Information floods us at a furious pace: newspapers, television, internet, books, movies, advertising, school, parents, friends, fashion, social conventions, social media—pressure from all directions. We are provided with templates for how we should think and are guided in thought, feeling and action.
How much of what you know is self-experienced? How much is mental grafts? How much have you absorbed in innocent faith? You trust in parents, relatives, teachers, friends, co-workers, the media. Do you know where you gave in and turned against yourself? Out of fear, laziness, ignorance, greed, cowardice, or any other of a thousand reasons, not least to avoid being deviant and exposed. Can you find yourself in that mess?
The world is conveyed through our senses, through the senses you experience the world. But it is only the beginning of the process that creates your personal image of reality.
The reality you see and act in is formed by your perspective, you perspective forms reality. Even if it was true that the underlying reality always is the same, what we experience will never share the same reality, since we all have a perspective of our own.
Man sees the world through man's senses. A bumblebee, a bat, a pig, an ant—everyone hears, sees, smells, feels in their own way. Everyone has their own particular view of the world, their own reality, their own limitation. Every living thing—plants, fungi, single-celled protists as well as bacteria have the senses they need for their lives. The world holds many realities.
Values are layered, there are basic values that link the individual to the culture at large, and there are values that are more like opinions, and can easily change. A fundamental value that came with the mother's milk for those who were brought up in the values of the industrialized world is that nature is a resource.
Our personal perception is a process that, more or less, goes on throughout life. Everything we encounter dynamically shapes our individual perception of reality and to remain alive we must constantly seek the essence and origin of life, to respond to those we meet with love and respect.
One of the difficulties with modern industrial society is that people move around, move to the cities, and lose touch with their land. Trust is shifted from the land and nature to man-made environments; the traffic lights, buttons, walls, doors. The closed room of illusory security. A signed paper instead of a handshake.