Wake Up from your Dreamworld to Face Reality
You can experience zesty newness in your life rather than the same old cycles. (It IS possible to see beyond Confirmation Bias.)
Confirmation Bias in Action
I Don’t Belong and it Hurts
I’m sitting in a fancy café. Fancier than I normally go to, on a ritzy street, described by some as the hippest street in Melbourne, Australia. And I noticed myself doing something weird.
I’m looking at the clothes people are wearing (I don’t normally do this much). I’m assessing whether they’re better quality than mine, as in the clothes wealthier people might wear. Branded. Cooler. Corporate or upmarket.
As I look-to-assess I start noticing my clothes too (I don’t normally do this much). I’m wearing an old singlet-top from bulk clothing supermarket, Target. Jeans from a thrift shop. Jewellery that I like, but each piece cost under $20. My hair is messy (I’ve needed a haircut for more months than I’m keeping track of). My toenails are in that pre-claw phase.
I’m suddenly feeling insecure. Out-of-place. I wonder if the waitress was a bit rude to me. Did she look down her nose? Was she thinking that I don’t fit here? When she asked if I wanted just a drink today was she suggesting I can’t afford breakfast, and insinuating that I don’t belong?
I feel embarrassed, angry, ashamed in vacillating shades.
My body feels uncomfortable, edgy. It feels like moving out of the café, or hunching down in my seat and hiding. It wants to avoid making eye-contact. Or to eye the waitress in a challenging way.
My mind says that I should have gone someplace else. Somewhere safe. Somewhere mid-range and with more room to setup a laptop (this place is popular and crowded). That ‘I don’t belong here’. This was a bad idea. I should have known better.
I go to the toilet. On the way outside I notice other patrons, and one who watches me walk past. She’s dressed better than me. I interpret her facial expression as ‘judgey’. I imagine that she is picking apart me and my outfit, and judging that I don’t belong.
Ghosts from the Past
I stand in the toilet and look in the mirror. I notice that I’m lost in my own mind. I have no idea if my mental-stories and resultant-emotions are based on something-out-there or only inside-of-me. I become aware I’m looking through a thick lens at this café experience, and it’s a warped lens. I can’t tell if what I’m experiencing is objective.
The external signals I’m ‘noticing’ are so micro, and I’m setting out to look for them. It’s almost like I want those signals-of-judgment to happen … I’m expecting them. I’m going out of my way to find them, like a ghost hunter.
Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like. This lens inside of me was formed by ghosts-of-Christmas-past (to reference Dickens’ famous novel, ‘A Christmas Carol’). I grew up in a family that was only-just-middle-class, with parents who had grown up working class (translation, they were poor, and struggled to put food on the table). My parents are both university educated, the first in their families. My Dad sweated blood and tears to give his wife and children a better life, and my Mum married him because she anticipated he could.
The ghosts of my childhood were wispy insinuations that poverty is bad and to be feared. That we must fit in and act better than we are. That we must pretend to have more money than we do (I was one of only a few teenagers wearing obviously second-hand uniforms to an expensive private school, that sent my family into ever-spiralling debt and massive arguments. I didn’t want to go to this school — I fought against it — but it was vitally important to my Mum.)
Now that I remember it, my Mum has expensive taste, but she puts outfits together in a way that looks ill-kept, and perhaps reveals her roots. She carefully enunciates every word, and has excellent spoken and written English skills. I speak like my Mum … it’s how I learned to talk. People often ask where I come from and guess places like England, New Zealand, and various European countries. I come from Australia. I just sound less ocker than I really am!
Perhaps Mum talks like this to hide her roots.
The ghosts of so many familial messages around money and social class, overt and implied, haunt me still. They form a thick lens that fits over my eyes so snuggly, I keep forgetting that it’s a lens. It seems like just the way it is. It seems like I’m seeing objective reality.
But I’m seeing through a warped lens, that’s been there for as long as I remember.
That’s what Confirmation Bias is, and we all have it.
Confirmation Bias (of the ego)
Wikipedia defines Confirmation Bias as, “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.”
So I’m doing that, all the time. It’s part of being human. And it sucks … it leads to my past repeating in endless cycles, even (perhaps especially) when it’s traumatic.
