Inner  Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

 

Inner Work


For the week of February 20, 2006


Distorting Perception

Our ego distorts our perceptions according to its desires and concerns, its fears and its attitudes. Egocentric filters prevent some things from getting through at all, while others acquire new colors. If, for example, we worry about being overweight, then when we see other people, we first notice their weight. If they are less overweight than us, we may feel antipathy, jealousy, or self-critical. If they are more overweight than us, we may feel successful or superior. We compare ourselves to others on the basis of weight. We even focus our own body awareness on our overweight bits and feel disgusted or burdened. All this forms an undercurrent of attitudes around weight issues, an undercurrent that influences our perceptions, usually without our realizing it. We no longer see people as people, but rather as fat or not fat. We no longer see ourselves as a person, but rather as fat or not fat. Much of our experience passes through that distorting lens of fatness.

If we feel financially unsuccessful and worry about it, then we see others and ourselves through the filter of money. If we feel unattractive, we measure others and ourselves in terms of physical appearance. If we think we’re too short or too tall, we see people in terms of their height. To the extent that our sex hormones drive us, we see people in terms of whether they are sexually attractive or not, usually ignoring the latter. If we feel lonely, we see people as having a mate or not. If we feel sad or depressed, we may see in terms of happiness and unhappiness.

All this originates prior to thought, in self-centered attitudes that shape our perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and actions. Our ego unconsciously defines us as someone who lacks a certain something and then builds our life around acquiring or wishing for that something. These unexamined but powerful attitudes take our freedom and enslave us to egoism. Instead of being fully here, open, present, alert to the wonder of life and actively contributing to it, we waste so much in these distorted, limited views of the world.

Unfortunately, our perceptual filters do not announce themselves; they just do their work without us even noticing the damage they inflict. Whenever we encounter one of the triggers of our ego-based filters, we automatically fall right into its power. Our emotions and thoughts collapse into the corresponding reactions without us even realizing that there are other ways to see, think, and feel.

We can, however, work to shine the healing light of direct awareness onto these inner processes. We set the intention to notice how our ego distorts our perceptions. We remind ourselves several times a day to look for such inner events. When we feel emotional reactions, strong or weak, we suspect our ego filters have been active. Perhaps the easiest situation to notice these ego-filters occurs when we see other people and our comparing mind takes hold. See what kinds of comparisons your mind makes and how those comparisons make you feel. Seeing these automatic, ego attitudes in action shaping our perceptions, thoughts, and emotions, helps diminish their power and free us.

For this week, notice your perceptual distortions.


     

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