All Perception is Self-Perception
What We Think of Others is a Reflection of Ourselves in Them
The true nature of what we refer to as perception, like consciousness itself, is still a mystery in scientific terms because it’s a product of our mind. While many talk about how we each create our own reality, few explain what that means in empirical terms, or how it is we actually do it. Reality is formed through our perception, and perception is a product of our mind formed through our mental paradigm, which forms the lens we look through to see and experience the world around us. Our mind literally reformulates everything to match our mental model, making it perceivable as a consistent version of an outer reality that’s translated through our inner reality to be of the same nature, meaning, and significance. We fit everything into a consistent theme as a way of making sense of the world. We form an understanding of the world around us by how we describe it, explain it, justify it, and build it into our story about things in a way that makes sense to us.
The statement that we are one with everything around us, is a literal statement, but not in the way most people think. While we are constantly exchanging and share the same particles, molecules, and energy with everyone and everything around us, we’re also exchanging consciousness, and energetically merging with it, becoming one in essence, and reshaping how it appears through our perception of it. We never really see things as they actually are apart from us, but as we remake them through our experience of them. Each person that’s apart of the same situation, event, or observing the same object will experience it differently and in a way that’s unique to them. This is because we only see and recognize in everything around us what matches our mental paradigm, which acts as a filtering system for selecting particular types of information inherent in the atmosphere around us, and organizing it into a pattern that reflects the reality of our mental model. Attention, which is consciousness being directed towards something, vibrates at a certain frequency, and is always resonating with what is of the same frequency in everything else. We vibrate the same information in everything around us that matches the informational structure of our paradigm, calling it forth in an active state of expression, while the qualities that don’t match our paradigm recede into the background and become latent, reshaping how things appear to us. How things appear to us is a product of our own vibratory frequency formed out of our mental paradigm. We’re always seeing aspects of ourselves in everything else.
The outer world shape shifts to match the inner world that’s perceiving it. Reality, which is perceived as a material construct, exists fundamentally in a state of probability. Energetically speaking, reality has the potential to appear different to everyone (the individual mind) perceiving it. Matter itself possesses a primordial form of consciousness as psychic qualities that are always interacting and transforming through the induction and repulsion of everything around it. We alter the vibration of a substance just by observing it. Our vibratory frequency, formed out of our mental paradigm as an archetypal theme (pattern), enters into the same vibration formed as a set of qualities in everything around us, and effects it by remixing it’s dominant and recessive qualities, changing how it appears by reformulating its inner state. In this way, the observer and the object being observed are apart of the same event, and can’t be seen as separate from each other. Our perception of others and outer events are a direct reflection and expression of our own mind. We see in everything else what’s in us, because our mind is what’s doing the seeing. The qualities we see in other things are the qualities that we ourselves possess that we project onto them, then perceive them as having the same qualities. If they possess qualities that we don’t, we fail to see or recognize them, and they don’t form a part of our perception. We transform their character to match ours by how we reform them in our imagination. We describe, explain, and tell stories about them that have nothing to do with them, and everything to do with us. Everything we perceive as being around us is a metaphorical reflection of what’s within us.
Likewise, every reaction we have to another, is an interaction with ourselves (same characteristics) in them. They possess the same qualities that we do as a dynamic pattern, and the reaction is the experience of resonance, or what we call stimulus. We only resonate (react) to the same vibration in another, which not only transforms us to that vibration by making those qualities active and dominant, but transforms them equally to the same qualities and behaviors, which form the basis for the interaction as the outward display of the shared pattern as a behavioral dynamic. Whenever we come into relationship with someone or something else, an immediate pattern emerges as a type of dynamic that becomes the nature of the interaction in an ongoing fashion. Once we realize this, we gain a valuable tool for self-recognition and realization. Anytime we’re forming a distinct interpretation of another person, we can ask ourselves simultaneously, what does this show me about myself? Allow yourself to notice that each person you interact with always brings out the same qualities in you, causing you to behave in a certain way by how you interact with them.
