Where did reality stop and my perception of it begin?

Your observations and conclusions are mirrored illusions of your inner state of being, teaching you truth through falsehoods, strength through weakness and clarity through confusion. You are seeing your Self now, disguised as the world through a lens of denial, but you will soon come to realize that what you choose to deny in yourself manifests into your world. The flaws you see in your world are your most powerful teachers.

There are parts of a woman’s heart that are reserved for certain types of love. Experiencing the love of a father figure in an appropriate way is essential in paving the way for the love of a man to be experienced in the right way. The love of a father is vital in ensuring that a woman’s heart is kept open in this area. If this area is not kept open, it produces problems later on in a woman’s life, for that area is also reserved for the romantic love that comes in the form of a marriage relationship. This is an extremely sensitive area of the heart for a woman, and has plenty of opportunity to be easily bruised. When that does occur, she will put up a protective barrier to try and avoid any such pain occurring again. If this barrier isn’t dismantled fairly soon, a woman’s heart becomes accustomed to its protective barrier, and the heart shielded inside gradually becomes hardened. As women, we may be able to function like this for awhile. But there will come a time in your life where God will begin to peel away those hard layers surrounding your heart, and you probably won’t like that sensation. But you have to fight your natural instinct to run away. This is where many Christian women may get stuck. They view every man through the lens of what their father was to them, or what he was not. Their perception of men is shaded, and often damaged, by the very people who should have been modeling the world of adult relationships to their daughters. As a result, their judgement is often clouded, and women find themselves settling for less than what they truly deserve. Many marriages, even Christian marriages, have been damaged and even terminated because one or both partners refused to sit down and deal with their past issues.

We must clean the lens of our hearts to see the state of our souls. However, too often the former is too dirty to even know that the latter exists.

If you are going to judge others it is wisest to do so individually not collectively and on your own direct experience of them personally. But first - and throughout - examine yourself closely. Blurred vision can often occur due to the lens, perspective and perceptions of the viewer projected onto the object that it sees. Be wary of taking to the judges seat. Above all meet at treat yourself and everyone else mindfully, compassionately with humanity.

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.

What if life isn’t happening to you? What if the hard stuff, the amazing stuff, the love, the joy, the hope, the fear, the weird stuff, the funny stuff, the stuff that takes you so low you’re lying on the floor crying and thinking, How did I get here? . . . What if none of it is happening to you? What if all of it is happening for you? It’s all about perception, you guys. Perception means we don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are. Take a burning house. To a fireman, a burning house is a job to do—maybe even his life’s work or mission. For an arsonist? A burning house is something exciting and good. What if it’s your house? What if it’s your family who’s standing outside watching every earthly possession you own burning up? That burning house becomes something else entirely. You don’t see things as they are; you see things through the lens of what you think and feel and believe. Perception is reality, and I’m here to tell you that your reality is colored much more by your past experiences than by what is actually happening to you. If your past tells you that nothing ever works out, that life is against you, and that you’ll never succeed, then how likely are you to keep fighting for something you want? Or, on the flip side, if you quit accepting no as the end of the conversation whenever you run up against opposition, you can shift your perception and fundamentally reshape your entire life.

I see everything outside of me through the lens of everything that is inside of me. Therefore, before I look at the world outside I’d be wise to look at the lens inside.

Nothing is right or wrong. It's all an interpretation of which lens we are looking through.

Our pets love us unconditionally. Because they are conscious but not “self-conscious,” it’s impossible for them to judge. They do not see us through the warped lens of our self-perceptions. They see us as courageous protectors and loving providers. They see in us all the qualities that really matter. What difference does it make to them if you got fired from your job? None. What difference does it make to them if you gained 20 lbs. back from your last diet? None. That’s because our pets love and accept us at the soul level, in a way that’s primal and simple—just like the universe itself. So, as silly as it might seem, the next time you’re struggling with accepting an issue in your life, ask yourself: Will this matter to my dog? If not, then it shouldn’t matter to you.

We are a species and a culture that, through our attention habits, carry past wounds that cause anger, fear, longing, and sorrow. These affect our lives far more deeply than we realize. We see the world through an imperfect lens, which deeply colors our perceptions, making us more angry, fearful, sorrowful, and overwhelmed than we need to be. Our attention habits, and the emotions they repress, keep us separate from the world, from feeling part of it; they prevent us from fully sensing what is around us and participating in it. As a result, we are unable to fully engage the here and now. The cruel irony is that because we have no other frame of reference, because we do not pay attention to how we pay attention, we think we are seeing the world as it is.

Focus is a choice. The runner who is concentrating on how much his left toe hurts will be left in the dust by the runner who is focusing on winning. Even if the winner's toe hurts just as much. Hurt, of course, is a matter of perception. Most of what we think about is. We have a choice about where to aim the lens of our attention.

Perception is the lens through which we interpret experiences, and when we change the lens we change how we experience.

What we should focus on are not events or people or things, but our thoughts that control how we see the world through our lens..

