Elevating Moments: Seeing Beyond the Surface

<br># Elevating Moments: Seeing Beyond the Surface<br><br>It’s a complex business, being human. We walk around in these bodies, seeing the world through our own two eyes, and we believe what we see. We believe the story our senses tell us. The chair is solid, the sky is blue, the person who cut us off in traffic is a jerk. It all seems so… real. So absolute. And in a world that moves at the speed of light, a world of endless information and constant demands on our attention, we rely on these absolute realities. We need them. They help us navigate the complexity, make quick decisions, and get on with our day. But what if the reality we are so sure of is only a sliver of the truth? What if we are living in a beautiful, intricate, holographic universe, but only allowing ourselves to see it in black and white?<br><br>I remember a time, years ago, when my reality felt particularly absolute. I was walking through Granville Island Market on a busy Saturday. The air was thick with the smell of salt and fried donuts, the sound of a busker’s saxophone echoing off the concrete pillars. I was navigating the crowd, feeling that familiar urban mix of energized and slightly overwhelmed, when I saw him. A man with a long, grey beard and a tattered coat, standing near a bin of apples, muttering to himself. His eyes were wild, unfocused. My nervous system did what nervous systems do: it contracted. Unsafe, the old brain whispered. * unpredictable*. I clutched my bag a little tighter, my body preparing for a threat that hadn’t actually materialized. I made a wide arc around him, my gaze fixed on the exit. My own story was already written: I was a woman alone, and he was a potential danger. It was a story that felt ancient, etched into my DNA. And yet, even as I was moving away, a tiny part of me, a quiet witness, felt a pang of something else. Not fear, but a deep, resonant sadness. It was a fleeting feeling, quickly overridden by the much louder voice of self-preservation, but it was there.<br><br>I told myself a story about that man. A story of mental illness, of poverty, of danger. My brain, in a fraction of a second, had taken in a few sensory details, cross-referenced them with a lifetime of cultural conditioning and past experiences, and produced a verdict. It was a story that felt true. But was it?<br><br>## The 99% We Don’t See<br><br>Here’s a very good thing to know: our brains are masterful storytellers. And like any good storyteller, they take liberties with the truth. Neuroscientists tell us that of the 11 million bits of information our senses take in every single second, our conscious mind can only process about 50 bits. Fifty. Out of 11 million. That’s not a typo.<br><br>What happens to the other 99.999%? It’s filtered out by a part of our brainstem called the Reticular Activating System, or RAS. The RAS acts as a kind of bouncer for our conscious mind, deciding what gets its attention. And its guest list is determined by our beliefs, our past experiences, and what we’ve deemed important for our survival. It’s a brilliant survival mechanism. It’s what allows a new mother to sleep through a roaring thunderstorm but wake to the faintest whimper from her baby. Her RAS knows what’s important. But it also means that what we experience as “reality” is a radically simplified, heavily edited version of the world, tailored to our personal history.<br><br>We’re not seeing the world as it is; we’re seeing the world as we are. We are seeing our own neural pathways in action. The stories we tell ourselves about the world are, in a very real sense, the stories we have practiced telling ourselves. The grumpy boss, the distant partner, the unfairness of it all… these are not just external realities. They are neural habits. They are the well-worn grooves of our perception, and the brain, loving efficiency, will send energy down these familiar paths again and again. This is the law of neuroplasticity: the more we think a thought, the more we feel a feeling, the easier it becomes to think and feel it again. We are, in essence, practicing our reality into existence every single day.<br><br>So what about the man in the market? My brain served me the most practiced story, the one of fear and separation. It was a story designed to keep me safe. But what other stories were available? What might I have seen if I had been able to access even a fraction of that other 99%?<br><br> This is the work of transformation. It’s not about pretending the world is all love and light. It’s about developing the capacity to see a wider reality, to hold more complexity, to access the wisdom that lies beyond our initial, reactive perceptions.<br><br>The ancient wisdom of the Tao Te Ching speaks to this. In chapter 1, it says: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.” What we see, what we can name and label — the “man,” the “threat,” the “market” — is not the whole story. It’s just the nameable, the 1%. The eternal, the whole, the real… that is something much vaster, something we can only feel and experience, not capture with our labels.<br><br>

<br><br>## The Body as an Antenna<br><br>So how do we begin to access this vaster reality? We have a beautiful, built-in tool: the body. Our bodies are constantly receiving information from the world, much of which our conscious minds filter out. The body is an antenna for the unspoken, the energetic, the 99%. That feeling in your gut, the tightening in your chest, the sudden sense of peace that descends for no reason… this is your body speaking to you. It’s offering you a different story, a different data point.<br><br>When I think back to that day in the market, I can feel the contraction in my body even now. The shallow breath, the tense shoulders. My body was reacting to a perceived threat. But what if I had been able to stay with that sensation, to get curious about it, instead of immediately letting my mind’s story take over? What if I had been able to notice the fear without becoming the fear?<br><br>This is the practice. To feel the sensation, to notice the story, and to create a little space between them. A pause. In that pause, we can ask a new question. Not “What’s wrong with him?” but “What is my body telling me right now?” Not “Is this person safe?” but “Can I be with this feeling of unsafety within myself?” This is not a mental exercise. It is a full-body listening. It is the practice of inhabiting ourselves with such gentle presence that the deeper truths have a chance to surface. It might start with the simple act of placing a hand on your heart or your belly, and breathing into that space. It might be noticing the temperature of the air on your skin, the feeling of your feet on the ground. These simple acts of sensory awareness can be powerful anchors, bringing us out of the frantic storytelling of the mind and into the grounded wisdom of the body. From this place, our questions change. They become softer, more curious. We are no longer trying to solve a problem, but to be with a mystery. The mystery of ourselves, the mystery of another, the mystery of the moment.<br><br>I lost sight of the man that day. I hurried out of the market, my heart thumping, and it wasn’t until I was sitting in my car that I allowed myself to feel the full force of my reaction. And in the quiet of my car, a different story began to emerge. A story of compassion. A story of our shared humanity. A story of a man who was, perhaps, not a threat, but a soul in pain. A man who was, perhaps, a reflection of a part of myself that felt lost and unseen. I don’t know. I will never know.<br><br>But in that moment of quiet reflection, my reality expanded. The world became a little bigger, a little more mysterious, a little more infused with grace. I hadn’t changed the man. I hadn’t “fixed” anything. But I had, for a moment, changed myself. I had loosened the grip of my own certainty. I had touched the edge of the 99%.<br><br>This is the journey of elevating our lives into love. It is the journey of learning to see with more than just our eyes. It is the practice of listening with more than just our ears. It is the courageous act of questioning our own stories, of softening our own certainties, and of opening to the vast, mysterious, and sacred reality that is always, always available to us, just beneath the surface of what we think we know.<br><br>A Blessing for Seeing Beyond<br><br>May you have the courage to question the stories you tell yourself.<br>May you feel the wisdom of your body, that faithful and true messenger.<br>May you find the grace in the pause, the space between the stimulus and the response.<br>And may you, in your own time, come to see the world not just as it appears, but as the vast, interconnected, and sacred whole that it is.<br><br>

<br><br>With infinite love and support on your journey,<br>Susan<br>