Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it. – Anaïas Nin

In the August newsletter "Perception: A Work in Progress" I published an article entitled "Window on the World," which illuminates through personal story telling the nature and role of perception in our lives. It emphasizes how what we see through the lenses of experience, knowledge, beliefs and assumptions we tend to define as our world. It follows to suggest that the more we sharpen our perception, soften the vision through expansion (of knowledge, experience, beliefs and more) and obtain a larger window on the world or a glimpse of a larger world, the more readily we can live into the endless possibilities of life.

Why? Because, as William Blake's aphorism suggests, "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is - infinite."

So, how can we keep our windows on the world clean? Below are a few of my suggestions, offering you just a snippet of this vast territory. Of course, all my usual Getting UnStressed & UnStuck suggestions and much more could fit here as well. For your convenience, I am repeating the first three suggestions from my newsletter article (skip down to #4 if you have already read them). Everything else that follows is new. Enjoy!

1) Apply Rule Number Six: "Don't take yourself so damned seriously," as Rosamund and Benjamin Zander suggest in their wonderful book The Art of Possibility. I highly recommend the thoughtful, entertaining and practical ideas the authors put forth.

2) Have you ever heard of the 'one-buttock' technique to shifting your action and therefore your perception? Well, here is your chance. Get a sense of Ben Zander's wit and unique approach to "looking at life with a squint" by indulging in this short video (~20 min) that demonstrates Zander's take on the practical application of awakening possibilities.

3) "Reality doesn't bite. It's our perception of reality that bites," says Anthony J. D'Angelo. So, if you feel the pain from the bite or the sting, take a breath and first anchor yourself. Then see or imagine what aspect of your perception at that moment might be causing you pain. Picture somebody else in your place. Imagine how you could detect a new or differing perspective or possibility for that person. Then apply it to yourself and see what happens. The story known as "The Rabbi's Gift" serves as a brilliant example here. It illustrates how just imagining a particular possibility encourages and nourishes amazing shifts in perception, behaviour and action.

4) Perhaps soaking in the powerful words of the Persian poet Hafiz will illuminate the topic of 'Cleansing the doors of perception' for you.

Someone Should Start Laughing
I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:
How are you?
    I have a thousand brilliant lies
    For the question:
    What is God?
If you think that the Truth can be known from words,
If you think that the Sun and the Ocean
Can pass through that tiny opening called the mouth,
    O someone should start laughing!
    Someone should start wildly Laughing–
    Now! – Hafiz or Hafez (1329-1389)

5) Re-awaken and strengthen your sense of awe, wonder and mystery, which feeds your heart and soul. After all, "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

6) If you ever catch yourself in a mode of thinking that originates from worry, anxiety or fear, what happens to your perception of the world around you? Your options then tend to become very quickly finite. You get stuck and spiral downward.

As a demonstration of an alternative, particularly in the field of Climate Change, where we get ourselves stuck and feeling disempowered because of our perceptions that are rooted in a sense of fear and apocalyptic scenarios, watch this short TED-Talks video (~17 min) with Nick Marks. In the spirit of realizing we can each only capture certain aspects of the truth, see what you can garner from his talk.

Sam Keen's words may also be of interest here: "As a mode of perception that often becomes a style of life, paranoia weaves around the vulnerable self or group an air-tight metaphysic and world view. Paranoia is an antireligious mysticism based on the feeling or perception that the world in general, and others in particular, are against me or us. Reality is perceived as hostile. By contrast, the religious mystic experiences the ground of being as basically friendly to the deepest needs of the self. That which is unknown, strange, or beyond our comprehension is with and for rather than against us." – Sam Keen (b. 1930s), U.S. theologian, psychologist. Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination, pt. 2, Harper & Row (1988) [from http://quotes.dictionary.com.]

7) Consider the following proposition: We can only get to know ourselves in relationship, "not in abstraction and certainly not in isolation," as the Indian writer and philosopher J. Krishnamurti proposes. So, take a look at your relationships with yourself, with your loved ones, nature, the environment and Spirit. See yourself in that mirror.

8) Make a commitment to engage in the creative process of daily life. Realize that it is our inner attitude towards life that shapes your perception of the world and, by extension, of ourselves in that world, as Viktor Frankl reminds in Search of Meaning. You may also wish to read my blog entry on the subject, entitled "Creativity: Looking at Life with a Squint."

9) Now, if you would like, contemplate one or more of the following statements–or of course others of your choice in the same vein:


• “Whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver.” – Thomas Acquinas (1225-1274), Italian Dominican priest, theologian and philosopher
• 
“We do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe.” – Joseph Jaworski, American author and expert in transformational leadership

• “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. – Meister Eckhart (c.1260-c.1327), German theologian, mystic and philosopher

• “Man knows himself only to the extent that he knows the world. He becomes aware of himself only within the world and aware of the world only within himself. Every object well contemplated opens a new organ within us.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German writer and polymath
• “If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye, which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what whine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?” – Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or
• "True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion." – Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian novelist, philosopher
• "For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception." – David Hume (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher
• "Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they show how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise." – Thomas Reid (1710-1796), Scottish leading philosopher, opponent of Hume
• "Men are not philosophers, but are rather very foolish children, who, by reason of their partiality, see everything in the most absurd manner, and are the victims at all times of the nearest object. There is even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. Our experience, our perception is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts and in succession, that is, with every truth a certain falsehood." – Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. Speech, December 9, 1841, at the Masonic Temple, Boston, Massachusetts. "The Conservative," Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (1849)
• "The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive." – Vaclav Havel (b. 1936), Czech playwright, president. Disturbing the Peace, ch. 2 (1986, trans. 1990).

Please note: The last five quotations are courtesy of http://quotes.dictionary.com.