Going Beyond Our Ordinary Way of Thinking + Seeing

October 21, 2021

Written by Jennifer Finch on Medium

Human beings are very strange. We tend only to see things that fit in with what we think. Our ability to perceive our reality right in front of us, even to have other sense perceptions at our disposal (we have over 20…scientifically proven at least) are strictly limited by what we think.

And until we come to understand this truth…

“that we don’t know anything”

…we will continue to see out of closed eyes. Or at the very least, open a teeny tiny bit but holding a very, very narrow view of ourselves, of our lives, of others.

When you finally arrive, out of the box of, “mistaken thinkin’,” it can alter what you thought you knew. And that can feel shaky at first. But that is actually a good sign. That socially constructed anxiety of letting go of what you thought you knew…about everything….is the mark that something real is actually happening.

When things don’t seem the same, something very real is starting to happen in our lives.

Working with direct perception in Dr. Judith Blackstone’s Realization Process and the work of the Healing Ground has OPENED MY EYES!

In fact, what I am learning is when we actually experience how to really SEE it in effect doesn’t require the use of the eyes, (sight).

Ultimately when we are in our full body + mind, our embodied Self, and we begin to open to nondual experience of perception, all of our senses integrate and operate from a unified whole. We have a multi-sensory system. This is how humans are intended to experience life. And it is magnificent. In Buddhism this unknowing is referred to colloquially as “beginner’s mind.” In the traditional teachings it is spoken of as bare perception, or direct perception, which I am coming to understand as, perception without a lot of mental ideation or clutter that has been shaped by my past choices. We of course do not need to subscribe to Buddhism, or any other belief systems to gain this experience. They just have been doing this for a really, really, really long time and therefore make exceptional teachers. This teaching of direct perception is offered to everyone who is on a path to change old patterns (in mind or body) that have been previously difficult to change, unproductive, or even damaging.

It is pertinent to know that we are NOT eliminating ourselves in doing this. We all have past selves shaping our current attitudes, interests and attention. Getting rid of what you know doesn’t require getting rid of Self. In fact, quite the opposite. I’ll say that again a different way, because I really want you to attune to this: We are opening up, which requires a letting go of, but we are not losing ourselves, in fact, we are rediscovering our truest Self. This is not “nothing is true, so therefore nothing matters, and I don’t even matter” training. Everything matters. You matter! Life is beautiful and matters! And, whether something is true or not, wouldn’t it be magical to be able to experience it with a clearer perception? More aligned with our actual reality? Experience things more directly? More vividly? Without the past getting in the way? Like the year when black and white TV moved into color…and then we discovered HD….and then we found 4K!

So no, we are not tossing ourselves down the nihilism drain. We can experience direct perception and still have an opinion that we don’t really like that chair. But the experience is not besieged with our usual tendencies of stapling in our judgments, harsh criticisms, negative self-talk, limiting preconceived beliefs, biases, and prejudices. The mind is a compulsive storyteller, as we all know and most likely live in. It’s been shaped by our past lives.

“The way we see the world depends on who we are. On the simplest level, a child walking down the street will readily spot all the toy stores; a pennywise shopper will see all the bargains displayed in shop windows; an architect will notice buildings; and a taxi driver will be quick to locate house numbers. In each case, perception is selective.” (p. 165 Feuerstein, Georg; 1998)

What if we have only been walking around with very, very constricted sight? How have your thoughts and behaviors been shaped by this? Here is a prompt: If you think your view is emphatically right! You’re most likely wrong.

It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s simply how we have been organized. But can you imagine what your sense perceptions would be like without all of that past noise? We would experience more directly and cleanly without all of that conceptual overlay. Perhaps a more compassionate world would be a by-product? Underneath all of that smog is clean air. And our natural state of being. Open. Receptive. Engaged. Wonder. Awe. Illumination. Authenticity. You name it. Wouldn’t you like to see more?

All it requires is unlearning everything you know about yourself and how you currently see your reality.

No problem, right?!

FURTHER EXPLANATION MIGHT BE NEEDED

This can be a hard realization and even harder to actually practice in letting go of our “knowing” but it is the greatest single barrier constricting and limiting us and continuing to coach us to operate from a fragmented self.

