Reference Point

About a month ago, very good friends moved to Atlanta.

Yesterday, on the way home I was listening to news on the radio and they were doing a report on a flash flood in Georgia’s capital that had killed many people.  I became very concerned for my friends.  They mentioned that the zoo in Tibilisi was destroyed, that many animals were killed and many more escaped.  I wondered how far from Atlanta Tibilisi is.  It is 6,303 miles away.  The flash flood happened in the country of Georgia, not the state.  I listened to the majority of the report before I figured it out.  A co-worker who knows my friends told me they had done the same thing.

I like to think of myself as a pretty intelligent person, and my co-worker certainly thinks she is, so how did the both of us make such a big error?  We both had the personal reference point of the state of Georgia, rather than the country.  The mistaken location triggered concern and that concern became a filter through which all the information passed.  That filter was so effective at conditioning my awareness that I thought Tibilisi (the capital of the country of Georgia) was a city I had never heard of near Atlanta.  

I tell this story to highlight how our reference point, or point of view, can take factual information and distort it.  Not only can our point of view do this, but it in fact does do this all the time and there is nothing we can do to stop it from happening.

Everything that comes into your conscious awareness must come through your consciousness.  If you love vanilla ice cream and your local shop is giving away free cones of vanilla you will have a much different reaction to that information than if you don’t like vanilla.  The information itself doesn’t change.  Its meaning does.

So, whats the point?  Be aware of your reactions to everything.  It might seem like you are reacting to what is present, but in fact you are reacting to what you think about what is present.  Other people are reacting to what they think about what is present.  A lot of upset comes about because we take neutral information, automatically filter it through our consciousness (thus changing it), and making others wrong if they perceive differently. Recognizing that your experience is not based on fact, but on fact skewed by your perception, will help to leave room for other people’s experiences as well.  When I’m not right, and you’re not wrong, there is room to adjust and broaden my understanding.

You determine the content of your consciousness, meaning you choose what filter everything you experience will go through.  If your filter is clogged, change it.  If your filter is letting all the crud through and keeping the bliss out, change it!  How?  Ask a question in the comments section or hit the “Ask a Question” button at the top of the screen.