“We don’t know what we don’t know. What we think we know is what we think. It doesn’t make us correct. Research points out that we don’t operate directly on the world. Information coming through our senses is filtered through our brain. We create maps.
We create maps of our experience. Our eyes don’t see. Our eyes are the lens through which the brain sees, interprets and makes sense of the data coming in. We are bombarded with trillions of bits of sensory date but consciously can only process 5 +/- 2 bits.
That means we are only consciously aware of an infinitesimally small sliver of all that is going on. It is as if we have a flashlight in a dark room. What we are aware of is whatever is within its beam as we shine it around the room. From this limited info we create maps.
Consciousness Is A Flashlight – We See Only What It Shines On
We should attempt to examine and review and update our own maps whenever we can. We can never know it all, and as I stated, we don’t even know what we don’t know. Still, we can seek to discover what we are missing and work to enhance or update our maps.
The funny thing about ‘we’ humans is we defend our maps. We think we have the whole picture, when we don’t. We argue over our perceptions of what we think is going on, or what ‘the story is’. We think our version, our map of reality, is correct and other’s wrong.
When we agree, we agree on elements of the map because we can’t even describe our entire map, small as it is, nor understand what precisely we, or others mean when we describe it. That too is subject to the same issues. We are limited in what we know and perceive.
We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know – We Wear Blinders
We are all brought up programmed and conditioned by everyone and everything around us. There is no escaping that. Some of us never question much of our original programming. We simply live from that conditioning most of our lives and then pass on.
We never know it might be different from what we were taught and came to believe as ‘reality’. There are those who elect to, and spend much of their lives attempting to, discover and update the original conditioning. They challenge it and seek to discover what else is.
They effort to trade in old conditioning for new updated, more relevant conditioning. They seek better maps and attempt to constantly keep up to date. In some cases there are those who attempt to drop the conditioning altogether. It can be done!
Awareness Is Necessary To Begin To Discover Your Conditioning
Maps are maps. We got them from somewhere. Most of us, mostly, live from old outdated maps. We remember and review old pictures, conversations, self-talk and memories while thinking we are thinking new things. We aren’t. We are reliving old things.
The key to change IS becoming free of it all, as much as possible. We need to learn to do new things instead of re-live the old. We need to learn how to ‘respond’ instead of knee-jerk react. It is possible and many do become free or at least, freer. Meditation assists in this.
First, one must become aware that one is living off their old maps. Without this awareness you will not change your life. Within these blog pages I have described different processes and principles for becoming free. I suggest, if you want to become free, you study these blogs. Enroll in Mind Design™. But if you don’t at least begin the practice of gratitude and celebrate everything!” Rex Sikes
ACT TODAY! Stop suffering! Transform yourself and create your best life ever! Enroll In Mind Design™ Today Stop struggling! It can be easier. Learn to use the mind you have to get what you want!
Horizon photo used with permission of Phil Koch