Sure, we see things. Then we think things. Then we feel things.

But we often only see from a narrow lens that has been constructed mainly by our past experiences. If every rope begins to look like a snake, we encounter unnecessary problems, which in turn creates unnecessary suffering.

What do you see first? A rope? Or a snake?

When we train in somatic embodiment and direct perception our senses open and meld together. Sound is not separate from vision, which is not separate from touch etc. And so ultimately the doorway into our truest sense of Self can begin to restore. Our senses can be a pathway into this reclaimed Self. It has been there all along, we have just layered it with all of those constructed, hard beliefs. Ahem…politics…news….social media….all being shaped by someone else…other than you. Be careful. It’s a slippery slope.

What if what you are seeing is only operating out of the very slender lens of what you already think? How is that already being shaped by your past experience? Is it possible it isn’t the full picture? Because, you know, we are not currently in your past. Can we see something, and not think an already deeply marinated thought mired in a hardened and encrusted belief? Can we loosen our grip on righteous knowing?

A SAMPLE FOR YOU TO TRY

Atfirst our senses appear independent from one another. This has much to do with how we were taught to sense our senses. The very rudimentary learning of the five primary colors of perception, perpetuating our current understanding of senses: touch, taste, see, feel, and smell. Any children’s museum or Highlights magazine honed-in on the separateness of our senses. Our brain naturally aligned with this very western ideology and we followed in suit and trained in perception, one sense at a time. We still teach it this way.

We see, we feel, etc. We didn’t learn in Kindergarten for example how to See-Feel. To experience the flavor of this advancement, look at any object near you (I might suggest something pleasant at first) and without touching it, feel it. Feel the quality of it, the texture of it. Feel it, through your sight. Notice how this brings you down into your body? You’re Seeing the Feel. And, we know how to do this!

COURSE CORRECTING

Even in classical mindfulness training, I was instructed, many moons ago, to initially teach mindfulness as an antidote to our over-acting “thinking” mode. And in order to reduce rumination, in MBSR for example, we trained in “sensing.” Sense into the body. How do your feet feel in this moment? Are they cold? Or warm? In socks? Or shoes? Or barefoot? Are they gripping? Or tight? Or relaxed? When we tap into our sensing mode with this newer level of awareness (interoception), it can moderate our thinking mode and voila — rumination can be temporarily pacified.

But even in this teaching, we understand thinking to be a separate entity from sensing. And it was considered, and still is in most psychology modalities that incorporate mindfulness, that we cannot think and sense (into our bodies) at the same time. Sensing was the detour off the well-worn path of an over-active ruminating mind. This of course has its benefits and can be tremendously helpful to a lot of people. It can be a great gateway to just about anyone. This classical understanding of “mindfulness” and its oeuvre of empirical literature has proven repeatedly for decades its great ability to be an interrupter to chewing our own cud on thoughts. Here for example is one old slide I used to teach from:

But, even with the efficacy of this approach, this remains overly simplified to what we are actually capable of. Dialectical “Thinking”- OR- “Sensing” keeps us just flipping the light switch between the two modes, but we aren’t truly advancing our main objective of being a whole integrated and embodied Self. We remain in a closed loop system in our brain of either “on/thinking” or “off/sensing.”

For many, the brain objects to “sensing” mode all together. What can happen, especially to individuals with complex histories, when “sensing” mode is initiated, yes, their brain takes a reprieve from over-active thinking; it doesn’t like it, but eventually the brain relinquishes all control and hands the keys over to the body. The body then begins vying for control and sends the mind-spirit-soul-self- what-have-you, into a deep dorsal dive into the vast, empty space of eternal darkness and it can feel like an entropic gravitational pull into the vortex of a black hole. Phew! If that feels like a lot, it was intentional, because I am sure that “a lot” is what sensing mode cultivates in highly sensitive people.

