A vision of how our beliefs are limiting and forming our perception

[Vyana]

I just finished my NLP trainer education. The last days before our last two days meeting, I spent a lot of time at the computer, amongst other things answering an enormous list of probably several hundreds of questions on all NLP-matters you could think of. More than half of that list I did at extremely high speed the evening between the first and the second day. After that I went to sleep late at night without taking time to relax first. My brain and nervous system were still working at a high pace and even my body felt aroused. So, I just relaxed my body and waited for the brain to come along.

Soon, I experienced myself as floating in a dark and empty space. In that space I could kind of see %ndash as a kind of illustration %ndash my mind hanging on to a thought and taking off with it at high speed in a certain direction. After a few second there due up a small white card that stopped the thought and made it bounce in another direction. This happened several times, as my experience bounced around with my thoughts between the white cards in my %ldquomental space%rdquo.

As I said, this was not only a vision. It was an illustration to my process of thinking. I was following one line of thinking, exploring it, until there due up some kind of belief, earlier made decision or other restriction, which ordered my experience in another direction. My experience just obeyed the order without out questioning the belief etc. These small white cards and the passages between them were metaphors for the conscious part of my mind. All the space between and beyond the small white cards were my subconscious and unconscious mind an all the sensory information that does not reach the conscious mind. It was as if I perceived my mental reality as it really was.

The white cards form the walls of what I in daily life perceive as my entire mental reality. Normally these are all that I see, and I do not even notice there is space between them. In my everyday experience, these white cards do together form the walls of some kind of mental room with white walls, floor and sealing (I don%rsquot know about the shape of the room). And this limited room is normally all that I se. In this vision I perceived things as they really are. There is an unlimited space of information and possibilities not only beyond the small parts or reality that I choose to actually se, but also in between those. All of those, I have chosen to exclude from my reality.

If I made different choices, I could have an entirely different reality. For instance, I build my beliefs of who I am and of how my reality is formed on a number of experiences, from which I have made conclusions that are generalizations of those experiences. These conclusions form my beliefs. If I would choose a different set of situations to build my conclusions on, I could have had an entirely different set of beliefs and thus have been an entirely different individual with entirely different experiences from life (in spite of the fact that the underlying sensory experiences might have been the same %ndash although my course life would probably have differed rather early).

This vision was of course an illustration of the NLP model of how the human brain works. But I think it is also valid in the yoga context, where we are also working on changing our beliefs and getting rid of limiting beliefs and thus trying to expand our awareness. At least it might be of some interest to consider these perspectives.