When talking about visual perception without past experience as it pertains to newborns, Irvin Rock’s book “Perception” inspired this thought:

How do the emotional ties we have to the things we are perceiving shape the vision we choose to accept ?

I was inspired by Rock’s description of newborn children’s pattern preferences during observation. Particularly the explanation of how birds and newborns are “‘eliciting’ or releasing instinctual reactions” to things they were seeing.

While Rock was referring to birds and newborns and their visual studied preferences, this got me thinking about emotional ties we have to the things we perceive, such as marketing tactics. Emotional branding, including the visuals, the story being told and audible effects play a huge role into our perception. Thats why emotional branding is so successful, it reminds us of things we perceive to be cute (fawning), scary (fear based adrenaline) or disastrous (empathy) to create a preferential experience.

When addressing perception, positively and negatively, I look to a loosely accurate statement that says “If I take a picture of the moon with a disposable camera versus a telescopic camera the image might differ but the item being photographed does not.”

In the same concept, if my experience is seen through the lens of an emotional attachment, then am I more inclined to feel that emotion when perceiving that experience?

If my experience is seen through an emotional attachment, did I really see the experience as it was or did I just see a preferential experience based on that attachment?

Let’s connect this to instinctual reactions, trauma responses and non attachment.

One of the concepts I move by is that there is your truth, my truth and THE truth, the unbiased reality that exists without external perception, are all different things.

It’s obvious that it is an innate human trait to attach our emotions to our perceptions, also that this varies with experienced trauma. So what is the solution to seeing things as they are and not how we perceive them?

Non-judgmental perception

Unbiased vision or simply, non- attachment.

Non judgmental perception refers to observing and experiencing thoughts, feelings, sensations and events without attaching labels or evaluations like “good” or “bad”. Its about seeing things as they are, without imposing personal biases or interpretations.

With this, we allow a bigger range of awareness with experiences and allow ourselves to experience more, and choose then, to attach, not instinctively but intentionally.

Until next time,

Honestly Ayala