The Vedic Conversation Episode 4 - Perception: Recognising and clearing our perceptual filters
The Vedic Conversation Episode 4 - Perception: Recognising and clearing our perceptual filters
Each episode we take a different topic and look at it through the lens of storytelling and from the perspective of the the Veda, an ancient but still very relevant body of knowledge from India.
This is joint venture with Anthony Thompson, a Vedic Meditation teacher based in London and Vedic colleagues Derrick Yanford in New York and Rory Kinsella in Sydney.
This episode was recorded during the height of the lockdown and is about Perception: Recognising and clearing our perceptual filters. At the end we offer a practical exercise so you can apply this knowledge to your daily life.
Here’s My Story.
The Beatles had returned from India and it was the hot summer before I went to secondary school. A friend who was up to speed on all the latest music asked me to join him to hear a new album he'd bought - it was the first album by The Doors.
A few years later I learnt they took their name from 'The Doors of Perception' a book written by Aldous Huxley in 1954. I had no real understanding of what perception meant until after I had started to meditate, about 18 months later.
But I was taught a lesson in the first week of my job working at an international auction house. The head of security had given us a talk about being vigilant, looking out for anything that seemed untoward and which would threaten the safety of the very valuable artwork that was in the building.
A day or so later I noticed a suspicious character – a small elderly lady, wearing a dirty raincoat, bent over carrying bulging heavy bags. She looked very out of place and her behaviour was erratic. So I approached a security guard and told him what I had seen. He pulled me to one side and laughingly said 'Oh that's Mrs Wise, she's an important silver dealer and is often in here.'
My perception, my understanding of the person I had seen had been influenced by the request to be security conscious.
So often the way we view things, and especially people, is through a prism which has been defined by our culture and upbringing, or influenced by something we have been told or learnt.
I had mis-interpreted something that didn't look right and my sense of foolishness was compounded by the knowledge that my fine levels of feeling had been tempered by the instruction to be vigilant. On a very simple level I had been conditioned.
Right now with the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests we can see perception thrown into sharp focus – that many years, many generations of conditioning, and mass hypnosis in the collective is no longer to be tolerated or is sustainable.
Vedic Meditation finesses our perception and acuity (the keenness, or sharpness of perception), so that whatever we approach or come across is understood at all levels.
The Vedas show us that when we are in our most simple and honest state, in full consciousness, the purity and integrity of what we are engaging with is shown to have the absence of 'other' - it is no different to us, and this allows us to connect, contribute and grow.
By adjusting the optic we can change the way we observe, the way we assimilate, the way we sense and recognise and understand that something is right or wrong.
Vedic Meditation helps us see more clearly, improving our judgement and insight leading to better decisions. We are able to see the truth more clearly from a position of honesty.
Many years after I first heard how The Doors chose their name I learnt that Aldous Huxley in turn took his title from the visionary work ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, by the English poet and artist William Blake, who wrote:
'If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.
If you’re happy to share your stories, we’d love to have you join the conversation. Please send them through to us at stories@thevedicconversation.com or post them on social media using the hashtag #thevedicconversation and we’ll share some in future episodes.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel now and get the latest episodes as soon as they drop. You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook.