Seeing is not Believing

How many times have you heard someone say, “Well that is just the way the world is these days”? Or, “What do you expect, that’s just the way s/he is”? We all make the “is” assumption; that is, we believe the world and all the people in it are exactly the way we see them. Actually, in a statement attributed to the Talmud (though it turns out is not exactly what the Talmud says) we learn that, “We do not see the world as it is; we see the world as we are.” There is a world out there. It exists. Chairs are really chairs and if I bump into that wall it will probably hurt. People do exist; they are not a product of my imagination. They are not some dream I am having.

However, how the world occurs to me is determined by who I am, the sum product of my DNA and my experiences. It is as if each of us is a filter through which we experience everyone and everything. Instead of using the “is” word, we should more accurately use the word, “occurs”. In fact, though I do not want to get all biological on you, science teaches us that what we call seeing is really interpreting. What we actually physically see, as we look out into the world, is just some light. That light is sent to our brain via the optic nerve which then unscrambles the light informing us what is out there. At the same time, our emotions and memories are triggered providing us with what we believe to be a complete picture. And all this happens in a millisecond! In other words, “We do not see the world as it is; we see the world as the sum total of who we are.” The world occurs to us. People occur to us. Situations occur to us. As I learned through the Mastery Foundation, we live in an occurring world.

What science now knows the Torah knew thousands of years ago. In the Book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Torah, after returning from the scouting mission and agreeing that the land which God promised is indeed a good land flowing with milk and honey, the majority reports, “We cannot attack that people because it is stronger than we are…we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” (Num. 13:31, 33) Because they felt small and weak, like grasshoppers, they believed that is how they occurred to everyone else, thus failing in their designated leadership role. Their reality was determined by their self perception. And so was their prediction for the future. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the people believe them and lose their opportunity to inherit the Land of Promise, the land we today call Israel.

As it was for them, so it is for all of us. We become whatever it is we perceive ourselves to be. And the future that we predict, for that is all the future really is—a prediction (though we sometimes act as if it is a certainty)—is something we make up based on how we see the world around us and our place in it.