I’m sure you’ve seen the experiment below, where participants are asked to count how many times the white team passed the ball amongst themselves.
This experiment elucidated a very important component of how our minds work: at any given moment your senses are bombarded with an unfathomable amount of infinitely complex information, so our brains have devised systems of filtering out what’s important vs. what’s noise. These honing systems are very effective at what they do and allow us to focus on the task at hand. The only problem is that it also creates a blindness in all of us.
In a very real sense what you focus on dictates what the world looks like to you, what your life looks like. So the question arises, how does your brain decide what’s most important? Is this something that you are fully conscious of or is it influenced by factors outside of your awareness?
This is probably something you haven’t considered before, but this filter in your brain dictates everything about how you operate on a day to day basis. If we can become aware of this filter, how it’s painting our experience, we stop being marionettes to it and it loses some of it’s power. We are able to gain some semblance of control over our lives. And really that’s all it takes, simply cultivating awareness of this filter is enough to see drastic change. If you are able to cultivate this, your mind will operate in a completely different level from what you are used to.
Pure awareness is a superpower, and one that is available to you right now.
But let’s back up a bit.
What is this “filter” I’m referring to exactly? Well, it’s your idea of who you are, your ego, the ‘you’ that you identify with in your mind. It’s also the societal baggage you’ve picked up over the course of your entire life. It’s the little voice inside your head, it’s the criticism and judgement you place on yourself and others, it’s your knack for daydreaming and imagination, it’s your ability to lie to yourself about why you’re eating that cookie or not exercising.
This is something we have no control over, these thoughts simply appear within our minds and most people simply go along with them without realizing those thoughts aren’t actually them and they’re in fact being pulled away from reality, that this filtering process is creating your reality.
Think about it like this. A noise is just sound waves floating in the air, but when it reaches your eardrum your brain automatically processes all of them and gives it meaning: your neighbor’s dog barking again (unpleasant) or a songbird doing its thing (pleasant). It’s the filter that turns noise into something that you can grasp onto, something makes sense to you. Right now you are looking at a series of random symbols on your screen and your brain is automatically processing that info so that they mean something to you. You don’t have to force your brain to do anything, it simply happens. So the only thing we can do in this situation is to observe it happening.
Observe the filter
Right now in this moment you’re becoming aware of the filter because I just pointed it out to you. When you go off to do something else, that presence may remain temporarily. But this is very ephemeral, if the silence goes on for long enough your mind will jump in and say ‘okay how long is this going to go for’, and you already might be gone by then. That’s okay. It’s that space that you want to cultivate, a very subtle presence that remains once you take everything else away.
You want to observe yourself as if you were a scientist. This is a new skill so you may only be able to hold that space for a couple of seconds or, if you’re like me, even less at first. But resist the urge to call yourself a goldfish and realize that just like a muscle you will get better over time, and much more quickly than you imagine.
You will start to notice how arbitrary the filter is. If someone says something that irritates you is what they said inherently bad or is it just your perception that says it is bad? Your mind likely just gave you an answer to that question right now. Don’t dismiss it or accept it, simply be aware of it. Am I eating right now because I’m hungry or because I’m stressed out from work and need something to decompress? The key is to not moralize, add any judgements, or try to pivot to what you “should” be feeling. Simply watch what comes up from the ether of your mind. You will start to ask yourself: if I can’t control this filter then perhaps that means it isn’t me, and if that’s the case, then where did it come from?
Cultivate Awareness
If you are able to simply witness the way your filter is creating your reality, you can decide to accept or dismiss its interpretation. And that’s incredibly powerful. You will be able to go beyond the fears and insecurities that manifest within you. If someone says you’ve put on weight your filter used to decide whether you’d have a bad day or if you’d just brush it off, now you get to decide that. It’s a slippery little devil though, you must commit to watching it like a hawk.
You will also notice things manifest within you that are beyond your understanding. You will ask yourself, when I’m curious about something is it that it’s calling to me based on my innermost desires or is it just an interpretation of my filter? Am I in control of what makes me interested in things? Am I in control of what I find beautiful? If not then what is? If you are able to pay attention to these hunches and gut feelings you will begin to realize that they are pointing to something beyond you, something much greater than the current confines of your self. Same way as a great artist doesn’t quite understand what they’re doing as they’re creating, almost as if the art was creating itself through them, you will begin to notice these energies within you. But if you’re not aware, you will miss them.
There you have it. That’s our superpower. Presence, awareness. Cultivate it and you will be able to interpret reality as it is, instead of through the warped perception of your filter, and you will be able to honor and cultivate the deeper energies that manifest inside of you.
Thanks for reading!
The JJ Experiment 