„What is the biggest problem of humanity?” I asked at a channeling event a few years ago, when the Q & A section had begun. The answer of the spirit realms was: “Too many people regard light as darkness and darkness as light.” This statement is often on my mind lately. Do we really have such an issue with our perception?
At the time I interpreted it rather superficially. For example that we really like something and therefor consider it positive when it in actuality is rather detrimental, like refined sugar, micro waves or aluminium foil. Apparently we fundamentally mistake good for bad or good for evil and interpret information in the opposite way, when our perception is manipulated accordingly.
We know so much but often not the right stuff
For the information that gets conveyed to us by advertisements, producers and salespeople only mention the advantages of course. That already leads our perception into a certain direction: sugar makes many things more delicious, preparing meals with a microwave oven goes faster and tinfoil is oh, so useful in so many ways. We are seldom aware that certain “risks and side effects” go along with this.
And this is hardly surprising for we lack the information that would allow us to put things into the right context. Therefore the whole truth about these things is beyond our perception. This insufficient knowledge not only applies to consumer goods. But also to healing methods, political decisions, city planning, concepts of education and many other things where we would require comprehensive information in order to make an informed decision. Now more than ever.
Our perception has amazingly little to do with the truth
The more absurd the events of this year are turning the more I realize: most of us are dealing with a major distortion of our perception. Due to the incomplete and increasingly flawed information. This is so massive by now that it seems obvious there might be an intention behind it on the part of the popular informers: mass media.
Sadly some of our very human and actually positive traits are working to our disadvantage here. Those contain our curiosity, our gullibility and our generous bestowment of confidence. For if another assures us most convincingly of his competence in an area of which we have little to no clue then we place our rather unlimited trust in him.
All the more so, when others confirm this information. It is considered a proof of quality! A typical example are the star evaluations online. Facing a high number of positive judgements we often question our own perception our even our negative intuition. Sometimes even after we acquired the product and the intuition proved to be right. However, so many people cannot possibly be wrong or can they?
Our perception has become a currency
No wonder that many industries and politics employ millions of influencers by now. They are to direct the opinion of the majority in favour of their offer. That is one of the reasons why famous people that convey their conviction in ever such a decent manner are so popular. For the more critical people are trying to find out if ‘the right’ people, that is to say equally minded people and/or their peers whose opinion and perception they trust, agree. And if enough do so, that you feel safe in the “herd-perception” and protected in the unity with others. That is existential for us as humans.
Belonging can become more important than truth
Our need for connection is also stronger than our trust in our own perception – if that means isolation. For we are all conditioned that the survival of a single human is much more threatened than that of an entire group.
Our survival is more important than our truth. This is illustrated by an impressive experiment by the communication researcher Paul Watzlawick that I already described in my Blog ‘Twilight of the Gods’ in the paragraph “Who decides what is true and real?”. So here only the summary: we deny our perception rather than sacrificing the belongingness and its inherent promise of safety.
Furthermore ‘flocking’ is one of our reactions to stress and overwhelm, besides flight, fight and freeze. We kind of build a ‘social fortress of protection’.
Yearning for correction of the perception by external events
We also have a tendency to ostracize others who think differently and avoid them. For they threaten the belongingness and the pleasant feeling of safety-by-unity. But this underlying dynamic is rarely realized. Instead a lot of fighting or speechless amazement overwhelms us as to how convinced the others are of their respective opinion or rather perception. Helplessly the two fronts (and it seems as if there are mainly two fronts right now) then withdraw into their own camp. Everybody is hoping that time will tell (especially the others…) the truth, separate the wheat from the chaff and that the public perception will finally get the most urgent correction…
Mass media influences our perception massively
Currently many people have a hard time accepting the opinion of others if it is different from theirs. According to my observation we have forgotten in the recent decades to feel connected even if our opinions differ. Insidiously the spectrum of opinions in most print and tv-media has become ever narrower. By now only a certain opinion that is repeatedly presented as a fact is considered valid. For of course it is the only truth.
Media have become our drug dealers
Also, we´re addicted to news. And like all real junkie we always want the same drug or a tougher version of it. Certainly not something that would be truly good for us. Currently the valid truth is what is claimed by most in unison. Mass media conditioned as we have been for decades this has worked very well. That is also something we need to let go of if we want a healthy future.
