Breaking The Illusion

Have you ever asked yourself “what’s really going on here?” I ask myself that question all of the time, and sometimes I get answers that might surprise you. For me, the truth is that there is more going on here than most people recognize.
Perception is a funny thing. Our senses have a way of telling us what we already know about the world, rather than telling us about how the world really is. That’s why illusions like this fool our eye every time; we have built-in assumptions and expectations about how the world works. Not only can we be tricked into seeing things that don’t exist, we can be tricked into not seeing something that is as real as the ground you stand on. And it’s this other side of perception that has always interested me.
As a child I had a life changing experience when I noticed that people could simply erase from their perceptual reality anything that didn’t fit into their own model of the world. To say it more simply, I noticed that people lie to themselves about what’s really going on here. In a later post I will tell you more about the specific event that started me down the path of perception verses reality, but for now I want you to understand that I’ve been watching myself as I watched the world and I noticed that I lied to myself too.
My life has been driven by a deep desire to see the world as it really is — to  see the things that others ignore. This desire has challenged me to release many fundamental assumptions and beliefs about myself and the world around us. Without a guide to follow it took me many years of constant effort to discover how to stop deceiving myself so that I could finally see what is really going on here.
I’m here to share with you the world as I’ve come to understand it, and share some of the experiences that shaped my beliefs. However, the most important thing I want to share with you is how you can expand your perceptual awareness into the subtle realms that are often only noticed out of the corner of our eye.
Follow me as I unwind the adventure of my life of psi…

Deal Me In

I grew up in the rural south and my Grandmother’s house was the hub of my family. Many of my Dad’s six bothers and sisters, and their children — my cousins, lived close enough to my her house that she always had someone there for me to play with. I was lucky enough to live close enough to walk to her house, which I would do just to see who might be there.
One day in the winter of 1976 I walked through the pasture between our houses and was happily surprised to see both of her driveways were filled with cars that I recognized as my aunts and uncles. Nothing in particular was going on when I got inside her warm house, unfortunately my cousins were more bored than I was and despite all of my efforts to get something going, the group consensus was to watch TV — American Bandstand. With all of the furniture already covered with kids  I decided to go hang out with the adults, at least they would be playing cards around the kitchen table.
I found a spot to park myself where I could see all of the action going on in the kitchen and settled in for however long it would take for my cousins to get bored and go outside to play. Although this wasn’t what I wanted to be doing, watching the adults get excited over their card game was interesting enough to keep my attention. I would watch their faces as they tried to bluff against some of their siblings, while signaling subtle hints to others. They had done this for so many years everyone knew each others ‘tells'; nobody was really fooling anybody.
At a particularly quiet moment in the game when everyone was sorting the cards in their hand after a fresh deal there came an unsettling noise from practically every direction at once. Part of the sound was like a heavy wooden chest being slid very slowly across the floor of the room above us. However, the part of the sound that sent shivers down my spine was a hissing sound that lingered after the wood-on-wood part of the sound stopped. Instinctively I looked to my grandmother for her reaction; I was expecting her to yell “RUN!” I was stunned to see that she acted as if she didn’t hear it. Looking back to the card table I could see that all of the men had not changed their poker faces but ladies at the table had obviously heard the noise. They were glancing around the table nervously as the card game resumed after the last deal. I will never forget the look on my Aunt’s face when her eyes met mine, it was if she was trying to reassure and comfort me but the fear in her eyes could not be hidden.
After a few minutes the card game had fully resumed back to its original pace but I wish I could say the same thing for my heart beat; the adrenaline rush had not left my body.
We could hear the music from the TV in the other room and when a commercial came on one of my cousins came into the kitchen and asked about the strange noise. Without exception every adult at the card table denied that there had been a noise. Even my aunt that only moments earlier had tried to sooth my fear denied in a very convincing tone that no strange noise was heard.
“What’s going on here?“, I thought to myself. Why did they lie? Why are they acting as if nothing had happened? How can they be so convincing? Did I really hear a sound so unnatural that it shocked my body into the fight or flight response? I did hear it, didn’t I?
Maybe it was the strange sound or maybe American Bandstand had come to end, but I was relieved when, all at once, my cousins went outside. I had been set free from the card game and I quickly followed them outside. None of the kids mentioned the sound. I don’t know if they were in on the charade or if they had accepted the story that there was no sound. I almost didn’t care, I was just glad to finally be playing outside — anything was better than being in the kitchen watching the card game.
It’s hard to remember anything we did that afternoon, but I do recall that I would catch myself glancing back at my grandmothers house and reliving the shock of hearing that sound. But even more than that, I wondered why the adults lied about it.
I had no way of knowing it at that time but this was the defining moment that set me on a path of discovery about the world around us and, more significantly, the world inside us. The world of perception and belief. Thus begins my journey — my life of psi.