Human perception
Holistic living is the ability to use all of your intelligence to interpret reality and make decisions. The four modes of perception for the human being are
Intellect (Thinking)
Emotions (Feeling)
Sensations (Sensing)
Intuition (Knowing)
When you can use all four of these effectively when making a decision then you are living holistically.
The intellect is the most commonly used source to interpret reality and make decisions. This presents some real challenges for us humans. One, the intellect is VERY SLOW relative to our other modes of perception. It takes a long time for things to get through at this level of perception. The intellect is also very divisive. The intellect functions like a Samurai’s sword. It separates. The sky isn’t the ground, green isn’t red, tall isn’t short etc. The intellect is easily conditioned in the early years of life with the age of 0-14 being the prime time.
This means when we lean too heavily on the intellect to interpret reality and make decisions it leads us to making decisions that we were conditioned to make between the ages of 0 to 14. At the conscious level most of us have no interest in living life that way, but we’re only conscious of a small amount of the totality of ourselves at any given moment in time. That’s why growing our awareness of ourselves and what we really are becomes important. It’s the only way to change.
The emotions are next up on the list. Contrary to popular belief both men and women can effectively use this aspect of intelligence to interpret reality and make decisions. Due to both cultural conditioning and biology women tend to have an easier time with this than men.
When we’re out of touch with our emotions for any reason it can lead to some ugly tendencies such as addictions, isolating ourselves and harming others. Being fully present with all of our emotions is essential if we want to be able to handle challenging situations without falling into unhealthy unconscious habits and behaviors.
For example a common theme is for people to go into an unconscious state by watching tv, youtube or something similar before consuming low quality food. Tuning into the entertainment puts the body into a subconscious state and will lead you to do what you’ve always done, which for many is consume low quality food as you watch your favorite show, movie, influencer etc. This example can be inverted as well with the low quality food leading to the watching of the chosen form of entertainment.
Next up are the sensations. The five senses are incredibly powerful when it comes to perceiving reality and within humans have a WIDE range of perception. Your level of mindfulness / awareness determines where you fall on that scale. The more aware you are the more of reality you can interpret with the senses. We all know of people who have very fine tuned perceptions with one or more of the senses. The person who can smell things before anyone else in the group does or the person who is like a taste tester when eating food. With mindfulness the information we receive from using the senses is of tremendous help to making good decisions with air, water, food and exercise among many other things.
Last, but certainly not least…. Intuition. For the vast majority of humans alive right now this is the least utilized mode of perception. This is arguably the most powerful of all the modes of perception because it functions outside of the currently accepted laws of space and time. Out of all of our modes of perception as human beings, intuition is by far the fastest. The real challenge with intuition is that you can’t simply decide to turn it on or off by using the other modes of perception. Intuition most commonly kicks in during life & death situations, when a loved one dies or is in danger, during introspection and when making life changing decisions. In order to develop intuition a consistent introspection practice is necessary for most. There are those who walk among us who are blessed to have this in droves from their youth, but at this point in human history it is rare.
