Reality perception is the fourth main level, you are working with. And equally important. In fact, the most important one from one point of view.

Human beings are creatures of habit. We want our doctors office to look the way, such an office should look like and not – for example – like the office of the manager of the local zoo. We want a supermarket to look like a supermarkt. We want our home to not just look a a home, but like our home. What our home looks like is different for everyone.

When performing a suspension your home is still your home. Yet, it is not. Not in your perception. To the giver, the recipients’ head should not be somewhere in the middle of the air or close to his feet, because it normally isn’t there. To the recipient, the floor should not be in front of your belly, for example. In other words. Things suddenly are not where you expect them to be and many thing do not look like you expect them to look. If you have a painting on the wall, take it off and look at it upside down. It is still the same picture. Nothing has changed, apart from the orientation. And guess what, suddenly it is a different picture and you may even see details, you’ve never seen before.

Much of your perception of reality is actually based on memory. You do not need to look where the bed is in your bedroom. You do not even need to go there and look. You know where your bed is. Well, actually, you know where it was the last time you checked and there is no reason to assume that situation has changed. Memory and assumption – that is what a substantial amount of our reality perception comes from. In fact, there probably are a lot of things in your house you do not notice ……… until they’re suddenly missing.

You probably know the feeling. For no apparant reason you suddenly want to read a particular book. You go to the bookcase and find it isn’t there anymore. At least not on its familiar spot. Why did you suddenly want that book? Well, ten to one because at some point your brain recorded it was missing but it took a while to process this minute bit of information. Your brain compared the latest actual scan to a previous one, stored in your memory and found an item missing during a routine check. So it sent out an officier – you – to go and look for it.

One objective of meditation is to temporary free processing capacity in your brain, to allow for different – other – things. Temporarliy shutting down such routine checks and other worries and thoughts is one way to do that. Changing the perception of reality is in fact an intens form of meditation. If the room you are in no longer looks like the room it used to be, there is no need to compare notes from previous visits to this room and your mind is free and open for exploration, for wonder, for new and different things. it has to be, because it is not updating stored information, it is recording new information.

Reality perception changes: The furniture is suddenly underneath.

These meditational aspects are very important, since they allow the brain to record and work with the other levels – hence the other signals – coming in as a result of the suspension. This is what fully opens the mind and the energy flows we are after. What largely happens is that the concious mind and the subconcious mind are working together in the same reality. This is what creates the different state of awareness.

One cannot say one of the four levels is more important than the other, neither does any of them tie them all together, All four simply need to be present and are of equal importance and relevance. Besides, there are more levels – the effects of hormones, such as adrenaline end endorphins for example, the intensity of the situation itself and the excitement of it. All these contribute to the different state of awareness. The meditational aspects – the alteration of reality perception – is largely a facilitator for other impulses to come through, be noticed and worked with. And by the way, meditation does not always have to be a state of calmness and harmony. When you jump out of the way, just before a car hits you, you could see that as a moment of very clear and effective, but not exactly calm and peaceful meditation. The fact that people, when things like that happen, will say later “they saw there entire life flashing by” means they in fact were meditating and for a split second were in another reality.

Reality perception changes: Sideways suspension.

You will have spotted that traditional Shibari suspensions are not done high up in the air. The reason for this is, there is no need to. It is not a circus act. What we are after is changing the perception of reality and quite often an inch of elevation is actually more than enough to send someone off into ‘” outer space”. It is the combination of the different levels and the impulses and effects, they bring about, we’re after. It does not need to be overly spectacular.

 
The above article is a reprint from our information/educational site Kink Culture.
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