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Showing posts with the label mental filters

Stained Reality

“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, / Stains the white radiance of eternity...”  Like the other Romantic poets, P B Shelley was unhappy with the inevitable stains of life. One of the many stains or imperfections is our inability to perceive reality clearly. Reality comes into our consciousness through a lot of filters that have become a part of our very being.  Our past experiences, our prejudices, beliefs, convictions, desires, culture, religion, political affiliation... a whole range of things acts as the filters. For example, take ourselves, human beings.  “What a piece of work is a man,” exclaimed Hamlet in spite of himself.  Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark saw human being as a paradoxical creature that is noble in reason, infinite in faculties, admirable in form, angelic in action and godlike in apprehension.  Yet the Prince ended up hating many human beings and killing quite a few.  Hamlet’s whole perception and understanding of reality was tainted thoroughly by on