It means it’s hard for me to go into an upmarket establishment and not ‘feel poor and judged for that’, despite what’s happening in that environment. Maybe I am being judged. Maybe I’m not. Maybe the woman with the ‘judgey expression’ had an itchy nose. Maybe the waitress was stressed because it was so busy. When I’m looking through my warped lens, those possibilities aren’t even possibilities.
“With enough mental gymnastics, just about any fact can become misshapen in favor to one’s confirmation bias.” ~Criss Jami, ‘Healology’
The Power of the (Warped) Lens
When I look at an experience through my warped lens it powerfully warps reality:
1) I see evidence for what I already believe. I seek it out. Depending on how warped my lens is, I may invent it.
2) I act as though my warped lens is true. Others react based on my reaction. A chain reaction is setup. The reaction is likely to be in the direction my warped lens pointed it in. So I’m likely to help make what I feared come true. And rejoice in the evidence that I was right (because reality feels safer if I can predict it, and my ego feels enhanced by being-right).
An example of number 1 would be me in that ritzy café looking around to see if people were judging me. It was me looking at their clothing and comparing it to my own, and feeling bad about it. It was me interpreting facial expressions as the judgment I feared.
Number 2 would be if I reacted to my lens as though it was the objective truth. If I had hunched my shoulders and hid behind the teapot. If I had walked out in a huff. If I had been snotty with the waitress to defend against her assumed ‘rudeness’ (I was friendly, and she became friendlier). If I had glared at ‘judgey face’ woman.
I still don’t know what happened in that café … and I realise it’s just not important. What was important was catching myself seeing the world through a warped lens. I became more relaxed about the lens, realising it couldn’t see clearly. My insecure feelings dissipated somewhat. I paid more attention to external cues in an attempt to re-check reality. I acted in ways consistent with my values, rather than my fears.
Taking off the Lens: Seeing Reality
Lens-removal is an advanced step that not everybody will want or choose to do. The more attached to our various lenses we are, the more they seem to be us. I am not my lens … I’m a human who sees the world through various lenses at various times, sometimes multiple lenses (which can be mega confusing!).
Once I realised I had a heap of dysfunctional lenses that were in the way of my vision, I set out to access reality. I don’t know why, but the truth has always seemed essentially important to me. Younger me vowed that I would live and die for the truth, because it was the truth — and that was enough of a reason. I also converted to a religion because I believed it was the truth, and eight years into sincerely exploring that path, I left the religion, because I saw through various lies, and found more-true-truth.
Now it’s ten years on. As I’ve removed lenses, reality has opened and expanded at an astonishing rate, to reveal astonishing vistas. I had no idea the world was so big. It was so small when my inner world was small. It was so small and hellish when twistedly-warped lenses blinded me. I had no idea that I could be so happy, so filled with love, so knowing I belong, so at peace. Or that I could be so sad, so filled with hate, so anguished and longing, so in turmoil (I’ve been all of that as I’ve opened to clear-seeing. And in seasonal cycles I experience all of it, as I let go of more subtly-hidden lenses).
What I can share is that reality is worth it, and that I will continue to take off every lens, until there isn’t a lens anymore (or at least until there isn’t a lens that I mistakenly believe is essentially-me). Perhaps I’ll end up with a consciously chosen lens that I can take off and exchange with other lenses, anytime I choose — a superpower, indeed.
How to Pry-off a Lens
So you’ve realised you have a wonky lens, and that you’d like to take it off. You want to update yourself to the reality of a particular situation. You’re sick of repeating cycles of the-same-old-thing, as you (unconsciously) co-create relationships, jobs, and your identity.
As Albert Einstein is (contentiously) attributed to say: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”
It’s time for a new lens if you want different results. But first you have to effectively remove the old lens (and they can be sticky!).
1) Just noticing the lens is often not enough (but it is the first step).
2) The second step is watching yourself internally … like a hawk.
3) The third step is to relax the hawk-like attention to be more friendly, more relaxed (that’s a paradox, and it works).
4) Notice any thought-stories. Notice any feelings. Notice any bodily sensations.
5) Be with what you notice with friendly, hawk-like attention. (This ability is sometimes called mindfulness.)
