Perception Determines The Perceived
The substance of everything is the idea of it
I was trying to get the last lotion out of the bottom of the pump bottle. I could tell there was at least a half-inch of lotion down there, but the bottom of the pump stem didn’t reach it.
At first, I was annoyed because that meant I would have to take the pump out and squeeze out the rest of the lotion.
I tried a simple perception shift on my non-positive point of view about short-stemmed pumps. I briefly thought, “Intelligence is the substance of Life.”
As a result, I immediately saw a way to lump the lotion, and the pump worked for another week.
It was not an earth-shaking event, but just like 2 plus 2 = 4, sticking with the perception that Infinite Intelligence is the substance of Life must also shift bigger events from the inside out because our perception of something is what is perceived.
The substance of everything is the idea of it, not the reverse.
We can apply this realization to everything in our lives.
Actually, it’s not a can, but a must. We cannot continue to take action based on the false belief that what appears on the outside is reality and expect the world to change.
We can see the results of accepting this false belief in every aspect of our lives since we become at the mercy of whatever we accept as real.
It can be as minor as a short stem in a pump bottle to what appears to be more serious misconceptions, like recession, famine, job loss, and wars.
As we observe what our five senses report back to us, we can see which misconception is currently claiming to be real in our lives so that we can replace it with Truth.
For example, a TV commentator once said a famous artist was “hardworking, but not beyond promoting himself.”
The commentator came from two opposing perceptions, and neither was correct. First, the artist had a right to be famous because he was “hardworking,” and second, he didn’t have a right to be famous because he promoted himself.
These perceptions are widely held, subtly powerful, and yet incorrect beliefs.
If accepted, we would believe that first, to be successful, we must work hard, and second, we must never look like we believe that we have a unique value to share.
Let’s shift our perceptions about these beliefs.
First, the hard work.
This concept stems from the curse of hard work imposed upon us in the second chapter of Genesis when we chose to know the duality of good and evil. It was specifically leveled at men, or the male quality in each of us.
When we return to the point of view, the perception, the awareness, that there is only One Infinite Intelligence and that one is Good, it eliminates the cause of the curse and, therefore, the curse itself.
Hard work is no longer seen as the path to success but is seen for what it really is—the activity and joy of expressing and sharing who we are in unique ways.
This awareness eliminates the second misconception that we may not shine our specific light since it is a quality of Light to shine, so shine we must.
Often, we think we must do profound things in life to be useful to the world.
As in all beliefs that start from the outside, this is the reverse of the truth.
It’s the small things we shift to the correct perception that shift the world.
It is very easy to be distracted by the seemingly enormous problems facing our times and to become caught up in the glitz, glamour, and display of fixing things.
However, this will never solve the problem since the perception of the thing is the thing.
What we can do is question what we are saying and doing to see if it aligns with our current highest awareness of Truth, shift our perception to that, and stay there.
Like lifting weights, each time we make that shift, we become stronger students of Truth, and the appearance of all misconceptions, from short-stemmed pumps to wars and recessions, will fade away from our experience, revealing the beauty of the Infinite Intelligence that is the substance of Life.