If you want people to perceive something more favorably, you should convey high expectations because those expectations will become a lens that will mold their perception.

Anytime the rich and poor combine, we should listen to whoever has the least power. Rich people are conditioned to assess the world through our privileges. The powerful tend to discredit or ignore the marginalized perspective because we can. We are shielded from the effects of a lopsided equation; we reap the benefits, not the losses. We don't mean to do this (or even know we do), but we evaluate other communities through the lens of advantage assuming we know best, have the most to offer. In doing so we unintentionally elevate our perception.

Introverts are often thought to be shy, and they may battle the perception that they dislike people or company or that they’re grouchy or social misfits. Extroverts, however, battle the perception that they’re flighty or shallow or relentlessly happy. People tend to assume extroverts are bad listeners, hate being alone, and are irrationally “needy” for the company of others.

Luther Burbank could directly work with plants to co-create most of the food plants we now take for granted is that he routinely accessed earlier developmental stages, in essence, taking them on as a lens through which to experience the world. This shifted his sensory gating dynamics, opening the doors of perception much wider, allowing a much richer sensory perception to occur. It allowed him to work with the metaphysical background directly. As Helen Keller once remarked of him . . . He has the rarest of gifts, the receptive spirit of a child. Only a wise child can understand the language of flowers and trees.

Our experi¬ences and our memories are within us, and the key is to be aware of the lens or the filter, to realise that we can also change the angle, especially when we are feeling agitated or stuck in life, that we can change the record.

misunderstandings test us. can we say I'm sorry or do we have to stand and fall with our perceptions. help me Lord to stand for what I believe, yet to know that I may not possess all truth. Aquinas after pages of describing You had the blessed humility to end his words 'but not that.

Seen through the lens of human perception, cycles are often viewed as less symmetrical than they are. Negative price fluctuations are called “volatility,” while positive price fluctuations are called “profit.” Collapsing markets are called “selling panics,” while surges receive more benign descriptions (but I think they may best be seen as “buying panics”; see tech stocks in 1999, for example). Commentators talk about “investor capitulation” at the bottom of market cycles, while I also see capitulation at the top, when previously prudent investors throw in the towel and buy.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way; when antibiotics were commercially introduced in 1946 they were considered to be miracle drugs and many prominent researchers and physicians loudly proclaimed the end of infectious disease—for all time—was at hand. The trouble is that the lens through which most scientists viewed the world then (as regrettably, many still do) pictured the world as an essentially static background against which human beings acted.

Our perception of reality is not reality itself, but it is the lens through which we view reality. It is like looking outside through a stained-glass window—if we look through red glass, the outside world will appear to be red; if we look through blue glass, the outside world will appear to be blue. The outside world isn’t changing, we are just observing it through different colors of glass, which make it appear to have the same color as whatever color glass that we look through.

Framing isn’t about lying and deception; it’s about knowing how to present your product or service through the most factual and compelling lens. For example, it’s more appealing to say a food product is 90 per cent lean than to say it contains 10 per cent fat. Both are true, but one frame is more psychologically alluring. These examples illustrate an important but too often forgotten principle in branding, marketing and business: reality is nothing more than perception and context is king.

They all have mechanisms for taking in and processing sensory data—and they all have mechanisms for reducing the amount of sensory inflows. They possess what are called sensory gating channels—or as William Blake and Aldous Huxley more comprehensively described the phenomenon, we all have within us the doors of perception. Sensory gating channels can be thought of as tiny apertures or gates or doors in specific sections of the nervous system’s neural network. They are similar to the lens in our eyes

Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are--or, as we are conditioned to see it. When open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them. But, as the demonsrration shows, sincere, clearheaded people see things differently, each through the unique lens of experience.

One of the simplest is the drive for survival, in other words, your very deep sense of self-protection. If, in the field of sensory inflows in which you are immersed, the parts of the self that gate inflows pick up sensory-encoded meanings that can affect your self-organizational integrity, they will have a very deep evolutionary drive to signal your conscious attention. However, if the paradigm or lens through which you view the world around you does not allow you to receive those signals consciously, this can be thought of as repression-driven gating then the unconscious parts of the self may begin to override the conscious programming. In response your emotional state or behavior may change, sometimes significantly. You just won’t know why.

I’m struck by the fact there was nothing supernatural about my heightened perceptions that afternoon, nothing that I needed an idea of magic or a divinity to explain. No, all it took was another perceptual slant on the same old reality, a lens or mode of consciousness that invented nothing but merely (merely!) italicized the prose of ordinary experience, disclosing the wonder that is always there in a garden or wood, hidden in plain sight—another form of consciousness “parted from [us],” as William James put it, “by the filmiest of screens.” Nature does in fact teem with subjectivities—call them spirits if you like—other than our own; it is only the human ego, with its imagined monopoly on subjectivity, that keeps us from recognizing them all, our kith and kin. In this sense, I guess Paul Stamets is right to think the mushrooms are bringing us messages from nature, or at least helping us to open up and read them.

