Perception
Commentary
Existence is ever emergent. Perception proceeds apace.
Existence constantly updates itself. The construal of evolution is of adaptive change over time. Every aspect of Nature evolves in its own way.
Different flora and fauna live at different paces. Ephemeral plants may last mere weeks before sinking into dormancy, while others stand sentry for millennia. Colonies of clonal plants, such as aspen trees and creosote bushes, may thrive for tens of thousands of years.
Adult mayflies have a fleeting frolic of a single day, while an ocean quahog – a mollusk native to the North Atlantic Ocean – may live 400 years or more.
As a biological process, a mind apprehends Nature at its own natural pace. Birds vocalize at 10 times the rate that humans can hear, which means birds can hear 10 notes for every 1 that people can.
Generally, smaller animals interact more quickly while larger ones live longer at a more leisurely pace. The rate at which an animal lives and its perception in time are related to its nominal lifespan.
With a quicker mind at work, fast lives are as full as those that are lived more slowly. Each living being has the potential to enjoy a rich life at the pace which is natural to it.
Memory creates processes which are punctuated as events.
A process is manufactured in the mind by using memory to connect snapshots and construe a sequence. A process turns into an event when relevant motion stops or when the mind construes a certain outcome.
Doggedly determined to satisfy desires, the mind is constantly looking for payoffs. Events are contrived conclusions from which a takeaway can be derived. By takeaways are lessons learned.
Perception transforms data into information.
Sensation is the uptake of data by the senses. Perception is the process of making sense of sensation.
Construal is a post-perception framing process. Construal happens by reflection of wants. Desire determines what is given meaning. In assigning meaning, data transforms into information via construal.
The mind constantly seeks meaning in its gleanings. Only that deemed meaningful is kept in memory for more than a scant span.
Perception’s purpose is to find meaning in light of desire.
Desire exceeds the active wants that reach conscious awareness. The mind is always immersed in desire.
For instance, we constantly monitor our habitat, memorizing where everything is. We may not think of this topographical mapping as a desire. Yet you know well the frustration of not being able to find something you know you have.
Your mind autonomically retains maps for the inevitable convenience of being able to locate belongings. The desire to do so is subconscious, though you do at times willfully remember where something is, when you anticipate needing it later, and not want to be thwarted by not knowing where that something is.
Purpose and meaning are compelling artifices.
As the ingrained drivers of dobe, purpose and meaning are taken for granted. These philosophical terms – meaning and purpose – are found in every language and are among the earliest purely abstract words learned by young children. Meaning and purpose are entirely subjective. As an integral part of biological programming, they resonate strongly with willmind.
The Collective are common folk. They admire those who have passion for their goals. Acting without productive purpose is just “killing time”: murdering life in slow motion.
What lies behind meaning is esteem itself. To declare something “meaningless” is a strong damnation.
That meaning and purpose are compelling is obvious. Their artifice is also obvious, if you can get past innate bias. Beyond biological compulsion, meaning and purpose are mere whimsy.
Purpose gives living meaning. Meaning is driven by desire. Desire has no meaning unless its fulfillment is not readily achieved, for what is effortless does not hold our attention. The subterfuge behind purpose is part of an elaborate design to craft living as a challenge.
Perception is deception.
What you experience as Nature is an indelible fantasy. Nepalese guru Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) noted 2,800 years ago, “The mind is everything.” As the mind deceives in its basic conveyance, the instrument of mentation is not to be trusted.
Reality and existence are entirely data processes. The mind’s conveyance of a physical world of objects is a primal illusion.
We perceive by motion. Touching happens through tension. Hearing works via percussive vibrations. Sight is the reaping of light, which is the immaterial band of radiation to which Life on Earth attunes because that range contains the most data.
Our senses are constantly assaulted. The pounding of perception creates a panorama so overwhelming that our minds remember mere sketches of portions that have been designated as having meaning.
The relentless sensory onslaught is unsustainable. We must lose consciousness for extended periods – sleep – to recover. Other Life must also periodically rest.
