We all want to remove the filters, at least those of us that even know about them.
But what you need to understand is this: filters are necessary. Without filters reality cannot get through to you, without filters you are not able to interact with reality at all.
What is a filter, really? Filter is a predefined translator. Partially it is words. If and when you cannot name something, it doesn’t exist for you, or you don’t have any power to interact with it.
I remember my first encounter with “there is no filter/words for this thing” some 30-40 years ago in a book of short stories. There was this thing, heavy, big, silent, and it was threatening as hell… and the whole town was in fear of it. They didn’t know what it was, and therefore they had no way to interact with it.
The second encounter was in Star Trek IV: this “thing” was threatening to destroy the Earth… but what was it? Until they (the humans) figured out, by accident, that it was a probe they sent out some hundreds years earlier, they had no power to relate to it. 1
So filters are there for a reason. In the movie on Helen Keller, she had no filter until she had words. The world was undifferentiated nothingness, until she started to makes sense through filters, through words, through concepts.
So, if filters are a good thing, why do I harp on that all the time?
Two reasons you have a filter
- Each language has its own distortions, and they come from the level of understanding of the country, of the people when the words were invented. There is a distortion right there, that is an impediment to the accurate perception, the accurate and powerful interaction with the world.
- Each human has a set of filters that instead of creating a good working connection with reality, these filters act like the shaping disks of the pasta machine: anything that goes through them must conform in shape to them.
And if the filter says that you can’t… your relationship to the world is like that. I remember having a filter that I am big and ugly. Then, accidentally, I saw my mirror image in a big mirror in the Opera House, and I was tiny, and somewhat pretty. I didn’t recognize myself first from the image, the filter distorted my view so much.
It forced me to alter my filter to tiny and pretty.
The filter you are stuck with is a distortion of reality about you and about the world, and makes you ineffective in life.
- Some of you have a filter that you can’t, of you are bad, or something like that.
- Some of you have a filter that you are brilliant…
And counter to the teachings of all the assholes that teach you should have a high self-esteem, I teach that being cautiously realistic is the best way to relate to yourself and the world.
You are neither stupid, nor brilliant. You have certain results and they create a trend. If you want to change the trend you need to work at it.
An Expanding Human being isn’t weighed down with delusions of grandeur or delusions of inferiority. They are present at all times to re-evaluate their filters to become more and more effective in life…
Instead of being stuck and being ineffective and stagnant.
My activators rock the boat. They question your filters.
If you don’t like your boat rocked you will shrink even more. Get even more entrenched in your delusional world.
What a pity.
PS: Your arrogance is a filter
I just hung up with my Sunday conversation partner. It is becoming increasingly clear that the filter effectively stops you from doing any kind of thinking. You are not able to re-word the questions, you are not able to ask effective questions: why think if you already know the answer.
But 100% of the time, what you get is not what is said. 100% of the time. And unless you have the habit of saying “I understand it one way from the limited perspective of the human mind (mine), but it is probably not what was said… let me massage it around to see if I can glean a richer or different meaning than my filter gives me…” and unless you develop the skill to ask better questions, re-word sentences, you will never get outside of your filter, because it is NOT POSSIBLE. Developing a new filter is near impossible, the only winning chance is to be able to hold the filter in your hand and out of the way so you can see more, different, closer to reality.
I am very tempted to start an intelligence raising class… If I did (paid!!) would you be interested? Comment if yes. Depending on the schedule and the price, of course.
- The android staff of the “thing” called it Yager… they figured out that the ship was the Voyager programmed to check on the humpback whales… it was a really good example of no filter
your comments don’t testify to that statement
Thank you, Sophie. I have actually been spending time in a label-free and judgement-free zone, to the extent that I can catch myself. I am spending more time observing, including myself.
Ahh, filters…much to learn, and unlearn.
I am interested in how to up my intelligence level class, however i need to get around my big ego of feeding on the reactions of people which is the lid that closes up growth.
it is the same filter I am talking about. You are not an idiot, you have idiotic habits, no thinking, no methods to see things more than one way. If you were an real idiot you would be institutionalized.
So stop calling yourself names, it is more of the same. If you are interested in raising your vibration and becoming a human being, this is the first thing to drop.
Sorry, Sophie, tried to be funny, did not go over very well. By idiots, I mean people like me. Nice, almost self-aware idiots.
I need this class, but it’s intimidating. It would be very difficult for me. All my life, the first meaning that came to my mind almost always made my teachers happy, so I learned to stay with that first meaning. Finding other meanings is almost inconceivable to me. I’m afraid this course would be very frustrating. I would need you to take tiny, baby steps. And be very patient.
It’s ironic, isn’t it, that by spending my life making myself “intelligent” for school, I made myself stupid.
John, your context is your context. I have the freedom and the wisdom to invent my own.
Who said I could not invent this for MYSELF to further my training in disassembling the fog that keeps me from seeing reality even better?
AND for you as a teacher. Maybe it would be bad. Your classes would be full of idiots.
Such a class would be great. We are already paying for our stupidity. At least we can pay and dig ourselves out of the holes we are in.
For me to distinguish and accept my own stupidity would be wonderful. To establish a baseline of reality and to become familiar with my own limitations. To also see where I have a story and to see it as story. And to see where I have genuine limitations and become responsible for finding a work-around solution.
I think such a class would be freeing for us as students bad for you as a teacher. No context other than stupidity. Nothing else to attempt to learn through a haze of hidden stupidity.