Plato's Cave and "What is Reality?"

We are living in a cave, experiencing an illusion.

What will happen when we finally get to exit the cave? Our eyes will hurt at first but will slowly adjust to the light. Then we will be able to see all the colours, feel the warmth of the sun, the wind, smell the flowers and listen to the birds.

We will return to the cave and tell everyone there is more to life than this cave. The others will laugh at us. Most people are comfortable in their ignorance and can even become hostile to anyone who points it out.

Philosophers, the lovers of wisdom, can be found anywhere. They can point out the reality and the ignorance. Like actors, they shed light where there is shadow.

Are you ready to exit the cave and become a lover of wisdom, a philosopher?

You act to control your perceptions?

Our minds influence the key activity of the brain, which then influences everything; perception, cognition, thoughts and feelings, personal relationships; they are all a projection of you.

Deepak Chopra

Do you act to control your perceptions? Are your perceptions the reality? The theories to support either the positive answer or the negative are many.

The behaviourist movement in psychology started with B.F.Skinner. Skinner supported that all biological systems respond a certain way to certain stimuli. Control the stimuli and you can control the behaviour. Condition the biological organism with rewards and punishment and you can teach it how to behave. Skinner called the use of reinforcement to strengthen behaviour "operant conditioning" .

Contemporary academia considers Skinner a pioneer of modern behaviourism along with J.B.Watson and Ivan Pavlov. If you are interested in reading more about Skinner and his work, you are in luck. Skinner was a prolific author who published 21 books and 180 articles.

So is your behaviour a reaction to stimuli?

Or are you the creator of your reality?

Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes.
 

Are you familiar with perceptual Control Theory? For those of you who are not, these are the basic ideas behind PCT. PCT is a model of behaviour based on the principles of Negative Feedback. Negative Feedback occurs when some function of the output of a system, process or mechanism is fed back in a manner that tends to reduce the fluctuations in the output, whether caused by changes in the input or by other disturbances. PCT experiments have demonstrated that a biological organism controls neither its own behaviour nor external environmental variables, but rather its own perception of those variables.

An example is the thermostat. We all understand how a thermostat works. It is set to a specific point. If the temperature drops below that point, the thermostat turns on, until it reaches the set point and then turns off again. The thermostat has no control over its environment, it only "pays attention" to its perception of the environment. The thermostat controls the temperature of the room by comparing the existing temperature to the set point. it takes action if and only if the "perception is out of control". 

Human beings act, in a way, like a thermostat. The PCT theory stands by the idea that we only act to keep the perception we have of the world within specific boundaries.

Do you act to control your perceptions? 

I believe that part of our actions are to support our perceptions. This is our every day, automated response. We have certain thoughts- perceptions, that create certain emotions which make us go in to an automated action and bring a specific result. These are what we call in The Los Angeles Method convictions. If these convictions are not servicing you, we call them Confining Convictions.

Confining Convictions can be reprogrammed in a fast and easy way. In our workshops we teach you specific techniques. If you do not have the chance to join us however, a suggestion we can offer is to find ways to be in the Now. Understand that your thoughts create your reality. You do not have to control your perception, because your perception is not something outside of you with its own mind and will.

You do not have to struggle to control perceptions. Let go. Understand that your reality is created through your thoughts. Change the thought and the reality will shift.

Thank you for your attention.

We would love to hear what you have to say, so do not hesitate to leave your comment below.

If you wish to receive more updates, posts, helpful forms and more you can Subscribe to our Newsletter.

Take care and Enjoy!

---

---

---

Powered by Eventbrite