Both Cooper and Brennan got their start as extras. Like Brennan, Cooper had learned his craft by roaming around movie lots, absorbing the atmosphere and watching how things were done—especially the subtle interplay between actors, and between the best actors and the camera lens, which always picked up details that not even the most perceptive directors could spot before they were projected onto a screen. And like Brennan, when Cooper got his first two minutes of screen time, he was prepared. Watch him in Wings, playing an aviator about to go to his death, enter a tent and converse with the film’s two stars, Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen, who are immediately fascinated by his bluff allure. He is a hero without bravado. He is for those two minutes the picture’s star, the very embodiment of what Hemingway called grace under pressure. Cooper’s ability to convey composure just before a dogfight, to act with such quiet courtesy and aplomb, stuns Rogers and Arlen—and just that quickly Cooper takes the picture away from them.

The individual who is friend- or enemy-centered has no intrinsic security. Feelings of self-worth are volatile, a function of the emotional state or behavior of other people. Guidance comes from the person’s perception of how others will respond, and wisdom is limited by the social lens or by an enemy-centered paranoia. The individual has no power. Other people are pulling the strings.

What causes the collapse of the wave function? It is the entry of stimuli into the sensory apparatus of a conscious observer, such as photons of the right wave length hitting the human eye and entering the eye through a lens which focuses the light on to the retina. The retina then sends a signal to the brain via the optic nerve and the brain turns the information into the images we see. Those images and information from the other senses constitute the human sensory world. Clearly the images and other information could not exist without observation. Nothing else in the human sensory world exists without an observation being made, so why should the results of experiments, indicating the presence of quantum entities, which show in macro level experimental apparatus be any different?

When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them. But, as the demonstration shows, sincere, clearheaded people see things differently, each looking through the unique lens of experience. This

An elevated view of one’s self leads to the perception of other cultures through the lens of American Christian exceptionalism. Other cultures are viewed as diversions and interruptions to our regularly scheduled programming. Exotic cultural expressions will be accepted as long as we return to the normative form of worship, which oftentimes reflect the norms of the dominant culture. Lamentations

What did I learn and internalize from the experience? That our challenge is to let go of our old stories that defined us and forgive others and ourselves. Dropping those stories will free us from the burdens and restrictions that have prevented us from writing new ones. The spirits—our loved ones on the other side, our angels or guides, Fred—want us to do that in order to heal the deep rift in the world, so our future includes an earth that is healed and whole and tended to by her inhabitants with respect. Their message is to love without conditions, to show compassion, to be as authentic as we are able, to strip away the lies we’ve told ourselves, and to remember who we really are and who we came here to be. We are spiritual beings constrained by our human experience, defined at this time in history by a distorted lens of perception and perspective, in a state of spiritual amnesia and asleep at the wheel of life. It’s time to wake up.

I became particularly interested in how perceptions are formed, how they govern the way we see, and how the way we see governs how we behave. This led me to a study of expectancy theory and self-fulfilling prophecies or the “Pygmalion effect,” and to a realization of how deeply imbedded our perceptions are. It taught me that we must look at the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.

Perception means we don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are. Take a burning house. To a fireman, a burning house is a job to do—maybe even his life’s work or mission. For an arsonist? A burning house is something exciting and good. What if it’s your house? What if it’s your family who’s standing outside watching every earthly possession you own burning up? That burning house becomes something else entirely. You don’t see things as they are; you see things through the lens of what you think and feel and believe. Perception is reality, and I’m here to tell you that your reality is colored much more by your past experiences than by what is actually happening to you.

Any account of what religion does must note that it also provides personal meaning and wields social power. Religions offer an account of the way the world is and the way it should be. They provide meaning by generating, in Geertz's language, "conceptions of a general order of existence." These conceptions are transmitted through story, reinforced in ritual, anchored in artifacts, and lived out in moral action. When the worldview is internalized by adherents, the "conception" provides a lens for seeing the world. These lenses provide glimpses of different worlds, sometimes very different worlds. That might be obvious if we think about the variety of views of, for example, the afterlife, but these worldviews also shape perception in less obvious and more mundane ways, including how a devotee might see a feature of the natural world such as a mountain or an ocean.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not excusing or condoning anyone’s bad behavior. I am saying that the removal of the judgment allows you to experience the behavior for what it truly is—a distortion in that individual’s lens of perception that amplifies and projects fear and pain out into the world rather than oneness and harmony.

A group of investments isn’t something people can touch or examine in the physical world. Instead, the statement is the lens that investors use to view and understand their finances. It is what’s inserted between the observer and the observed, which, it’s important to note, is not created by the investor.

One tends to assume certain things about conventional photographs. Even with a sophisticated understanding of the high degree of abstraction involved, and the knowledge of the discrete and pointed differences between vision and perception or experience and image, the lens-formed picture remains our current model for accuracy of rendition.

Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are—or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them. But, as the demonstration shows, sincere, clearheaded people see things differently, each looking through the unique lens of experience.

Perception is our reality, viewed through the lens of what we believe. It has only a passing resemblance to the truth.

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.

The lens can act in many different ways and lenses can be stacked on top of each other in order to produce varying types of views. Take the fish-eye lens as an example. The glass on the lens is shaped in a certain way in order for the light to enter and produce a certain kind of distorted view. We all are born with a lens, but usually we get to kind of start at ground zero in the process of beginning to understand, use, and interpret what this physical reality is. As our eyes open and we start to interface with this new reality, we form connections and synapses within our brain for interpretation and use of this new tool that we have. And much of this develops through the guidance or non-guidance of those caring for us. So much starts to become ingrained, and even in some cases we can borrow other people’s lenses in order to feel safe in the world. Sometimes the layers and layers can become quite complex. How many of you feel that anything you come in contact with gets to be translated through a menagerie of different thoughts, ideas, and histories before it fully gets seen?

Let’s imagine that one of the two-dimensional creatures was able to switch planes and see the other one and see that there was some truth in both of them. Then they could flip-flop between perspectives at different times or they could say we just need to hold paradox. It’s both and neither, which mostly means giving up on making sense of reality. Or they say it’s a middle path that’s somewhere between the two. And a middle path in two dimensions is like a rounded rectangle where you kind of do something that’s a little bit circle-ish and a little bit rectangle-ish which isn’t even any true part of what a cylinder is. And the thing is that they’re just at too low of a dimensional perspective to properly understand the nature of the cylinder which is actually a very simple thing. It doesn’t require holding paradox. It doesn’t require a middle path in that way. And it’s because when we think of a middle path oftentimes we’re thinking of extremes on left or right in a gradient. But sometimes the two different perspectives aren’t on a gradient on a single axis. They’re orthogonal to each other. And the reason why this is kind of actually an interesting example is because perception itself, a perspective on something defined by perception is inherently a reduction of the information of the thing. My perspective of it is going to be a lot less total information than the actual thing is. So I can look at the object from the east side, or the west, or the top, or the north side, or the inside, microscopically, telescopically. They’ll all give me different information. None will give me the entirety of the information about the situation. And so there is no all-encompassing perspective that gives me all of the information about really almost any situation. And so what this means is that reality itself is trans-perspectival. It can’t be captured in any perspective. So multiple perspectives have to be taken, all of which will have some part of the reality, some signal. There may also be distortion. I may be looking at the thing through a fisheye lens or through a colored lens that creates some distortion. But then let’s say, I’m looking at a building and the picture, the 2D picture from the east and from the west side and from inside a particular room and the aerial view are all, obviously, very different pictures and it’s because the 3D complex building actually can’t be seen in a 2D process. So I could take a lot of pictures and I could seam them together into a kind of video that moves through the building. Now by having a video, I added the dimension of time and I go back to kind of the right dimensionally to be able to understand the thing. But that’s not a perspective. That’s a lot of perspectives that we’re able to put together. So why does this matter?

And it’s because when we think of the middle path oftentimes we’re thinking of extremes on left or right in a gradient. But sometimes the two different perspectives aren’t on a gradient on a single axis. They’re orthogonal to each other. And the reason why this is actually an interesting example is because perception itself, a perspective on something defined by perception is inherently a reduction of the information of the thing. My perspective of it it is going to be a lot less total information than the actual thing is. So I can look at the object from the east side or the west side or the top or the north side or the inside, microscopically, telescopically. They’ll all give me different information. None will give me the entirety of the information about the situation. And so there is no all-encompassing perspective that gives me all of the information about really almost any situation. And so what this means is that reality itself is trans-perspectival. It can’t be captured in any perspective. So multiple perspectives have to be taken all of which will have some part of the reality, some signal. There may also be distortion. I may be looking at the thing through a fisheye lens or through a colored lens that creates some distortion.

Read your bible. Go to church for the right reasons other than to be seen and noticed and chosen as someone's pet- ask GOD to clean your lens and perhaps you can see more clearly.

