How to See with Wiser Eyes

Understanding Perception

In our journey to becoming wiser human beings, we need to understand that there is a big difference between the factual information our senses gather and our INTERPRETATION of these events.

We tend to treat our interpretations as FACT! The truth is – THEY ARE NOT!

Our perceptions often trigger emotional response. Or an emotional response can trigger an old perceptual pattern.

Let’s explore how this can happen.

Perception is the process of gathering information through our senses, organizing and making sense of it.

Wikipedia defines perception as follows:

“Perception is not only the passive receipt of these signals, but it’s also shaped by the recipient’s learning, memory, expectation, and attention.

Perception can be split into two processes, 

1. processing the sensory input, which transforms these low-level information to higher-level information (e.g., extracts shapes for object recognition);
2. processing which is connected with a person’s concepts and expectations (or knowledge), restorative and selective mechanisms (such as attention) that influence perception.”

Sensing Coffee

Let’s use a cup of coffee as an example. Here is how each sense might gather information about the coffee.

See: What is the colour of the cup? How much coffee is in it? Is there cream in the coffee?

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