Perception, Reality, and Everything in Between.

[Taris]

So spending a lot of time in my life pondering and thinking on the meaning of perception and how it affects us from Parental perception all the way up to Governmental perception I decided to share my thoughts.

From childhood all the way up to our career lives we are taught how we should perceive things. Right and wrong, truth and false, how we should react to situations, resolving problems, and so much more. As individuals, though all of the other perceptive truths and falses affect us, we have our own perceptions and realities resulting from them.

So here is the chain I have noticed. As young children and individuals our main perceptive influence would be our parents. How our parents perceive the government, religions, society, countries, groups, ethnicities, and so much more bleeds over into our perceptions and how we see these things or peoples.

For Example: "My Father was an atheist so I experienced an absence of religious influence."

This could cause a number of scenarios. The child could shy away from religion, seek religion more so, and so on. But, ultimately, the parental perception INFLUENCES but does not fully define the individual perceptions of the child/individual. It ultimately affects our perceptive truths and rights. This keeps with us throughout our childhood and even into young adulthood until or unless we break those binds to better understand that which we have been steered away from or pushed into.

Our selves as individual and our perceptions and the realities resulting from them are not defined but refined from everything we are in contact with in our day to day lives, or the absence from. Governmental, societal, parental, religious, and groupal perceptions and their perceptive truths and rights are ingrained into our psyches from birth until we are of age to freely think and explore everything. Normally, the teenage years, when we refine our selves and our realities that were already formed from youth.

I know that personally I strayed from the mainstream beliefs, society, and religion it was around the age of 12 and I began my search for the differences and alternative truths and rights.

As we grow and are taught we come to understand different truths and rights as defined by those major perceptions around us. Governmental perceptions, laws and rules, help refine how we think abouit crimes, react to situations and conflict and generally behave dependent upon our geographical areas.

Example: Coming from the city I understood that to disrespect someone a certain way would normally lead to a physical altercation. It would be expected and usually not punished as harshly as it would in the country where I am now.

The different geographical location having a different outlook and punishment for assault leads me living out here to perceive fighting as something to avoid whereas in the city you fought it out if people came off a certain way to you and yours.

Societal perceptions are another large part of how we react and interact to and with others. As we grow up dependent also upon geographical locations certain ways of living and acting are expected and to not live and act these ways is shunned and taboo. An example would be living in a big city and having freedom to express yourself, dress whichever way, and seek alternate religious beliefs is accepted compared to a bible belt location which if you dressed goth you would be looked down upon and shunned by the community or if you took "the lords" name in vain for instance.

A lot of times most of the multiple type of perception and perceptive realities go hand in hand. Similar to the example above that would be societal and religious perceptions affecting the individual perception and the perceptive rights and wrongs of a person or child living in that area. These numbers of influences on the self, the perceptive realities we have, and even our psyche all affect how we act, react and understand right and wrong.

Is it wrong to live this way? Where we allow the influences around us to set our perceptions? We may feel as individuals it would be simply because it takes away our individuality and our own perceptions truly allow us to be ourselves. Yet, can we say we are truly individual when our areas, governments, societies, cultures, and even local groups help to define how we perceive live and the truths and falses, rights and wrongs, all around us? I say it isn't wrong and that it is just a part of life. If one is dissatisfied with their perceptions and the reality that has been created for us by those around us they can look outwards and seek the alternative. Those willing to remain a part of a semi predefined existence simply remain.

So I ask, how do we challenge or have we challenged those ways we were taught and the perceptions refined by other influences?

[The Madame X]

Kudos Taris!
may I move your article to our Article section?

[Taris]

Sure Madame. I was hoping for some discussion on it as well but i guess that could be done there as well

[Hesperus]

Excellent and thought-provoking post, Taris!

I often think of the influence others have on my perception and my sense of self within the context of psi feeding. As I see it, I am literally taking into myself some of the essence of another person; in a way, I am redefining myself to include a part of someone else. In a less direct sense we all do this when we invite people into our lives, rearranging our emotional priorities to accommodate new friends, lovers, or, for that matter, enemies.

I would say that one way to examine our hand-me-down perception filters is to expose ourselves to significantly different points of view and sincerely try to understand them. Successfully empathizing with diverse points of view forces us to analyze the underlying assumptions making up the foundations of our own perspective

[Taris]

Thank you for the reply

I actually dont feel that Psi feeding does really bring anything into us from another besides the energy as we "digest" it into the self and our own energy but I could see how others would take the whole empathetic view on it. Every relationship from the stranger walking down the street next to us to the acquaintance we barely speak with all the way to brothers and sisters affect us either energetically, in the mass web of the universe, or personally and emotionally.

Well happy thinking

[The Madame X]

From what I gather 90% tend to follow or even aspire to follow the environmental and roll-model predispositions and influences. Only 10% will aim to supersede, rise above or build upon their environmental influences.
What truly interests me, is that 10%. There we can find creative thinker and the builders of our society.
And yes, we are what we eat, those that surround us become a part of us and us in exchange we become a part of them...Not to mention we are often judged by the company we keep.

[Wulfsunus]

I see it like this . . .

In a clover patch, within the sea of likeness, there is this one clover with 4 leafs, and unlike it's brethren, the most cherished one of them all.

To be a true individual is to think for oneself.

Thank you Taris

[Taris]

Very interesting replies And Wulfsunus This forum is for seeking and learning and growing with each other All of the posts help us all in some way shape or form to learn something or even in some cases unlearn what has been taught by all of those wonderful influences we encounter on a daily basis. Thankfully the posts here help us all think outside the box and i am grateful i was able to post this Sadly enough the writings are on hold probably until after the holidays lol.