We have a dual mind which consists of the conscious (self-aware) and subconscious (unaware) mind. These two aspects of our mind are complementary, and always work together to form what we experience as reality. As we go through life, based on experiences in which we were severely judged in some way as being bad, wrong, not good enough, stupid, guilty, humiliated, shameful, and so on, causes us to deny the things about ourselves being used against us. As we deny parts of our character, we also repress the memories associated with those character traits. While these tendencies are being denied on the surface we still possess them internally, where they become internalized and formed into complexes that we continue to express by projecting them onto others (looking through them to see the same thing in others), and judging them just as harshly, if not more so, than we were judged. The dynamics of repressed issues continue playing out at the subconscious level where we’re not directly aware of what we’re doing, and we continue to produce the behavior and attract those who share the same issues and tendencies, and will cooperate in acting them out in a subliminal manner. Because they’re hidden from our own awareness through a denial of having or being that way, they remain hidden from our own awareness of ourselves, while remaining an active part of our perception of others. They remain an active part of our inner nature, forming an intrinsic part of our perceptual lens, causing us to readily see the same traits and tendencies in others, while continuing to play a part in the dramas that ensue from them. Realizing this tendency, anytime we have a negative reaction to someone, we can turn our attention inward and reflect on how we possess that same trait.
Once we become aware of the fact that we’re always projecting onto others and seeing in them the same character and tendencies that we also have, while playing out the same dynamics we were conditioned with as a child, we can use this awareness as a tool for psychological healing and self-development. Anytime we’re having a strong reaction to someone, or judging them harshly in some way, we can ask ourselves, if I could see this same trait, tendency, or behavior in myself . . . what would I see? Why am I having such a pronounced reaction? What emotion was triggered within me, and what idea or memory immediately comes to mind as a correlation? Why does it bother me so much? What is it about them or what they’re doing that bothers me? If we refrain from reacting outwardly, and instead turn our attention inward and concentrate on the feeling aroused within us, while observing what transpires from it from a detached perspective, allowing it to play out in our mind, we can begin seeing in ourselves what it is that we’re being shown through the other person or event that’s taking place. What are they acting as a mirror for? What part of ourselves are they reflecting back to us, providing us with an opportunity to understand and embrace it?
Just as what another person thinks of us has nothing to do with us, but is a reflection of them, likewise, what we think of another person has nothing to do with them, but is all about us. Our reaction, shows us what our own issues are that’s causing the reaction. How we judge others (through the nature of the reaction) is in the same manner that we were judged for having the same traits. How we act, or treat them, is the same way we were treated while being judged in the same way. We employ the same emotional state, behaviors, tone of voice and attitude, and often even use the same words. As you witness your own reaction from a detached state, as if watching yourself from the perspective of someone else, who or what does it remind you of? If you we’re on the receiving end of your own outward behaviors and attitude, how would you perceive yourself? What kind of person would you see yourself as, and why? Learn to penetrate it through a raw form of honesty, and as you begin gaining awareness of what has been operating in you without your direct awareness, gain realizations around it. See it in yourself as clearly as you can without denying it, and own it. Don’t continue to justify it or try to explain to yourself why you’re like that (usually blaming it on someone else), and just be present with it.
Self-awareness is what lays the foundation necessary for healing at the spiritual and psychological level.The more self-aware you become, the more you can begin realizing how your own subconscious mind works in forming how you perceive reality. This will provide you with a true understanding of what’s happening at the subliminal level and what you’re doing that you’re not aware of. Through this awareness you can begin working with it in a conscious and intentional manner. Become clear on the fact that whenever you’re reacting to someone or something, it has nothing to do with them, but is being created internally by you, and is providing you with the means for seeing things about yourself that you’re normally not aware of. We can only change what we’re aware of and fully own. Just the awareness itself starts the healing process and begins dissolving your attachment to the traits and memories or idea whenever they’re being played out in your present situation. Self-realization and the knowledge attained from it is the key to personal growth and emotional healing.
Personal Transformation Coach and Spiritual Mentor