Inversion of our perception
The power of mass media has also lead to the phenomenon that many things that are actually good for us are now considered bad. They became distorted in our collective and often also in our individual perception. It seems as if they were deliberately warped and demonized. Some of them for a fairly long time others more recently. For instance the discrediting of homeopathy and natural remedies has been on the negative agenda for decades. And for a few months now physical contact, dance and singing are considered threatening to people. All this because of a microbe of which is the actual danger is questioned by more and more people. But this does not get reflected by the mass media in a neutral let alone constructive or just way. Quite the contrary.
Our needs have an effect on our perception
We are particularly susceptible to information that we want to perceive. In this way we support quantum physics. It has long proven that we see what we want to see not that which is actually there. For everything that confirms our perception of things, our interpretation of information gives us the feeling of being right and to survive. Whatever we cannot think or imagine we cannot see. Even if it actually exists it remains outside our 
spectrum of perception. However this restriction is not natural.
In my view we are being groomed to a specific perception from a very young age. It already begins with the learning of our language for our language conditions the way we think.
Perception is learned to a great measure
We absorb many of the belief systems of our parents and add those of our teachers, mentors and peers on to them. Then we mistake their confirmation of our perception for safety and the safety for freedom. For this is what is being suggested to us on all channels: that safety makes us free. Germans happen to be particularly proud that they can move ‘safely’ in their country. That they don´t have to expect nightly attacks or that our traffic rules are so severe and that there are so many rules that regulate our social life.
We mistake safety for freedom
However I realized that freedom means to me to live utterly free from fears. If we all had less fears then many things would regulate themselves. I am convinced of that. That goes way beyond a feeling of safety. We then could feel at home in our beingness and free in the unfolding of our potentials. And the great majority of those would be positive, I’m sure!
To me the striving for safety is actually a masked fear and implies a negotiation with fate. Real freedom has only to do with a healthy consciousness – free of conditionings that create fear
I´ve been questioning old pet convictions, acquired knowledge and conventions of our consciousness for quite a while now. Many things I´ve learned from others in the course of my life I now scrutinize whether they actually sync with my own sense of truth, my inner wisdom. I’m checking if my own perception is actually different from what I so readily accepted from others.
Question to check your own perception
For example: How evil was Hitler? How good was Mother Theresa? Who actually started the last wars? Who won? Who lost? Lies war truly in the nature of man? Do we truly descend from apes? 
Why do we have such a strange relationship with ETs? Do we really think with our brain? Why are indigenous people considered primitive, when their consciousness is actually far superior to ours? Why isn´t a high consciousness appreciated?
Why do we have synthetic materials become more popular than natural ones even though they are so highly damaging? Is cancer truly incurable? Why do so many people hate school? Why are adults so much less creative than children? Why are we being taught that making money is the most important thing in life rather than being a healthy, content and decent human being?
Who is the better person – he who has impeccable manners and a great way to present himself but is massively involved in criminal actions and breeds discord? Or the annoying bully with awful manners, who might be rude and blasphemous but is an unconditional do-gooder and creates peace in his own way? Is the most democratic country in the world actually a banana republic and has been for quite a while? Why do we have government that maintain themselves but not truly serve their people? Why has so much in our perception been inverted? And by whom? And for what reason?
We can feel truth and train our perception accordingly
Finally I began researching many things. The internet makes it possible and sometimes impossible. It is stunning how contradictory some things are presented. However one thing becomes ever clearer. There is no such thing like neutral information. Too often crucial things are left out and sometimes it is even embellished. And always the attitude of the source colours the tone of the information. Even a video only shows a certain 
perspective and snippet of the entire event.
Then you have to filter again. Separate opinion from fact, counter check, find other sources for confirmation. It is also quite tempting to confuse the quality of the information with the quality of the source. So again and again you need to check your own perception regarding certain bias. That is why everybody must find their answers themselves. This is time consuming but rewarding. However your feelings are the most important and most efficient way to find out what´s true. According to the anthroposophist we actually have a sense organ for the truth: it´s our heart!
