I live in a world of patterns. Patterns that my brain has created and through which I interpret the world. Patterns are recognizable and quickly accessible. That saves time when I want to assess safety plus my responses are predictable and quickly deployable with set patterns.
What I see are my own expectations from those patterns of perception. Reality is chaotic. As my brain hones in on that reality here and there, it connects to certain pre-existing patterns and I can make an assessment of that reality. And my brain not only matches existing patterns of perception but also matches my projections, my estimations for the safest possible future, my expectations.
As a child, I drew. Who doesn’t. Only it didn’t seem like anything at first, but I had a lot of fun. Until the world around me started to think something of those drawings. Eventually I got into the symbolism of emoticons. Representations of what I see or want to draw. Abstractions of the external world. Thought-drawing.
Conceptualizing what I draw is faster perhaps but does not force me to pay attention. To let what my eyes see through looking resonate in me. Letting it touch me. Instead of being turned into a concept by my brain in shortcuts. A perception based on past experiences and patterned into sham reality. It creates an inner world of concepts, a look alike reality in which my brain is the puppeteer and adjusts to make everything fit. When I do that to an axtreme degree I exhibit narscistic behavior. Then there is only an inner world with avatars. My only task then is to manipulate the outside world so that it is appropriate with my “seemingly secure” inner world.
This includes the (often too) quick judgment of something or someone. Instead of taking my time to give my senses time to experience.
Exercise
- Sheet of paper and pen. Two people.
- It’s about looking.
- Two rules: (1) do not remove pen from paper and (2) do not look at the paper.
- Put pen in center of sheet of paper
- Draw the other person while looking the other person in the eyes.
I draw like this from an empty mind, thoughtless. From contact, presence, taking time.
I had long lost sensory perception. I watched with my brain. with a security-focused distinctiveness. Which created distance and duality. black-and-white thinking, binary judgments.
When I look without the filter of perception, without my safety-oriented thinking, only then can I see the other apart from my experiences and interpretations, fixed patterns, with which I pigeonhole the other. When I look with my heart I see love. In myself and in others.
