[Milan]

I thought you all would be interested in this excerpt I took from a Ken Keyes book. He was a guy who wrote a lot of books on happiness over the last 30 years. He was more scientific then the self help charlatans of today. His whole process of changing our addictions (desires) to preferences appealed to me. This part explains a bit on how our ego works. I don't know how accurate it is but it seems logical. Any one studying the human mind may want to comment.

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We see things not as they are-but as we are. Every addiction distorts your effective processing (on both conscious and unconscious levels) of the enormous flow of information that is continually flooding in through all of your sensory inputs. Every second your biocomputer is receiving millions of electrochemical impulses from your sight, sound, touch, taste, and olfactory receptors, and the tissues and organs within your body. For example, each hair on your body is connected by a nerve to your brain. All of your internal organs are continually sending signals to your biocomputer, most of which are fortunately handled on an unconscious level.

The reticular activating system of your biocomputer is a network that selects what goes into your consciousness. It screens the data that it sends to your cerebral centre - your master analyser. This network can close down your consciousness and put you to sleep. It can turn up your consciousness and awaken you when you are asleep. This neural structure performs the function that is often referred to as the "ego." (See Chapter 22 for a fuller discussion of neurological factors that affect your consciousness.)

You can consciously pay full attention to only one thing at a time although your consciousness can switch back and forth with lightning rapidity. How does your reticular activating system (or ego) select what to pass on to your consciousness? It selects the information that is to go into your consciousness by following the programming that you have been putting into it since infancy. Thus your programmed addictions determine your experience of the world for they are the guides that your reticular activating system uses to determine which data will be suppressed and which can go into your consciousness and command full attention. In this way, you gradually develop an illusory version of the people and things in your world because of the enormous domination of your consciousness by the things you are programmed to desire and that which you are programmed to fear.

The more you live with your distorted version of the people and things around you, the more certain you will feel that it is the only "true" picture of the world. Thus you build up a warped picture of yourself and the people and situations in your world. For your mind is such that whatever it believes is true produces a feedback that continually reinforces and molds your perceptions.

You should always be aware that your head creates your world. Your addiction patterns-your expectations, your desires, your attachments, your demands, your mental models - dominate your perceptions of the people and things around you. It is only when you become free of your addictive programming that you can perceive how things really interact in your world.
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Interesting how our mind distorts our reality. This excerpt seems to keep with Janine's book that our fears control our perception. Janine you may wish to comment.

I haven't read much of his Ken's stuff lately but it did help me a little during the hard times. He has passed but a couple of years a ago I spoke to a friend of his on the phone from the California. He mentioned that Ken was a amazing guy who loved life and was always happy even though he was a quadriplegic. He use to type his books using a pencil in his mouth. If your interested you can do a Google search on Ken Keyes.

 

[Scattered]

I think our minds certainly form their own reality that we continue to reinforce and perceive. However, I really doubt that there is a "true" way to see reality. Things just are, they aren't positive or negative, ugly or beautiful or anything in between. We can choose how we perceive and interact with the world but to suggest that there is a way to see the "true" reality, seems like bullshit to me. Our perceptions will always be "distorted" and by that I mean subjective. We can choose to hold on to positive illusions or negative illusions. But all are illusions.

 

[Guest]

to take a step even further, what reality is all perspective. We don't see reality; we use five senses to measure and identify 'objects' in our area. Animals/Bugs who rely on electronic waves to "see" things view reality completely differently.

Example, what is a car? You know how it looks, how it sounds, and you have a general understanding of the function it provides to humans. Beyond that its just a bunch of molecules, no different from the air around it.

 

[Shadow Cat]

to take a step even further, what reality is all perspective. We don't see reality; we use five senses to measure and identify 'objects' in our area. Animals/Bugs who rely on electronic waves to "see" things view reality completely differently.

Example, what is a car? You know how it looks, how it sounds, and you have a general understanding of the function it provides to humans. Beyond that its just a bunch of molecules, no different from the air around it.

Eck, I don't like thinking that way. It sometimes triggers DR for me.

 

[squish_is_me]

only have one thing to say:
Perception is reality!

 

[Guest]

[/quote]

Eck, I don't like thinking that way. It sometimes triggers DR for me.[/quote]

dp actually made me realize that. maybe its a two-way street.

And squish, "Perception is reality!". Its a very interesting thing. Someone was doing a presentation in class the other day about something similar. Say someone made a box so small, it looked like a dot. Is it a box or a dot? Does it become a box if you look at it with a microscope? bah, its too deep. Shallow things are much more amusing.

 

[squish_is_me]

more or less yah... what you see is what you get! Perception is reality! If you preceive that the world is bad and if you go out into that you will have a DP/DR episode and an anxiety attack and you think it and think it it wil happen! The world is what you take it for!

 

[Guest]

Perception is not reality. Perception is not even truly thought. Perception is the first thing your brain does when it gets neural input. It tries to make an image out of all that data, and for the most part it creates one that works pretty well. But it's just one isolated perspective.

 

[squish_is_me]

You are looking at it in too much of a single way. Perception is not just one thing. Perception isnt just what you see. Perception is how you view the world as a whole! My mother is a very good example of this! She has BPD. She often views situations differently than others. Say my fathers asks a sales clerk how to find something. My mother may think that he is flirting with her. As a BPD this makes her feel bad and so she projects her feelings onto my father and throws an accusation at him. In doing this it helps ease her own feeling that she was thinking something bad. In turn it causes my father to be defensive and act out of annoyance and anger. At this point in her mind he is wrong. She perception is that she did nothing wrong and that my father is acting innapropriately. We cann all see the reality of things here though!
As a BPD my mother commonly sets up situations like this. They are always meant to ease her feeeling that she must really be a bad person or to try and keep someone from leaving with fratic and erratic behaviour. Although she may realize that she is acting as a xhild and on impulse she still preceives everything differently! The way a situations happens, what she thinks was going on and so forth.
It is all about perception! If you are talking to someone and if they feel they are being nice and you dont and you begin to attack them it is all about the perception! You attacked because you perceived that they were being wronged somehow. Everything from how loud you feel something is to what a car accident is like is all about perception! Your world is the way you perceive it!