The incessant spectacle of sensation keeps people diverted from examining the construction of perception. Most simply struggle to keep up with what comes to mind. As such, conventional conception is that perception captures a material world in the mind: a turning of matter into symbols. The opposite is true. Perception converts symbols into the appearance of matter.
There is a tightly coupled correspondence between the data we can sense and the way our mind works. We perceive a physicality which intricately matches the way we construe cause and effect.
But just because something “works” does not make it reality. The compatibility between cöherence data and mental construal is the mind’s miracle of deceit.
The realm of existence is a universe of abstraction: a data dimensionality. The hierarchy from the elemental is of symbols that pile into concepts, not quanta that form atoms.
As we can only sense energy by its effect on matter, the deception of perception is an ouroboros.
The ruse of dualism presents the supreme challenge.
Perceiving Nature in its true nature is the supreme challenge, as the illusion of physicality is mentally ingrained from infancy and reinforced as nattermind comes to the fore in early childhood.
The game of life can only be won by overcoming the primordial illusion.
Living is a game with a goal: to make the most of the experience. Yielding the maximum value from living requires one’s full attention. Gaining the goal requires pure awareness.
Only at the highest level of consciousness can the mind’s fundamental deception of physicality be seen for what it is. Only in “overcoming the primordial illusion” is the veracity of existence revealed, and thereby life lived to its fullest measure.
Deception yields veracity.
Consider the inyō challenge that cöherence faces in crafting Life’s evolution. The ostensible purpose of biological adaptation is to enhance the prospect for survival and propagation of future generations. That is what abundant evidence tells us.
The flourish and creativity of adaptations seen in Nature speaks of a force with wildly inventive imagination, constrained only by the media in which it works. Those media appear to us in biological traits: in molecular and behavioral patterns. Constraints are seen in antecedents, for adaptation is always incremental, even when it has saltational flavor.
The adaptive aim of survivability must be tempered such that living remains challenging, for it is struggle that gives living meaning.
In proposing adaptations, local cöherence must twine survivability and challenge together, creating a sustaining inyō that offers the potential of vivid entertainment. The intricacy in squaring this circle testifies to the unimaginable sophistication of the force that creates showtivity: the appearance of Nature for every Life form.
Living is only meaningful because achieving our desires cannot be taken for granted. We only give meaning to that which is not effortlessly gotten. Challenge holds the promise of meaning.
But what is behind meaning? Only by seeking the intrinsic value of meaning is veracity discovered.
The idea that “deception yields veracity” is a strongly nonintuitive paradox. Veracity is conformity with truth. Truth is an irrefutable construal.
A truth of existence is that the mind deceives us about the nature of Nature. Physics amply evidences that dualism is deceit.
Veracity is hiding in plain sight. To turn aside the primordial illusion, all we need is relentless curiosity: to insist on answers to questions about elementals. What is the nature of consciousness? Why does the mind deceive? What is the relation between the intangible mind and physicality? How is the ordering of Nature achieved?
Deception is the challenge we need to seek the truth. English musician Elvis Costello sang, “You never see the lies you believe.” It is only when you choose not to believe that the road to discovery appears. Skepticism is the key to unlocking the door to reality.
Only by perceiving wrong can right be known. Veracity is only assured by its contrast to fraud.
Turning symbols into matter, the iğnorant mind perceives solidity.
At a low level of awareness, one lives in a world of objects (“solidity”), turning the symbols of sensation into matter with the naïve belief that the physical world is real.
Knowing that matter is symbolic, the realized mind perceives fluidity.
A sage is someone in realization, which is the highest level of consciousness. A sage’s perception still consists of objects, but how objects and bodies are construed is transformed.
A sage knows that matter is illusory, and so is concerned with process (“fluidity”), as shaping the flow of now is how desires are achieved. After all, living is swimming amid an incessant flow of desires.
In realization, there is no attachment to objects as there is in iğnorance. The value of objects is understood to be their utility for work (doing) or entertainment (beĩng).
