I believe we can find our personal empowerment in choice. Over time and/or through conditioning we sometimes narrow our perspective of ourselves and life situations, limiting our ability to see the myriad of choices in any given moment. Why not widen our scope (through awareness and curiosity) and discover the multitude of options around us for how we might feel, perceive, think and act in relation to situations and people.
Any time we simply react or follow our habitual emotional response to a situation or memory, we minimize our personal potential because we forfeit choice.
Each of us is amazingly complex and has a continuous system of thoughts and feelings flowing through us. Due to conditioning we might end up having the same perspective, thoughts and feelings time after time.
A great analogy might be comparing this constant stream of thoughts to something like a river.
In this sense we are immersed in a river constantly (the ‘river’ being these thoughts/feelings) and you see the same rocks (perceptions) over and over again along the banks of this river. You might also attempt to cling to the same branch at a certain point. But through practice (opening our focus and letting go of attachment to ‘right or wrong’) we may begin to see the sky, trees, colors and even the horizon. Why not open our personal lens and practice taking in all that is possible? Why not allow a little bit of surrender while in that river of thoughts and emotions and see where it takes you? You can always return to the safety of the familiar rocks or branch…… but what if you choose to expand the landscape of possibility? What if you could also perceive other thoughts, feelings and perspectives in the landscape beyond the familiar?
In Bio-Mapping we dive into what we know about the development and function of perception as well as the conditioned experience.
It seems that most of the ways we interact with the world and ourselves is affected, based upon or influenced by our perceptions. For the most part, the relationships we have with other people, events, ourselves and our environment begins with a concept. These general notions of our ‘world’ and all within it then become facts of awareness in our mind/consciousness.
This mental state/consciousness is also called perception or rapid cognition. This ‘quick thinking’ is a function of the brain that skips over any analytical thought process and jumps to immediate retrieval of stored information. It isn’t necessary to do any actual thinking because you or someone else has done the ‘thinking’ in advance to have the information ready to apply in an instant. All you need to do is jump to that ‘file’ so to speak.
Perception is a process by which we interpret and make meaningful sense of the world based upon an abundance of stored information, conditioning and memory. Currently there is still much debate over how much of this information is innate and how much is learned. Both science and philosophy continue to delve into the nature of perception and what informs and affects it.
It seems that this stored information is in essence how we define things and it is our definitions that create our perceptions and it is our perceptions that direct our behaviors and personality. Perceptions are key in understanding the ‘mind maps’ of who we are and patterns we play out.
Bio-Mapping is a practice of awareness where we can interupt the patterns and create different possibilities for our lived experience. This includes thoughts, emotions, physiology and truly the power of choice.