Ever have a moment when you could have sworn you heard some one say something, but they weren't even talking?? Or maybe they were, but they weren't saying what you thought they were saying. I'd argue that these moments happen more than we'd like to admit, or moreso, than we are even aware of. It's all tied into a phenomenon that I like to call..

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Perceptionality

My wife and I always seem to get in the same type of argument.. In one version or another, the basic premise of it goes something like.. "I told you that..." or "I asked you to.." with the response being "No, you didn't!"

At times I'm POSITIVE I'm right, and well I can tell that she is POSITIVE she is.. how can we both be right? Doesn't someone have to be wrong? Maybe both of us are..

I got to thinking about this conundrum earlier this week after another incident..

I have a lot on my mind, and we are moving house right now. We were in the kitchen of the old house and she was rattling off a check list of things we needed to get done for the move, and I wasn't there.. I mean I was there, but I wasn't fully present... My mind had drifted mid-sentence to something I remembered had to be done for work.

What set this instance apart from the rest is that I realized what was happening in the moment.. I caught myself.. or more like I saw myself in my head. I knew that I had completely not heard a single word she had said.. but not only that, I noticed something even more shocking..

In my mind, I had actually heard her saying things related to what I was thinking about work.. I had perceived us to be having a conversation about something that was completely fabricated.. and the thing is..

It felt so real..

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It's likely that if I did not manage to catch myself in that moment, I would have recalled the imagined conversation as an actual spoken that we had. An exchange that she would have had no idea about.

Furthermore, any recollection would have served as a means to solidify the made up event as factual in my mind. At that point, no rhyme or reason would have served to convince me otherwise.

I believe this behavior happens to us more than any one would like to, or even know to, admit. I've caught myself catching a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye that I could have sworn was real, heard noise that must have been imagined, and, most glaringly of all, heard people tell me things that they definitely didn't tell me.

Later that day the same thing happened in reverse.. My wife was searching for something in the room and I told her where it was. She didn't hear a word. She asked me again because she thought I was ignoring her. When your mind is in a thousand places at once, it's hard to distinguish truth from fiction..

Our perception starts to cloud reality.. it takes elements from it and ties it in with what it expects to see or hear. This Perceptionality becomes the new veracity of things.

What is reality? Can our perception of the world be trusted as an authentic reflection of what is? or perhaps it doesn't matter because our perception becomes our reality! I think it's important to be aware that what we think of the world cannot and will not ever be exactly how others see it. If we can remember this fact, it would make each of our.. realities a lot more pleasant place to be..

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Have you ever had a faulty memory moment? the disconnect from perception and reality can be disorienting. How did you feel? What are you thoughts on perception vs reality? is there an important distinction we should be aware of? Start the discussion in the comment section below! Namaste!