As I sit here reflecting on a topic to write about, I find myself asking the question  ‘What’s going on in my life right now?’ I like this question because it invites my awareness into the here and now, and into my sensing body. I hope that if I talk about experiences I’m encountering and how my practice is helping me relate with them, this may resonate with and be helpful to others. Almost immediately, the topic of seeing clearly emerges. 

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This topic jumped into my face because for the past month I’ve been struggling with my senses. Despite a deep appreciation and admiration for the natural world, I respond unfavourably to pollen and have done so since the age of 10. It takes not a lot of pollen in the air to render my fit 30 year old male body a series of spasmodic convulsions, snot and blood. Hayfever is an allergy caused by pollen or dust in which the mucous membranes of the eyes and nose are inflamed, causing running at the nose, watery eyes, along with secondary impacts such as lethargy, sleep deprivation and irritable mood. Prevention and alleviation of the symptoms include reduced exposure to the outdoors, consuming certain antihistamine rich teas/honeys or shaking hands with big-pharma. 

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A month prior, I was smiling smugly to myself as I was not experiencing any symptoms that would usually begin as early as late March with the rising of the sap in the hedges. Today I woke having slept a little better after almost a month of 2-6 hours per night. My mood is more regulated and I have capability to write more than one coherent sentence. My nose is painful and my throat raspy. Experiencing hayfever has led me to think about perception and seeing clearly. How do I see clearly? How do I respond when reality is either not as I’d like it to be, or not so clear to me?

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Thich Nhat Hanh wrote much on perception and offers a categorisation of perception into three modes: direct perception, perception as representation and perception as mere images. When we experience something with one of our five sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, or body), before our thinking mind swings into action to name the experience and compare it to other experiences, we are practicing direct perception. Our minds are capable of perceiving in this way but we more often perceive via the other two modes. Direct perception in relation to hayfever might include warm, blurred, wet, engulfed, itch, sharp, dull, clogged. 

 

‘Perception as representation’ happens when we interact not with an object itself but with an image of the object. I’ll use the example of a flower as a hayfever sufferer. I ‘know’ what a flower is and I also know of the pollen’s destructive capability in relationship with my orifices. When I encounter a flower, my mind immediately recognises and names it based on prior experiences with flowers - ‘bastard, pretty, go away, colourful, sweet, gift, please be gentle’. I conflate, to some degree, the perceived generic, historical versions of flower with the flower that really is in reality.

 

The flower is a bastard and it is not. The flower impacts me, invades my body and I can not remain indifferent to this truth. And yet the flower has no explicit desire to attack ‘me’; the flower is only a bastard in relation to the conflict that emerges between my membranes and pollen. And even then, not always! I’m reminded here of the reality that whenever you’re pointing at something with one finger, 3 fingers are pointing back at you - something to sit with... Context matters for perception and without mindful attention, context can engulf or entrench a relationship with something. 

 

When we engage in ‘perception as mere images’, we don’t even need the stimulus of an object; our mind generates images out of itself, as when we see and interact with objects in dreams or through visualisation. Although the term ‘mere images’ may sound dismissive, visualisation can be useful in deepening understanding or preparation. For example, visualising a blue inhalation while meditating can induce a deeper sense of calm and relaxation. In a different context, many police forces in Canada practice meditation ahead of their shifts in order to respond to pressurised situations with clearer vision. When I hear the word ‘summer’, a hesitation and awareness of suffering emerges alongside anticipation for warmth and joy. ‘What nourishes the world overwhelms me’, ‘How do I keep myself well in anticipation of being overwhelmed?’. The divergence between stimuli and symbolic representations varies for each of us. 

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Practices that help me see more clearly include reading poetry, practising meditation and enquiring in partnership with a fellow reflector on their sense of things. On an existential plane, and though I often playfully resent it, I am also humbled by the reminder that nature proceeds entirely without consultation. The flowers are simply doing what flowers do; reproducing extravagantly, scattering pollen everywhere with complete indifference to anyone’s histamine response. If they’re indifferent to my suffering, the least I can do is have a little fun in addressing them as worthy adversaries. Bastards. 

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Experiencing an unseen affliction also helps me be more tolerant and curious toward the unseen afflictions that we each carry from mild irritations through to identity defining knots and scars. In this way, my sensitivity to suffer what most people enjoy gives me a unique lens through which to remain open and curious to another’s world as they perceive it. 

When reality is not so clear to me, I can launch into judgements and see more of the bad in something rather than the whole. Particularly when there’s case history of suffering, it can be difficult to remain open to experience as it is without adding on the layers of judgemental ‘what ifs, whys, how comes…’.

 

A question that helps me defunk when I get a little too far down the rabbit warren of attachment to a particular view (let’s say I was attached to the idea that all flowers were bastards, all year around) is the wonderfully simple ‘Am I sure?’ What I love about this question is that it upends any semblance of a full stop. This in turn serves to keep me in contact with whatever is emerging at the boundary of experience. Often not easy. Best done with professional help.

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In extension to this question, Thich Nhat Hanh offers the sobering observation:

‘All images, whether we perceive them in the mode of representations or the mode of mere images, are false. They are not a direct perception of things-in-themselves. … We live much more in the world of representations and mere images than in the world of things-in-themselves. Our consciousness rarely touches reality. We imprison ourselves in our own distorted images of reality.’ Girard’s mimetic theory offers an extension to this idea - but let’s leave this to another time and place. See that bracketing off in action? Proud of you, Alex. 

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Perhaps we all have some work to do, or perhaps this is an incorrect view also… 

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In Space to Reflect, we explore many themes including those relating to our experiences of handling perceptions and misperceptions. Here are some questions you may like to consider:

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• When have you perceived something and then found out that your perception was incorrect?

• What did you learn from that experience?

• How do you practice to increase your ability to see more clearly?

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Intake for 2027 is open.