Life As We Are

We see the world not as it us, but as we are.

This is a basic fundamental awareness that has escaped many of us for a good portion of our lives. We are taught from the time we are very small that we experience the world through our five senses accurately. The truth is that the amount of sensory input we receive moment to moment vastly exceeds our capacity to process it. The best we can hope for is a scant overview of our environment. But the real key to the puzzle isn't how much of our input we process, but the filter we use to do that processing.

We develop our processing filter during our everyday lives. We begin when we are young within our family of origin. We absorb the values and ideals of our caretakers as we spend time with them. We observe how they respond to their environment and we mimic that learned behavior until we make it our own. As we grow we add to the base we acquired in childhood. During our adolescence we add much from our external family... our friends.... usually to the displeasure of our caretakers. As we approach adulthood we sort through all the values we have internalized and finally create our filter. Although we have the capacity to revamp that filter as we wish, our general tendency may be to continue to see our lives through it. It has effectively become the base of our belief system.

There are times when we suddenly see our lives without the filter. We experience a paradigm shift. For a brief moment we see ourselves as others may see us. How we internalize that message determines whether we are capable of changing ourselves as a result of that experience. If our self esteem is strong and we feel confident, we may accept this new information readily and adapt. But what if our self esteem is low. We may see the new information as threatening and reject the message, thereby preventing change and growth in ourselves.

This underlies the need for using our tools in our daily lives. As we continue to practice self care we become more adept at using our tools. As we become more and more familiar and comfortable with our tools we integrate them into ourselves, thereby increasing our self esteem. As our self esteem rises we are more able to accept the truth, that our vision of life is not as it is, but as we are. In this way we give ourselves the gift of acceptance.