As we approach parts with curiosity and compassion, they may spontaneously release burdens and polarities, returning to the wholeness of the Self, no longer believing in separateness. The conceptual framework surrounding parts may dissolve, and the very label "part" may become superfluous. This aligns with Schwartz’s belief that in a healthy, integrated, or never-burdened system, you "hardly notice your parts." As inner harmony is achieved through this work, the practices themselves may naturally fade away, including any mindfulness or self-inquiry techniques, as our direct knowing of the unified Self stabilizes. What remains is unmediated experiencing—perception without an internal judge or narrator imposing layers of meaning. Like a bird feeling the fresh raindrop, we awaken to the pure isness of the present moment. We recognize that diversity was never truly separate—all parts reside within the vastness of the Self and feel its illuminating presence infusing life with wholeness. Self-realization does not conflict with the experience of inner multiplicity. Rather, it provides the foundation for embracing our diverse parts with love and understanding. Just as clouds naturally arise within the vast expanse of the sky, the many facets of our psyche emerge from the same unitary source of consciousness. By recognizing our fundamental oneness, we can openly accept all inner voices and perspectives as inseparable expressions of our true nature. Parts work therapies like Jungian analysis, psychosynthesis, and IFS rest on the realization that our multiplicity arises from and returns to an underlying unity. Healing separation unveils the intrinsic connectedness shining through our diversity. The many are seen to be expressions of the one infinite consciousness from which we all emerge. Awakening to our true nature does not erase our finite human form but allows us to live as embodiments of the infinite while navigating the relative world. We can embrace relationships, experiences, and inner parts as manifestations of the vast depths of being itself. Our very capacity for a richly textured existence arises from the fecundity of the source—celebrating the unlimited creativity that gives rise to all multiplicities within its all-encompassing embrace. When we unravel the tendency to view parts as separate from Self, ourselves as separate from the collective, and the collective as separate from the universe, we find interconnected wholeness underneath it all, like pieces of the same puzzle fitting perfectly together. Though each piece may seem distinct, together they form a complete picture. Just as a puzzle is not whole without all its pieces, so too are we fragments without our connections to others and the greater whole. All pieces big and small fit together to create the fullness of life. From the vantage point of the infinite, life appears as a seamless whole. Yet seen through the finite lens of the mind, it fragments into countless shapes and forms. To insist that only oneness or multiplicity is real leads to a fragmented perspective, caught between mutually exclusive extremes. With curiosity and compassion, we can integrate these views into a unified vision. Like the beads in a kaleidoscope, Self appears in endless configurations—now as particle, now as wave. Though the patterns change, the beads remain the same. All possibilities are held safely within the kaleidoscope's luminous field. The essence lies in remembering that no bead stands alone. Parts require the presence of an overarching whole that encompasses them. The individual Self necessitates the existence of a vaster, universal SELF. The love that binds all parts infuses the inside and outside alike. This unifying love can be likened to the Tao, the very fabric from which life is woven.

The essential tension of human existence — between Being and Reality — cannot be hidden or masked by any theoretical perspective or lens. Not everything is subjectivity, and not everything is objectivity. The being exists between these two limits: material needs and spiritual needs. Your perception, naturally, can transcend this duality, hence our ability to know. The big problem arises when we try to reduce this existential complexity, giving rise to two mistaken ideological premises about human nature: psychologism (reduces Being to subjectivity) and materialism (reduces it to its material conditions of social reproduction).

Everything that ever happens is skewed by the lens of someone’s perception.

Christmas is a vivid and brilliantly revealing lens. And if we dare to look at ourselves through this rich and telling lens, we are able to clearly see the majesty within ourselves that we’ve so foolishly forsaken. But rather than leaving us saddened and forlorn by what we’ve abandoned, this lens also possesses ample power to give us back what we threw away.

Pygmalion effect,” and to a realization of how deeply embedded our perceptions are. It taught me that we must look at the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.

Even though there’s only one reality surrounding us, people perceive and interpret that reality differently. Essentially, our perception is a lens through which we interpret reality; if you know how to alter that lens, you can change how people view and interpret reality.

The educated man has his own ignorance in this tendency to view all life in light of his own expertise. Just as a blue lens makes the yellow sun look blue, or a pink lens makes the green grass appear pink, or a yellow lens makes the blue sea seem yellow, one's field of profession gives influence to his perception of reality; and while that is harmless in some cases, in such that the sea is already blue before peering through a blue lens, wisdom is knowing when to humbly remove the specs in order to see the spectacle as it really is.

Often called ‘seers’, individuals with actively open third eye chakras have access to a list of skills that help make navigating life, relationships, and emotions far less problematic and taxing. An opened third eye may also improve our perception of the spiritual realm that exists within our world - a skill that many individuals who have mourned the loss of a loved one seek from the practice of third eye opening.

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.

For the vulnerability pattern, that philosophy offers a corrective for the distorted perception of the schema lens, which panics about everything, including what cannot be changed.

Once begun, a spell of anxiety is hard to break. The interruption of attention to the outside world creates a strange sense of unreality, of disjunction. You receive familiar images, but your concentration is elsewhere, focused inside your head. It's often described as having a glass wall between you and the world. Yet it can be a lens too. The wobble it gives to normal, unconsidered perception can lead to eerie heightenings of awareness.

