Your Perceptions and Your Realities

The so-called "realities" of your life come from your perceptions. Enjoyment comes from the thinking mind, connected to the body. 

The human brain is composed of neurons or nerve cells that transmit information and messages; they’re the building blocks of the brain for the efficient functioning of the thinking mind.

Neurons are responsible for all human behaviors in the form of perceptions, which then trigger a mental process in the thinking mind that may result in an action or an emotion. If the process becomes instinctive, then the output in the form of actions or emotions is also automatic and predictable. That’s how attitudes and habits are formed, including the fight-or-flight response to any dangerous situation. This automatic or spontaneous mental process is often not “by choice” but “by instinct."

This “learned” and “acquired” mental process is often responsible for thinking and actions, as well as for beliefs and emotions. So, it’s important for the thinking mind to do the following: recognizing the instinctive or automatic mental process; challenging its reality or validity to see through the myths or even the deceptions behind; and then changing the mental process by taking appropriate actions accordingly.

The Bottom Line

Living in wisdom is the capability of the thinking mind to recognize the deceptions behind the so-called “realities” perceived and processed by the thinking mind, that is, the capability to separate the sheep from the goats.

Living by faith, you get your spiritual wisdom from God to perceive the differences between sheep and goats, that is, the differences between realities and half-truths.

Perceiving and Processing

The thinking mind processes all life experiences, which then become thoughts and memories, and ultimately the raw materials of the thinking process by the thinking mind.

According to James Allen, author of As A Man Thinketh, humans are “makers of themselves” and the human mind is the “master-weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance.” That is, humans may have become who they are and what they’ve now become by way of their own thinking over the years.

So, life is all about mind over matter. Harnessing mind power is understanding the exact functioning of the thinking mind and how it may positively or negatively affect the thinking process, and then learning some strategies to fully utilize the mind power to live in wisdom.

Life Experiences

An individual’s life experiences are unique in that they’re the byproducts of all the happenings in the lifespan of that individual. Those life experiences are determined by two pivotal players: choices and circumstances.

Choices, resulting in actions or inactions, bring about consequences as well as circumstances affecting life in general and in specific.

Circumstances can come from self-inflicting internal circumstances or from those uncontrollable external circumstances.

An Illustration

A person had to complete a project and submit a report on that project. That person had sufficient time to do what he or she was supposed to do, but that person chose to procrastinate until the last minute. An unforeseeable event happened and made it impossible for that person to finish the work on time, thus creating a “self-inflicting” circumstance of anxiety, frustration, and undue stress that might affect the subsequent choices of that person.

Of course, sometimes personal choices may not be able to alter the uncontrollable external circumstances, but they may still play a primary role in the reactions and adaptations to those external circumstances beyond their control. For example, in the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in 2011, the Japanese people demonstrated their remarkable resilience in their reactions and adaptations to the uncontrollable external circumstances inflicted on them by nature.

The Bottom Line

Living is all about choices and consequences from those choices, and that has much to do with causes and results—they often become the components of life experiences.

Living by faith: you often make the right choices with your own accountability to the consequences through God’s Helper, the Holy Spirit.

Stephen Lau