Ego is a filter lens distorting pure perception

Jac O’Keeffe
Just let there be a settling on the inside. Just a settling down. Let the body be at rest. Whatever happens in the phenomenal world is only happening when you’re thinking about it. If you don’t put your attention on it, then there’s no perception of it. And sooner or later, you’ll see that if your perception isn’t on something, it’s more unreal than real.
It’s our perception that solidifies the reality feel, to whatever you imagine is happening. And if the identified ‘you’ the personal ‘you’—the character or whatever you call yourself phenomenally—that person, if that person is viewing with all their own filters of how things should be and expectations, ideas, judgments, if all of these ideas are running, then what you see in front of you is only what you see, because it has your unique tapestry of filter lenses blocking pure perception, which is actually trying to come through all the time.
So, there’s pure perception arising out of your essence, from the core of your being. Now, the dualistic framework will say, “I am perceiving something,” and then we’ve got this triad that comes in, subject-object. I the subject am seeing an object. Now, it’s divided, but your perception is doing that division.

As long as you think there’s two, as long as you believe you’re separate, then there’s two and you’ve got duality. As long as you believe you are the person or you are the body or whatever version makes sense to you, if you believe you are your body, then okay, we’ve got a me and something else. We’ve got subject and object, and pure perceiving which happens from the essence of what you are is distorted. It comes through the lens of subject-object so it breaks pure seeing into subject-object. That’s the only way it can get the information back in—feed the information and interpret it back in.
So, this is how duality works. It is your own filter lenses that are in place that break up what is seamless into subject-object, me and you, division. Your own perception is doing this. That’s why we do this work. We do this work to understand that, “My view is making this look like the scenario in front of me.” With pure perception, that labeling of subject-object, of me and this, of color, shape, sound, texture, opinions, all of the story, pure perception doesn’t do that labeling.

That only kicks in when there’s subject-object, which is your personal lens. So pure perception sees without labels, so it’s just what’s happening and it feels kind of cumbersome to name what’s happening—okay there is this and there’s that. We have the capacity as pure perception to pick up a lens, use it and drop it. It’s like you’re picking up a pen to write something or you’re picking up your glasses to see small print more clearly.
It’s like this, that when pure perception is trusted and you know that the viewing point from your body is just a mechanism that’s attributed to the body, and it’s got nothing to do with who you are, so there’s no clinging to it, you’ve no ownership with it, so there’s just this mechanism of breaking subject-object which happens through your brain, through your mind, through the mechanism.

So, in recognizing, gosh you know this is a filter lens distorting pure perception; you can feel pure perception.
Ireland born Jac O’Keeffe facilitates spiritual gatherings in question-answer format in US