I am posting this response to Hannah Ziffs post “Journeys are the midwives of thought” onto my blog because comments are not turned on on her blog.
– On Subconscious Inspiration vs. Thought –
I find this distinction that you have made between Subconscious inspiration and thought is bringing up in me lots of ideas and questions on the nature and utility of perception. How can perception be defined? Webster gives us two similar but importantly distinct definitions. The first says that perception is “the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.” and the second “the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted.” The first is an action, a thing that we do to understand the world around us. We use our senses to perceive the world and collect information. The second is more of a thing than an action. It isn’t something we do but instead it is something we have. We posses our perception of something in the same way we would posses an opinion about it. It is an understanding of something. I find it interesting because without the first definition one would never arrive at the second. What I mean by this is that in our moment to moment doings we use our perceptive skills to collect information about the world around us and we gather that information into our perception of the thing that we are perceiving. It sounds silly but, in fact, we perceive in order to percept. We look in order to understand.
This is where I find myself beginning my contemplation on the utility of perception. What is it that we are doing when we develop our perception of something? Is it passing judgment? Is it developing opinion? It seems so, for when one posses a perception of something it becomes like a caricature of that thing that is being perceived. it is inherently reductionist, judgmental and opinionated. For what is perception but an incomplete series of information without judgment and opinion? At this point in my contemplation I realize that those judgments and opinions must be inherently false due to the impossible nature of the task of total perception. That is to say, our perception is fragmented and never accounts for the whole and thus never provides us with enough information to be able to truthfully pass judgment or honestly develop an opinion. Perception of the whole is nothing but a lie that our minds trick us into believing is possible by ignoring all that it cannot see.
I feel as if I have seen through the illusion that perception presents us and behind it I have found an answer to the question previously posed (what is perception but an incomplete series of information without judgment and opinion?). Through my judgmental and opinionated perception I have come to the conclusion that perception without judgment or opinion is truth and it is honest. It does not lie to itself and so it does not believe lies. It simply says “this is”. That to me seems to be how you described your sense of perception when journeying. Not developing thoughts (judgments and opinions) but instead allowing things to be and taking them in just as they are. Quite Taoist in fact.
I want to say thank you Hannah for providing me with an opportunity to think so deeply on these important concepts. I don’t know if I ever would have come to this understanding of the way of things without your influence.