When ego, unopposed, assumes its throne, The world, in fragments, reaps the seeds it’s sown. A kaleidoscope of discord and divide, Where separate streams in ceaseless turmoil bide. Through ego’s lens, reality transforms, A battleground where rampant desire storms. A sphere of strife, of victory and loss, Where fortunes shift as dice of fate are tossed. In ego’s solitary, narrow view, The world is painted in a hue so skewed. Confined by fears, by selfish dreams confined, Its canvas bears the limits of the mind. Thus, perception, in its manifold grace, Reflects the light of ego and soul’s face. In balance, may the truest sight be found, Where essence and ego in harmony abound. In the crucible where essence blends with sight, A wondrous transformation takes its flight. Where once division’s shadow coldly lay, Interconnection’s dawn breaks forth in day. What opposition’s harsh gaze once discerned, To harmonies of concord is now turned. The essence, with its ancient wisdom’s glow, Unveils the unity that lies below. Each leaf and stone, each soul that wanders free, A note within reality’s grand symphony. Essential, bound within the vast expanse, In life’s intricate, cosmic dance. This alchemical shift in vision’s sphere, Brings forth changes profound, both far and near. Challenges, once daunting, now unfold, As growth’s opportunities, bright and bold. Foes, once clad in enmity’s harsh guise, Transform to teachers, wise beneath the skies. Each joy, each pain, in life’s intricate weave, Threads of our evolution, we perceive. No longer a stage for vain rivalry’s play, But a landscape where learning’s blossoms sway. Growth and learning, in rich abundance, thrive, In this new world where our spirits come alive. Where once the ego’s voice, in solo strain, Ruled with iron will, in self’s domain, Now in harmony with the soul’s sweet song, It finds a place where it truly belongs. No longer master, but a partner kind, Guiding through life with a humble mind. It learns compassion’s tongue, intuition hears, Acts with mindfulness, as purpose nears. In perception’s alchemy, a journey grand, From fractured states to unity’s soft hand, From discord’s harsh cacophony to peace, A path that leads where true essences release. This sacred path, evolving as it weaves, Into our nature’s heart, where spirit cleaves. The veil of separation gently falls, As interconnectedness softly calls. Upon this path, with every step we tread, Our world transforms, new visions in its stead. The mundane now with sacredness imbues, The ordinary in extraordinary hues. Each day becomes a picture, rich and vast, For deepest truths, in vibrant colors cast. Through alchemy of sight, our roles transcend, Not mere observers, but creators bend. In world’s unfolding tale, we play our part, Co-architects, with collective heart. A reality, where highest potentials shine, In this, your design, our spirits intertwine.

Change your perception, change your reality. The power to transform your world, resides within the lens through which you view it.

The Allure of Impeccable Skin Across continents and cultures, from ancient civilisations to today’s digital age, our desire for flawless skin remains as strong as ever. It serves not merely as an emblem of one's outer beauty, but also as a reflection of one's health, vitality, and inner harmony. Although some are fortunate to possess naturally pristine complexions, many of us are in a constant battle with blemishes, each imperfection eroding our confidence and well-being. So today, journey with us as we delve into the timeless beauty standards that have shaped our perceptions of flawless skin, the modern remedies at our disposal, and one woman's gorgeous transformative experience. And if you're wondering where the best place is to achieve such results? Look no further than the exceptional Healand Clinic, a hub for these and many other treatments. Through Time’s Lens Historically, human beings have always been in pursuit of perfect beauty. The Ancient Egyptians, with their kohl-lined eyes and exquisite jewellery, weren't just embracing fashion; they were symbolising societal stature and their adoration of the divine. Similarly, Greeks cherished clear skin, turning to nature's gifts like honey and olive oil to retain youthfulness and fight off skin ailments. Fast forward to today, and with the flood of beauty influencers, trends, and products, the narrative is more nuanced than ever. We've started celebrating 'flaws' be it freckles, scars, or birthmarks. They’re seen as unique identifiers, personal badges of one’s journey. Yet, for some, blemishes become profound sources of insecurity, impacting their daily interactions, self-worth, and even mental health.

After being together with someone for a few years, their attractions stand to become grievously familiar. We will ignore them and become experts on their most trying dimensions. But we are never without a chance to reverse the process. It might be that we watch them when they are with friends. We pick up again on their shy smile, their sympathetic look, or the purposeful way they push back the sleeves of their pullover. Or perhaps we hear that a casual acquaintance thinks that they are fascinating and elegant and – mixed in with a dose of jealous irritation – via this potential rival’s eye, we see again all that we could conceivably lose. We are adaptable creatures. Disenchantment is not a one-way street. We are capable of a second, more accurate look. We can turn to art for hints on how to perform the manoeuvre of re-enchantment. Many works of art look with particular focus at what has been ignored and taken for granted. In the 18th century, the French painter Chardin didn’t paint the grand things that other painters of the period went in for: heroic battles, majestic landscapes or dramatic scenes from history. Instead he looked around him and portrayed the quiet, ordinary objects of everyday life: kitchen utensils, a basket of fruit, a teacup. He brought to these objects a deeply loving regard. Normally you might not have given them a moment’s thought. But, encouraged by Chardin, we start to see their allure. He’s not pretending; he’s showing us their real but easily missed virtues. He isolates them, he concentrates attention, he carefully notes what is worthy of respect. He re-enchants our perception. In the 19th century, the English painter John Constable did something similar for clouds. Nothing, perhaps, sounds duller. Maybe as children we liked to watch the grey banks of cloud drift and scud across the arc of the sky. We had favourites among them; we saw how they merged and separated; how they were layered; how a blue patch could be revealed and then swiftly covered. Clouds are lovely things, we once knew. Then we forgot. Constable’s many cloud paintings remind us of the ethereal poetry unfolding above our heads at all moments, ready to delight us when we have the imagination to look up. Imagine meeting your partner through the lens of art. You would find again the allure of things about them that – through familiarity and haste – had been neglected. We could study once more the magic of a palm that we once longed to caress; we could attend again to a way of tilting the head that once seemed so suggestive. In the early days, we knew how to see. Now as artists of our lives – in our own fashion – we can rediscover, we can select, refocus, appreciate. We can become the explorers of lost continents filled with one another’s overlooked qualities.

