PERCEPTION

Perception is not just a state of mind, thought or activity in the brain.  It is anchored in the muscles and innate capacities of the body that reflect an intimate relationship with the environment and other people.  There is no separation between mind and body, both are involved in capturing features of the world “out there”.  Reality cannot be an objectively knowable as it is observed and interpreted subjectively by our nervous system as we adopt different perspectives. The result of “structural coupling”.  Reality cannot be an objectively knowable as it is observed, filtered and interpreted subjectively by our nervous system to create our Way of Being.

You are not a psyche attached to an organism. You take action through the body mostly by habit and instinct. The body contains an innate wisdom, a world experienced and embedded in your nervous system. How you perceive something is “structurally determined”.  Your body knows what is possible and impossible and the mind knows not to expect more than the body can deliver. You take action through the body and learn from it. As a result, you have preferred attitudes, postures, and gestures when listening or when making presentations.  You are happy when your intentions and performance are in sync.

Learning a skill grows from conscious competence towards unconscious competence as it becomes embedded in the body’s physiology.  This is because:

• Meaning resides in the body and shapes how it moves and resists.
• We can only act in the world through our body
• We are constantly adjusting to act competently in different contexts
• We can use the body in ways that will improve our sense of well being or reduce pain
• When we change our posture we can change our mood and the language we use.

When we adopt different standpoints or perspectives we are assessing the same situation adopting different interpretations by using different distinctions. A piece of cheese will mean something different to a mouse, a starving student, a lactose intolerant person and a shop-keeper.  Distinctions such as gender perspectives, child, and parent, dreamer, and realist, seeing and hearing, etc.

Reality is as we perceive it to be. We cannot then say what is real as there are so many ways we appreciate what goes on around us. Often our perceptual position shifts when more information comes to our attention, we use our imagination or we are cured of a phobia.