Sensitization and desensitization. One of the most important knobs in our creation of reality.
The experiences we take in and the reality we produce are regulated by systems that have a certain level of sensitivity.
We enter a room, we smell whatever the room smells like, then after some time, we don’t. We go out into the dark night and don’t see much, after some time, we begin to see. We remove salt from the diet (or we stop smoking) and at some point we discover rich flavor where we used to perceive blandness. We begin to incorporate spice, which at first feels like flavorless stinging in the mouth and with time we begin to perceive nuance and flavor. We taste a rich dry wine and we pair it with an oily snack and with each bite/sip we achieve “first taste” each time. We avoid fear-producing activities and, with time, we fear more things. We practice the fear-producing activities and pretty soon we (are paralyzed by?) fear less. (Fill in blanks for many other emotional and other dynamics).
These systems which are in a constant state of self-calibration are there because what is consistently present is by definition not an immediate existential threat (nor opportunity) and therefore can be moved into the background furniture of our reality. Our perceptual systems are built to route energy towards detecting change in the environment because where we detect change best we discover new dangers and new opportunities earlier and are thus more capable of creating advantageous response. Those ancestors whose eyes didn’t detect movement in the tall grass never got the chance to run or fight and got eaten first.
When we awaken to the fact that we have constructed a reality that produces more suffering than we would like, that we are delusional, that we are devils, we also have the opportunity to discover that we shape that reality with sensitivity. What we expose ourselves to, in the right doses, be it foods, practices, situations, emotions, states of being, etc, can help nudge our continuous production of reality towards or away from that which we choose. By voluntary self-exposure to certain things and voluntary reduction of exposure to others we can begin to author the direction in which our self-calibrating perceptual systems open and which direction they close. By piloting this ever self-editing set of systems we begin to knowingly and purposely create the reality we perceive.
It is therefore crucial for us to realize that there is something we can do to construct the reality we would like to perceive. That thing is mindful, self-therapeutic, exposure and reduction of exposure in order to achieve growth in that which fruits and pruning in that which does not.
[Bonus: we also create the reality of people in our lives in this way. If we observe them long enough and they do not continue to grow, we come to view them as a predictable system rather than a dynamic being. We begin to lose the wonder that comes from discovering them. Those couples who spend time apart each day, week, month, year regularly reset their sensitivity to the other and therefore rediscover one another as a dynamic emanation of reality. Those who continue to grow as individuals and therefore are not the same as they were last week, month year, etc can be rediscovered again and again and therefore do not become reality’s furniture. Those who are always there and never changing, although incredibly helpful in bringing a sense of security, also bring a sense of deadness and non-dynamic non-entityness and we begin to forget and struggle to appreciate them. It is absolutely crucial then to be a person who grows to encourage those around us to be persons who grow, and to practice enough separation so that we can experience not stagnation but instead rediscovery of those we love.]
