Our mind does not see, it perceives. Perception works by projecting meaning to define our experiences. Our body’s chemistry responds according to how we define what we perceive. We may perceive news of someone saving a baby from a burning building differently to news about someone who violently attacks a child. ‘Perceptually induced chemical responses’ can vary dramatically. Our definitions for what we feel when we perceive experience can include the terms ‘happy’, ‘enjoyment’, ‘bored’, ‘numb’, ‘uneasy’, ‘anxious’, ‘fear’ and ‘terrified’.
All of the above are describing perceptually induced chemical responses. If chemical reactions are overpowering we may experience the ‘fight or flight’ response. This response is based exclusively upon our perception of our experience. If we fight we can injure or kill. If we flee we may leave those who are close to us vulnerable to attack, injury or death. The fight or flight response is an irrational primal response. A psychologically induced response is NOT natural for us. This primal response is an ego response to perceived situations where it lacks the skills or resources to cope.
Why fear? We think we may become a victim of an attack upon us. We do not fear! There is no fear! There is only a stimulus response. The mind’s conditioning controls the brain’s chemical responses. Fear is merely chemicals generated by our perception. Perceptually induced chemicals are responding to a trigger stimulus. Perception responds by generating specific feelings. Why create these feelings? The ego mind avoids everything that it does not control. The paradox is that fear is more powerful than the beliefs that create fear. Once our language defines something to be fearful our mind controls how our brain chemically responds.
What we cannot realise in the moment that we are consumed with fear is that we are the source and in total control of that chemical response. The specific chemical response is prescribed by our mind in response to our perception. It is that simple! We can only feel fear if we have a trigger stimulus. Why does the ego fear the unknown? The ego fears the unknown because the ego is a belief system, collectively referred to as the ‘identity’. The mind of the identity is the ‘collective beliefs’ that we use to perceive and define reality. Each ‘emotional’ feeling is a perceptually induced chemical response to any and all stimulus that we have formed a belief about.
Children fear nothing when playing and can generate dopamine when playing with friends and family. A child will scream with delight as their father chases them around the garden. What is termed ‘fear’ is a ‘perceptually induced chemical response’. Perception is sustained by projecting a particular meaning to define experience. If we believe there is risk in an experience we can trigger a chemical response to be activated when we are exposed to what we believe is fearful. We are not the victim of our feelings we are the creator of them.
It is insanity to deliberately upset our own peace of mind and then project the cause to be what we used as the stimulus required for a stimulus response. These chemical responses enable us to avoid or refuse to voluntarily participate in an experience. This may be irrational but it is an extremely effective behavioural constraint and deterrent. If we have not previously participated in an experience we do not know if the experience can harm us or not. So the only thing that can enable us to transcend the hold that fear has on our freedom of expression is to transcend our perception.
How do we transcend our perception? We change it! How do we change our perception? Perception is always sustained by what we believe about our experiences. If the belief is acquired at a young age we may not consciously remember what it is we believe about what we fear. All fear is a pre-arranged chemical response triggered by exposure to particular stimulus that is detected by our ‘perception’. All perception is sustained by ‘beliefs’. What we feel in a physically violent attack is not caused by fear but the physical impact and injuries alone and not perception. Fear is a word that is more accurately described as a chemical.
This chemical is a ‘stimulus response’ that is a ‘conditioned response’ to what is perceived to be ‘fearful stimulus’. Perception can create chemicals that we define as embarrassment, awkwardness, shyness and unhappiness. How we perceive an experience will determine which particular chemical responses we create when exposed to what we have judged. ‘In truth’ we do not fear anything! We know or we don’t. We use the word fear to describe a ‘perceptually induced chemical response’ that is so powerful it has enslaved the minds and behavioural expression of whole societies.
To feel the chemical reaction we define as fear we must discern what we fear from what we do not. Many have become addicted to the chemical responses created by perception. We go to horror movies in order to generate perceptually induced chemical responses. We watch and listen to comedy to generate perceptually induced chemical responses. We cannot feel the effects of this self-deception if we do not play our part in this delusion. How can we allow ourselves to be deceived by our own perception?
We are deceived when we forget that we created the belief that is used as the criteria that prejudices our perception. We have total power over what we feel. We forget most of our beliefs in the moment we create them but the mind continues to be controlled by this metaphorical code which programmes perception to identify any qualifying stimulus. What we forgot is that we chose to believe something that our mind continues to respond to whenever our perception confirms our exposure to any qualifying stimulus. When someone jumps and screams at the sight of a spider they are overcome and intoxicated by their own ‘perceptually induced chemical response’.
In this moment of hysteria it is almost impossible for an individual to undo the ‘cause and effect’ relationship that is required to trigger a perceptually induced chemical response. When the hysteria and feelings subside they may blame the trigger stimulus for what they felt. The whole ‘complex’ is unconscious. There is no conscious decision to react to the stimulus but there is a conscious decision to replace what is represented by the word spider with our mind’s perception of spiders. What is termed fear is an unconscious reaction to any stimulus that ‘our beliefs’ perceive to be fearful.
If we perceive something to be dangerous or frightening at a young age it is because we created a belief that may be forgotten the following day. It is like forgetting the name of someone with whom we shared an experience. In these situations the only explanation we may be able to give for our irrational chemical responses when exposed to any qualifying trigger stimulus is that we are scared of whatever provokes the stimulus response. In the moment before we ‘believed’ the stimulus could hurt us we were unable to respond in this way. We must perceive the stimulus before we can provoke a chemical response to it.
In order to remove the stimulus response we must change our perception. Our perception is sustained by what we believe about our experiences. Beliefs are not our truth so undoing them cannot harm us. We can only believe what we do not know because, when we know, we have no need of beliefs because we know. Fear is ‘always’ a perceptually induced chemical response. To transcend the control of beliefs we must stop worshipping them.
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