Per­cep­tion shapes expe­ri­ence as much as expe­ri­ence shapes per­cep­tion. Per­cep­tion is also sub­jec­tive and prone to mis­cues. While we are lim­it­ed by the lens through which we look, we can also expand our world­view from see­ing our­selves in rela­tion to all else that exists.

“In the end, we are self-­per­ceiv­ing, self-invent­ing, locked-in mirages that are lit­tle mir­a­cles of self-reference.”
— cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist Dou­glas Hofstadter

The the­o­ry of “pre­dic­tive pro­cess­ing” describes how half of what we call real­i­ty is gen­er­at­ed from entire­ly with­in our own heads.¹⁷ Our expec­ta­tions are based on what we’ve been taught, told, and trained. Because of this inher­ent bias, we are going to mis­per­ceive and mis­com­mu­ni­cate with oth­ers. To improve as peo­ple, we need to fig­ure out how to let go of our inher­ent bias­es and become less prone to self-deception

We can start by acknowl­edg­ing that our brains hal­lu­ci­nate our per­cep­tion of real­i­ty. We lay­er our real­i­ties and com­bine them into social agree­ments, form­ing a gen­er­al­ized con­sen­sus reality.

“If hal­lu­ci­na­tion is a kind of uncon­trolled per­cep­tion, then per­cep­tion right here and right now is also a kind of hal­lu­ci­na­tion, but a con­trolled hal­lu­ci­na­tion in which the brain’s pre­dic­tions are being reined in by sen­so­ry ­infor­ma­tion from the world. In fact, we’re all hal­lu­ci­nat­ing all the time, includ­ing right now. It’s just that when we agree about our hal­lu­ci­na­tions, we call that reality.”
— Anil Seth

Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Anil Seth con­tin­ues to explain, “We don’t just pas­sive­ly per­ceive the world, we active­ly gen­er­ate it. The world we expe­ri­ence comes as much, if not more, from the inside out as from the out­side in.” That’s because our per­cep­tu­al pre­dic­tions (what our brain expects to see based on repet­i­tive expe­ri­ences) work in con­cert with the oncom­ing input we receive to shape what we per­ceive as reality.

Our expec­ta­tions come from the count­less com­plex­i­ties com­prised by every­thing affect­ing our nature and nur­tur­ing through­out our indi­vid­ual, and mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional, spans of life. It takes a great deal of ener­gy to see beyond that mas­sive set of con­di­tions. Yet, there are ways to move beyond limitations.

Those who prac­tice med­i­ta­tion often speak of sen­sa­tions tran­scend­ing phys­i­cal or tem­po­ral bound­aries. Heart rates and breath can be con­trolled to expe­ri­ence dif­fer­ent elec­tri­cal pat­terns and waves through­out our bod­ies’ bil­lions of brain neu­rons and tril­lions of cells. Or, con­sid­er the expe­ri­ences report­ed by medi­ums who describe the recep­tion and chan­nel­ing of psy­chic infor­ma­tion from a realm out of reach to most…there are pos­si­bly many lay­ers of real­i­ty being expressed by count­less indi­vid­u­als around the globe at every moment. What else might we be missing?

It’s hard to keep track of how much con­fu­sion we encounter. There’s a great deal of infor­ma­tion we do not prop­er­ly under­stand because of our own lim­its of per­cep­tion. As well, there’s a con­stant onslaught of infor­ma­tion com­ing at us that is designed to inten­tion­al­ly deceive us. Whether it’s in the form of foods labeled to divert atten­tion away from harm­ful ingre­di­ents, or “pay-day loans” that dis­guise their preda­to­ry motives, often when we are told one thing, we soon find that the real­i­ty we actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence is quite dif­fer­ent. There’s val­ue in explor­ing that dis­con­nect, in ques­tion­ing the accu­ra­cy of what we’re being offered, or ask­ing our­selves why we feel betrayed. By slowing

down our response, by jet­ti­son­ing expec­ta­tion and by fol­low­ing our intu­itive curios­i­ty, we can make strides to clear the path toward gain­ing greater aware­ness about what we encounter.

Think about the pop­u­lar per­cep­tion of how aliens might appear upon arrival, how human or ani­mal they are made to look in sci-fi sto­ries, we are most like­ly deceiv­ing our­selves. What if, instead of indi­vid­u­at­ed beings like our­selves, an alien species is more akin to tiny particles?

“Sud­den­ly the entire sky seemed to be filled with points of gold. Then it was com­ing down on us, like fine pollen, like yel­low dust. It lay on our roof slopes, it sift­ed down onto our side­walks, cov­ered our shirt­sleeves and the tops of our cars. We did not know what to make of it.”— Steven Mill­hauser, The Inva­sion from Out­er Space ¹⁸

By becom­ing more open to a wider array of pos­si­bil­i­ties for far-out sce­nar­ios, as well as more sim­ple day-to-day encoun­ters, we can sub­vert our own lim­it­ed per­cep­tion. Wires get crossed and some­times per­cep­tions don’t align. Yet, as with any mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the pain of dis­con­nect­ed per­spec­tives can be reme­died by lis­ten­ing more care­ful­ly. In this way, we can learn much from our mis­tak­en per­cep­tions and move on with greater knowledge.