Through What Lens Do You See the World?
The filters (or lens, or perspectives) you are seeing through influence your reality, and your life.
Let me take a step back. I recently posted on social media: be aware of what filters you’re seeing your dreams through[1].
Yes Yes Yes.
But don’t stop at noticing what filter you’re seeing your dreams through.
What filter are you seeing yourself through? What filter are you seeing your discomfort through? Your job, your sensations, your stomach, your thoughts… What filter are you seeing your children, your parents, your partner, your fur babies, your neighbors, the homeless, billionaires, etc through? What filter are you seeing love, god, goodness, abundance through?
If you’re like most people, you might have no idea, which is super legit: our culture is not invested in supporting self-awareness and helping us to ask empowering questions. This leaves us being pretty disempowered. On purpose.
Let’s keep exploring.
To determine your filter, pause and ask yourself: Am I seeing through a filter of scarcity, doubt, doom, competitiveness, limitation, fear, and/or “I can’t/won’t/am not”, etc.? If you said yes, then welcome to being a human! Due to the culture we’re seeped in, we all have filters that include the dominant oppressive narrative[2] . It’s unavoidable, which is why trauma is so prevalent and iterative in our culture.
So, pausing for a moment: if you haven’t been aware of what filter you’ve been seeing through, or that you were even seeing through a filter, give yourself a break. Now you know, and now you’re that much closer to becoming an empowered participant on the planet. Self knowledge is powerful: once we take the courageous step into connecting to the filter we’re seeing through, then we can start to have choice in changing our lives. PHEW. This is big, because the dominant oppressive narrative is good for one thing: suffering. And there are other filters waiting for us to try on- a transformative oriented filter, for example.
Even if we’ve done a lot of self-exploration a lot over the years and are able to employ a more transformative oriented filter, most of us will at times still see through filters rooted in the dominant oppressive narratives that surrounded our childhood self. This gets tricky real fast. And creates a lot of dissonance.
As adults, if we’re stuck in old narratives/filters, we’ll be adhering to our child-self energies and not even know it. Nor will we know that something else is possible. This is the science of neural pathways, simplified. Familiarity and repetition form neural networks, which is why we can drive to our favorite grocery store without paying much attention. These neural pathways form grooves and build reality from them- for better, or worse- to form the filters through which we see the world.
Our brains are amazing, though. They don’t stop learning, and they have the capacity to rewire and re-write over time. Which is why when we first learn X, it’s hard, but within 6 weeks, it’s become so much easier. Thank goodness neural pathways are malleable. Sure, it takes time and continued willingness to get honest as we journey into the constructs of our thought patterning, while also connecting to territory we’d not known how to include. And, as we do this, that which had been covered up by old lenses and filters starts to open to another Reality.
With sustained practice and gentle deepening into uncovering the limitations our trauma-installed limitations, we start to develop an increased sense of safety. And as we become more curious, we also become more self-aware. As this happens, we make space for what else is possible that we did not know was available to us. We begin asking ourselves more questions and we connect with our community of practice with what we’re discovering[3]. We literally find ourselves transformed.
Learn how to know your filters, so you can make the conscious choice of how you’re engaging your life.
Join us in October for our retreat, and/or in our next Matrix Integration Exploration, a 10-month course. Both will support you in becoming aware of the filters that are influencing your life, so that you can choose new, transformative filters that align with who you really Are. We learn and transform together.
[1] For those not on social media: “I don’t know about y’all, but I’m having some hella interesting dreams lately. Being aware of what filter I’m seeing those dreams through is super important.
Is it the oppressive dominant narrative I have been trained to see things through? or Another narrative that my neuropathway system has been opening up to?
The first will give me more of how my small-traumatized self sees the world.
The second taps me into the Reality I’m currently participating in as an empowered adult.
I’ll take the second, for free.
Learn how to know your filters, so you can make the conscious choice.”
[2] I write A LOT about the dominant oppressive narrative on my blog. Here’s one post.
[3] A community of practice may look different for different people. For me, my various communities of practice are comprised of people who are committed to transformative work, providing me with compadre and support as we venture together.
