Perception Deception

Squibs & Blurbs

by Jerry Zimmerman

TEANECK NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—3/14/11—I recently read an article in The New York Times about a doctor who discovered he had cancer.

From the first moments of his new journey into the medical system as a patient rather than as a practitioner, he was amazed to feel that he was suddenly on another planet.

The world had turned upside-down: HE was the one nervously asking his doctor for direction; HE was the one dreading the testing by all the various labs; HE was the one suspiciously eyeing the instruments being used on him.

Before, this had been HIS world: he was the leader, the wise man, the one who knew the answers, the one who ordered the tests, the one who understood how it all happened. He had been confident in the world of medicine and treatment.

In a flash, nothing was as it had been.

I’ve read similar stories about doctors who become patients. In all these stories, the doctors are completely flummoxed by their sensation of being lost, totally at sea in a world they thought they knew so well.

Obviously, this medical world had remained the same—it was the doctors who had changed.

But what was the nature of this dramatic change? Weren’t these doctors pretty much the same people as before, except now not so healthy? Weren’t they now going to the same labs they had always dealt with? Weren’t they talking to the same nurses they had always known? Weren’t they walking down the same hospital halls they had always walked down?

Their outside world was ostensibly the same. Their inside world had been blown to smithereens by one, simple sentence: “You have cancer.” Their new partner in life, Fear, had changed the game.

We’ve all experienced some version of this change in our perception of the world around us, though usually to a lesser degree. We break up with a girlfriend and the sunny morning doesn’t look cheerful at all. We fall in love, and the grey, rainy day seems just exquisite! We get fired from a job and that building we used to work in looks positively malevolent. We garner a big client and their product appears newly brilliant.

What has changed is all in the realm of emotion, that mysterious life force that gives value and shape to the mass of people and events constantly swirling around us, making up our universe.

What does it mean when “truth,” when “objective” reality, can change on a dime? My best friend is a wonderful guy, my brother in life, the salt of the earth. He betrays me. This same human being is now a beast, an evil sub-human; I get the shivers just thinking about him.

Sound familiar?

Yes, it’s familiar to us all, alive and well (and not so well), on the planet.

We perceive the actual nature of the world by and through how we feel about people and things.

Our perceptions are formed by emotions; we run our lives according to our perceptions. Nothing exists in a neutral state; yet we never realize this until we come face to face with a transformative event, whether happy or sad, fearful or creative.

This is our chance to see what is possibly more the truth of the matter or maybe even the truth of matter.

Almost all esoteric practices are intended to help one reach an understanding of life that is separate from the influences of human desire, human emotions. Disciples are trained to slowly and sedulously tease out the real from the perceived. The goal is to see the “real” world in all its glory.

I’ve had the experience of this transformation many times in my life, as we all have. What to do with these moments of light is the question.

If I can just purposefully hold on to my new understanding longer than usual, maybe some of that emotion will dissipate enough to allow me to see something “real.”

That would be exciting!

Oops.