The thing about looking at your childhood through an adult lens is that you can see all the sides of the situations you were in, but they’re tainted by the emotions and perception of those events based on the age when they happened.

We make sense of perceptions and experiences through our particular cultural lens. This lens is neither universal nor objective, and without it, a person could not function in any human society. But exploring these cultural frameworks can be particularly challenging in Western culture precisely because of two key Western ideologies: individualism and objectivity. Briefly, individualism holds that we are each unique and stand apart from others, even those within our social groups. Objectivity tells us that it is possible to be free of all bias.

Many “older” children go through life either secretly or openly hating their parents. They blame them for past abuses, neglect, or favoritism and they center their adult life on that hatred, living out the reactive, justifying script that accompanies it. The individual who is friend- or enemy-centered has no intrinsic security. Feelings of self-worth are volatile, a function of the emotional state or behavior of other people. Guidance comes from the person’s perception of how others will respond, and wisdom is limited by the social lens or by an enemy-centered paranoia. The individual has no power. Other people are pulling the strings.

The more time you spend in the present moment without your thoughts, the more you are able to know life as it truly is, as your true self experiences it. If you spend enough time being fully present in the moment, you discover the truth about life—that it is good, trustworthy, wondrous, miraculous, and divinely and intelligently guided. Only your personal illusory reality keeps you from realizing this. Your beliefs cause you to misperceive life. Once the lens of your perception is cleared of the beliefs that distort your vision, you can see life as it really is.

Storytelling is one means to entertain, share knowledge, and transmit cultural ideology. Through the universal lens of storytelling, do we become familiar with the life altering dilemmas and moral challenges that fuselage provides the linkage to mode the character patterns essential to leading a principled life? By shuffling through scores of loose leafed stories, can we glean the clarity of thought and the lucidity of perception needed successfully to tackle our own life with gusto? Is reading stories of struggle and redemption one way that we become acquainted with the chemistry of pain and suffering that permeates the arteries of all thinking human beings? Does appreciation for other people’s hardbound stories assist us place the vertebrae of our own experiences into a telling template? Can we draw upon the accumulated experiences of other people’s lives as well as our own hands-on experiences when we see our lives folded into a comprehensible scabbard depicting what it means to be human and, therefore, fallible?

I’m struck by the fact there was nothing supernatural about my heightened perceptions that afternoon, nothing that I needed an idea of magic or a divinity to explain. No, all it took was another perceptual slant on the same old reality, a lens or mode of consciousness that invented nothing but merely (merely!) italicized the prose of ordinary experience, disclosing the wonder that is always there in a garden or wood, hidden in plain sight—another form of consciousness “parted from [us],” as William James put it, “by the filmiest of screens.” Nature does in fact teem with subjectivities—call them spirits if you like—other than our own; it is only the human ego, with its imagined monopoly on subjectivity, that keeps us from recognizing them all, our kith and kin. In this sense, I guess Paul Stamets is right to think the mushrooms are bringing us messages from nature, or at least helping us to open up and read them. Before this afternoon, I had always assumed access to a spiritual dimension hinged on one’s acceptance of the supernatural—of God, of a Beyond—but now I’m not so sure. The Beyond, whatever it consists of, might not be nearly as far away or inaccessible as we think. Huston Smith, the scholar of religion, once described a spiritually “realized being” as simply a person with “an acute sense of the astonishing mystery of everything.” Faith need not figure. Maybe to be in a garden and feel awe, or wonder, in the presence of an astonishing mystery, is nothing more than a recovery of a misplaced perspective, perhaps the child’s-eye view; maybe we regain it by means of a neurochemical change that disables the filters (of convention, of ego) that prevent us in ordinary hours from seeing what is, like those lovely leaves, staring us in the face. I don’t know. But if those dried-up little scraps of fungus taught me anything, it is that there are other, stranger forms of consciousness available to us, and, whatever they mean, their very existence, to quote William James again, “forbid[s] a premature closing of our accounts with reality.” Open-minded. And bemushroomed. That was me, now, ready to reopen my own accounts with reality.