Perception and truth must become coherent again
We all can feel the truth. We are born with this sense. However in the course of our growing up this almost instinctual feeling shrinks. It is replaced by a program that more or less says: “True is whatever the parents, school, church, society says is true.” And in order to belong and not to risk our own existence we comply.
However it is obvious that our world is in a deplorable state. So this truth program must have some serious flaws for otherwise we wouldn´t have manoeuvred our earth in to this current catastrophe.
Therefore we must train our sense of truth (again) and activate it. We all have to do this by ourselves. For the opinion of others is rather useless here. However when we come to the same conclusion in the scrutinizing of the same facts then this is a wonderful confirmation. And it does not necessarily mean that we are of the same opinion. But being able to feel together what is truth and what is lie, is a first step towards a constructive interaction. For our goals are actually the same. We all want peace, abundance, freedom… And together we can find the best ways to achieve them.
A chance to heal our perception
Then I realized what huge possibilities lies in what is currently happening. As exhausting and unsettling the collapse of the familiar and seemingly safe structures is. However it forces us to leave the trodden paths of our habitual thinking and feeling. For they will 
never guide us where we actually want to go, if it were so, we would already be there.
That raises the question: what do we need to feel and think so we won´t create a world that ends in our self-destruction? However as many people there are, as many perceptions there are. And the physical senses are rather limited. The beautiful story of the blind men who each touch a part of an elephant illustrates this. For in the end one claims that an elephant is long and thin and another says, he is broad and bristly… But if we communicate well we might get a useful idea of the whole picture in the end.
Perception is a tool for creation
A crucial element of our perception is massively underrated. It is part of our tools for creation. For as many mystics know and teach: our thoughts create our reality. Or as the nature mystic Michael Roads likes to say: “Where we focus, energy flows, connects and creates.”
So everything we focus on becomes amplified. However our subconscious focus often overwrites the conscious intention. This needs to be checked. Is our perception focussed truly positively then the positive becomes stronger. If it is negative we experience more of the negative. And the more people unite in their focus the more powerful the effect of this mechanism becomes. One of the reasons why so many negative things are currently happening is also due to the focus of the collective: it is currently controlled by fear.
Together we´re unbelievably powerful
If we unite as humanity in our focus nothing can neutralise our power of creation. We can make use of this for the wellbeing of all. Currently many wise meditation offers are aiming towards this to help our consciousness and spirit of our time shift towards the positive. Group meditations have a wonderfully empowering and amplifying effect.
Besides it is great to connect with likeminded people in our increasingly insane reality and focus on the essential: community, connection, peace and love. And that is highly needed right now. For in my view we have not reached the maximum number of revolutions in the current spinning of our washing cycle. Way more dirt will hit the fan of our consciousness. Our perception and sense of truth will be sorely tried. However – and I´m firmly convinced of this – it truly serves a wholesome cleanse and finally will allow for something new and truly healthy.
Love instead of fear, hope instead of despair
I have reduced my own consumption of news for the sake of creating “slides of the future” as I call it. Instead of wallowing in horror scenarios that brutally soak everything within range, like a water hose that is turned on too quickly, I think: “Okay, someone must or wants to experience this right now. However my own focus is a different one.” And then I create alternative and happier scenarios in my mind. When I meet others I maintain this attitude and send their hearts a message: “What is currently happening is difficult, but what is coming is magnificent”.
You are welcome to call me nuts or unworldly. However one thing I´m not doing is contributing to the gross current of our times: fear, powerlessness, distrust and doubting the future. These feelings too are part of the dying of the old world – and of course are allowed to be felt. However while my feet are still in the mud of the old, I stretch my arms towards the winds of the new. For I can already feel it coming. Things will come back into the proper order!
While the old world parts with a lot of noise the new one already quietly emerges
For instance while I’m standing in line at the cashier in the supermarket I imagine serene scenarios of a liberated, creative and peaceful world. I´m not going into further details for I´ve already blogged about this here and here.
To remain strongly positive when face with the fears, the distrust and the aggression of others is often exhausting. However since I know about the power of conscious perception there is no alternative for me. I want a better world for all! And the more everything around me is breaking apart and the more these ineffable and unbelievable truths come to the surface – the more I´m looking forward to what is already emerging and will emerge in the future. We can already perceive it if we want – and empower it!
