Your Belief Filter, Perception, and How It Effects Intentional Manifestation
I’ve focused many blog posts on perception, what it is and what it is not. Today I’d like to visit the topic again because it is such a stumbling block to intentional manifestation.
First, just for a moment glance around you, smell the air, touch something near you, listen to the sounds in the background. These are you physical senses, they make up part of your perception but they are not the complete picture. Consider what happens when you look out the window and see a tree shedding it’s leaves, a cloudy sky, or a bird on the windowsill.
Seeing, hearing, tasting, or touching (all physical actions) are only part of perceiving. When you take in a visual image, a taste, a physical sensation, or a sound, it is entered into the brain (database) and run through a program which quickly compares them to those held in memory, contrasts them with other similar experiences, brings up past memories, thoughts, and emotions held at those times and then finally it run’s all of this data through your Belief Filter. Your belief filter is your inner guidance of what is not only true but what is possible. These are the adopted beliefs of your identity.
So as you sit and look outside and perceive the scene you are not only seeing what is now, but a compilation of many many other instances of similar experiences combined with the current information. Any information not in alignment with your adopted belief system is filtered OUT and not perceived. Thoughts & emotions rise depending upon all of this information.
What this means is that you are not perceiving truly. When the brain compares, contrasts, and includes past experiences to you, it actually render’s what is now into what was. The present moment cannot be contained in the past. To see with new eyes, to hear with new ears, or to see with the eyes of a child requires circumventing this packaging of information with past associations and beliefs. It requires that you be completely present & open. This is aptly described in the New Testament as being born again, in this moment. It is a complete release from memory, from mental associations, from beliefs, and from arising emotions. Tolle describes it as THE NOW, and ‘A Course In Miracles’ dubs it the HOLY INSTANT.
One of my favorite quotes about perceptions is found in ‘A Course In Miracles’, chapter 11, section VIII:
The End of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into Heaven. The reinterpretation of the world is the transfer of all perception to knowledge.
The Bible tells you to become as little children. Little children recognize that they do not understand what they perceive, and so they ask what it means. Do not make the mistake of believing that you understand with you perceive, for its meaning is lost to you. Yet the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning for you, and if you will let Him interpret it, He will restore to you what you have thrown away. Yet while you think you know its meaning, you will see no need to ask it of Him.
You do not know the meaning of anything you perceive. Not one thought you hold is wholly true. The recognition of this is your firm beginning. You are not misguided; you have accepted no guide at all. Instruction in perception is your great need, for you understand nothing. Recognize this but do not accept it, for understanding is your inheritance. Perceptions are learned, and you are not without a teacher. Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself, for you who learned amiss should not be your own teacher.
No one can withhold truth except from himself.
So in essence, we see only what we believe, and most of us believe 100% of what we see. But, the TRUTH or the real REALITY is not our perception of it. Our individual reality is completely our own and is formed by us and fed to us through our belief filter and past associations. Everything we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch is created by and through our beliefs about what is true and real, therefor everything we perceive is a reflection of who & what we are at our deepest level, our ego formed beliefs.
To break away from this circular manifestation cycle, we must enter into the unfiltered NOW, the present moment or Holy Instant. Tolle advocates using your breathe, meditation, and a continuous watchfulness of thought. Similarly ACIM advises to let go of the past, look with new eyes, and ask constantly what it is you are perceiving and what it really means. If we ask ourselves what it means, and allow ourselves an instant to become aware, our perceptions will show us all exactly what it is we truly believe. Each thought, emotion, and perception is the witness to what we hold true for ourselves and our reality, and there can be no change in thought or reality without first a change in our belief filter.