I came to realize that all my problems, dislikes and emotions comes from me. My perception of things happening around me and my mental habits derived my experiences, influence and wisdoms that I have acquired. How we see a thing or perceive and event will trigger our re-action and emotions. If we see a thing that we don't like, our sight will sent an image to our mind and the mind will search for an experience which will justify and support our unhappy emotions. This is an automatic and hidden process and it occurs so fast that we do not realized it.
I had a friend who do not like to eat fish and even if I offered him a very good cooked fish, he would not touch it. I was wondering why and after much persuasion, he told me that in the past, he had eaten a rotten fish. Another friend also do not like to eat fish and his reason is that a fish bone poke through his cheek and he have to go through an operation to remove it. These bad experience was kept deep into their mind. So, when they see fish, the bad experience quickly surface and warn them not to eat the fish.
So, the perception is much influence by our past experiences which is archive deep in our mind. So, the older we are, the more of such experiences either likes or dislikes and we are influence by the years of experiences we have encountered. If you are 10 years old, you have 10 years of experiences you can fall back on and if you are 60, you have 60 years of experience to fall back on. So, the older, we get, the more restrictive is our perception. To our loved ones, we can become more stubborn or unreasonable. This process happens so fast and is not transparent from the naked eye. So, sometimes people question us that why we think we are right, it is only our perception.
Our perception is based on our experience and knowledge. If we have the wrong experience, we make the wrong perception and we make the wrong decisions. This link is very strong and binding.
So, we have to analyse our perception from a fair and balance view and away from the influence of our experience and knowledge. If we read widely and acquire much wisdom, our perception will change. If we are aware of our experiences , we will also see things differently. In some cases, we can neutralized the experience and erase the memory so that we can see clearly and make the right judgement. So, to change my friends' dislike for fish, I must convince them to eat good fish and after that experience, they may change their mind about fishes.
Looking at my findings and realization, when we look at a stranger, our perception of him will draw out the good and bad points from our experience. We will match him with somebody similar in our library of experiences and if he resembles our loving father or mother, we will automatically have good feelings for her or otherwise, if he or she resembles a bad person, we will automatically find reasons to dislike him or her.
The influence of Hong Kong TV series have much influence on the way we judge a person because our mind capture the good characters and bad characters from the movies and stored them in our mind. Such experiences will surface when we see a similar character in our daily life.
From this realization, everything is depends ourself and if we are aware, we can handle the events happening around us much better and more balanced. The Chinese sage already knows this connections and they have advise his followers to "think three times" before we make a decision. This action will break the automatic link of perception to our experience and knowledge and this pause will make us see more clearly and objectively. Finally, it is ourself to blame if we based our judgement on our experience and knowledge alone without been aware that there is an element of biasness. Hence, there is a very good advice "to unlearn and learn" and with this process, we can see clearly and fairly.
Namaste.
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