Can a person have complete mastery of his own perception?

Question

Can you choose how you see things?

Answer 1

you can. but most people percive as they learned. but all bad things can be made new, so why do you complete mastery over your own perception?

Answer 2

If a human wishes to gain mastery over a thing called perception, one must get rid of all their preconceived ideas.
Find a large trash container and start discarding!

Man carries such trash within him it is unfitting of a human to carry such unnecessary stuff!

One must start looking through the heart instead of trusting the eyes to share the "Truth".

Mastery of ones own perception is nothing more than an "ego trip". When the ego has been brought under control "Wisdom" dawns in man. This is when true perception is allowed within humans.

Mastery is indeed possible if ones own personal motives have been discarded.

It's tough, but highly plausible. Give it a try, what have you got to lose other than an insatiable ego that consumes everything in its path!

Answer 3

Nope.

The world is in your head and the human animal forges that world in childhood using experience and imagination. By adulthood, anything that has not, so far, been experienced or imagined cannot be added to the model and the model cannot, actually, expand. The paraphrase is: You can't teach an old dog new tricks. You can learn new ways to put the pieces of your world together but if something requires an understanding of a genuinely new concept you have never encountered before, you have no hope of ever understanding it.

A practical illustration of this limitation is the Oriental languages being entirely devoid of a sound we, in the Occidental world are perfectly familiar with. That sound is the letter R. Someone growing up without ever hearing Occidental languages, never hears the R sound as a child and it never integrates into their mental model of the universe. In Adulthood, that person will be unable to learn, pronounce or even imitate the sound because it is not part of their preconceived world. They will, simply, not hear it, ever. Their perception will mutilate the sound on the way to the brain in such a way that it resembles something else (usually L) and that is what they will hear, instead. One result of this mundane example of perception breakdown is the famous phrase "FLYED LICE".

I have personal experience of something similar. I learned to speak German as an adult without ever hearing it as a child. While English and German are quite similar in many ways there is a diversion with the letter L. The German pronunciation is not the same as the English but I can't hear any difference. I've tried and tried and tried, but my perception makes the two sound identical, to me. I am helpless to do anything but continue using my English version because I will never hear the German one no matter how many times it is said. My perception will always convert it to the English L my brain already recognises. The vast majority of Germans, of course, are familiar with English speech and hear my 'wrong' pronunciation very readily and find it ridiculous.

Your perception is is a mechanical process defined, designed and fixed in childhood and you can only function within its limits. You can't master it.

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Someone gave me a thumbs down, probably because they don't understand what perception is. Here's another illustration of how helpless you are to capitulate to your perception. Hopefully it will make you realise how unconquerable perception is.

It's a practical demonstration you have to participate in. It shows how your perception alters the world to fit your concept of it according to priorities you cannot master.

1. Look around the room you're in and find a visual frame with a number of distinctive objects distributed throughout.

2. Stare, unwaveringly, at the object in the middle of the frame.

3. While keeping your eyes fixed on the object in the middle of the frame of vision, try to stay aware of the other objects nearer the edges. Note what they are and where they are relative to the object in the middle but without moving your eyes or head to get a better look at them.

4. Keep doing that for several minutes, not just seconds.

After a little while, if you follow these instructions, you will notice that some of the things in the periphery of the visual frame completely disappear before your very eyes. Even though you know the things must be there and your EYES are able to see them, YOU don't see them. Your perception has taken control of what it deems appropriate for you to see and you will have caught it in the act of 'editing' the world.

Your perception is doing that ALL the time. You just never notice it and you can't control it.

Answer 4

Of course, but it depends on how powerful of a will a person has. Weak willed people are usually trapped in the perceptions of the stronger willed people in their lives and who came before them. It takes a lot of guts to cut free of the cultural norm and decide that your own personal truth is just as valid as that of the vast majority.

Answer 5

No, you can't. Some Buddhist masters come close, but the body does have physical limitations on the senses. Even people with normal color vision can see colored shadows as being different colors. Everything you see and hear, for example, is dependent on the lighting and the vibrations in the air around you.

Answer 6

It would be pretty hard, but first you'd have to give up your knowledge of everything percieved. Everything you didn't learn through perception would be the only things that were true. Probably not, then.

Answer 7

Our natural senses are really quite limited.

But you certainly can see things as you wish to some degree.

Answer 8

You started typing random words you found in a dictionary, didn't you.

Answer 9

they are called Atheists.