THE DEEP FILTERS
In the series of articles “Reality is A Creation of the Mind”, we saw in the previous post how the human mind create an internal representation of reality, how this process happens outside of conscious awareness, and how because of this, we believe that the subjective internal representation that has been conjured up by our mind is in fact the true reality. The external world is a creation of the internal realm.
The reality that we construct is valid within a certain set of rules and assumptions, most of them completely unconscious (our internal filters). Together, they constitute what we call someone’s ‘model of the world’ (MOW in short). Your MOW is the sphere within which your mind moves around. Imagine that you were born in a small village. You spend your whole childhood there, and the only interactions that you have with the external world are with people from your village. Everyone knows you by name and you know everyone’s name, every family. Your friends were born in the same village, and like you, this is all that they know. Everything and everyone is very familiar. You live in a familiar and comfortable world, a world that you understand and that understands you. You live according to a routine that you know inside out. You know exactly how to behave, you understand what’s accepted and what’s not.
Now imagine that your parents job changes and suddenly, you are taken to live in a faraway place, maybe even a different country where people do not speak the same language or eat the same food, where unsaid rules are different from the ones you know, and suddenly, you are lost. You don’t know what is expected of you, the behaviors that got a certain result in your village do not seem to get the same results in this new place. There are new rules, but you do not know what they are.
Example: Saskia was born in Italy. Her parents took her and her brother to live in China in the early 80s while she was in her pre-teens. She was put in a local Chinese school (a language she did not speak at all), lost all her friends, made new ones (after a while), and adapted to a whole new way of living, a whole new culture.
Within the boundaries of the village, life is structured alongside rules that everyone understands because they share the same CULTURE. There is a certain coherence to culture, things just make sense, just as within our personal sphere (our Model of the World), every assumption, every belief, every expectation, MAKES SENSE. Conclusions are drawn, deductions are made based on some often hidden rules and principles that we hold ‘true’, and certain types of behaviours start to emerge. The model of the world has a strong coherence IF the basic assumptions are not questioned.
Classic example: Maria came to coaching because she was lost. Her Hong Kong based firm had recently been taken over by an American company, and the newly merged entity was going through some cultural changes. She also had recently been promoted, which meant she was the HK representative in the weekly conference calls with the management team in the US, a team that was composed of men, most of them with a military background, the youngest of which could have been her father. She described those weekly meetings as scary events where aggressive communication was considered good etiquette. As an Asian lady and as a relatively new-comer, she felt thoroughly out of place, and though she did have a great deal of constructive contribution to propose, she never found the courage to speak during those conference calls. (We will see later how she solved this problem.)
The glue to this coherence are our deep filters, our values and beliefs, which colour the world we live in, i.e. the world we spoke about in an earlier post, which we create by deleting, distorting and generalizing the information available to us. Our values and beliefs are also called ‘drivers’ because they powerfully affect our reality and therefore, drive all our actions.
There are many interesting characteristics to those drivers, but let’s start with one major fact about them: they are created by and stored in a place of our mind that we are absolutely not aware of, the unconscious mind, which means that we do not know how or when they form, and how and when they operate. They are the equivalent of the automatic pilot in a plane.
How is that relevant for you? It is relevant because those deep unconscious filters sometimes clash with our conscious desires and wishes. So you may want to be wildly successful, powerfully loved, immensely rich, admirably attractive, deeply connected, whole heartedly compassionate, fiercely independent, profoundly understood, intensely respected but some powerful unconscious messages coming from deeply unconscious internal filters may override those conscious desires, and there is a lack of significance.
Personal Practice
Think of something that you really feel for, something that triggers some strong emotional reaction in you. Think about something related to politics, religion, relationships, economic policies, gender issues, family etc…
Now ask yourself: what is the belief I am holding that makes this an issue for me? How am I getting triggered by this? In one sentence, how can I describe the underlying assumption that makes this a hot topic for me?
Once you’ve found out, write down the belief. It should not take more than one sentence, and if it does, keep digging until you find the REAL underlying belief.
Then ask yourself where does this come from? how was this formed? Do I know someone in my close environment who thinks like this? Since when have I had the belief? What does it do for me? What does it allow me to do, be? What does it forbid me to do, be? How does it shade my behaviors, with others, with myself?
NB: Understand that we are not judging the belief, we are not trying to determine whether you want to let if go or whether it serves a purpose, or whether you are a good or bad person for having it. And since you are doing this with yourself, be honest, think of a belief you would not talk to someone about, as those hold the most potential for self learning. Dig until you have exhausted the answers to those questions.
To be continued…