6) Some of what you find may be painful (even agonising). You may resist noticing it, let alone feeling into it more fully. Do your best to relax into it, and breathe into it. Stay with it as much as you can, but also be as relaxed as you can (Access supportive others and professionals to enhance your mindfulness, if you have need. This can often help at key points in the process including beginnings, processing trauma, and getting through perpetual stuckness).
7) Notice how your inner landscape shifts and moves, as you stay with it. All sorts of weird shit can and does happen as you watch it. (And to think that once I was completely oblivious to this undercurrent of reality!) Don’t get lost in the happenings, don’t read into them — allow it all. Be with it. Your system knows how to heal itself, and will equalise over time. You’re watching healing happen, you’re empowering it to happen … by getting out of the way.
8) Notice anything and everything that comes up in your ‘lens view’. Notice the inside stuff, and the outside stuff. Notice what’s happening all around you, and anything that gets your attention. It gets your attention because it’s resonating with your lens in some way, or with your deeper wisdom. It’s important even thought it seems unimportant; it’s a paradox. Be with it.
9) Be with it all, breathe into it with friendly-hawk attention, relax into it. See if you can bring a sense of warm lovingness to it all, and to yourself (this takes time to develop, and build capacity in. It’s a skill: a rewiring of the brain, and a reopening of the heart. It will happen, if you stay with it … it will build itself in micro-moments, until you are much more proficient than you dreamed was possible).
10) Put down the lens. Or be with it so much that it eventually drops off by itself. Look around and experience the world as it actually is. You’ve just woken up in The Matrix. Welcome Dreamer to the reality where you’re awake! Now you have power to effect real and lasting change. Now you are here.
Back to Basics: One Step at a Time
I recommend beginning where you are, and practicing lens-removal in every situation. Take one step at a time: your next step. Take the step that’s right for you, that makes sense to where you are right now. Maybe that’s to notice what’s going on inside, to remind yourself to keep noticing. Maybe you’ve already cultivated hawk-like attention but it’s not warm and loving. The next step is the only step that exists and is all that matters. It will get you where you need to go. Assess what it is for you.
I’m on my next step, noticing that there are lenses beneath lenses, and that they affect my life hugely … and that they are not me, not really.
And whenever they drop off (what a relief) or I get to the stage where I can willingly put one down — wow. Life is wow. Life is love. Life is me, and I’m aware that my words no longer make logical sense, but I’m also aware that the truth-of-direct-experience is beyond-words.
Beyond Confirmation Bias
I Belong Here and it’s Bliss
In the beyond-the-lenses reality, I re-enter the ritzy café. I see and feel how I belong, no matter where I go or what social class I move in. I see how loved I am, and how beyond-judgement, even if others judge me or I judge myself. I see how silly judgment is, how most people are trapped behind wonky lenses living in endlessly repeating pain-cycles. They are not in-charge of when or how they judge me, and I can’t blame them for it … they are a slave to their lenses.
I put down my warped lens and I enjoy the café-experience. It’s visceral and delicious (literally). It’s an unusual experience for me because it’s a different café to my usual. If people are judging me it’s not personal, and I can react to them any way that I choose (now that’s freedom). I enjoy the people. Perhaps I even enjoy the experience of being judged, when and if it comes. Wouldn’t that be something!
The world has tipped on its end and exploded out the side. Nothing of the old reality makes sense. The warped lens is gone and everything is shiny and new. The dawn looks like the dawn again, like it did through my newborn eyes as an unknowing baby. Love feels so rich and warm — the smell of breakfast food, the pillowy cushion behind my back, the smile of a passerby … these are all ‘Love’ loving me, in this moment. Life is good, life is alive. Life is this moment, and this moment is all there is.
I am real, and I can see reality. Reality sees me. We gaze at each other with tender lover’s eyes and then we merge into … what? I can’t tell you. I’m still merging, and I’ve never merged before. I want you to come with me, to drop your lenses and gaze at the wonder of Isness. And I’m not going to wait for you, and it’s okay if you don’t / can’t / won’t come right now. It’s time for me to drop the lenses.
Drop.
Sair Gryphon of IntimacyIs has been most motivated by longing for love and feeling unlovable. Their life has been focused on learning how to love and be loved. Now they KNOW they are loved, no matter what.