We make sense of perceptions and experiences through our particular cultural lens. This lens is neither universal nor objective, and without it, a person could not function in any human society.

Adults with ADHD as a group have often experienced more than their fair share of disappointments and frustrations associated with the symptoms of ADHD, in many cases not realizing the impact of ADHD has had on them. When you reflect on a history of low grades, forgetting or not keeping promises made to others, repeated exhortations from others about your unfulfilled potential and the need to work harder, you may be left with a self-view that “I’m not good enough,” “I’m lazy,” or “I cannot expect much from myself and neither can anyone else.” The end result of these repeated frustrations can be the erosion of your sense of self, what is often called low self-esteem. These deep-seated, enduring self-views, or “core beliefs” about who you are can be thought of as a lens through which you see yourself, the world, and your place in the world. Adverse developmental experiences associated with ADHD may unfairly color your lens and result in a skewed pessimistic view of yourself, at least in some situations. When facing situations in the here-and-now that activate these negative beliefs, you experience strong emotions, negative thoughts, and a propensity to fall into self-defeating behaviors, most often resignation and escape. These core beliefs might only be activated in limited, specific situations for some people with ADHD; in other cases, these beliefs color one’s perception in most situations. It should be noted that many adults with ADHD, despite feeling flummoxed by their symptoms in many situations, possess a healthy self-view, though there may be many situations that briefly shake their confidence. These core beliefs or “schema” develop over the course of time from childhood through adulthood and reflect our efforts to figure out the “rules for life” (Beck, 1976; Young & Klosko, 1994). They can be thought of as mental categories that let us impose order on the world and make sense of it. Thus, as we grow up and face different situations, people, and challenges, we make sense of our situations and relationships and learn the rubrics for how the world works. The capacity to form schemas and to organize experience in this way is very adaptive. For the most part, these processes help us figure out, adapt to, and navigate through different situations encountered in life. In some cases, people develop beliefs and strategies that help them get through unusually difficult life circumstances, what are sometimes called survival strategies. These old strategies may be left behind as people settle into new, healthier settings and adopt and rely on “healthy rules.” In other cases, however, maladaptive beliefs persist, are not adjusted by later experiences (or difficult circumstances persist), and these schema interfere with efforts to thrive in adulthood. In our work with ADHD adults, particularly for those who were undiagnosed in childhood, we have heard accounts of negative labels or hurtful attributions affixed to past problems that become internalized, toughened, and have had a lasting impact. In many cases, however, many ADHD adults report that they arrived at negative conclusions about themselves based on their experiences (e.g., “None of my friends had to go to summer school.”). Negative schema may lay dormant, akin to a hibernating bear, but are easily reactivated in adulthood when facing similar gaffes or difficulties, including when there is even a hint of possible disappointment or failure. The function of these beliefs is self-protective—shock me once, shame on you; shock me twice, shame on me. However, these maladaptive beliefs insidiously trigger self-defeating behaviors that represent an attempt to cope with situations, but that end up worsening the problem and thereby strengthening the negative belief in a vicious, self-fulfilling cycle. Returning to the invisible fences metaphor, these beliefs keep you stuck in a yard that is too confining in order to avoid possible “shocks.

We make sense of perceptions and experiences through our particular cultural lens. This lens is neither universal nor objective, and without it, a person could not function in any human society. But exploring these cultural frameworks can be particularly challenging in Western culture precisely because of two key Western ideologies: individualism and objectivity. Briefly, individualism holds that we are each unique and stand apart from others, even those within our social groups. Objectivity tells us that it is possible to be free of all bias. These ideologies make it very difficult for white people to explore the collective aspects of the white experience.

There is a big problem that arises from keeping the company of those with limited perceptions. At first you'll think you're being kind, or doing people a favour, but the problem you'll eventually face, comes with the realization that we exist to other people not always as we are; but very often, we exist to people as THEY are. So, imagine taking photos with a primitive lens: the primitive lens will capture your view only within its own capacity to do so, and you end up having an image that does not display a true understanding of what it shot. The same thing happens when you allow yourself to be surrounded by primitive mindsets. And you must not do that to yourself; you must not allow all these images of you floating around, none of which do you any justice at all.

Once an opinion is formed, we carry it with us for a very long time. We view the world through the lens of our experiences.  Furthermore, opinions continue to influence perception, until substantial compelling evidence is presented to us which completely shatters our initial opinion. And, of course, since everyone has different experiences in life, they have different opinions, and thus, different perceptions of the same things.

Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are—or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them. But, as the demonstration shows, sincere, clearheaded people see things differently, each looking through the unique lens of experience. This does not mean that there are no facts. In the demonstration, two individuals who initially have been influenced by different conditioning pictures look at the third picture together. They are now both looking at the same identical facts—black lines and white spaces—and they would both acknowledge these as facts. But each person’s interpretation of these facts represents prior experiences, and the facts have no meaning whatsoever apart from the interpretation.

Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry and what we perceive is how we live.