What's YOUR window on the world? What colours and shapes your perceptions? How do your perceptions reflect back to you the world you see? How are your perceptions linked to your knowledge, assumptions, beliefs and experiences? And what does that tell you about your understanding of truth?

In preparation for a recent talk on transformative experiences, I recalled poignant moments from my teenage years that illustrated for me the particular nature of my windows on the world at the time, although much of that, and its wider implications, I only grasped gradually. Let me tell you the story:

I grew up in a small rural town in Germany, West-Germany at the time, a place my parents still call home. Due to my cousin Ulrich’s diligent passion in genealogy, we know that both sides of my family tree have been rooted for centuries in the same small town. Although I couldn’t quite articulate it then, I felt bound and stuck by the world into which I was born. I was longing for more depth and breadth and spaciousness.

“I live in a very small house. But my windows look out on a very large world,” says Confucius. Well, It seemed that the only window I knew was a tiny, heavily obstructed window looking out on a very small slice of the world. No wonder I liked school as it held for me the promise of adding more windows to my house that would enlarge my view. And no wonder I couldn’t wait to start grade 5 at the ‘Gymnasium’ (the academic high school) in the nearby bigger city. My new beginnings, and the potential to gain an expanded view of the world coincided with my home town’s 1200th anniversary in 1967.

In the early 70s, our school choir had arranged an exchange with our partner school in England, in Romford, located in Northeast London. We, the German 9th graders were in our 5th year of English studies, whereas most of the English girls knew no German at all or barely enough to say hello. It put the onus on us to manage most of the communications, even within our families and our host families. As you can well imagine, never having been outside of a German-speaking country, I anticipated the trip with excitement and trepidation.

We encountered much that surprised us during the ten days across the Channel, such as round-abouts (unknown then in Germany), driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road (of course we knew about it, but experiencing it was quite different), waiting stoically in queues-even with just three people–standing for the national anthem in the movie theatre, the structure and format of the school day and year, even table manners! Who knew that switching your fork over to the right hand and putting your knife down was considered perfectly good etiquette?!

Two experiences still stand out for me, though, that emerged at the Grammar School we had to attend when we were not singing still: one in Math and the other one in History class.

Presumably you were taught one particular process of writing down long divisions and multiplications. (Just a reminder that I belong to the era BC-before calculators or computers!)  Picture my amazement, when the division on the board was written up in a way I had never seen before and seemed odd, and yet the result turned out to be the same as mine! It had simply never occurred to me that even divisions and multiplications harboured within them the potential of diversity and possibility. I wondered what else could be done differently than I had accepted as a given.

History class revealed itself more as a shock than a surprise. How was it possible that not only the tone and the direction of the discussion of early 20th century history differed substantially from what I had been taught, but also the so-called facts that were presented? I had never heard of some of the names, places and accomplishments that figured so prominently in the discussion!

My teachers tried to mitigate my confusion by pointing to my insufficient knowledge of English, but I didn’t quite accept that explanation. I suspected something quite different, much more important and bigger, was revealing itself to me even if I couldn’t really identify it. My deep inner knowing as a child suggested to me that the world had to consist of many different shapes, hues and textures–and I don’t mean landscapes, peoples or languages in themselves. What I was given to understand, though, as truths and facts we were required to memorize, for instance, became continuously more questionable and at the same time more inexplicable.

Within the five years that followed my first trip to England, I travelled and studied for extended periods of time in England, France and the Soviet Union, then still behind the ‘Iron Curtain.’ My studies of English and Russian literatures in particular that followed my completion of high school perpetually opened my eyes and my mind to even further contradictions of truths, and thus to endless possibilities. How many versions of the purportedly same events do you believe I learned about? And yet, how many individuals, groups, organizations and groups believe they own the truth?

It dawned on me during my time of studies how accurately Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the amazing German writer and polymath, had captured the insights I was gaining: “Man knows himself only to the extent that he knows the world. He becomes aware of himself only within the world and aware of the world only within himself. Every object well contemplated opens a new organ within us.”

Having travelled to, lived and worked now in numerous countries, I realize how much of a larger picture of the world I have been enjoying over the years, how the view has changed. Quite honestly, though, many a time I only appreciated the blessings after the fact. Rubbing up daily against mind-sets, beliefs, behaviours and experiences that differed from what I was used to, frequently was at the least uncomfortable, often extremely painful and frustrating. However, each instance compelled me to re-examine my own attitudes, priorities, behaviours and beliefs.

Life’s happenings certainly continue to provide me with the opportunity to contemplate many an object and trust that each time “a new organ,” a new connection or insight emerged for me. Going back and forth between various cultures keeps me on my toes not to succumb to numbness and habit. Isn’t it really easy to get caught up accepting apparent truths because so much of our lives remains habitual and unexamined? And what does that do to the window on the world? How wide open is it? What's the world we look on to?

I would say, as the title of my August newsletter suggests, that our perceptions reflect the world back to us, a world which we create from the inside out. Getting to know ourselves and what we acknowledge as our own truths, therefore, must remain a work in progress because life presents itself to us as a steady flow of experiences. Lets be aware, however, that the moment we perceive something, it becomes static in our awareness, which leads to potential inflexibility and artificial conviction on our part. This paradoxical attribute of perception requires from us creative approaches (I wrote about the topic of creativity, “Looking at Life with a Squint” in my last blog) and a willingness to remain flexible and open to the flow of life.

So here is my invitation to you:

    1)   Choose a particular area in your life and examine your perceptions. These areas may pertain to fairly concrete realms of life, such as your physical body, your daily routines around the house, or your eating habits. Or perhaps you may wish to focus on one of your political views, your attitude towards the environment or religion, so-called fringe groups, or perhaps the organizations or institutions you dislike or detest.

    2)   Now do your best to discern, simply as an observer without judgment, out of which window or windows you are looking at that particular aspect of the world. How large a piece of that world can you see?

    3)   If you feel you would like to enlarge your view, ask yourself how you can infuse movement into this aspect of your life. For instance, can you change your routines or something else in the exterior environment that might allow you in turn to see the world differently? Or how about this: Could you concede, even for just a moment, that you may not know the answer or you may be incorrect in your own position on a subject? How about then engaging in conversation with others (imagined or real) who may offer up a contrary point of view - but not from a position of righteousness, but coming from your heart space? Try it out and see what happens to the slice of the world you will be able to see through your windows. Is it getting richer and more varied? What colours, textures and nuances can you perceive?
   
If you are interested in further ideas on the subject, including out-of-the-box presentations and references, see the article on my website, “Cleanse the Doors of Perception .” In addition, peruse the Newsletter Archives for more inspiration and suggestions for practical application.