To break this down, the brain goes “off” and certain individuals, especially those bound with complex trauma, literally go “off.” This is dissociation from the inside. Don’t panic. We all do it from time to time. It’s actually the body’s way of saying “at least I have somewhere to go.” People who don’t dissociate, just sit in the discomfort of overwhelm and sweat it out until “thinking” has had enough and loses its patience and takes over the wheel. It usually flips back on with its brights on sending thought messages like: “What was that?” “Are you crazy?” “You can’t turn me off!” “I told you, you couldn’t drive!” “And by the way, did you feel that?” “Do you think it might be appendicitis?!” “Why would you lead us into that vast, dark, unexplored place? Nothing is known in there!”

This is usually where people abandon their meditation practices and say things like, “meditation doesn’t work for me.” Yea. Duh! This is also where more fragmentation from their bodies occurs. Over and over we can actually build up a bias to being in our own bodies! And consequently more over-drive and battening down the hatches the brain provides. “Don’t go in there. We don’t belong.”

For the super charged type A’s and slightly masochistic practitioners who keep tackling meditation after repeated “think-sense” experiences, it can take several years or maybe even a lifetime to uncouple this dynamic. How far have we really gone? I know people who have meditated for years and are still quite literally disconnected from their bodies. Just go to a meditation retreat and watch for the individuals who are restless, squirming, uncontrollably fidgety, or have found a way to temporary manage the wiggles and discover Legs-Up-The-Wall Pose.

QUICK RECAP + WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE

So,what have we learned? The thinking brain doesn’t like to be turned off. So why not invite it to come along with sensing? Makes more sense, right? Let’s not turn it off. Let’s keep it on, and teach it to cohabitate with sensing, and, feeling, and touching, and smelling, etc. No one has to be vying for control. We are a united collective of senses beyond our wildest dreams. The true leader should be the whole Self, not just one fragmented and sectioned-off aspect of the Self.

Instead we can work towards integrating all of our 20 plus senses (including interoception, proprioception, echolocation, to name a few) through our fully embodied core. We might not ever “achieve” this, but what’s at stake if we don’t try? I suppose we just keep living, and doing, and seeing exactly how we are now.

When we do this great act of integration, the release of all of the previously held constrictions of having to hold one direct perception at a time can naturally be set free. Who doesn’t want that? What we hope to end up with is a fabulous whole Being where we can perceive what we are seeing even in our back, or from behind our head because our sense organs are so activated and integrated that we are a 360 degree Being or Self that is totally sensing. Even my own glimpses of this is pure beauty.

When we let go of our preconceived notion of sight, we paradoxically, see more. We feel more, we sense more, and our experience becomes raw, pure, and direct. We engage in AWE! And, bonus, our brain of course loves this because it feels more prepared. It has an advantageous viewpoint. Or what in Buddhism is referred to as the Garuda Advantage. An all seeing — all sensing bird’s eye view of the whole big picture. Or, like when Neo uploads JIU JITSU training in “The Matrix.” Or when William Black (played by Ethan Suplee) finally sees the sailboat in the Magic Eye poster in the movie “Mallrats.”

One of my brilliant Realization Process teachers, Dr. Christi Bemister, describes this process of direct perception like this:

“Another thing to say about sensory perception is, we might consider it like a gyroscope. We’re all working to get our footing or grounding literally with all of these senses and have them all be online all at the same time, 360 degrees front, back, below, above. That’s really the whole idea. We’re talking about shifting out of small thinking and into a much more fluid way of being. At first, it’s a little bit like learning to read white noise and have that white noise turned into information that is actually there all the time anyway. And as we are in our core, it basically comes into focus, and at some point we catch it, and then we’re able to understand it, and get it. It’s an aha moment. That’s the process.”

IN CLOSING

Letting go of what we think we know, what we think we see, what we think we feel is the deepest fear of all. But it all begins there. With the willingness to at least experiment with it. As we practice, we begin to feel okay, like there is a metaphorical trampoline waiting if needed under us. We are safe in letting go of our current ways of being, because it is in our natural capacity to do this. To return to our full integrated selves doesn’t feel strange. It feels like home. There is a deep resonance when we connect back to our Core Selves, and we trust it. The deepest direct perception we have is in that resonance. We just have to be willing to get through the barriers of conceptual fear.